DIE TRYING [A Roguelite Extraction LitRPG]

Wade didn't know why he was getting lucky twice over or what exactly luck had triggered on, but he wasn't going to question it too deeply.

Or he would question it - just long enough after that the universe couldn't smite him for it.

For now, what was really nice about all this was that he'd get a break from walking in these stupid, waterlogged rubber boots. His feet hurt; he was pretty sure the 1% of health damage he'd taken over their hike so far had come from his skin getting peeled off by the clamped rubber, and he was completely miserable thinking he'd need to walk all the way down the valley and then possibly hike for hours to get out of here.

A good fight here was an excellent way to take a break, especially because there was a demon up ahead.

Said demon ripped a string of flesh and black mist from the dead wolf, glanced up with wild eyes, and narrowed in on the group ahead.

New Personal Quest: Challenge Gauntlet - An enemy forty levels or higher above you is hunting you down. Evade or defeat your hunter. Reward: One storefront coin and one randomized additional stat point if your pursuer is eliminated.

Ah, there's one possibility of where his luck had come into play.

Level 47 Greater Infernal Essence - 92%

This demon was exactly forty levels above him. Which meant an extra coin and random stat from winning this fight.

And Wade really liked both of those rewards.

"Eri, kill." He smiled deeply, pointing right at their target.

The feral demon looked much smaller than Bael, but that didn't mean it was any less dangerous given the level.

However, they had faced worse against Bael, and that was quickly proven when Eri launched forward in a mana-empowered leap, his sword glowing as he brought it down in one heavy strike.

The demon wasn't stupid, Blackrotten or not, and backed off, stalking at a safe distance from the skeleton. Looking for a weak point to rush in or any chance to get past at the better targets: Bael and Wade.

The forgesmith demon, on the other hand, was far more cautious than Wade.

Equipping the blade had increased his level, but oddly enough, not by all that much.

Given Bael's current level of 39, Wade knew the fight wouldn't end with him winning.

A reminder of how insane this part of the world was. If Bael had spawned here without Wade, he really would have made it down half an hour's worth of a hike before running into a demon that would easily infect him, if not outright kill him and restart the process all over in an hour. And he even had a weapon right now, compared to having nothing like he would have on a normal day under the mithril sea.

Brutal.

Fortunately for the forgesmith, and regrettably done in a way Wade couldn't demand some return favors for this, the smith was getting escorted by the rising duo star employees of Wade Heavy Industries: The Glock and Grenade.

Of which he had already ripped the pin off the usual non-modified normal grenade, thrown a left-handed rock at his foot, triggered the dodge roll, and immediately had to backtrack and race to hide behind his skeleton while screaming out surprised curses.

Because the rest of the wolves had rolled down the mountainside and joined in the party.

Not ideal.

There were four of them, with the last two rolling down hard into the trail just now. One went right for the demon they'd been chasing down here in the first place, and the other three went for the other living targets.

Level 33 Blackrotten Direwolf - 93%

That one didn't even bother to lick its wounds, springing right after Wade, jaws snapping.

His water master boon let him bail out at full speed, adrenaline currently covering any limp pain. Eri had equally noticed his employer was getting his butt chased, while his old foe was getting caught in a scruff against the third wolf to join the fray.

With that Blackrotten demon occupied, the skeleton turned and charged right over to block for Wade, while his chasing wolf was about to catch up, already leaping after the running human.

Wade was watching with his head turned the entire way, calculating. And he realized he wasn't going to make good on his calculations, so he instantly dodge rolled perpendicular to the lunge, in Eri's direction.

He wasn't trying to time anything with this one. He was abusing the full stop and reposition ability. It worked, letting him instantly get a few extra feet ahead while the wolf was forced to land, come to a stop, and then start sprinting after the running prey again.

In MMO terms, this would be called kiting.

Generally, the second use of kiting usually involved dragging the enemy mobs back to the designated tank.

Eri nailed a boot into the ground to stop his speed as Wade passed him, pivoted on himself, and swung the sword in a defensive arc that caught the newly chasing wolf mid-leap.

The health bar tanked deep into the orange as the wolf was all but sent packing in the other direction. It howled in mostly anger, snarling at the skeleton blocking it's lunch.

