Chapter 23: The Troll King

All around the camp, fighting began in earnest.

Lune’s pack of Venombrew Maidens had emerged from their shelter behind the blasted boulder. They dashed across the field with incredible speed, their masks torn free and female faces exposed. Empty potion vials shattered against the ground as the seven Eldarin women tossed them away after ingesting their empowering contents.

It was a sight that would have stopped the heart of any hot-blooded male. Predatory beauties one and all, they struck the disoriented troll survivors as one under moonlight, wielding blade glaives dripping with poison. They attacked together with practised precision, fighting in a unified formation so unlike the loose discipline that he had seen the bugbears or goblins perform. Their blade whips were surgical grace, and proved their lethality superior to any wild cleaves and reckless spear thrusts.

From troll to wounded troll, they ran, tossing acid flasks or incendiary glass grenades over the monsters’ crippling remains before descending in a whirlwind of purple-edged blades. Once the struggling, screaming beast was thoroughly dissected beyond even its vaulted regeneration ability to heal from, they moved on.

A distant, analytical part told him they would not be fast enough. There were dozens of remnants left, and not all were so severely injured as to remain prone for long. Already, a few of the troll survivors at the furthest edges of the blast were getting to their feet. For the moment, the advantage was to the Venombrew Maidens, but as more of the trolls recovered, they would soon find themselves overwhelmed.

However, only a small part of the soldier’s brain registered the impending danger. The majority of Axel’s senses were presently filled with nothing but honed bloodlust.

Before him, the back of the roaring Troll King awaited.

With an exuberant war cry, Axel leapt, twin iron spears manifesting in each hand before he plunged them both into the beast’s thick shoulders. The troll, not expecting another opponent beyond the traitorous wife darting around before it, spun in surprise.

Axel immediately let go of the two spears, ducking low to avoid the whistling halbard blade. He summoned two more spears and thrust them into the King’s stomach, hoping they would split its guts open.

Even with Axel’s vastly enhanced strength, the attempt still felt like trying to pierce a mountain. The spear tips slashed into the rock guts of the King, but failed to eviscerate them in any appreciable manner. 

Heavy fists smashed into Axel’s side, knocking the breath out of his lungs. The follow-up knee strike from the troll was lightning quick, hammering hard against his hasty guard and flinging the soldier several metres back.

[Warning! Health below 80%!]

Axel ignored the warning low-health notifications, snarling as he rolled to his feet. He summoned more iron weapons into his hands. The Troll King brought its halberd around again in a violent arc. Rather than dodge or parry, Axel opted for the far more dangerous approach.

Holding an axe with both hands, he aimed for the shaft of the weapon, deflecting the halberd swing while also slicing his axe edge along the length of the weapon. The blade met the meaty fingers of the Troll and cleaved its right hand in two.

Unbothered, the troll simply switched its grip and swung around again. The sheer swiftness and dexterity of the heavy creature caught Axel by surprise, and the man would have received a halberd blow to the face if not for the sudden appearance of Lune, leaping from behind and stabbing her daggers into the side of the troll’s neck, causing it to flinch.

The troll’s swing missed Axel by a hair's breadth, and the man resumed his assault. His axe slammed into the knee, gut, and groin. The blade drew blood and entrails from the creature’s wound. Lune left a dozen dagger bleeding lacerations on its fat neck in half as many seconds. The creature’s wounds were undeniably mounting.

The Troll King let out a sound that chilled his blood.

Not a cry of pain, nor even a roar of anger.

The King was laughing.

“Fools.”

The beast roared.

Axel’s muscles instantly locked up. A primal terror engulfed him, one that was beyond even the supersoldier’s rational mind to overcome. At the corner of his vision, he saw Lune similarly paralysed. A notification came up.

[Warning! ‘Troll Terror’ debuff active!]

Teeth gritting, Axel pushed himself to move, but it was fruitless. His body was not responding to him. 

The Troll King grinned. It lifted its axe.

Axel could only watch as the blade came down upon him. The blood-ruby edge slammed into his shoulder and kept going, slicing all the way from his neck diagonally to his stomach.

His body burst into a fountain of blood. His insides poured out, as if he were an unzipped piñata.

[Warning! Health below 5%!]

Only once the pain hit him did the terror cease, the soldier crying in sheer agony and rage. His body was damn near bisected in two, but he was still alive. 

A burst of light sparked in his hand as Axel pulled forth yet another weapon. He brought his shaking hand up, aimed…

And fired.

A 10mm handgun round blew forth from the pistol barrel, spinning not towards the Troll, but the woman frozen on its shoulder.

A bullet bit into her thigh, doing barely any damage beyond a gash before it deflected off her unnaturally durable skin. However, it was enough pain to jolt her out of her Terror-inflicted stasis.

