Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 735
Chapter 735: Clown (4)
Whoosh!
A chilling wind blew away the thick clouds of dust, only to reveal a burning skeleton.
Crackle!
The black flames swallowed the Corpse Collector until only his bones were left behind. Even in that state, his bony fingers still clutched the Staff of the Netherworld, which somehow appeared unscathed by the flames.
Why does it look so bad now?
The presence this invincibility skill had exuded when I first saw it in the Goblin Forest was no longer present, and it was for a very simple reason.
One minute of invincibility.
His mental skills and abilities had been converted into physical buffs. While the core effect of the skill hadn’t changed, the Blessing of the Netherworld had made it even stronger now. Yet, despite that, he made a different choice now than he did back then.
In that long minute, where before he would have tried to kill me, he turned his back to me and ran without even a moment of hesitation.
Watching him fleeing reminded me of a familiar bug. Those little scurrying creatures—cockroaches—that ran whenever I turned on the lights back when I lived on the ground floor. Just like he was doing now.
He’s pretty quick.
Due to his greatly increased stats from both Blessing of the Netherworld and Momentary Immortality stacking, his movement speed had increased tremendously.
And so, I resumed my chase.
Thud! Thud!
My long and thick legs worked to move after him as sweat began to bead on my brow, but still, I drifted further and further away from him.
Those bones were moving pretty fast.
He’s still just going to die in the end.
Although he was getting farther away from me, I didn’t feel any urgency.
This was a wide field with nowhere to hide. No matter how far he got, I would just trundle along after him.
One minute.
After the minute passed, Momentary Immortality’s effect ended, and flesh began to reappear on his body.
He was now running with nothing but the staff in his hand.
I’m still not getting any closer to him.
He was moving fast even after Momentary Immortality’s effect ended. It was a troublesome problem, I would admit, but nothing major. We had plenty of time left before the Netherworld closed.
I’m pretty sure the maximum duration is twenty-four hours.
We had only been here for at most thirty minutes. In other words, I had twenty-three hours left to use.
Thud! Thud!
I grinned as I maintained my pace.
Let’s see how long you can run for.
A barbarian never gave up.
***
Have you ever played tag?
You would know if you have.
Even while knowing that it was just a game, being chased by someone makes you feel an intense thrill and anxiety.
And if that was how one felt during a game, how would it feel when being chased in real life?
In truth, Necrapeto had spent most of his life not knowing what that felt like. He had always been the one doing the chasing, after all.
Dash!
His legs felt sore after moving for so long without rest.
The mental strain of the situation weighed him down even more, to the point where he felt like he was getting tired more quickly than usual.
He heaved in gasping breaths as the air began to catch in his throat.
Maybe it wasn’t just a “feeling” at all.
P-please give up!
Although he was still decently far from his pursuer, he couldn’t relax, not even for a second.
Thud! Thud!
Those steady, even steps echoed out from behind him with an unmistakable message: he was never going to give up.
I need to distance myself even more from him if I want to lose him for good…
Slowly being pushed to his limits, the man tried using all the tricks he had up his sleeves. He pulled corpse after corpse from his sub-space and tried to get them to hinder the barbarian, even if only for a moment.
“Grrrrk!”
He raised huge walls of corpses.
“Kyaaaak!”
And got the corpses to swing their rotten claws at the barbarian in an attempt to distract him.
“Oh, thanks for the stacks.”
He didn’t need to see the satisfied smile of the barbarian to know it was there.
Dash!
And so, time passed.
One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes…
Thud! Thud!
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes…
One hour…
Although he couldn’t know for sure, his body clock told him it was around that time.
And yet, nothing had changed.
The man was riding on top of his fastest summon, and the barbarian was still thudding along as he waded through the corpse army. The distance between them…
Why isn’t it widening anymore?!
The distance between them was still around the same.
There were two problems.
The first was that even after summoning all those corpses to block him, the tank of a barbarian didn’t seem affected by them at all.
Giantization.
And it didn’t seem like his Giantization was going to end anytime soon.
Usually, those transformation-type abilities constantly consumed MP, so it was difficult to maintain them for long.
I-if not for that, I could get much farther away from him!
When was that skill going to turn off?
He had no way of knowing, but he was sure it wasn’t far off.
Necrapeto clung desperately to hope that Giantization would soon reach its limit and that he would be able to get away from the barbarian.
That was a false hope founded on ignorance.
Abed Necrapeto didn’t know.
[Bjorn Yandel has used a transformation-type ability. The effect of Primordial Cell decreases the Soul Power consumed by the skill by half, and his highest stat has risen by 1.5X.]
He didn’t know this shield barbarian was 70 percent to his full build.
[Bjorn Yandel has cast Soul Dive. His soul power has regenerated relative to missing soul power.]
Unless he was forced to use more MP, his Giantization could be maintained forever.
Fwoong!
At that moment, Necrapeto felt a chill run down his back. He glanced back in terror.
[You have used the Dragon Plate of Aegis.]
There, he saw a giant spirit warrior who ignored every known principle.
H-how does that skill have such a low cooldown?!
It wasn’t a skill but an item’s activated ability, but Necrapeto couldn’t possibly have known that. Dragon Plate of Aegis was a secret numbered item, after all, one that didn’t even exist in the game. It was also out of the question that he knew his summoned corpse army was the thing that allowed the barbarian to regain his stacks so quickly.
I-I tried to get as far as I could because of that thing…!
He felt so wronged.
How did it make sense that a tank could use that cheat-like skill multiple times in a row?!