Wade stumbled to a stop, panting hard, and ripped the Glock from his holster, left-handed grip awkward but functional. The grenade sat live in his right palm, held from being triggered by a dead man's hold over it. If he accidentally let go with the pin out, that grenade would blow up in about four seconds. He didn't have time to put the pin back; the buff from his first dodge roll was about to expire in two seconds.

His second dodge roll hadn't done anything to jeopardize that buff since it hadn't triggered any new buffs to overwrite this one.

So Wade lined up the shot, trying to stabilize his left hand with whatever he could use of his right hand.

The wolf rolled to a stop, got back up, and started another lunge after Eri.

Wade pulled the trigger.

The bullet punched through the wolf's skull with a wet crunch, and the lightning damage, amplified by whatever insane math the grenade in his main hand created, zapped everything inside its brain.

Level 33 Blackrotten Direwolf - 0%

The creature dropped like a puppet with cut strings, skull smoking. Already at half health and hit with a critical kill shot, that was one less wolf to worry about.

Wade exhaled, then immediately whipped around, looking for the second wolf that had been charging him.

Gone.

His head swiveled, searching. Where the hell-

A pained grunt cut through the chaos.

Bael.

The forgesmith demon had backed himself against a crumbled trail wall, longsword held in his grip. The last two wolves circled him, feinting left then right, testing his defenses.

Level 31 Blackrotten Direwolf - 88%

Level 35 Blackrotten Direwolf - 96%

Bael swung, the blade whistling through the air. The first wolf ducked under the strike with practiced ease, lunging for his exposed flank.

And that ended terribly. For the wolf.

Bael hadn't swung his sword uselessly. He'd been baiting this exact attack.

The demon lifted a leg and stomped down his hoof right onto the wolf's head just as it got into range, slamming it into the ground. Almost in the same moment, he stabbed down with the longsword into the neck and spine, over and over. Hoof holding the head in place, sword doing the rest.

Getting stabbed there wasn't great for overall coordination. The wolf was spasming, unable to make use of its full blackrotten strength to push itself off as its nervous system was constantly scrambled.

The health bar was going down faster than it was going up.

Just as it passed the twenty percent mark, the second wolf circled around to his left side, away from the dangerous sword arm that was eating up the other wolf, and lunged.

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Bael instantly raised an arm, flexing to take the hit and protect his head. Jaws sunk into his forearm, and then he pulled the clamped wolf with him, spinning on himself almost as if throwing a baseball, using the wolf's own inertia against it. At the apex of his throw, he redirected the wolf into the ground as if he were slapping a shirt down.

It remained clamped onto his forearm, despite the entire wrestling move into the ground. At least, until the longsword stabbed right through the exposed throat and then started stabbing over and over.

The wolf Bael had been stabbing earlier was slowly getting back up. But Wade could see it wasn't long for this world. Eri landed right on top, the greatsword fully chopping off the head from the spine in one cleave.

The skeleton looked absolutely gleeful at the violence, having the time of his life.

Wade triggered one more rock-leg-throw dodge roll combo since he already had the primed grenade in hand; why not? After landing back on shaky feet, then letting the momentum pull him on one knee down where he'd get a hand on his holstered Glock faster, he fumbled for it, pulled it out slowly, and finally aimed.

Bael was currently stabbing the living shit out of it. Wade had a mostly clean shot at the thing's body, but the Glock in his hand was shaking violently, and Wade didn't know why. His body wasn't letting him get a clear shot. So he got back up with a groan and jogged forward, panting until he was up close and could shoot it point-blank into the flank.

The round hit, zapped the monster, and was clearly overkill based on the health level the wolf had been brought down to.

No notifications came, despite this being one more high-level mob kill to his name. Wade was feeling slightly jilted about all this. On one hand, less levels meant more challenge gauntlets. On the other hand, where the hell were the levels for all this work? Killing Eri at level one three rounds ago had given him two entire levels. What the hell? Was it based on difficulty of the fight, or having Eri here curbed the gains?

Bael drew the longsword back out and took a few steps away from the bodies, eyes going from the wolf to the human and down to whatever that black metal equipment the human had used.

"Focus, human," he said, sword pointing behind Wade. "Still two more." Then he gave a grunt when he saw the change. "One more."

The Blackrotten demon had finished the last wolf, who had been a terrible judge of target, since once more the demon stood up from her fight against a wolf, victorious, holding a ripped-off head. But not for long, as she dropped it and went sprinting after the pair on all fours, looking to secure these kills for herself.

Last enemy left alive now that the wolf party had been dispatched.