The Elderin reacted immediately, somersaulting off the troll’s shoulder before its meaty hands could grab her. She threw two razor dirks, both slamming true into the troll’s eye sockets, before flipkicking hard against the halberd, knocking the blade free from its entrenchment within Axel’s body.

Blood, organs, and guts poured from his massively gaping wound. Axel slumped over, already as good as dead, before Lune grabbed his lifeless body over her shoulder and sprinted hard away from the Troll King.

Axel was barely conscious. He could feel more of his innards spilling out as Lune ran as hard as she could. The ground shook behind her as the Troll King gave chase. She shouted something to her Venombrew Maidens, and at once two of them split off from the group and came to her aid. 

Lune rushed past her Maidens. The pair, in turn, bore stoic faces as they covered their Mistress’s retreat, preparing to sell their lives against the Troll King to buy Lune a few precious seconds. Axel heard the brief clamour of frantic battle — acid flask splashing, fire bombs detonating, and the ever-present roar of the Troll King — before the pair were overwhelmed.

There was a shrill scream, the sound of bones being crushed between fangs, the terrible keening of a sharp blade ripping flesh, and the two maidens were no more.

But their sacrifice brought time. Lune was a hundred metres away from the Troll King when she finally set Axel down and pressed a flask into his mouth.

“Drink!” she hissed, the usual calm in her voice completely absent as panic had nearly taken over.

Axel didn’t know how he could drink; he was pretty sure he lost his stomach and half his guts to the ground during that jostling sprint when Lune carried him. Still, he obliged her, moving his numb lips and tongue to swallow.

Light bloomed in his vision. His soul suddenly felt like it was engulfed in fire, only far worse. Axel could not hold back the scream of agony as his entire body underwent a hellish metamorphosis. Organs were regrown, flesh knitted back together, and his mind shot back to life as if a lightning bolt was fired directly into his spine.

[Golden Potion ingested!]

[Health at 100%!]

[Debuff immunity for the next 120 seconds!] [Class boon double duration active!]

The first thing he heard was a scream: “GET UP!”

Axel got up.

The Troll King was a metre from him, halbard blade once more coming down on him. He had less than a split second to react.

In the face of such impending death, people reacted differently. Many would freeze. Few would have the sense to scream, and fewer still would try to run. 

Axel didn’t do any of that because he was insane. The first thing he thought to do was laugh before rushing forth to meet the blow head-on.

His legs braced, his body low, Axel darted low with his arms outstretched, narrowly avoiding the cleaving blade by performing the most risky manoeuvre possible and seizing the shaft.

The force drove him to his knees, but the soldier successfully redirected the weapon, causing the blade to smash into the ground behind him instead of upon him once more.

The Troll King growled. The soldier released his grip on the shaft and rolled between the King’s legs before it could stomp him to paste.

He gave a glance around the clearing. The situation was dire. Only five Venombrew Maidens were left, and they were becoming rapidly surrounded by more trolls. To their credit, they killed more than half a dozen trolls while the beasts were crippled on the ground, and then half that number again when the creatures regenerated and fought in earnest.

But the maidens were outmatched and severely outnumbered. They fought like lions and showed no sign of fear, but it was clear they would not last much longer, especially with two of their sisters gone.

Once they were dead, there would be nothing left holding back the surviving troll army from swarming him and Lune.

And the Troll King… The King reached for its face and pulled out the two dirks Lune had tossed into its eye sockets early. It blinked twice to rid its vision of blood, and its freshly regenerated face could see once more.

All the wounds Axel and Lune had delivered fiercely earlier to its neck, gut, and groin were already healed.

“I thought you said its regeneration would be halted by your poison!” Axel complained, his voice breathless.

“I never said it would halt it, just slow it down,” Yume replied, her fear evident. 

“Does that regeneration look slowed to you?!”

“The poison… It is working. Or it should be. Hard as it is to believe… This is with his regeneration already slowed.”

The Troll King laughed. It spoke in guttural tones:

“Lune, for this insult… After my kin and I are done with you… You wouldn’t even have a mind left to beg for death.”

“Fuck you, monster,” the Eldarin hissed. Her hands were shaking.

Axel looked at her, then the Troll King, and then the shitstorm situation as a whole.

For the first time in a long while, a shadow of doubt and apprehension grew in his battle-addicted mind; a freezing balm upon his fiery madness.

The man analysed it all with cold rationality. He could not see the path to victory under the current circumstances.

Axel sighed, then shrugged. “Alright, here’s what we do.”

“You have a plan, Demon?” Lune asked, a seed of hope blooming in her voice.

“Yep, I have this really, really awesome plan,” he assured her confidently, facing her with a smile…

… Before turning away from the Troll King and sprinting full-tilt in the opposite direction.

“I’M GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”