Chapter 246: The Travelling Nightmare

A jagged stone dagger was about to come down on Jay.

Lying in his bed, Jay didn’t even have the time to put his hands up; his reactions were slow, his body felt numb.

Something was wrong. It was so hard to even breathe, let alone move.

Jay knew he could take the stab wound due to his large health pool, but that was not what alarmed him – it was the strange feeling of sleeplessness in his body, the paralysis.

His helminth stopped squeezing him as he woke up and Jay instantly knew it wanted permission to attack.

His thoughts rushed and time seemed to slow down, the ethereal helminth was immediately given permission with only the traces of a fleeting semi-coherent thought.

And then it all happened in a fraction of a second.

Just as the dagger was about to be brought down near Jay’s neck, the ghostly glowing slender skull of the helminth appeared, as if a harbinger of darkness or a spirit of the dead.

Its ethereal skull had a sinister glow to it which only looked more frightening in the almost complete darkness.

The villager about to stab Jay almost dropped the pathetic stone dagger he was holding in panic. He felt like his soul was at the mercy of such a creature.

He paused his attack.

Suddenly, a radiating glowing green light started pulsing from the cracks in its ethereal skull, and was slowly glowing brighter.

Its ethereal jaws opened to reveal a swirling ball of crackling green and dark energy; it was like looking into the eye of a hurricane.

The villager had never seen anything like it, he froze completely in fear.

Suddenly the ghostly jaws slammed shut, condensing the swirling energy into a deadly concentrated ball of energy.

A necrotic bolt.

With nowhere else to go, the dangerous orb of concentrated necrotic mana suddenly shot out of its jaws.

Right into the face of the stunned villager.

*BOOM!!!*

He couldn’t even scream.

Knocked unconscious instantly.

His flesh melted away and fell off of the bone underneath the skin, which had also turned to liquid.

His whole head turned to a bag of blood.

In the darkness, it was hard to see just how devastating the attack was – yet it was not completely dark.

Another villager was holding the door to Jay’s stone hut open.

Seeing that the assassination attempt failed, he quickly rushed in to try and finish the job.

The helminth responded in kind, blasting another villager with a necrotic bolt and leaving him nothing more than a brain in a bag, blood flowing from his mouth, ears, eyes and nose.

It was truly a horrifying spell, but none of the villagers could see the results.

They had no idea about the monster they had awoken.

Four more men rushed in as quickly as the first two fell to their deaths.

“They’re really trying to assassinate me?”

“How dare…” he gritted his teeth in anger.

Some adrenaline helped Jay to recover from the paralysis somewhat, and he already had his shield, sword, and armour equipped.

Combined with [Stress Response], it wouldn’t be long before he was back to normal. [Cytokine Stabilisation] helped his mind and breathing to quickly recover too, not that Jay could tell in the urgency.

All four villagers rushed in, brandishing their barbaric and crude stone daggers.

The stone hut was too small for all four villagers to stand side by side, so Jay only had to face two at once.

Since they were all level four without classes, they were really not a threat.

But that didn’t mean they deserved mercy.

Jay stood up on his bed, slashing his sword to keep them at bay.

Compared to the reach of his bone sword, their stone daggers were pathetic – really, they were just pointy rocks with some tattered rag wrapped around it for the grip.

Jay already despised these fools for their weakness, but now they had the gaul to try and assassinate him.

They should have all been running instead, hoping that he was too lazy to chase them down.

The helminth began to mercilessly launch more bolts, and in a few seconds, two more of these fools were turned into convulsing meat sacks.

Jay didn’t even need to bloody his sword.

He took out his luminous orb for a moment to see his assailants better.

Each of them were shaking – perhaps with either excitement or fear.

Blue veins trailed over their bodies as if their skin had been caught in a blue fishing net; they were not healthy, but their eyes were locked onto Jay with an insatiable killing intent.

Each of them looked at Jay like predators, with both an intensity and a wanting desire.

