Defiance of the Fall

He didn’t bother with it anymore and walked over to the leader . He was most excited about the gear on him , and it was largely intact . The fractals had protected the demon from Zac’s strike on the chest , and the finishing blow had been on his head , which kept all the gear in good working order .

Zac , who was getting more and more adroit in undressing corpses , nimbly loosened the clasps and buckles , and dragged the chest plate from him . He also gingerly touched the great sword , afraid that he would get zapped again .

Fortunately there was no charge left it seemed , and he picked up . The sword was actually lighter than he expected . Of course , he was a bit unsure of his current strength , so making exact measurements was hard .

He carefully looked through the weapon for some hidden function . The leader clearly had been unarmed one second , and in the next holding this monstrosity . It must have come from somewhere .

Zac suspected the sword might be able to grow and shrink at command , and it simply was too small for him to notice before . Or the sword might be able to turn invisible .

After a quick rundown he couldn’t figure it out , and he did not want to delay too long here in case reinforcements arrived . He quickly stripped all remaining items from the leader , including a pouch , a few runed bracelets , and the large knife .

He put all of it inside a backpack , then proceeded to do the same with the other two fighters . He left their weapons and armors though , as he simply was overburdened as is . Just bringing back the sword would be arduous with his battered body .

Finally he dragged the bodies away and looked over the battlefield . A discerning eye would quickly notice that a battle took place here , but Zac couldn’t be too bothered anymore . This was the second scouting party he had killed , besides a herald and a throng of demons .

The humanoids would have to be crazy to not know that someone was hunting them by now . They had seen the trap used to kill the herald , so they knew it wasn’t a beast either .

He wasn’t too sure why they weren’t scouring the island for him . He guessed they either had limited resources or was preoccupied with something else . Who knew , maybe there actually was a city with humans hidden in the mountains that waged war on the demons .

He put the axe into his belt end hefted the great sword over his shoulder and turned back . He had been out for half the day , and either had to turn back soon or sleep in one of his hideouts .

He decided to head back , as the fight had given him some insights about the inscribed items that he wanted to try out in a safe environment .

Zac started heading back , heading a slightly altered path . Even if he was hurt it wasn’t to the point that he couldn’t hunt some demon dogs on the way back . The worst part was his leg , and luckily the demons always came running so he didn’t have to chase them .

He soon ran into one and with a swing of the great sword completely split the barghest in two . The sword continued with its momentum and slammed into a tree , cutting clean through it .

The power was great , but it felt too unwieldy for jungle warfare . More importantly , Zac noticed that killing the barghest with the sword didn’t improve his quest for axe mastery . On second thought he felt it made sense that the kills had to be made with an axe to complete an axe mastery quest .

As he continued on he had to continuously swap weapons every time he ran into a demon .

Finally he arrived at his camp as the suns were starting to set . After the customary sweep he entered the camp . He threw some lumber into the fire pit and lit a small fire , and got some more dried meat . He was starting to run low so he’d have to hunt something edible tomorrow as well .

His wounds had actually turned a lot better during his hike back , as he hadn’t sustained any new wounds from the lesser demons .

A quick glance at his status screen showed that he had gained roughly 10 000 Nexus coins in one day . It made sense , as he had more than doubled the speed of killing barghest with his upgrades . Furthermore , the demons seemed to give out roughly a thousand Nexus Coins each .

Zac was somewhat surprised to find out that he actually had gained nexus coins and cosmic energy from the demon that the leader accidentally killed . He had somewhat felt the rush of energy during the fight , but at the time had been preoccupied with getting zapped by demon lightning .

He also felt that he almost had gained half a level from the intense fights . Risking your life really was the most effective way of getting stronger with the system .

His Axe mastery had progressed as well , currently showing a (69/1000) progress . Most of the kills had been barghest while traveling , with a few of the more agile Gwyllgi peppered in every now and then . Zac felt that if he put his mind to it then he could kill roughly 100 lower demons a day , which would allow him to complete the quest in another 10 days .