Chapter 41: Man vs Man

The dagger pierced straight through Kuikui’s ribs.

Basil wasn’t certain whether the dinosaur had been trying to catch the dagger in midair with his maw or if he had tried to push his master out of the projectile’s way. The result was the same. Kuikui’s timing was wrong and he took the dagger straight-on. Time slowed down as feathers and blood swirled around Basil.

Lucine Lalande [poisoned] Kuikui!

Kuikui finished his flight course straight into Basil’s face, making him stumble. The assassin lunged in his direction, sword raised for a fatal blow…

And then she leaped past Basil.

“Lucine, what are you doing?” the knight snarled at his teammate. “You had him!”

“Dommy!” The assassin rushed past Basil in a foolish attempt to rescue her boyfriend. Orcine had reached the bard and was busy beating his head into the ground with her mace. “I’m coming baby!”

Orcine saw the rogue coming and raised her shield at the last second. The assassin’s sword bounced off the steel, but she followed through with a whirlwind of strikes.

“You… you rooster hater, I won’t forgive you!” Bugsy furiously rushed at the assassin from behind, mandibles open. “Agility Up!”

The centimagma wasn’t quick enough to catch the assassin even with a buff, but his swift assault forced her off Orcine’s back.

Basil immediately exploited the brief respite to grab Kuikui with one hand. The poor velociraptor’s wound was severe, with blood pouring out of his ribs. Basil was no expert on dinosaur biology, but the blow seemed to have cut through major arteries.

“Kui… cold…” Kuikui rasped as he struggled to stay conscious. “Kuikui… sick inside…”

“Hold on,” Basil said, gritting his teeth. “Monster Cure!”

Kuikui’s [Curse] ailment negated your Perk!

Damn it! He had to carry Kuikui out of the castle for healing!

“Rah, women!” The knight turned to face Basil, a malevolent glare peering through his helmet’s slits. “Fine, I’ll kill him myself!”

Basil roared and flailed his halberd around with one hand. He attempted to push the knight back, to force himself a path outside. Yet his foe deflected each blow with his sword and shield.

“You’re wasting your time trying to save that bird, boyo,” the knight taunted him as their blades clashed. The greater reach of Basil’s halberd prevented his foe from gaining ground, but he wouldn’t let him escape the castle either. “Lucine’s Poisoner Perks double poison damage and bypasses resistance. Your pet is already dead.”

“Out of my way!” Basil threatened him while desperately searching for an opening. Kuikui’s breathing was growing heavier and slower by the second.

“Leaving before the real fun begins?” the knight chuckled. “I have lost enough HP to trigger my best Perk. Bear witness!”

The knight’s sword shone with a malevolent red aura. Basil sensed an invisible, overwhelming pressure build in the air.

“Revenge!”

Man had developed a peerless fight-or-flight reaction over millions of years of evolution. So when the knight swung his sword again and all of Basil’s instincts screamed at him to dodge, he didn’t try to parry. He leaped to the side, the blade narrowingly missing him.

The knight’s blow hit the floor with enough strength to shatter it.

Stones went flying around the point of impact and part of the ground collapsed into a dark basement below. So powerful was the blow that the entire hall shook from it.

Basil could only stare in shock at the crater left by the attack. Red and green particles floated around the cracked stones like blood out of a wound.

“Kui…” Kuikui rasped weakly under his arm.

“What the…” Basil whispered in astonishment. He couldn’t rival so much destruction even under Warp Spasm.

“It’s that busted Mercenary Perk I warned you about!” Orcine should. The orc desperately protected herself from the assassin’s furious assault as she juggled between attacking her and avoiding Bugsy’s bites. Each of the woman’s sword swings dented Orcine’s shield further. “It adds half the difference between his current and max HP as raw damage! The more he’s hurt, the harder he hits!”

