Chapter 113: Bloody Murder

The swing was too perfect, too clean, and far too powerful for someone using an axe for the first time.

This guy was good with his hands.

That made him dangerous.

Peter already had the idea that Kael wasn’t normal when he carried him by the neck using one hand, but this? This is too much.

Kael didn’t bother comforting him. Comfort was a luxury. The stairs were still full of red dots.

“Close your mouth,” Kael said, “We still have much to take care of,” he added as he looked up the stairs.

Some of the mental pain began subsiding slowly.

Not disappearing. Not forgiving him. Just loosening its grip enough for him to think without feeling like his thoughts were being dragged through glass.

Mana was an infinite well. It can dry, but it will once again flow and fill up if given enough time. And right now, though Kael’s well was empty, it seems that a few drops began bubbling from the bottom, alleviating the pain.

He could feel it the way you feel circulation returning to a numb limb. Tiny, quiet, but real. His skull stopped pounding quite as violently. The edges of his vision stopped vibrating. He could breathe without wanting to spit.

He twirled the axe as if he had used it for a lifetime and looked up the staircase; two more goblins were rushing down.

The twirl wasn’t showmanship. It was muscle memory from tools, from work, from knowing how weight moved and where to place it. The axe head made a faint, heated hiss through the air, and the goblins answered it with their own eager screeches as they charged.

Kale walked up the stairs, just as the first goblin took the turn down…

The blade bit through the torso with a wet resistance and a final release.

The goblin’s legs kept going a fraction longer, then folded as the upper half slid away, spilling dark blood down the steps.

[You have obtained one Soul Core.]

Without wasting a second, Kael, using the reverse motion of the same swing, struck in the other direction; that was where the second goblin, unaware of the death of his friend, just jumped.

It was probably thinking that the first goblin was already feasting on human meat.

Only to see the pike end of the axe coming his way. That was the last thing the goblin had seen as it fractured its skull.

The impact sounded like hitting a rotten melon. The goblin’s eyes went blank mid-air.

The force of the blow was so strong that the goblin’s entire body spun in the air before it landed flat on its face. Dead and bleeding.

[You have obtained one Soul Core.]

“More are coming. Get your breathing regulated,” Kael said as he adjusted his hand on the belly of the axe.

He didn’t say it gently. He said it like an order you either followed or you died. He kept his stance angled toward the stairs, feet planted on steps slick with blood, as if the staircase itself was now his territory.

’This was a good spot to kill off goblins.’ They don’t see what’s in the corner, and most of them just come down running.

The turn in the stairwell was perfect. It hid him. It hid Peter. It made goblins commit before they could process what waited below.

’Let’s just keep doing that, though my head is killing me. I’m still not physically exhausted. I need to get some relief back before I can climb up higher.’ Kael thought.

He could grind this. He could farm this. As long as nothing smarter showed up. As long as the red dots stayed goblins and not something else.

“You need my help? I can kill a few of them.” Peter said.

Peter’s voice had changed. The shock was still there, but greed had started to creep in around it.

The same hunger Kael had seen in everyone else’s eyes when cores were involved. Peter wasn’t offering help out of kindness. He was offering help because he wanted the cores falling at Kael’s feet.

“This is a good choke point. If I’m tired, I’ll let you have some fun,” Kael said.

He didn’t promise anything more than that. He didn’t share the staircase like it was a gift. He framed it like permission.

Kael already had enough, he must have thought. And Kael already knew that.

But he couldn’t go back from the chokepoint before the pain was gone. Every swing of the weapon made his body feel lighter, although the occasional nauseous sensation and sudden feeling of wanting to pass out was bothering him. He just gritted through it.

More goblins showed up soon after, one after the other; they kept dropping like flies.

The rhythm became brutal. Footsteps above. A shadow rounding the corner. A wet thud. A body is collapsing. Blood pooling and sliding down concrete. The axe rises and falls with steady purpose. The mental strain lessened, but instead, exhaustion began building. Kael couldn’t show either, didn’t have the choice to show either.

Any other time, Kael would have been able to keep up the pace of killing goblins for hours. But the pain throbbing in his head made him use a bit too much force in some swings, or breathe too loudly and too roughly. This made him expend energy recklessly.

The stench of goblin bodies began filling the place. It got into the back of the throat. Bitter, rancid, like old meat left in the sun. Even the burnt floors below smelled cleaner than this.

Unlike the stressed Peter, Kael was becoming better off.

