Return of the Wind Mage: A Regression litrpg

46.

A wide hand grabbed at the edge of the railing, bare knuckles white with strain with wiry black hair covering the back of its hands and arms. Hateful brown eyes came next as the beast glared at Santi as it rose up and over the concrete barrier to land in a crouch. It was as big as the Alpha was, but it lacked an edge that the Alpha had. There was no aura of danger to the creature.

Primus lvl. 32

Santi punched it in the face. The morph weapons wrapping around his fist and spikes emerging from his knuckles as he crossed the distance in the space between heartbeats. Flesh tore away, blood splattering the concrete as the force of the blow picked up the animal and tossed it against the divider. Concrete cracked as it slammed into the barrier with the crunch of breaking bones.

Santi saw red as he got in a full mount on the bigger monster. His fists, both armored and unarmored, pistoned back and forth as the creature tried to get its arms between Santi and its face. Thick nails scraped across Santi’s legs and sides, drawing bloody furrows as Santi continued to beat it to a pulp without a sound.

Its legs kicked back and forth and its arms fell limp as the kill notification rang through his mind. Santi froze, chest heaving as sweat slicked his brow as he stared at the broken monster on the ground.

It wasn’t enough. It was just fuel to the fire inside of him. He needed more.

Santi looked up and over the ramparts and into downtown. To the swarming horde of ape monsters. Abraham and the traitors would be down there somewhere. The thought stirred him to action.

He hopped up and onto the edge of the barrier and leapt down. He broke his fall with [Air Shield] landing lightly on the street. A furry shape was hurtling at him, wielding a metal pole with chunks of concrete on it. Santi lunged, sliding across the ground without care for the damage the asphalt did to his clothes. The morph blade turned into a eight foot blade no more than an inch thick as he sliced across its waist.

The monster fell in two pieces as Santi didn’t bother to slow down. Heading further and further inward, his pace picking up. Another of the monsters leapt out of a broken window and [Gust] slammed into it, driving it into the ground. Santi lanced it through the skull, killing it before it could recover.

He loped towards the skyscrapers, an instinct telling him that’s where he would find Abraham. A sense of power stirred from there, mana and potential growing dense in the heart of the downtown region.

Two more of the ape monsters came leaping at him and he twisted and bent in half as he cut them both down with two strikes. All of them were in their low thirties, nothing that could even begin to slow him down. He was racing down the streets, blade a blur as more and more of the apes came at him.

Body parts fell like rain about him, the creature’s screams loud as they failed to stop him. Deeper in the downtown, hoots and hollers and roars of challenge echoed out as Santi cleared the lightwork around him.

Every breath was a fire in his gut as his spells slashed out and about. [Air Shield] firing off nearly constantly as he caught thrown objects continuously. Chunks of broken concrete, rebar, wood, other things. Anything that they could get their hands on, they threw down at him.

Santi leapt straight up, [Gust] helping push himself up higher up toward a five story brickwork building. He grabbed the iron bars that covered a second story window and used them as leverage to throw himself higher up. His morph blade slashed the leering face of an ape on the third floor as his hand caught the broken windowsill of the fourth. He swung himself up and over, feet first toward the roof.

Santi twisted in mid air, landing lightly on his feet and killing two monsters as they spun to fight him. Both fell in pieces on the ground, his morph blade drinking deeply from their blood. He could feel the blade’s hunger finally being sated, the battle against the golems having done little for it.

Santi spun about on the rooftop, looking up further to the buildings that dominated his own. More and more of the monsters were coming out of the ruins of the downtown, more like an ant swarm than a troop of ape monsters. Santi was breathing heavily, alerts pouring through his mind as he continued to cast spells.

[Crosscurrent-Orb] caught a group of leaping apes, flinging them through the air as they tried to jump from building to building. The fall wasn’t enough to kill them, but it was enough to slow them down for a bit. A figure caught his gaze, bigger and more lopsided than the others.

Broad shoulders and long arms that scraped the ground as it leapt from rooftop to rooftop. The smaller monsters got out of its way, fleeing its scarred presence as it came leaping toward him. Santi could see the white scars tracing through its wiry black fur, one of its eyes pearly white. Yellow fangs jutted from its oval jaws as it smiled viciously at him.

Bull Primus lvl. 38

“Come on, you bastard. Give me a challenge,” Santi whispered to himself as the great beast landed with a heavy thump across the roof from him. It charged instantly and Santi could feel mana swirling around it, building into this unstoppable wave of momentum. Muddy yellow aura surrounded it as it closed the distance and Santi leapt out of the way.

It flashed by him and hit the far side of the wall with a boom. Brickwork disintegrated and it fell off the building and toward the ground like a meteor. Santi watched it for a moment, his mind tugging at him not to do it.