“That’s right.” The knight tossed his shield aside and grabbed his sword with both hands. “And with the curse affecting you, I can reach four digits damage on a critical hit. Death in a single blow!”

So that was why the knight was fighting defensively so far. Protecting his teammates also allowed him to charge his ultimate ability. And considering how much damage he had suffered so far…

When Basil thought the situation couldn’t possibly get worse, a wolf’s howl echoed in the hall.

A new challenger walked down the stairs from the upper floors, but this one was no man at all. The beast resembled a red-furred wolf humanoid, albeit twice larger than the soldiers defending the castle. He wore two bandoliers strapped to the brim with bombs, flasks, and powder pouches. His cold blue eyes looked the same as the human assassin, and a fleur-de-lys symbol was tattooed on his naked chest right above a pair of tattered boxers.

Baron Eric Antoine Lalande, Boss of Château Muloup

Level 25 [Beast/Humanoid] (Alchemist 13/Cultist 5/Skinchanger 7)

Faction: Apocalypse Force (Empire Lalande).

Basil assumed it was the party’s leader considering his name. And from the bombs and classes, he had finally found the Apocalypse Force’s weapon supplier.

“Why are you wasting so much time? The witch and the cait sith are inside the castle already!” The werewolf’s cold eyes surveyed the hall and paused in contempt on his wounded Bard ally. “Ah, I should have known Dominique would screw this up. What an imbecile.”

“This fight would already be over if your dumbass sister listened to orders, Eric!” The knight pointed his sword at Basil. “He’s the Tamer!”

The werewolf grabbed two bombs from his bandolier and threw them at Basil with inhuman strength. The projectiles crossed the hall in the blink of an eye.

Basil dodged the bombs as they exploded in a fiery burst. However, this allowed the knight enough time to tackle him with his shoulder.

Critical hit!

The blow propelled Basil against a wall. His head and back hit cold hard stone with enough force to briefly whiten his vision. Kuikui slipped through his arms without a sound.

The knight charged at Basil, sword raised for the kill.

“Big Man!” Orcine broke from the fight with the assassin as she struggled to dodge Bugsy’s firebreath. She rushed at the knight with her shield raised and managed to cross the gap between them in seconds. “Back off!”

The knight turned around, his sword shining with power. “Revenge!”

Orcine raised her shield to stop the blade.

It failed.

The knight’s sword shredded Orcine’s shield like tissue paper before continuing its course. The blade cleanly sliced the orc’s left arm, cut the breast, and kept going. Orcine spat blood and her eyes widened in terror. The black shroud indicating a curse-powered critical hit surrounded her.

Orcine fell off her back in two halves neatly severed at the chest.

Basil’s blood froze and boiled in the span of a single second. First came the horror, then the fury. Acting entirely on instinct, he grabbed his halberd with both hands and hit the knight in the back.

Basil’s weapon had cut through a dragon’s neck and ignored half of a target’s defensive stats. Yet it barely managed to cut through the knight’s armor and grazed the hard flesh underneath. His blow tossed the knight to his chest, a little blood dripping from his back.

Basil raised his halberd for another strike when a terrible screeching noise echoed inside his brain. A red screen message flashed before his eyes.

Kuikui the Dinosaur has left your party. Your buffs have run out.

Basil blinked in confusion. His eyes wandered from the wounded knight at his feet to his velociraptor. Poor Kuikui lay on the ground, his blood turned green by the poison infecting him.

He was no longer breathing.

Basil was frozen in place, his mind unable to compute the dire reality in front of him. His house’s destruction had shaken him, but here he felt something snap inside him. The fire inside him smoldered, leaving only coldness.

When Basil struck the knight’s back before he could rise to his feet, he felt nothing. No anger, no sorrow, no nothing. His halberd dented his enemy’s armor without inflicting lethal wounds, yet he persisted in his futile task. Did the knight’s vitality increase the closer to death he was?

