Growth Hero

by Brent Tyman

  “Well, we’ve gotta do something and fast, I don’t think these Demons will go down easily, so this is the plan. You support me and heal any wounds I take, though I should be able to take a few hits with the amount of defense training we’ve done.”

  I hadn’t checked my Defense in a while, but it had better be really high after all I had gone through to increase it.

  “Alright, do your thing Juliana,” I said, then sprinted towards the Demons while drawing my sword.

  Despite all my training in the Dungeon, I honestly hadn’t seen much improvement in my sword skills, not that it had mattered much, so far. I only hoped this Demon was as inept as me at swordplay. If I survived this, it would probably be best to find a trainer and master the basics at least.

  The Demons were still arguing when I sprinted towards them, and only gave me their attention when I was within striking distance.

  Both of them snarled as they raised their swords to strike when a hint of magical energy appeared in front of the shorter one’s face and a blinding light erupted.

  “Ow, my bloody eyes,” the Demon screamed as he dropped his sword and covered his face. The leader, however, was unaffected, and our swords collided together.

  Clash!

  I reviewed my extensive knowledge of RPG’s, trying to find a valid sword technique to use next. For some reason, I decided to drop down to my knees and aimed for his side as the Demon drew his sword back to strike me.

  I gripped my sword with both hands and put all of my might into the strike.

  Crash!

  My sword bit through the Demon’s armor and into his side with an incredible impact. His follow up strike at my shoulder was weak as he yelped in surprise.

  “Ahh, you little…” he yelled.

  I tried to step back as his strike glanced off my leather armor, but he drew his free hand into a fist and punched me right in the face. I was knocked back a few paces from the shock of the blow, and by God it hurt, but not nearly as much as I’d feared it would.

  Almost the same amount of pain as if I had fallen right onto my cheek. The cool magic of Clarissa’s healing spell entered me a moment later, and the pain vanished like it had never existed.

  “Again Alex!” Clarissa cheered from behind me. “Take this oversized brute down!”

  “What you say you…” the leader Demon moaned as he held his side. It seemed my attack had done a lot more damage than I’d thought.

  “Junatak!” the other Demon yelled, “Get her to stop! I can’t see shit!”

  Another blinding flash erupted in front of the Demon’s eyes as he flailed his arms in every direction.

  “Stop that, you idiot, you just about hit me with those dumb arms of yours!”

  “Then make her bloody stop!”

  It seemed weird to me that the flash was so bright, yet only affected Juliana’s target directly. Juliana had been right, though, there were a few moments between when she cast the spell and when it manifested.

  Her hands were a foot apart, channeling white light between her palms before it zapped forward and blinded the Demon. Vencia wasn’t joking when she had mentioned that Juliana had a lot of Magical Capacity to keep this up. It was impressive.

  I shook my head to clear it of such distracting thoughts and focused on what to do next. With a roar, I sprinted at the Demon again, this time aiming for its head, a tried-and-true method for quickly ending a fight. And though that usually worked against four or more legged monsters, it failed spectacularly, here.

  The Demon parried with his sword and growled as his hand glowed a deep shade of orange. Before I could even comprehend what was going on, his arm gained devastating speed and I felt his sword cut into my shoulder, hard.

  “Shiiiit,” I slurred as I fell to my knees, almost dropping my own sword in the process.

  “Die already,” the Demon roared as he dug his sword deeper into my clavicle.

  The pain was more intense than any I had suffered in the Dungeon, but I knew that if I blacked out now, this would be the end of my journey—and would likely cost the girls their lives, too. I couldn’t permit that.

  “Alex!” both women shouted behind me before Clarissa’s magic set in with a vengeance.

  Thanks to the sword imbedded in me, I wouldn’t heal to one hundred percent, so I needed to act fast, while I could.

  The Demon was encased in armor, with the least amount of armor—strangely enough—up around his shoulders. I knew I couldn’t reach up that far, not while he had me pinned down on my knees. My only option was to double down on his already bloody side.

  Leaning in with all the Strength I could muster, I lifted my sword and, wincing at the spike of pain in my shoulder, twisted and struck the Demon in the side again. My sword easily bit through his flesh and he roared in pain before toppling over.

  I didn’t want to entertain any idea of him surviving, so as soon as he released his weapon, freeing me to move, I gripped my sword in both hands and pierced his head with it.

  I didn’t have much Strength left to put behind my blow, but it didn’t seem to matter as his head caved in. It wasn’t as clean a death as I’d wanted, but with his blood and brains splattering everywhere, I was fairly sure it was game over for him.

  I got up slowly, not focused on the corpse anymore, and turned my attention to the other Demon. Juliana had continued casting her magic, with the Demon screaming and tossing profanities out in every direction, along with a dagger he had pulled out from somewhere.

  The blade flew harmlessly into the cavern wall.

  Clarissa shouted something at me, but I was already moving, maneuvering around the Demon as it swung blindly.

  “Junatak, say something, you…”

  With careful precision, I lunged forward with the point of my sword into the back of his head. The tip of my blade pierced his skull and sliced right through.