Running in a straight line, a good chunk of distance away. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel, Wade thought. He holstered his glock, grabbed a small rock that felt far heavier than it had any right to be, but still Wade threw it at his foot to complete the usual combo.

He did one more dodge roll, landed on his feet exiting the default animation, and then tried to grab the Glock off his holster.

Instead, he collapsed down into the ground like a falling tree, completely spent.

Uh oh.

A second passed, and Wade stared from the mud at a grenade rolling out of his hand, the spool happily ejecting off, his fingers unresponsive and limp as exhaustion hit all parts of his body at the same time.

Motherfucker.

A second passed. The grenade didn't roll far from his hands at all, barely making it past his fingertips as the mud slowed it down.

Wade seethed internally. What a stupid stupid way to die. And so preventable, too. All he had to do was not do a greedy fourth dodge roll in a row when he had plenty of experience knowing that two would knock him on his ass for a good minute before he could so much as crawl. His stamina recovery was improved enough that he could do multiple ones, but there was a limit, and he'd let the adrenaline completely cloud his mind.

Why didn't he even think for a second that his hand shaking too much to aim the Glock at range was something to just work around? Warning bells should have been blaring in his skull.

Hell, did he even need to do that third dodge roll? Bael was already on top of that wolf, stabbing it to death. Given twenty more seconds, he would have finished the job. Eri had also decapitated the last wolf and was perfectly free to help the forgesmith. His skeleton was way above their levels, even without any help Eri would have cleaned house by himself.

Wade didn't need to execute that wolf at all. He should have conserved his skills.

Three seconds left before boom.

Self-murder by cooking a grenade and failing a dexterity throw. Greed was straight-up his worst enemy right now. He'd need to meditate on this and make sure he didn't fall for it again in the future.

Two seconds. The grenade remained right in front of his face, half-stuck in the mud. Looking so innocent despite the fuse inside burning, seeking complete destruction.

A boot raced into the picture and kicked the grenade out of his sight like a football. Then a giant Nathir greatsword chopped down into the ground, the flat edge forming a long horizontal shield to protect Wade while Eri hunkered down behind it, two hands holding the edge up and steady while the skeleton's head remained completely exposed to the grenade. Opting to just tank whatever damage came his way so long as he could cover Wade better for it.

The explosion was deafening. Eri had punted the grenade right into the demon's path, and it exploded just a few feet away from Eri and Wade, almost right before a direct impact.

The damage hadn't been enough to kill the demon. Rather, it was far weaker than one of the lightning bullets, leaving the demon at around seventy percent, flying off backwards before landing into the mud, rolling a few times.

Eri took next to no damage, one shrapnel piece slicing through part of his cheekbone, breaking it off. A few more pieces slammed into the Nathir greatsword's flat edge and pinged away. The blast wave itself rushed forward, unstopped by either Eri or the greatsword protecting Wade.

To the skeleton, there was nothing the pressure wave could break. No lungs, fragile tissues, or otherwise.

For Wade, the far squishier of the two, the wave ripped through his body, compressed his lungs, and executed every bit of physics it should have done this close to the blast.

But his health bar remained the same.

"Eri." Wade croaked, not really thinking about why a pressure wave this close hadn't hurt him. "Glock. Aim... for me. Use... hand."

He felt a skeletal hand grab his shirt and hoist his immobile body up. The other grabbed the Glock off his belt, then slapped it into Wade's limp hand and curled a finger around the trigger.

And then, like a deranged-looking ventriloquist hand-puppeteer, Eri aimed the gun using Wade's hand and arm.

Wade couldn't even tell if he was on target or not. His head hung down, his body limp. But Wade didn't need to see to shoot.

Eri took one more second to correct the aim, then clicked his jaw. Open fire boss.

Wade pressed down the trigger with every bit of strength he had left.

He almost didn't manage to shoot. Almost.

But the trigger depressed just enough to fire. The gun kicked out of his hand, and Wade was equally dropped like a sack of potatoes as Eri sprinted forward out of sight, grabbing the hilt of the Nathir greatsword off the ground before going to town on a lightning-shocked, defenseless and already wounded demon.

Wade couldn't tell if it had worked. All he saw was the muddy ground and his left arm, muscles twitching.

