Chapter 24: The Scraps of a Plan

An hour before Axel and the alchemists set out…

“How do these rune things work anyway?” Axel asked, crouched before one of the distilleries.

Around him, the Venombrew Maidens were hard at work preparing the soporific brews and the vast quantities of drugged meat. Their leader, Lune, stopped overseeing their tasks for a moment to scowl at him.

“Stop touching them,” she scolded. “What are you, a child?”

“Merely curious. I didn’t have magic in my world.”

“Ah, a Null world as well? And a mono-sapient one too… Your kind are wont to kill themselves all the time after assimilation, either by a complete ignorance of magical safety or by social suicide within the multi-species environment of the Hub.”

Axel filed that curious comment away to be dissected later. His main attention was still on the distilleries.

“You said you could blow these up with your mind earlier.”

“That is not what I said. I meant that I could trigger the self-destruct runes remotely via my magic link. The distilleries and everything within the area are part of my Workshop Territory, after all.”

Axel frowned. “So… Like a neural link to every machine part in a base, then? How sensitive is the trigger to these runes? Would a fire set off an explosion?”

“I work in a hot, highly flammable, and hazardous environment,” she replied, exasperated. “Why would I make it unprotected against high temperatures?”

Axel chuckled. “And yet you are worried about me touching them.”

She sighed. “The runes will go off either by my command or with a sufficient kinetic force knocking out the rune alignment. Touching is fine. Just don’t punch it.”

Axel hummed appreciatively. “Pity we are leaving all this behind.”

“Don’t be absurd. I said before, it is a Workshop Territory. I can carry them all with me as part of my Class Trait and can deploy them at will.”

A mobile chemistry base? 

Axel considered a thought. “How long to deploy it?”

Lune frowned at his question. “Ten minutes, if I need to get everything up. I will need space too.”

Axel knocked against the iron still. The machine vibrated as it continued brewing and churning its potent contents. “And how long would it take to get all these stills set up, without the rest of the machinery?”

“... About half a minute, if I rush. Why?”

“No reason. Just good to know.”

~~~

Present…

“YOU FUCKER!”

Lune’s enraged cries behind him were barely heard over the Troll King’s roaring laughter. Axel’s massive agility scores allowed him to sprint several hundred metres in mere seconds, giving him a large headstart as the Troll King resumed its attack on Lune, rather than give chase.

That did not mean he did not face any opposition. In front of him, a pair of trolls blocked his escape.

They were injured. One was missing an arm, the other half its head. Still, they roared and swung their crude hammers at him.

Axel had no problem facing these creatures. Summoning spears and axes, he had them impaled and severed in a minute, killing the two with barely an injury on his person.

[Congratulations! You have slain more than five ‘Troll-Type’ entities!]

[Trait earned: ‘Troll Slayer’!]

I’m a lot stronger now than before, but still nowhere strong enough to fight the King.

A small reason for that was that half of his strength was technically gutted by his fellow allies. The trait ‘Heroic Isolation’, paired with his Class Boon, had given him God-like combat abilities, but only when he was alone.

Right now, his screen displayed thus:

[Ally Party Members: 5x Venombrew Maiden, 1x Venombrew Alchemist (Lune)]

Heroic Isolation would not activate so long as those Eldarin viewed him as an ally. However, if they were to sincerely believe he had cowardly run away…

He doubted they would continue to hold those views.

[Entity Stance Updated!]

[5x Venombrew Maiden Stance towards Participant: Allied to Neutral!]

[Venombrew Alchemist (Lune) Stance towards Enemy Base: Allied to Hostile!]

[Updating conditions…]

[Conditions met! Heroic Isolation active!]

That was Step One complete.

Axel grinned as a familiar rush of power bloomed within him. The effects were not as overwhelming as when he first used it since his base skills numbers were now a lot higher, but +12 to all stats was still an incredible boon.

That last part in his notification about Lune turning hostile was a bit worrying, but he was sure she would understand once he explained it to her later. He couldn’t tell her or her brew maidens about his unique Trait earlier. It risked the System not turning their mental perception away from a friendly state towards him.

Axel swiftly moved about the camp's perimeter, his axe striking isolated trolls. ‘Slaughterhouse Master’ — the improved and exotic upgrade over ‘Killing Spree’ — gave him temporary boosts here and there, but the group was too scattered and tough for him to take advantage of it. Even though he could deal with the trolls with reasonable ease, he could not kill them fast enough to prevent his kill stacks from expiring.

Can’t repeat what I did with the Siegemaster… But even if I did, would it be enough to kill the Troll King?

That bastard was absurdly powerful; easily the most troublesome and dangerous foe he had faced thus far. Axel was almost inclined to think that King would have given the Giant Ymir a run for its money.

Axel was not prideful enough to deny that he had severely underestimated the King’s strength. Direct combat was not going to win him the battle. ‘Heroic Isolation’ evened the odds between them by a margin, but Axel needed more than just Stat Boosts to win the fight.

What did he have? A bunch of iron weapons. Potions. A handgun with one magazine. A flashbang. Some weird Boss items he got from the previous fights.

The supersoldier grinned. He had survived with worse odds before.

Axel looked at his Titles.