And of course, he had no time to actually voice those complaints either.
Dash!
He dodged the huge axe that fell like divine retribution from the sky and dived off of his summon.
BOOM!
He succeeded in dodging the axe attack, but the summon he had been riding on disappeared without a trace. It would slowly regenerate thanks to the field effect of the Netherworld, but it would take at least a few hours to recover from that attack.
“Tsk, I thought I could get him this time.”
Thanks to his keen hearing, he could hear the mumblings of the barbarian.
Having regained his senses, Necrapeto quickly got up and began to run on his two feet again.
Dash!
He only realized the problem with his body around five minutes after he began running.
“Ugh!”
It seemed that although he dodged the main attack from the axe, he hadn’t been able to avoid it completely.
M-my legs…
One side was fine, but his left leg refused to move properly. Although he was forcing it to move by pushing himself, the pain began to creep over him every time he did.
Crunch!
And the pain worsened.
It only made sense that he began to slow down as a result.
Necrapeto didn’t look back. He would rather use that time to focus more on limping forward, yet still, the thuds grew louder and louder.
Thud! Thud!
One step, another step.
Even though he was running as fast as he could, the sound continued to get closer.
Thud!
And when the sound came from right behind him…
“Ugh!”
He was lifted by the head straight off the ground.
“Finally got you.”
When Necrapeto once again opened his eyes, he saw the barbarian.
The barbarian then let out a laugh.
“Pshe.”
Pure mockery.
***
The chase was finally over. It took a little over an hour too.
I should revisit my movement skills situation once all this is over.
Although the chase ended without issue, I couldn’t help but reflect on my shortcomings and think about ways to improve. Recently, there had been too many situations where my lack of movement capabilities came to bite me on the ass.
This time was no exception. If I had even Leap, the chase would’ve ended much more quickly and efficiently.
“H-hahaha…”
In my moment of distraction, the guy dangling from my grip suddenly let out an awkward laugh.
“H-how about we negotiate a little?”
Hah, why did people like him always talk about inane things like this whenever they were cornered?
“Nah, I’m good,” I deadpanned.
“S-still, if we talk it out, we might find something that we b-both want—”
“Nah. There’s nothing. You can die now.”
As if putting a baby to sleep, I slowly began to clench my fist.
However, at that moment…
“Hmm?” I hummed in question.
“I-I don’t want to die like this…!”
As I held him up by his hair, he suddenly took out a dagger from his sub-space and swung it.
Swish!
It may have been obvious, but his dagger wasn’t aimed at me. He didn’t swing the dagger at my body, which wouldn’t have even gotten a scratch, but rather at his own hair.
He then rolled to the ground and bolted away, putting some distance between us.
Wow, he’s still looking for a way out even in this situation.
Considering how he ran away last time after abandoning Vivian, I could tell that he had a strong desire to live.
Well, that didn’t mean I would answer that desire.
“If you wanted to live so badly, you shouldn’t have gone around and done all those things to earn yourself a death sentence.”
I swung down with my hammer.
Boom!
He quickly rolled to the side and dodged it. However, because I expected him to dodge, I kicked his head.
But what was this?
He did a backflip from that position and dodged my kick. It seemed like he had injured his leg, but he was still pretty agile.
I’m pretty sure if I just get one clean hit in…
He seemed to have realized that as well as he resisted with all his might.
Vwoong!
I swung my hammer.
Fwoom!
And reached my hand toward him.
Boom!
And even slammed my hammer down on the ground, but my attacks couldn’t reach him.
Hah, why won’t he just get hit?
It felt like I was trying to catch a fly.
He wasn’t dangerous at all, but it was difficult trying to get him with just my bare hands.
I just needed to get one hit in, but that one hit kept missing.
“Can’t you just die?”
It was starting to piss me off, which meant I needed to look at the situation more coldly.
“Heh heh…”
Even a rolling stone had something to teach me.
When I let go of my frustration, I could tell he was giving his all to dodge my attacks. And when I saw that, I came to a realization.
Vwoong!
The fact my attacks weren’t landing was just a problem of determination.
He was giving it his everything to dodge each of my attacks, but what about me? Was I using everything I had to kill him?
The answer was no.
In times like this, attacking the mind is key. Yep.
I continued to swing my hammer, which met only empty air as I spoke, saying the most effective things I could to shake his concentration.
“Did you know, Abed Necrapeto? I am actually an evil spirit.”
I could see his eyes quiver for a moment, but he bent his body backward to dodge my hammer.
Hmm, so that wasn’t enough.
“I grew up in South Korea.”
I rushed to speak, trying not to give him time to process my words.
“And used the nickname of ‘Elfnuna’ in Stone Iven.”
“What?”
Oh, that got his attention.
Well, Elfnuna was a pretty famous name, and I pronounced it perfectly in English as well.
Vwoong!
“Ugh!” His focus seemed to have been broken, as my hammer only just barely missed his nose.
Hah, so you can still dodge this?
“Clown, Abed Necrapeto.”
As I used the name he used at the Round Table, his eyes went wide. It was as if his eyes were asking me this:
How do you know that?!
I mean, why wouldn’t I know?
I grinned, feeling an odd sense of freedom.
“I…”
I had always wanted to tell him this truth one day.
“…am Lion.”
Wow, that felt refreshing.
All the stress was expelled from my body as I saw his eyes fill with disbelief.
“Y-you?” He even stopped moving to ask, “You are Lion?”
I nodded as my answer.
Yeah, I am Lion.
[You have cast Swing.]
So die already like the insect you are.
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