I Awakened My Game System! Now Three Great Houses Want Me Dead!-Chapter 101: Love?

They were everywhere.

A hungry sea of dead eyes and too-long claws.

The Vrykolakases moved with no particular purpose.

With no leader now, no Daemon to focus them, they attacked everything.

And that meant that Aspro was in trouble.

Thankfully, Xenos was there before anything could happen to him.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet, his sword loose in his hand, Aspro tucked under his left arm like a warm trophy, he ran around them while an acid glob sat in his right palm, neon green and humming, ready to vomit death on anything stupid enough to touch it.

Eris, his internal GPS, sighed in his head.

’Don’t enjoy yourself too much.’

Xenos replied because the dog deserved amusement, and She deserved an attitude:

’I’ll try my best~.’

The first wave hit with eight Vrykolakases lunging at him at the same time.

He ducked beneath their claws, and just as he was about to drown in their bodies, all eight split apart, allowing him to rush forth and meet the next.

His blade flashed only for it to pause on a Vrykolakas’s flesh.

[Wise Fool] hadn’t crit this time; the sword had met resistance.

Yet Xenos, seemingly unbothered, casually stepped away from its lunge before jumping up high, avoiding another pile-up of Vrykolakases that he quickly sent a glob of acid at, killing many of them.

Vrykolakases jumped, meeting him in the air, surrounding him from all sides.

He glanced at each of them, threw Aspen up, and stabbed one in the chest.

Just then, all the Vrykolakases punched out, aiming to crush him to pulp.

But Xenos wasn’t there any longer, having used his sword as a step to reach Aspro.

Now out of harm’s way, he caught the dog and looked at them as they fell back down.

In the next second, as many of them reached or neared the ground, his sword appeared back in his hand, making it obvious that in the short moment where he stepped off the sword, he’d quickly called it to his inventory.

Pivoting on one foot, he swung another acid glob at those approaching him.

This time, he had aimed it above them, exploding it in a shower of sizzling green mist.

The nearest Vrykolakases melted into dark, steaming slush, while some of the Vrykolakases just outside his attack’s range faltered, their skin bubbling and their exposed bone smoking, but others kept coming, perhaps more determined for it.

Woof!

That was when Aspro pointed his horn at the nearest of them, and for a moment, the undead’s jerky coordination fell apart.

A few turned around and began to bite at each other, confused.

Xenos used the chaos his pup created, juking between biting claws and hacking away, the sword finding purchase with each strike as his [Wise Fool] kept flickering, making true slashes that couldn’t be parried.

’Keep on going.’

He caught himself smiling at the thought.

Luck was a cruel lover, and She liked to surprise him.

After all, She was also of Calamity, the same coin.

A boulder came flying at him.

Xenos noticed it at the last second.

It came from a Vrykolakas...

They were getting smarter.

But he didn’t have time to think about that.

His left hand blasted a glob of acid at the boulder, melting much of it and slowing it down, before he swung with his right, his sword cutting it in half, sending its remains splattering all around him, killing whoever was close.

Spinning around, Xenos raised Aspro with his right hand and flung him at the boulder-throwing Vrykolakas, wanting to kill it fast before its kin learned of that annoying trick.

Aspro flew between them all and pierced straight through the Vrykolakas’s head with its horn, somehow coming out clean on the other side.

Yet before he could drop, a hand of rotten flesh grabbed him by the scruff.

The little dog yelped and commanded it to fling him back into Xenos.

And that was exactly what it did, though a bit too strongly.

Chuckling, Xenos jumped into his path and let Aspro latch onto him before rolling across the blood-soaked ground and back into a stance.

"Good boy."

Xenos wedged Aspro under his arm again and kept moving.

They pressed on, and the Vrykolakases fought back harder, adapting to them.

Still, Xenos wasn’t so easily predicted, ducking and parrying his way through them.

He used the acid sparingly, a glob blast here, a toss there, wanting it to last as long as possible, because this... this was about endurance.

One, two, three, his sword cut through their torsos in a single arc.

Their heads flopped, and their bodies unstitched, filling up the area with their corpses.

A dozen or so of them were caused by Aspro himself, who, seeing his savior’s deteriorating state, left his embrace and began to attack them himself, pausing them still and charging through their ankles, dropping them to the ground and allowing Xenos to easily kill them.

And yet, the end had yet to arrive.

There were more clusters before them.

More they had to kill despite their exhaustion.

That was bad enough; Xenos admitted that.

But unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

While they kept coming, while Aspro darted between them, tearing through tendons and snapping necks with that little mind power of his, while Xenos began to feel his fatigue more and more, the acid in his palm dimming to a faint glow, while they fought together as if they’d been doing this all their lives... everything stilled.

Behind them, the few half-bodied Vrykolakases had dragged themselves over one another, their dead fingers gripping into each other, their broken jaws locking into flesh, making them one.

A few dozen... on top of another, even the terminated.

Only when Xenos killed those surrounding him did he finally notice.

He could do nothing but pause and watch the mound of mangled bodies knit itself together.

Bone to bone, flesh to flesh, ichor to ichor until something huge rose from the center of it all.

A giant.

A grotesque colossus made entirely of the corpses he’d slain.

The thing stood taller than the trees, its form patchwork and writhing.

"GRarrrrrrrrraaaaaaaah!"

"GRaaaaaRAAAAAAARRAAH!"

"GRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Eyes blinked from random spots on its chest, as screaming mouths opened everywhere.

Xenos let out a long breath while staring up at it.

Once more, he was before death.

And yet his smile remained.

Rather, it widened... 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"...so this is love?"

He was happy.