~~~

Title: <Heroic Isolation> <Null>

Available Titles: The Reaper’s Emissary (LOCKED), Friendly Fire Advocator, 1st Place

~~~

He had removed ‘1st Place’ once the battle with the Siegemaster was over earlier. No point wearing a giant target sign above his head when he needed to scout out the troll camp.

As such, Axel had one Null slot with which he could equip another Title. His means of victory now lay in how he could use that.

The soldier breathed. He steadied his mind, visualised his path to victory…

And charged back into the fray.

~~~

[I have said this before, but it bears repeating: You are insane.]

Axel broke into deranged laughter. “You chose me for my madness, Reaper! Now watch closely and be entertained!”

The soldier parried the awkward blow from a one-armed troll. He then followed up with a cleaving strike across its belly, leaving the creature even more severely wounded than before.

But still alive.

Slow by its injuries, Axel was able to move on to the next. He targeted isolated trolls or pairs, making sure to avoid killing them outright while leaving debilitating wounds that would take a long while to recover.

The soldier had noted that dismemberments and stomach slashes were harder for them to regenerate. It didn’t kill them from blood loss or shock like it would for a normal creature, but the trolls could not regrow limbs instantly, and the guts spilling from their opened stomach interfered with their regeneration. The trolls’ hands were too clumsy to gather the tangle of innards back into their bodies either.

None of that applied to the Troll King, of course. Whatever wounds Axel had delivered earlier were practically pointless. Cuts and spear wounds healed in seconds. Any limbs Axel cleaved off or organs torn out from the beast mattered little; the King regenerated them instantly after it tore off the mangled remains from its body.

And that was with its regeneration already partially arrested. The toxin would only work for ten minutes. Time was nearly running out; Axel estimated he had less than three minutes left to pull off his plan.

The surviving trolls, about two dozen of them left, were now properly enraged and chasing Axel. All bore heavy wounds, but were still alive and dangerous.

Of the Venombrew Maidens, not many remained. One of them existed as a pile of mangled bones, body still twitching even though everything below the chest was paste. Another had her head trapped between a troll’s hands, her desperate screams ending in flesh-tearing agony when the beast finally twisted her head off like a doll.

Three left. Two of them were assisting their mistress, allowing Lune to survive the King’s ferocious assault by the thinnest of margins. The last one was badly wounded, yet she fought valiantly to hold back a troll force five times her number, dancing between the lumbering creatures with a broken arm while striking at eyes and joints.

Axel came to her aid first, axes ripping and tearing at hardened troll hide. Flesh was severed and bones broken, but eventually an opening was made.

The soldier grabbed the collapsing Elderin and ran from the horde. 

“You…again? You cur…” she hissed brokenly. “My Lady… Why did you run—?”

“No time to explain!” he shouted. Once he was some distance from the rampaging trolls, he set her down and forced the contents of a health potion down her throat. “Get out of here now! Your battle is lost!”

The Elderin coughed. “My Mistress—!”

“I’ll get her, but you need to run, you understand? Go back up the ravine, retreat, but whatever you do, don’t try to help me, or the plan is ruined!”

“P-plan? You can’t fight the King alone!”

The soldier laughed. “I still have a score to settle. That fat fuck nearly killed me earlier, so his head’s mine to claim for the Reaper!”