Dokeshi March: Chapter 11 (Patreon)

Chapter 11

The Ushi-oni ignored Grant’s approach, seeing the gauntlet-wielding pink-haired prodigy as the greater threat.  He decided it was time to teach them the error of their ways.  Dropping his shoulder, Grant slammed into the nearest gyuki with his shoulder planted in its thorax and his sword stabbing at the base of its bull ear.  The impact lifted the freaky spider monster on its side, allowing his sword to slice deeply across its throat.

“One down, two to go!”  He was able to dodge the spray of blood that shot out of the monster, but he wasn’t able to avoid the spear-like tip of the monster’s leg.  It was more bad luck than on purpose, as the Ushi-oni spasmed in its death throes.  “Bwaragha!”  Grant shouted as the leg pierced his forearm.  Damage notifications flashed through his eyes, momentarily blinding him.

Damage taken: 51 piercing (51 mitigated)

<Focus!  That yokai isn’t done yet!>  Sarge’s shout was all the warning Grant needed.  He rolled backwards, away from the monster attacking him.  His arm tore free of the leg impaling him, but Grant ignored the shooting pain that made his hand go numb.  The bleeding  yokai was trying to get back to its feet, its spidery limbs making a clattering sound on the cobblestoned street.  <Now, this time, sword and mind must be united!>

Once again, Grant had no idea what that meant, so he just knelt in a sprinter’s stance and darted under the oversized creature as it gained its feet.  He ran through the curtain of blood still pouring from the gaping neck wound, and dragged the Uchigatana across the length of the bulbous abdomen.  It was a terribly destructive attack, forcing the monster to plop onto the ground, its insides now on the outside.

“Oh, that’s awful!”  The smell was like a punch in the face to his senses, and Grant retched in disgust.  “I need to figure out something else for the next one.”  Now that his first opponent was down, he could focus on what the other two were doing.

Suki was facing two of the Ushi-oni at once, and the fight looked to be pretty evenly balanced.  She was too fast for even the dashing movements of the spider creatures to keep up with, and her giant gauntlets weren’t doing much visible damage to the monsters.  It was an endurance game, to see who would tire first.  Given what he knew about Suki, he would gamble all he had on her winning.

The obvious move was for Grant to jump in right away to help.  He was facing the difficult decision of when exactly to do it.  They were fighting as if almost in a choreographed dance, and he was worried about just jumping into the fray.  If he timed his intervention wrong, it could distract Suki’s rhythm and end in disaster.

<Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death>  Sarge’s words sparked Grant into action.  He knew the sword spirit was right.  Overthinking things would only slow his reflexes, and he needed to be in top form.

A stabbing pain in Grant’s arm forced him to check his stats before jumping into battle.

Health: 301/352

Mana: 19/19

Getting stabbed just once from the bull-spider monster had taken a full seventh of his health.  He needed to be careful, or this would be a short fight.  The blood from his forearm was dripping off his elbow, seeming to fall in slow motion as he sprinted toward the cow-sized monsters attacking the small girl.

Suki saw him coming, and timed a punch to land on the horn of the gyuki he was charging.  It positioned the head so the creature didn’t see him approaching, allowing Grant to sever the rear left leg where it met the thorax.

The Ushi-oni made a lowing sound that was a mix of pain and anger, and quickly spun in place to confront the new combatant.  Unfortunately for Suki, that meant its bulbous rear slammed into her just as she was turning back to face the other monster.  She went flying straight into the waiting arms of the gyuki.

Grant was dealing with his own struggles.  The surprisingly quick spin of the bull-spider told him the monster he had killed at first must have been the weakest and slowest of the trio.  The idea was reinforced when the front legs of the yokai darted toward his face in an uneven staccato, their sharpened tips like spearpoints aimed at his most vital areas.

Training to deflect incoming threats served him well.  February 29 seemed to block the incoming limbs with a will of its own.  Grant didn’t even have to think about angling his blade to force them out of alignment, and the hardened chitin of the spider legs made a screaming sound of squealing metal as their length ran along the edge of the sword.

When the bull head rared back to gouge Grant, he ducked forward into a roll that put him within easy striking distance of the gyuki’s right eye.  He stabbed deep, but he didn’t have the leverage to push through the back of the eye socket into the brain.  It did, however, manage to force the monster to scuttle backwards in pain.

Glancing over, Grant noticed the predicament Suki was in.  She had a spider limb in each hand, and was twisting and dodging the butting head of the bull horns as it tried to gore her.

<Let her fight!  You worry about your own opponent, then help her.>  Grant’s focus snapped back to the bull-spider in front of him.  <Get in there and finish this!>

He put action to Sarge’s orders, leaping over an outflung limb on the creature’s blind side and stabbing his sword through the side of the thorax.  He twisted his grip, widening the wound before ripping it free and rolling under the downward-striking limbs.  The ichor dripping from the wounds he had inflicted on the yokai made the footing slippery on the cobblestone street, so Grant jumped backwards into the more open area of the intersection.

The monster fighting Suki must have reacted to Grant moving closer, because a sudden shout of victory from her was immediately followed by the sound of pained lowing.  Grant’s opponent seemed reluctant to move into the more open area, its spidery instincts telling it the more confined space of the narrow street provided more protection.

<You have it scared!>  Sarge’s shout was excited, and he urged Grant back into the fight.  <This is your chance.  Go show that demon creature who is boss!>

He lunged forward, his sword held out in a two-handed grip that was aimed at the blind side of the creature’s neck.  It had taken down the last one, so the same technique should work twice.  But it didn’t.

