NOVEL NEXT Book 1: Chapter 5: First Blood
Scarlet Asger
Deciding that the best time to strike is when it still has its leg pierced through the door, I sprint forward and swipe my new blood claws straight at the leg. And my claws… don’t actually do that much. All they manage to do is pierce nearly half an inch in, drawing some sort of ichor that is drained into my claws, changing their color to add a slight green tint before returning to the red of my own blood.
The spider demon lets out a pained screech before yanking back its leg and tearing the door off of its hinges in the process, revealing the rest of the demon in all of its spidery glory. And the moment my eyes latch onto it, I hear some sort of voice echo in the back of my head.
|Demon Spawn – Subspecies: Spider – Level 4|
It’s level 4?! That explains why I barely did anything to it! At least, if video game logic applies in this situation.
“Good luck and try not to die before I can at least explain your status.”
My eye twitches at the sheer callousness of the tanuki whose name I won’t even bother saying this time before I jump back, very nearly tripping over the carpet in the process to end up between one of the chairs and the table. Meanwhile the spider lets out another shriek as it tries – and fails – to fit through the door. Only to end up climbing the wall and then entering while sideways instead of upright.
Right as I’m expecting it to jump on the ground and chase after me, it instead begins climbing up the wall towards the ceiling.
Are you kidding me?
I jump out of the way right before it leaps from the ceiling straight at where I was just standing, destroying the table in its landing. And before it can gather its bearings, I swipe my claws at it again, still unused to having any sort of weapon, much less blood claws to use in the first place.Once again, I don’t manage to do much damage to it. But I do at least notice that this time it did a little bit more than the last time.
Does it have anything to do with its blood entering my claws?
“Skill descriptions are not all there is to a skill. Remember this.”
My eye twitches again as I notice the tanuki floating in the air close to the corner of the room, right beneath the ceiling while watching me fight for my life. But I take a deep breath to calm down again before jumping away when the spawn swipes two of its legs at me, barely missing my head in the process.
Unfortunately, in the process of dodging its claw tipped legs, I trip on the chair next to us, falling to one knee where the spider turns around and tries to snap at me with its incisors, taking a chunk out of my arm in the process as I raise it to block the strike.
I let out a scream of pain before gritting my teeth so hard that it feels like they might break.
“You Terran damned spider!” I shout at the thing as if that’ll help while trying to roll out of the way again. After I manage to make it to my feet a couple of meters away from the spider, I glance at my arm to find it leaking quite a bit of blood down from the wound. But surprisingly, the blood ends up mixing with my claws, making them grow slightly larger.
That might be useful.
Still gritting my teeth to ignore the pain, I raise my head to look around the room, my gaze narrowing on the chandelier that I hadn’t noticed when first entering the room. That’ll work.
Hopefully.
Right as the spider begins to charge at me again, I charge right back in its direction, seemingly surprising it for a second. And before it can get over that surprise, I climb up the chair and jump off of it, landing on the spider’s back, where I then jump to a bookcase not too far away. I barely miss landing on the bookcase and instead have to drag myself the rest of the way up with my legs dangling.
That could’ve gone better.
I turn back to find the spider looking around for a few seconds in confusion before turning to me. So I don’t miss the chance to jump again straight at the chandelier above it, where I climb up and swipe my claws at the chain holding it up.
“Interesting.”
Is the last word I hear before the chandelier comes crashing down on top of the spider, its chain having been shredded with relative ease by my claws.
The spawn makes a loud hissing sound that quickly deflates with the sound of its carapace being shattered by the chandelier, but it still tries to move even after the thing fell on its head. So I climb down from the chandelier that is still somehow intact and on top of it to walk over to its face, where I bring my fingers together with a grimace and dig them straight into one of the creature’s two largest eyes.
A rather unpleasant feeling follows as my hand digs into its head before I quickly rip it out and wipe it on the carpet beneath me.
Sorry whoever’s carpet this is. But you’re probably gonna need to replace it.
A ding sounds in my head, followed by another message by that same voice as earlier.
{Level 4 Demon Spawn defeated. Bonus EXP is awarded for killing a creature above your level.}
{Ten Skill Points are awarded for killing your first Demon.}
{Five Skill Points are awarded for killing your first Demon Spawn.}
{One Skill Point is awarded for killing a demon.}
{Congrats, you have leveled up to level 1 through killing your first demon. Two Free Points have been awarded to you and your stats have been updated.}
As soon as I hear that, I flop onto the ground with an exhausted grunt. And soon after, the tanuki flies over to me before landing on my chest again.
“Your use of the name Tar aside, I will not be subjected to being called a tanu-”
Before the tanuki can finish, I cut it off by barely saying through my exhaustion, “I don’t care. You’re a tanuki. Get over it.”
At first I was gonna be nice and call him Tar. But that was until he decided to watch me fight for my life as if I were some pawn or thing that didn’t matter.
The tanuki narrows his eyes at me and crawls up to my face before literally stomping its tiny foot on my cheek. Which, as expected, doesn’t exactly do much.
Why exactly was I afraid of this thing again?
Oh, right. Because it was numbing my pain earlier during the awakening. And it could’ve stopped at any moment.
I raise my arm slightly to look at it, where a large cut in my favorite jacket now lies revealing a bloody gash equal in size on my pale skinned arm beneath.
Seriously? That’s going to be a pain to sew up. Because I am not replacing this jacket.
I don’t really care about the shirt underneath though. That’ll just go in the trash later.
Several seconds pass in not-so-comfortable silence – considering the burning pain going through my arm – before I finally notice out of the corner of my eye that my hair now has red highlights that it didn’t have before.
Odd.
Doesn’t matter though.
Better red ones than yellow or some gross color like that.
The tanuki also kind of falls off of my face when I turn my head to look at my hair, but that’s a little inconsequential right now. Especially when he just floats back up to stop right above my head with a rather displeased expression on his face.
“Open your status.”
I blink in surprise at the fact that the usually arrogant and overbearing tanuki isn’t actually saying anything in regard to my actions right now, only to mentally shrug and think, ‘Status.’
Name: Scarlet AsgerSpecies: Human/Blood Lycan HybridMagic: Blood Age: 19Level: 1SP: 16 Stats: Physical: 16Mental: 12Magical: 15 Physical/Level: 2Mental/Level: 1Magical/Level: 2 Free Points: 2Mana: 81/90Free Points/Level: 2 Active Skills: Blood ClawsSkill Level: 1Description Passive Skills: N/AN/AN/A
Oh, that’s nice. Not really sure what’s different from before, but I’m guessing my stats are higher since the voice – which I’m assuming is the System – said that I’d leveled up.
Wait.
I’m half Blood Lycan?
I stare at those words for who knows how long.
Oh.