Not truly relaxed. Not comfortable. But composed, the way you got when you had accepted that the world was trying to kill you and you had decided to be stubborn about it.

“Yo man, it’s stinking up the joint, this many bodies. Other goblins from outside might come in…” Peter kept looking down.

He kept glancing toward the openings where daylight slipped through gaps in the building, like he expected goblins to pour in from the streets any second.

But Kael didn’t worry, “Relax,” he said, “Goblins won’t walk down the streets in daylight.”

Though Kael didn’t confirm that theory, at least that’s what most climbers think, so that was a good enough reason for Peter.

But the reality of things, Kael already scanned the entire area surrounding the building using the mini-map.

There were no red dots anywhere else around these parts, but in this building, they were in.

So, for now, they were ’safe’.

A good farming spot where enemies kept coming down blindly, only to die soon.

“You want a turn?” Kael asked.

He asked it casually, but his eyes stayed on the stairs. He didn’t offer his back. He offered Peter an opening while still controlling the space.

“Yeah, would like that,” he said as he eyed Kael’s weapon.

The glance lingered on the axe head, on the clean edge, on the faint heat shimmer that occasionally rose from it.

Peter wanted that weapon more than he wanted a turn. The turn was just what he could ask for without sounding desperate.

“You want to use my axe?” Kael asked.

He watched Peter’s face as he said it, catching the twitch, the instinctive interest, the quick calculation.

“No, no, I got one of my own,” he said as he pulled a Stone axe, a drop from a goblin most likely.

The thing looked crude in comparison. The edge wasn’t even. The handle was chipped. But it was still a weapon. Still heavy enough to crack skulls if swung right.

Kael went down and sat on one of the least damaged office chairs on the floor.

He didn’t sprawl. He sat like he owned it, like he had time, like he wasn’t still recovering from his mana getting ripped apart minutes ago.

The posture was intentional. A message.

His weapon in hand, his eyes looking at the staircase that had more than a dozen and a half goblins sprawled all over it.

The stairs were slick now. Bodies piled in awkward angles, limbs twisted, blood smeared across concrete steps. It looked like a butcher’s chute.

Peter went up the stairs and waited at the corner, listening attentively.

“One’s coming down soon, get ready,” Kael said.

“I don’t hear anything,” Peter said as he turned to Kael.

Kael’s gaze sharpened. Not angry, just unimpressed.

“I wouldn’t turn my back on a goblin if I were you,” Kael replied.

Turning, Peter was stunned to see a goblin that just come down from the staircase, it had something on its feet, a pair of shoes, Climber shoes that it probably got from killing someone, the reason Peter couldn’t hear it.

The shoes looked almost normal, almost ridiculous on a goblin’s small feet. But they were silent, and in that silence was the proof that someone else had died up here before Kael arrived.

Just as the goblin raised its club, Peter swung down.

A hasty swing, it grazed the goblin’s head but still did concussive damage.

The goblin staggered, howling, spittle flying, its wart-filled tongue flapping as it tried to recover. The creature finally realized it was in pain, howled as it felt the rush of blood, but Peter didn’t allow it a breath as he swung down; the goblin dodged to the side, and Peter’s axe missed completely.

He became exposed to the goblin’s counter, but just then, when the goblin went for the killing blow, it couldn’t get a proper footing; something viscous caused it to slip and fall, dropping its weapon.

Blood.

The steps were coated in it now, and the goblin’s borrowed shoes didn’t save it from physics. It slid like it had stepped on oil, legs kicking uselessly.

Looking at its hands, they were blood red. It looked toward the source of the blood and saw the dozen corpses of goblins, and on the far side of the room, a trail of blood drops that traced all the way to the head of a metal axe with a man who was sitting on a broken chair as if it were a throne.

Kael didn’t move. He didn’t need to. His stillness was the threat.

“Die motherfucker!” Peter said as he bashed the skull of the terrified goblin in.

The stone axe came down hard. Once. Twice. The goblin’s movements stopped. The smell got worse.

“More are coming,” Kael said.

And this time Peter wasn’t going to trust his own ears.

After all, he knew that Kael had a good nose.

So he was better off listening to the man who can smell monsters. At least doing so would mean he’d get to survive longer. Live longer, earn more cores, and perhaps, just perhaps, if he grows strong enough, he thought, he might be able to obtain what Kael has on him.

After all, accidents do tend to happen in the Tower. No one is safe from a streak of bad luck…

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