He jumped after it.

The wind whistled around him and he landed lightly, eyes locking with the bull’s one good eye. The creature smiled widely as charged at him, lowering its shoulder as the momentum built up around it again. The morph blade slashed twice, both blows striking the aura around the monster, diminishing it but not breaking it.

Santi ducked and rolled, letting it fly by him and slam into a wall. Bricks broke away as the bull landed in a heap. With its aura diminished it didn’t have the power to disintegrate the bricks like it had the first time. Santi followed in its wake as it pulled itself out of the ruins and hit it three times as fast as possible.

Each blade stroke bit deeply, blood flowing like water as the monster staggered back to its feet and looked at him. If anything, it looked ecstatic. The blows raining down on it nothing more than a nuisance and Santi couldn’t help but agree. He had finally found something sturdy enough he could work some of this pit of black rage out on.

He sped up.

Eight blows in under a second with a barbed whip, digging and ripping flesh off the bone as the creature screamed in sudden pain. He grabbed a heavy piece of masonry and side armed it at him.

[Air Shield] held, causing the masonry to break apart into dust. The thousand compact twisting winds that formed the shield whisked the dust and the normally transparent shield became opaque. The bull leapt and punched, hitting the shield and unleashing the winds around them.

Santi ducked down and avoided a flying fist, slashing open the creature's triceps with a flick of his wrist. The bull slammed into him, pitching him backward to hit the ground in a roll. He popped to his feet and was forced to cut a heavy steel pipe out of the air. The two pieces clattered to the ground, bouncing away with a ping.

“You’re a tough bastard, give you that,” Santi spat as the blood drenched monster glared at him with its savage smile.

“You. Fast and sharp,” its voice a guttural growl.

“The other humans. Where are they?”

“Tower with Alpha. They bring tribute.”

“I’m going to kill you now.”

The bull simply gave a coughing laugh as it lowered its wide head and started walking toward him. This wasn’t the heavy handed rush as before, but rather an unstoppable march. Santi bit back a curse as he threw a dozen flickering blows at it before it could react. Each blow stopped before it hit skin, the aura growing smaller and smaller as it got closer to him.

Santi backed up further and further, keeping the blows landing on it. With every step its power grew back while Santi’s assault pruned it. An effective stalemate.

There was nothing about what he was feeling that was ok with a stalemate. The maelstrom of emotions he couldn’t contain demanded action and he gave in to it. He stopped retreating and attacked. The morph weapon turned into a sturdy warhammer which he swung with all his might.

The broad head of the hammer hit the bull in its shoulder, breaking the bone with a loud crack. It screamed but its unbroken arm snapped back in retaliation, hitting him square in the chest. The [Air Shield] he cast right before it hit prevented him from dying. The vicious winds burst apart as he was bent in half with a powerful exhalation.

[Gust] was cast, aiming straight up towards the sky. The monster grunted as its feet left the ground and its aura disappeared. It barely got a foot off the ground, its heavy body fighting to stay to the ground. Santi stabbed it with a lance, shattering through the creature’s thick sternum and killing it with the well placed blow.

It hung there limp for a second and he let the body hit the ground with a thump. It had been a bit better than the other creatures. Not a true challenge, but something that had resisted him for even a little while helped.

There was a silence around him, nothing came at him. Eyes stared at him from elevated positions as the powerful monster lay dead at his feet. He started marching toward the center of the downtown district and the tower where he felt the thick waves of mana swirling.

He was hurt, his body bruised and bloody. He couldn’t care. That numbness seeped through him, every step a reverberation through his soul. Abraham was going to die. That thought drove him forward when all he wanted to do was lay down and sob. The rage burying the sorrow and denial.

A tentative piece of plywood came spinning at him as one of the braver monsters threw it at him. Santi turned the morph weapon into a shield and let the piece of wood clatter to the ground harmlessly as he continued his march. A half dozen of the monsters hit the ground in front of him.

They beat at their chests, hooting and challenging him. Santi leaped, landing right in front of them and started to continue his bloody work. He slipped under swinging blows and slashed open bodies with a thought. A wordless battle cry was coming from him as he cut apart the monsters.

All six of them were in pieces. They were pieces of meat in moments and he was continuing on his way. There were no more thrown pieces of debris. The hateful monster eyes looked at him with fear now. He was drenched in blood, only some of it his own.

The tower took up his entire view. The bottom floor windows were broken out, the doors in shattered ruins. Corpses were staked out, impaled on rebar. Other monster varieties, goblins, kobolds, a troll-kin, a lizard creature, and more. Anything and everything that had tried to contest the [Primus Alpha].