Chapter 10

There was no thought on his mind as Hakon stabbed his sword into the beetle’s eyes. It shifted, avoiding the brunt of the attack, leaving it with a shallow injury rather than certain death.

The monster’s defense was tough. Incredibly so. Its quick reaction speed only helped the beetle, resulting in diminishing returns on Hakon’s end.

He tried to power up [Combat Awareness] and scanned the monster as it attacked. It spat a glob at him, which he evaded narrowly. Having analyzed the beetles’ movement pattern before helped a lot, but the monster of the Fracture was different. Its projectiles were faster, leaving little to no space to escape.

Predicting its movements and spit’s trajectory was a challenge. It was also a necessity to survive. The beetle spat smaller globs at him in quick succession, making it near-impossible to evade them all. Hakon wasn’t surprised when a few splatters joined the yellowish-green mass spread across his chest, but his body’s reaction to the spit certainly caught him off guard.

The splatters worsened his condition: The numbness spread out from where the Fracture’s beetle struck him, burning deeper and stretching further. His body quickly contained the spread but it promised trouble. One proper hit and he’d be dead.

Scanning the beetle constantly, eyes focused on every little movement, Hakon struck again, and again. And again.

He gained more momentum after the first few strikes, his sword sizzling as it cut through the air. The blade whipped through the air, executing a series of quick slashes and swift trusts, yet the beetle prevailed. Most attacks failed to do any significant damage. Even those that did carved small pieces out of its carapace. None of his attacks were deadly. However, Hakon was no longer worried. The longer the fight continued, the more he gained.

The beetle’s tactic never changed. It was faster, tougher, and deadlier than its brethren on the island, but it moved all the same. And once [Combat Awareness] caught up to the changes, he struck the same spot over and over again until something in his head clicked. Several spots, some appeared to be scars, whereas others felt like seams connecting the beetle’s carapace. All that mattered little as his sword plunged into the crack in the monster’s carapace, piercing it, and tasting its flesh.

A triumphant roar thrummed through his chest, and it urged him to be released into the wild, but Hakon kept it in. He twisted the blade, eyes growing wide as the monster dissolved into blue mist rather than collapsing dead to the ground. Most of the mist dispersed into the surroundings, sinking into the ground but some headed toward him, seeped into him.

Mana joined the mist and flooded Hakon’s body. It surged through his veins and the tunnels within him. And, for the first time since he awakened, the tunnels’ depths and sheer infinite count made itself notable. The number of tunnels moving away from the mana mass in his abdomen was still countable, but they branched out rapidly until every corner of his body was covered in them.

Was that normal? Did everyone have so many tunnels within them? If so, nobody told him. A familiar pungent smell pierced his nose until he felt nausea, but he brushed it aside with some effort, a smile playing on his lips. His chest no longer felt as numb as before. Pain replaced the numbing nothingness.

The numbness receded quickly but slowed down to a trickle as soon as the surge of mana died down.

That was all he needed to know to make a decision. He departed in a hurry. A tactical retreat to recover the strength needed to crush his enemies. [Combat Awareness] went awry as several projectiles splashed to the ground around him, disintegrating the knee-high grass. Without the grass’s protection around, Hakon barged into the nearest field of grass blades and made a run for it. From danger, certain death, and the Fracture vortex.

He only stopped running when he was completely spent, gasping for air, his chest heaving heavily.

The Fracture’s violet vortex shimmered in the distance as he turned around, expecting ants and beetles to follow him in the dozen. Alas, he was alone, if one ignored the birds chirping in the sky and the other monsters found in the Crawling Expanse. They did not notice him or simply didn’t care about his existence, which was probably for the best. His whole body hurt, his heart hammered and complained, and his brain felt like it had been struck one too many times by his father’s mace.

“Just a little break.” He sputtered, his wobbly legs caving in as he slumped to the ground. Then came the messages.

[Proficiency gained. [Evasion Lv.1] improved to [Evasion Lv.2]]

[Proficiency gained. [Combat Awareness Lv.2] improved to [Combat Awareness Lv.3]]

[Proficiency gained. [Running Lv.3] improved to [Running Lv.4]]

That was only the first batch of messages. The messages he received before he rushed into the Fracture. A lot more messages from the Ancestors were waiting for him.

[Fracture, Crawling Expanse, has been detected. Scan complete.]
[Incomplete Saga Trials discovered!]
[Overflow discovered! Generate additional Trials.]

[Lesser Deed – Slay 25 Giant Ants(0/25)]

[Lesser Deed – Slay 25 Acidic Beetles(1/25)]

[Major Deed – Defeat Colossal Terror(0/1)]

[Major Deed – Restore the Balance(1/500)]

[Feat – Shattering Core(0/1)]

Not even the exhaustion plaguing his body could stop him from grinning like a madman. He recognized the messages: He knew what all this was about. Or maybe not everything. The hide scrolls did not go into detail when mentioning Fractures but the scrolls hid hints. The chieftain and elderly warriors had told him tales about their dives into Fractures many cycles ago as well.

Fractures were trials made for Barbarians. The Ancestors did not create them, or so the Shaman once mentioned, but they used them to challenge the tribes’ greatest warriors. They challenged warriors and provided bountiful rewards, each Deed adding to the warrior’s Saga.

One Lesser Deed and one Major Deed was common. More than that was weird. A Feat was not unheard of either. His father once mentioned it, but Hakon couldn’t quite remember. Nor could he gather the energy needed to come up with a straight thought.

[Proficiency gained. [Sword Mastery Lv.19] improved to [Sword Mastery Lv.20]]

[Skill [Weakness Detection] has been learned.]

[Proficiency gained. [Combat Awareness Lv.3] improved to [Combat Awareness Lv.4]

[Experience threshold met. Level Up!]

[Proficiency gained. [Running Lv.4] improved to [Running Lv.5]

The Level was what had helped him, wasn’t it? It pushed the numbness away.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

His eyes closed for a moment as he reached out for the mana within him once more. Hakon grasped it with a clear intent; to move it through the tunnels nearest to his right shoulder and down his arm. Remove the numbness if possible.

Instead, he coughed up blood as pain raced across his chest. With the receding numbness, the pain of burned skin and flesh returned. The beetles’ spit was not done hurting him either.

Hakon bent down and carved a chunk of soil out of the ground. It was wet and its earthen scent strong, though it failed to mask the smell of burned flesh.

He first scraped the blade with mud. He removed every last bit of the plant’s viscous liquid from the blade and moved down to his fingers, slowly uncurling them. The bone dagger clattered to the ground after a while, his hand scrubbed with an intensity his skin wasn’t used to. Last but not least, Hakon rubbed soil all across his chest. The beetle spit, however, was tenacious. It stuck to burned skin and flesh, clinging even worse than the leeches from three cycles ago, but that only pushed him to work harder until most of his body was covered in soil, face and neck included.

Hakon knew his solution was far from perfect, but it was the best he could come up with, his body worn out just as much as his mind. Yet, he followed through and guided more mana through his body. It felt good earlier, so it ought to help now as well. That didn’t stop his head from feeling heavier the more time passed or his thoughts from growing sluggish, but it felt like a necessity: His body had to recover faster to return to the battlefield.