The bull-spider was blinded, so it swept the horn sideways in an attempt to keep Grant back.  It smashed into his shoulder, throwing him halfway across the road where he bounced off the street sign on the corner.  His breath exploded outward, and his ribs made a crackling sound like crumpled parchment.  The whole right side of his body went numb, and he tumbled to the ground in a heap.

“Uhhhh…”  Grant tried to get back on his feet, but every inhale felt like he was getting a spear to the lungs.  Even though his right side was numb, he could still move it.  His hand tightened on his sword, and he got back on his feet with some help from the now-bent street sign.  The agony that shot through him almost made him pass out, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet.

<Yeah, no matter how strong you are, busted ribs are their own special kind of pain.>  Sarge waited for Grant to steady himself before saying anything else.  <I don’t think you punctured a lung, but your ribs are definitely broken.  I would recommend you finish this fight without doing a bunch of jumping around.>

“Easier… said… than done…”  Grant was struggling to talk, but he was able to get back in position to bring the fight back to the yokai.  The injured monster still looked game to fight, so he tried to make it look like he was too.

Health: 143/352

Mana: 19/19

Grant had missed the damage notifications when he had hit the pole - hitting the sign was a pretty big distraction - but when he checked his health, the shock of seeing almost one hundred and sixty health disappearing was a sobering moment.  He couldn’t afford to take another blow.  Thoughts of retreating to heal ran through his head for a moment before a wave of determination swept over him.

<Good.  A samurai never retreats in battle.>  Grant could feel the approval coming from the sword in his hands.  <Now, get back in there.>

This time, Grant had a plan.  It was time to finish this fight, and finish it now.  He shuffled more than ran at the yokai, and waited until it was just about to kill him with another swing of its horns.  He ignited his spell, shocking the bull-spider and causing it to curl up on itself.

Elemental Spell: Thundering Step

Prerequisites: 65 Mind. Two feet. Metal weapon.

Active Mode: Create a static field in a five foot radius around you that damages others when they move through the area. Does not move from the point it was set. Lasts five seconds.

Mana cost: 10 per use.

Damage(Self): 0% Mental cultivation.

Damage(Other): 100% Mental cultivation per second.

The damage the spell inflicted on the monster was instant, and the damage his mental cultivation could impart was seventy six points of damage per second the gyuki was in range.  It must not have had any spell resistance, because the Ushi-oni wasn’t able to back out of the spell radius.  He did three hundred and eighty damage to the monster in one blow, leaving it as a curled up husk.  A downward stab through the skull of the yokai finished it off.

<Excellent.  Now, go help Suki before she gets hurt.>  Sarge didn’t give him any chance to catch his breath.  A glance at the fight told him it was for good reason.

Suki had crushed most of the limbs on one side of the yokai she was fighting, but the monster still had plenty of mobility left in it.  The gauntlets Suki wore meant she had to get in close to do any damage, and the spear-like spider legs were making it hard for her to finish off the creature.

Grant waited for an opening, and did another shuffle-run at the monster when it was forced to focus on a thundering blow from Suki.  He struck a downward blow at the base of its neck, almost severing the head in one blow.  Grant immediately plopped down on the ground, not caring about the disgusting paste-like mix of monster blood and dusty debris on the street.  The numbness was starting to go away, and shooting pain was slowly replacing the deadened feeling along his right side.  He was trying to concentrate on breathing through the pain, when a very angry Suki came over and punched him in the chest.  Which hurt.

“That one was mine!”  Suki kicked the dead creature’s head, finishing off the decapitation and sending it tumbling down the empty street.  “I had it right where I wanted it!”

Grant wasn’t able to reply, since his broken ribs were pushing against his lung.  Instead of answering, he dropped into the meditative state that allowed him to replay the fight and heal some of his missing damage.

Live by the Sword: Pause and meditate on the failures of your combat ability, healing up to 35% of all damage taken within the last 10 minutes, over one full minute. This ability will increase with physical cultivation.

He was forced to relive every blow and mistake, and think about how to improve.  The biggest flaw was his poor timing.  If he had used his spell at the start of the fight, it would have ended without him being injured at all.  Their weakness to spells wasn’t something he knew about at the start of the fight, and he didn’t have the knowledge of any creature like the Ushi-oni to fall back on.  Next time, he would maximize the radius of his spell.

Health: 143/352 -> 217/352. Critical areas focused. Broken bones repaired to 90%. Organs repaired. Soft tissue repaired to 80%.

It felt like waking up from a long sleep when Grant opened his eyes after the full minute of rest.  Suki was smashing the corpse he had electrocuted with steady and measured punches, her blows making the sound of sharp cracks echo through the area.  He got to his feet, wincing at the pain it caused him.  Wasn’t he supposed to be healed enough by now that it didn’t hurt so bad?

<Oh, feeling a little sore, are we?>  Sarge seemed angry, which confused Grant.  He had won, hadn’t he?  <You didn’t see the skill you earned yet, did you?>

[Skill that causes him to feel pain even worse, as punishment for getting hurt to much] (The specifics will determined by Dakota and I during our weekly meeting)

“What?!”  Grant was incredibly angry at the skill he had just gained.  Weren’t they supposed to be a good thing?  “Sarge, I thought skills were supposed to help people, not cause their situation to get worse!”

<If you had fought the way you should have, you wouldn’t be in this situation.>  Sarge’s tone softened, and he sounded a little less angry.  <I guess it is a good thing you gained this skill.  Your mental cultivation is going to go through the roof in no time!>

All Grant could do was sigh in defeat.