Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 19: Vul

Even though Zac moved like a specter through the woods he couldn’t always avoid fights. A barghest was lying hidden behind a few bushes, and noticed Zac before he could reroute around it.

It immediately got up and without hesitation charged upon him.

Zac was completely unfazed by the oncoming beast, and circulated a small amount of cosmic energy through his body down to his legs. With a quick step he avoided the beast at the last second, giving it no time to adjust. He then followed up with a vicious swing down the throat of the passing beast. The barghest would have been decapitated had it not been for the limited size of Zac’s hatchet.

Instead he tore a huge gash that severed both muscles and jugulars from the top and then continued until exiting down on the bottom, resulting in the head barely staying on.

The demon continued for a few meters before collapsing with a thud. Zac continued on while going over the state of the axe. By now he had killed hundreds of barghests and the recent fight barely registered in his mind, even with the power-up of the beast. Even if the barghests had become stronger, they still were the most common and stupid of the monsters on the island.

The empowered Gwyllgi that focused on speed were far more annoying to deal with. He still had a hard time dealing with them without getting a cut somewhere.

When looking over the hatchet he couldn’t help feeling a sour lump in his throat. The axe was in a state of disrepair with scratches all over. The head had become a full two centimeters shorter from repeated sharpening against rocks. Zac knew the only reason the weapon still somewhat held together was that it was made from a solid piece of steel. Still, the shaft had started to bend, showing the strain it had been put under.

The combination of Zac’s superhuman strength and the hardness of demon bones had slowly warped the metal. He was quite worried, as he did not know what he’d do when his weapon finally broke. He would be able to buy a shop and hopefully get a weapon that way when he finally upgraded the outpost to a town. But until then there simply seemed to be no weapons on the island.

Zac sighed and continued on his way.

He barely used any energy during the fight, only enhancing himself for a few seconds. With the help of the gathering array he would be topped off again within a minute.

Zac kept stalking through the woods like death incarnate. Anything that was foolish enough to attack him was quickly ended with a swing.

He had initially been afraid that his daily excursions would we found out by the demons, but after a few days of observation he was quite content knowing he was safe as long as he did not hunt too close to the Heralds.

Every day new monsters would appear in the woods, likely summoned through the Incursion. More astonishingly, the demons killed each other far more than Zac killed them. He had lost count of the times that he had found a demon hunkered over a corpse of the same race, feasting on its carcass. There seemed to be simply no familiar affection between the demons. That Zac was responsible for a small part of the deaths seemingly went by completely unnoticed.

Finally he arrived at the area where he had spotted the Herald earlier. He immediately became more alert of his surroundings, not wanting to create a stir with his target so close. He soon found the target, and it wasn’t hard to notice.

The Herald was huge.

[Vul, Level 45]

That was all the information that the [Eye of Discernment] gave him. Either his mastery over the skill was too low to show more information, or the skill was simply too basic.

It at least showed that its level was over twenty levels higher than his. He did not know whether Vul was its name or its race. His skill hade only showed the race when fighting the random beasts in the forest, but here it also showed a level. The system somehow made a distinction between this herald and the other demons.

He was leaning towards the theory that Vul was a name, because the monster clearly looked a lot like a barghest. If a Barghest had been supercharged. Instead of three pairs of legs it had four, with the additional being positioned closer to the hind legs.

‘Does that mean that it’s a spider rather than an insect…’ Zac mused with a dark sense of humor while looking over the beast.

Vul was also far larger than its Barghest brethren. If a normal barghest could reach up to Zac’s chest with its head then this monster was a full head taller than him. It was even larger than a bear, and from its oversized muscles looked that the bear would rather be prey than a competitor.

Just like the normal demon dogs it had an oversized head with an abyssal maw, with three rows of sinister fangs lining it. With its size the monster could easily fit both Zac’s head and torso in its mouth for a quick bite. The paws which looked like talon had the same three long claws attached, but on Vul they were as long as small kitchen knives.

It seemed to be the alpha of the barghest pack, although it didn’t seem very interested in anything except lazing about and eating.

Zac had observed the monster from a distance a few times the last week, and had also realized that it not only was larger, but it was also a bit smarter. Certainly, it was still a meathead, but he had noticed some burgeoning intelligence from its actions. It luckily didn’t seem overly alert, as Zac had used the [Eye of Discernment] on it without any reaction.

Perhaps only magically inclined beings such as the imps could actually notice being screened by the skill.

He knew his customary method of killing a demon dog would not work with this monster, it simply was too large a risk. He had gotten swiped almost countless times the last month, each time having a new wound to show for it. A similar swipe from this monstrosity could instantly end him if unlucky, and he was not ready to take that chance.

He slowly eased back into the vegetation after ascertaining the Herald’s position. Taking down a beast like this would take some strategy.

Zac slowly made his way a few hundred meters away where his final piece of the puzzle lay hidden. Luckily Vul mostly stayed in the same area except for when it went on patrols in random directions.

He finally reached his destination, a particularly lush bush that had a thick leafy crown that was roughly the same height as Zac himself. After glancing around he gingerly made his way into the bush.

Inside there were four trunks of trees, each roughly three meters long and almost as thick as his thigh. One end of the tree was sharpened into a point. They looked as if they were made to form a palisade, but the real purpose was monster hunting.

The spear he had used the first time he hunted broke on the first demon, so he had learned his lesson.

During his weeks of fighting he had found a type of tree which had a dark trunk but white-grey veins. He hadn’t recognized it and had tried to cut down a branch with a swing of his hatchet, and to his surprise he found that the tree was extremely dense and hard.

Cutting down the trees to make the four supersized spears had tired him out even with his superior physique.

He gingerly dug roughly half a meter deep holes with some distance from each other, then placed the wooden stakes into them at a slanted angle. He had placed them so that the spear tips were hidden within the bush at roughly 150 to 180 centimeter height. Finally he covered the holes and placed down secondary smaller stumps beneath the stakes, so that they wouldn’t tip over from their own weight before they could be used.

This was the only trap he could figure out that could help in his fight against the huge beast. The only other idea he had come up with was to dig a pitfall. But he did not have the tools for the massive undertaking of digging a pit large enough to trap and kill a monster the size of a large minivan.

He took one more glance at the bush to inspect his work. He would only get one shot at this and didn’t want anything to give it away before it was too late.

Satisfied with his work, he finally turned towards the Herald and started walking.