“Orcine, Boss, I’m coming!” Bugsy shouted, only to take a bomb to the face. The blast propelled the centimagma back and knocked him out of the fight. His exoskeleton was beaten and battered.

“Finish them and let’s run to the walls,” the werewolf ordered as he climbed down the stairs. “The monsters outside overran our soldiers. We need to take out the dragon before it tears down the fortifications.”

“Dommy…” The assassin knelt at her boyfriend’s side with tears in her eyes. The Bard was pale as a corpse, his head lying in a pool of his own blood. “Brother, you have to help!”

“My potions can’t cure death,” her sibling replied without a care in the world, “and you were too good for a lowly banneret anyway.”

It can’t end like this, Basil thought as the werewolf and his assassin sister walked in his direction. The latter was crying tears of rage and grabbed a new dagger from her belt. Not like this. “Warp Sp—”

The hall’s stained window shattered into a thousand pieces.

All eyes turned to it, Basil’s included. He immediately beamed in relief upon seeing the intruder.

“Sorry to be late!” Vasi said from atop her broomstick as she flew above the battlefield. “Clearing the walls took longer than expected!”

“Guys, we’re here!” Plato’s voice echoed from the hall’s entrance. The cat leaped into the room, followed by Shellgirl, House Garden, and a dozen fire seeds. “Luck Up!”

“Peasants storming the gates, how droll,” the werewolf taunted them as he grabbed two new bombs off his bandoliers. “Where are the torches and pitchforks?”

“You couldn’t afford mine anyway!” Shellgirl replied with a volley of ice pearls.

The werewolf and the assassin deftly dodged her projectiles, but Plato exploited the distraction to hit the dungeon Boss’ with a wind slash. When the werewolf prepared to retaliate with a bomb, Shellgirl shot it out of his hand.

As for House Garden and the others, they rushed at the assassin with suicidal fervor. The latter skewered the lower-level plants as they approached with her dagger and sword, but Rosemarine’s fire seeds violently exploded whenever they perished. The assassin took a few steps back to avoid the blowback.

The knight at Basil’s feet attempted to slash at his leg with his sword. Basil responded by pinning his hand to the ground with his foot and stabbing his helmet with his halberd’s spike. It drew blood, but failed to kill the knight.

What was he made of, iron?

“My gods…” Vasi whispered as she landed next to Basil, a hand on her mouth. She had noticed Orcine and Kuikui’s corpses. “I’m so sorry, I… I should have come quicker…”

Basil knew Orcine was dead long before he checked her empty eyes. Her shredded organs had spilled all over the hall’s rug.

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The knight hadn’t lied. Death in a single blow.

“He did this,” Basil said angrily as he glared down at the knight. “But I can barely damage him.”

“Hold him down,” Vasi said as she set her broom aside. “I have an idea.”

Basil followed her advice, keeping the knight pinned to the ground as Vasi knelt beside him. She lifted his helmet’s visor and Basil expected her to blast his face off, maybe poison him. Yet Vasi did none of these things.

Instead, she forcefully kissed the knight on the lips. Quickly, vigorously.

Basil watched the scene in utter incomprehension, and from his gaze the knight was as surprised as him.

“Witch Kiss,” Vasi whispered after breaking physical contact.

A pink fume traveled from her mouth to the knight’s. His pupils dilated as he breathed the strange vapor. Pink phantom hearts floated above his head.

Vasi [charmed] Paul-Octave Malherbe!

“Now, my dear knight,” Vasi said with a fake smile. “Why don’t you protect my servants and kill all these horrible Apocalypse Force villains instead? That way, nobody would stand between us.”

“At your service, my queen!” the knight answered with unbridled lust.

Vasi nodded at an awestruck Basil. He reluctantly let the knight go, half expecting him to turn around and hit him again. His worries vanished as his former foe rushed at his werewolf leader, sword first. His wild charge reminded Basil of Don Quixote assaulting the windmills. The knight hadn’t even bothered to put on his visor again.