Well. That was a shit experience. He'd learned a lot, however, as in there are limits to his water mastery's stamina recovery. Four dodge rolls back-to-back with nearly zero downtime weren't doable. It also felt like once his stamina had been completely drained, it didn't recover quite as quickly. Even breathing felt hard right now, which might be why it was harder to recover from an empty stamina bar than a half-filled one. He could actually take deeper breaths, compared to right now, where even his lungs felt fatigued.

If it hadn't been for Eri being Eri, Wade would be back at Play's storefront with his tail between his legs.

He heard a sound behind him and then saw a hoof walk into view.

No black-rotten mist coming out of it. Just white fur, slightly bloodied.

Bael. He was standing right over Wade now.

The demon's voice gravelly from above. "Get up. Stop playing dead. It doesn't work on blackrot. You already know they sense life."

"Not... playing," Wade croaked. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. Slow, and hard to move. Well, it was a muscle like all the others in his body. "Just... completely... exhausted."

Silence. The shadow shifted as the demon crouched, examining him with clinical precision. Wade saw those slitted eyes tracking his breathing, looking at the tremor in his fingers and legs.

"Hm." Bael cracked his neck. "You actually mean it. Word of advice: Telling a demon you're helpless is how you end up more helpless. All I hear is opportunity."

A large hand reached out and grabbed the discarded Glock off the mud, holding it with reverence.

If Wade could laugh right now, he would have. This was one rollercoaster of emotions. He'd been winning easily, then almost completely lost in one stupid move, back to winning, and now going to get betrayed all because he'd told Bael the truth without thinking for a second. Of course, the demon would want his Glock and gear.

"Is this the part… where you… mug and kill me?"

Technically, it would work. He'd stab Wade, and Eri would equally be dragged back with Wade to Earth. Though the demon likely believed Eri would just collapse without a master.

The demon gave a dark chuckle, then took a deep breath before speaking: "Not today." He reached down with his other hand, grabbed Wade's torso, and yanked him off the ground like he weighed nothing. "We made a deal. Do our best to protect one another from all danger. No more, no less. This lecture is me protecting you from your own mouth in the future. Only, didn't think explaining common sense would be part of that job when we shook on it."

Wade could see ahead again.

Eri stood on the trail. The Nathir greatsword was stabbed through the feral demon, who was very clearly no longer moving and equally headless. Her arm flopped down on the ground, blackrot squirming. In fact, she was already vanishing away into motes of essence, the blackrot within starting to panic and spasm outward, finding no solace in Eri.

It made sense his MVP skeleton would have won that fight one on one. Eri was already close to the enemy's level. And that demon had taken a grenade to the face, reduced the starting health pool down by thirty percent, and then got shot and shocked at the same time. Defenseless for a few seconds against Eri charging ahead.

Challenge Gauntlet Complete! One storefront coin added to inventory.

He looked down at his notifications, waiting for the System to roll for the bonus point. It did so a moment later:

Stamina has been increased by 1!

Of all things, handing him a point into Stamina after his fuck-up here? A wheeze came out of his lungs, as he actually started to laugh. The laugh picked up volume and power, as a second wind kicked through into his system.

It was like he'd taken a giant gulp of air from the world's most powerful asthma inhaler. The burn of exhaustion was rapidly fading.

The System had shown itself rather impartial to things, and when it was partial, it was due to a lucky roll, which it usually mentioned in the log. With one mimic-sized exception. So maybe this really had been a coincidence.

He hadn't put any points into Stamina yet, so knowing what the effects were had been something he'd been curious about. Well, he got exactly the data he was hoping for:

He felt it almost down to his bones. The dodge roll had eaten up a percentage of his prior stamina pool. Having a full point added to it was a flat increase, both expanding his max stamina and equally expanding his current stamina.

Exhaustion peeled off his muscles like a half-frozen blanket removed from his shoulders and replaced with a warm one straight out of the dryer.

He felt a different kind of power coursing through his muscles compared to sheer strength. Even his pruny feet, still trapped in the world's most uncomfortable boots, felt a little better.

"Don't worry for her, human. She'll be back in an hour," Bael said, already taking steps forward. "We need to get away from here before more blackrot come looking for the bodies."

Wade took a steady, full breath again, then looked over his quest logs.

Rescue Operation: 2/5 Infernal Essences freed.

He recalculated his odds before he started to speak again, this time without any wheezing. "I think it's a good thing you can't punch me due to the contract. Because you're going to really dislike what I'll be asking next."

That, indeed, turned out to be the case.