Defiance of the Fall

Ignoring the burning pain Zac quickly scrambled to his feet and got out of the way . But it seemed that the escape was unnecessary , as the demonling had collapsed after the swipe . The grass beneath it was completely stained red , and a large chunk of intestines was hanging outside its body . It was seemingly completely out of steam , weakly growling between shallow rapid breaths .

Ideally , Zac would have preferred to wait it out and let it slowly bleed to death , but the monster’s roars had been quite loud . He had no interest in sticking around in case there was backup on the way . He had to be calculative at times to avoid unnecessary risks , but sometimes he had to be decisive as well . Gripping the hatchet in a bloody hand he slowly circled out of sight of the monster . Then with a few quick steps forward swung down with force right behind the middle legs , cutting deep into what he presumed was lungs . The demon tried to rouse a retaliation but was completely out of power , resulting only in a feeble wave of a paw .

Zac repeated an identical slash on the other side , which should mean that both its lungs were punctured . Given that the demon’s physique was somewhat similar to a normal mammal’s , of course . The demon barely responded to the second swing apart from shaking with pain or death throes . Zac wasted no time and with one final swing cut right into its neck .

With one final spasm , the monster passed . He knew this without having to check as he suddenly felt the familiar warmth of cosmic energy entering his body .

A quick look around the corpse once again showed no sort of loot spawning or dropping . This made Zac more certain of the fact that there was no such thing as a loot system with the System .

With a last look at the surroundings for anything he might have missed , he once again receded into the cover of the forest . The hunt was not over .

Chapter 14 - Zombie Hound

Zac sat on a rock with a bottle of water in hand . He had just finished bandaging up his arm from the swipe of the demon and was now taking a quick breather . The fight had gone far better than his expectation , but he wouldn’t let himself get complacent .

Not wanting to fill his stomach with too much water and later cramping up he took a few small sips then put the bottle back . Checking that everything was in order he once again set out into the jungle , continuing his path of gradually moving inland . He did not bother remaking a spear for now , at least until he found some far stronger wood . Abby had talked about trees taking properties of metal , and he desperately hoped he could find a tree like that .

It was not long before he ran into another demon dog . This one was slowly moving around , almost looking like a scout or like it was patrolling . He quickly decided on the place of the battle after a quick look around the surroundings . From there it proceeded much like the last fight . A rock was thrown to taunt the beast and it almost knocked itself out cold on a boulder . This time Zac instead swung down his hatchet on the spine between the two sets of frontal legs . He strove to incapacitate two sets of legs and only leave the front-most legs in working order .

This was as close to the head as he dared attack at the moment though , as he had seen how fast the demonling had swung its head to snap his spear in two . He was somewhat certain that the demon was like a crocodile in that regard ; if something entered the maw , it would not leave .

The attack proved far more effective than he could have imagined . The blade fell down right between two vertebras and continued almost unimpeded into the torso of the beast . Zac saw his opportunity and twisted while he tugged out the axe towards the side . He hoped to wreak as much havoc as possible in the demon’s insides , destroying both lungs and heart . The axe was quickly completely ripped out of the chest , and a great gout of blood followed it and sprayed all over Zac .

The forceful tug swept Zac off his feet and he fell backward into the grass . He quickly got up to his feet axe at the ready , but soon realized it was unnecessary . The demon was lying on the ground listlessly . Blood was pouring out of the wound like a waterfall . After a shudder it stopped moving , and Zac felt the now familiar warmth once again enter him .

Zac realized he must have hit the heart of the beast . There seemed to be no other possible explanation to the copious amounts of blood that had streamed out of the wound . Seeing as how he wasn’t even out of breath from the fight , he immediately left and continued to look for more prey .