The werewolf kicked Plato away from him just in time to see his crazed teammate close the gap between them. “What in the world—”

“I will take your foolish orders no longer, Eric!” The knight’s sword glittered with dark power. “Revenge!”

The knight slashed his teammate across the chest, cutting through powder pouches and spraying the ground with alchemical components. His mighty blow cut through the werewolf’s skin, flesh, and bones. The dungeon Boss roared in terrible pain, blood staining his fur.

“What the hell are you doing?” the assassin snarled in anger at the betrayal. Two dead members of House Garden, Onion Spider and Strawboogie Berry, were impaled on the tip of her sword. “Traitor!”

“You shut up!” the knight shouted back with crazed fanaticism. “You are unworthy to breathe the same air as my future wife!”

“I told you I had experience with charming paladins,” Vasi boasted to Basil.

“Does that spell work on anyone?” Basil asked, shocked by this turn of events. The werewolf was forced to run around the hall to escape his crazed teammate’s fury. The knight proved as dangerous to his teammates’ wellbeing as he had been to Basil’s.

“Only on brave and lustful fools.”

Basil squinted at her. She had kissed him on the cheek before… “Did you ever—”

“No, Basil, I don’t use roofies,” she replied with a cold tone. “What kind of gal do you take me for? I only use this Perk for menial tasks and assisted suicides.”

Basil couldn’t tell how he should take this confession, but he relished the thought of these two Quislings killing each other. His dark joy turned to worry when Bugsy rose up in a corner of the hall, his exoskeleton bleeding from half a dozen spots.

“Bugsy, run outside to Rosemarine!” Basil ordered. “Get healing!”

“But Boss, I can still fi—”

“Don’t you dare die on me too!” Basil snarled angrily; anger born of worry and remorse. “We lost too many friends already!”

Bugsy flinched as if he was slapped. He glanced at Kuikui and Orcine, lowered his head in shame, and then crawled out of the hall as commanded.

Vasi watched the scene with an unreadable look, before asking, “What next?”

“I’m a feminist and proponent of gender equality, but just this once…” Basil glared at the female assassin. “Woman’s first.”

The rogue had slaughtered her way through the plants, leaving only three members of House Garden alive: the Ghostie Pumpkin, the Demon Tomato, and the Bean Ninja. The assassin stood proud, drenched in juice and surrounded by corpses. She was moving to finish the job when Basil and Vasi moved to help the vegetables flank her.

The rogue found herself trapped between the two groups and threw a dagger at Vasi’s head. The projectile moved almost too fast for Basil’s eyes to follow, but he managed to deflect it with his halberd. The assassin immediately lunged at him with her sword before he could adjust his stance.

“Murderer!” she shouted, crossing the gap between them in a blink. “This is all your fault!”

A feint!

An ice pearl from Shellgirl missed the assassin’s head, distracting her at the last second. Vasi snapped her fingers and unleashed a burst of flame. The assassin stepped back from Basil to dodge.

With the werewolf safely occupied by his own teammate, Plato and Shellgirl joined in the attack. The former cut the air with his rapier and the latter fired a volley of ice pearls. The assassin grit her teeth, sweat dripping from her forehead as she dodged the projectiles.

“Don’t let her catch her breath!” Basil swung his halberd at the assassin’s head and narrowly missed. Vasi assisted him with bursts of fire, forcing their target back.

It said a lot about the assassin’s agility that she could dodge so many attacks at once. Yet she lacked eyes on the back of her head. House Garden’s Bean Ninja jumped at her from behind and stabbed her in the throat with a knife. The assassin choked on her own blood and tripped. The Demon Tomato and Ghostie Pumpkin bit both of her arms and pulled in different directions.

Quartered by vegetables was a humiliating way to go, but one that the assassin deserved. House Garden’s survivors kept her pinned to the ground as Basil raised his halberd.