Something about it disgusted Jay.

It was now that Jay noticed their knives were coated with a purple substance; the same one Jay had been fed during dinner.

“The little fuckers poisoned me.”

It was obvious why he was feeling paralysed.

Jay used a truly tortuous ability on one of them.

A villager suddenly froze, his body shuddered and he dropped his knife.

All his limbs trembled.

His head then moved forward from his shoulders which remained fixed in place. It was being pulled away while his neck which began to make popping noises.

Then in one clean motion the flesh around his head ruptured and folded back; a splash of blood coated everything as the skull was ripped out cleanly.

The body collapsed to the ground, a pulsing wriggling mess squirting blood which slowly stopped moving.

The skull floated into Jay’s gauntlet.

Surrounded by green mana it was crushed as if it were nothing but a grape, and disappeared into the sickly glowing green mist.

Jay’s [Uncaring Rip] ability was just that – uncaring and merciless.

Meanwhile the last villager looked on in sheer horror.

He had never seen anything like it.

From outside of the hut, all anyone could see were occasional flashes of green light coming through a partially-opened door; all they could hear were thuds hitting the ground and a squelching noise.

The three men dropped dead before him, and the last thing they saw was a smile of contempt and disdain on Jay’s face.

They were like bugs being crushed before his presence.

With the luminous orb, the final assailant could see everything clearly.

Five corpses lay around Jay, who had not even been touched.

One corpse had his skull ripped out, but the others seemed just as horrific as their heads looked like they had turned to blubber after having their souls ripped out.

The man who had done it stood over them – his eyes now digging holes into him with contempt.

He had dared to offend this being, who was supposed to be paralyzed and unable to move.

Finally he overcame his fear and moved again.

In paniced terror he dropped his stone dagger and slammed his body against the door of the hut like a caged animal, pushing it and trying to run.

He was so scared he even seemed to forget how a simple latch worked.

Finally his hands tripped the latch and after slamming open the door and stepping outside he didn’t even make it more than a few steps.

He was so frightened that he tripped over his own feet.

Behind him, the door of the stone hut slowly creaked open as if it was a monster opening its jaws.

From the darkness, a sword flashed out and flew forward.

It pierced the villager right under the shoulder blade, causing him to fall back to his knees in a pained groan.

Jay actually didn’t expect the sword-throw to pierce the villager, but just wanted him to stumble so his helminth could finish him off.

However the villager, didn’t get up as he quickly choked on his own blood and died.

A sly smile appeared on Jay’s face.

Before leaving the hut completely he held one hand back, his necrotic gauntlet caused a few more glowing lights to flash inside before he stepped out.

The purpose of the flashing green light? Well the villagers could only guess.

As Jay walked outside, he realised this was no mere assassination attempt of only a handful of men – no.

The whole village was here.

All of them were watching, surrounding the stone hut, their suspicious gazes still fixed on Jay.

Their eyes full of murder and violence.

Each of them carried stone daggers and spears, while a few carried torches too.

They had seen the green flashes of light, but didn’t know how the handful of men had died.

It didn’t matter now though; Jay was here and they were ready to end his life.

There were about fifty of them, and only one enemy: Jay.

Nevertheless, Jay slowly and confidently walked out, stepping his boot onto the back of the dead man as he pulled out his sword with a flick.

His confident predator-like smile made every one of them pause.

The fifty villagers really thought they had the upper hand here. Jay wondered what price they were paid to take his life.

Obviously it was not enough.

Jay was smiling this whole time and shaking his head; he felt sorry for them and pitied them.

Not for their primitive lives – but for what he was about to do to them.

He came to free them, and they had tried to assassinate him?

He was here to lay down his life for their benefit, and they treated him like an outsider, like an enemy, like one of the knights they supposedly feared.

Such insolence.

Jay quelled his rage and controlled his anger, as he knew it would be fed soon.

Before Jay’s eyes, all of them were like vicious wild dogs.

And wild dogs needed to be put down.