“You cost me many vegetables, a dino, a rooster,” he said, his voice heavy, “and a friend.”

The assassin glared at him even after he carved her skull open.

Her werewolf brother’s scream of horror was only matched by his pain.

“Sister!” he roared, holding himself against a wall with two enormous gashes on his chest. He had lost so much blood that Basil could see bones beneath his fur. “You’ll pay for this…”

“Your fur will make a fine coat for my lady!” his knight teammate ranted as he lifted his sword for the coup-de-grâce. “Reven—”

Exploiting his former ally’s lack of visor to protect him, the werewolf shoved a bomb into the knight’s mouth. Vasi’s charmed thrall choked on the device as if it were an apple. His headless corpse fell to the ground after a flash of blood and light. Pieces of brain matter stained the ground.

The werewolf’s relief lasted mere seconds. Basil and his allies converged on him from all directions and surrounded him. He looked for an escape, but found only barrels and blades pointing at him.

“It’s over,” Basil warned.

The werewolf sighed in defeat and moved his hands above his head. “I surrender.”

The creature lost pounds and fur. Within seconds, the mighty werewolf transformed into a half-naked scrawny man, with short red hair and cold blue eyes. He was clearly the male mirror of his assassin sister.

Shellgirl and the others kept their weapons pointed at him, but didn’t open fire. They glanced at Basil and waited for his signal.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” their prisoner said, pleading for his life. “I’ll surrender control of the dungeon to you too. The server is in the central tower.”

“Why?” Basil asked dryly. The question had been burning on his lips since the fight started.

“Because Apollyon will have my head for my failure to hold this place anyway.”

“Why did you ally with him in the first place?” Basil clarified. “To spare your family’s life?”

“I did it for my family, yes. These lands belonged to us before the Revolution.” The baron shrugged. “I took back what belonged to us by right. The French government cheated us. If I had to convert to undo that wrong, who was I to argue?”

“That’s it?” Basil spat at the ground in disgust. “You betrayed your country so you could call yourself a baron again?”

“This country was turning into an Islamo-leftist ghetto anyway,” the traitor replied without remorse. “France needs to undergo a national regeneration process to regain its greatness. The right men at the top, and people like you purged.”

His sick phrasing made Basil’s skin crawl. It reminded him eerily of some of Europe’s darkest hours. No wonder his kin crawled out of the woods to join the Apocalypse Force. It wasn’t so big of a jump.

“I’ve got a question too,” the baron said with a curious look. “Why did you come? What did we do to you?”

Basil searched the man’s gaze for any hint of mockery and found only puzzlement. This man ruined so many lives and distributed so many bombs to Apollyon’s soldiers that he couldn't be bothered to remember them all.

“You burned our house,” Basil replied. He glanced at his team, raised his thumb, and mimicked a gutting gesture. “So now we’re taking yours.”

The man glared back with malevolence. The comment seemed to have struck a chord with him.

“My only regret,” the baron said as he faced his incoming death, “is that we didn’t kill more of you fuc—”

A volley of ice pearls and wind slashes interrupted him, and his corpse soon hit the floor with a soft thump. A red wolf pelt covered in strange symbols materialized over his remains like a funeral shroud.

Congratulations, you received 180,000 EXP (36,000 for you). You earned 4 levels (total 29).

By defeating Baron Eric Lalande, your Party can now bypass the Neurotower’s barrier and decide the dungeon’s fate.

You earned the [Pèth] accessory reward.

“We could have questioned him,” Vasi pointed out.

“You don’t make deals with his kind, even to betray your word later.” Basil looked down on the baron’s corpse with contempt. “It’s just beneath us.”

Nobody argued. In fact, nobody spoke. Shellgirl hopped to Orcine’s corpse's side with a grim expression, and House Garden’s survivors gathered around Kuikui without a word. Basil exchanged a silent glance with Plato.

The battle was won and no one cheered.

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