  At first, it surprised me that it only took one blow and I had to release my sword as its body folded like a rag doll to the floor. I supposed the head really was the weakest part of these Demons, although that probably held true for a lot of races.

  “Jeez,” I muttered, rubbing my sore shoulder. I slipped to my knees as the adrenaline coursing through my veins faded, leaving behind a host of aches and a mind-numbing exhaustion. “That was intense.”

  A sudden weight pressed into me and my senses went back on high alert until I realized it was Clarissa, clinging to me and nuzzling her head into my chest.

  “That was so brave of you Alex,” she said, “These feral Demons are incredibly resistant to magic, so either of us had little chance against them. To see you fight was… so… damn…”

  She left the rest of that to my imagination, but I had a few ideas that I hoped we’d have a chance to follow up on, later.

  “Thanks. I’m kinda surprised it went as well as it did,” I said, looking around.

  I noticed Juliana was on her knees as well, then suddenly curled over onto her side. My eyes went wide, and I quickly disentangled myself from Clarissa to rush over to her.

  “Juliana, you alright?” I questioned as I kneeled next to her.

  She was unresponsive, her eyes closed, and I was a moment away from panicking before Clarissa kneeled at her other side and examined her.

  “It seems she has exhausted most of her Magical Capacity. I had heard she possessed a sizeable amount, but to see it in action was… impressive,” she admitted begrudgingly.

  “What do we need to do?” I asked quickly.

  “Relax, handsome, there are some signs of Magic poisoning, but it’s not severe. She should be fine, with rest.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

  Jeez…

  “Although… We will have to carry her back to the surface,” Clarissa muttered.

  “By we, you mean me, right?”

  “You’re the one with all that manly Strength,” Clarissa winked. “But I suppose I can give her some healing, to aid her recovery.”


  “So, you two are finally getting along?” I teased as I prepared to pick Juliana up.

  Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far… but, she expended her magic for our survival, and I can’t ignore that it probably saved our lives.”

  The blonde snorted. “Even if she is insufferable,” she muttered to herself, though loud enough that I heard her.

  I laughed. Juliana had said the same about her. Once Clarissa had finished her healing, I pulled Juliana up into a princess carry.

  Then I thought better of it and eased her over my left shoulder, so that I could still wield my sword. She was incredibly light, but perhaps that was because of my Strength stat. I was just glad we had walked out of this one alive.

  “Oh, and don’t forget to get the drops from the bodies,” Clarissa suggested. I raised an eyebrow at that, and she grinned at me.

  “What? Feral Demons usually drop Demonic horns, which are quite valuable.”

  “But… they didn’t have horns…” I mused. I double checked the mangled heads—sure enough, neither of them had any horns.

  “Don’t question it, handsome, just trust me. Also, maybe we should find more Demons to fight? You can certainly handle them one on one,” Clarissa grinned.

  I chose to simply ignore her and walked over to collect the loot. It was refreshing to have Clarissa prompt me to collect something, a first in all the time we’d spent together in the Dungeon.

  This dive into the fifth floor hadn’t turned out remotely like how I’d expected it would, but I was glad we’d come out of it alive and intact. More intact than either of these Demons, anyway.

  I wondered what the deal was with them. I guessed we would learn more when we got back up to the surface.

  But… I had a feeling things were only getting started…

  15

  Luckily for us, we didn’t encounter any more Demons on our way back to the surface. We did come across a number of bodies of what Clarissa called Lizardnoots, and while there were a lot of them, they were so mangled that their features were practically unrecognizable.

  Whatever these Demons had done to their foes, it definitely wasn’t pretty…

  We each let out a sigh of relief when we got to the entrance for the fifth floor, but ran into trouble not long after.

  “What the blazes is going on?”

  “I dunno, it’s been nothing but silence from the Clan heads.”

  “We need some answers already!”

  Several groups of adventurers crowded around the top of the stairs that led down from the fourth floor to the fifth. The chaos here was plain to see, and Clarissa tsked as she pulled on my arm, dragging me along behind her as we worked our way through the crowd.

  “Come Alex, we mustn’t linger here like these fools.”

  “What are they even doing?” I asked.

  “They likely saw the Demons down below and ran to safety. After that… who knows?”

  I got a few looks as I carried Juliana past the crowd and overheard some of the complaints of the adventurers as we passed.

  It seemed like they planned to head back to the surface together, but the biggest Clan party was still waiting for some of their members to return from the fifth floor. Some adventurers even asked if we wanted to join them as they waited, but Clarissa promptly declined.

  The rest of the journey back to the Dungeon’s entrance took quite a while, mostly because we avoided every monster we encountered. I didn’t want to risk Juliana getting attacked, even if she would be back with Clarissa as I fought. Instead, I circled around as many enemies as I could.

  We especially wanted to avoid the annoying Foxes and their crazy aggro ranges…

  Finally, after much tip toeing and sneaking around, we reached the surface and exited the Dungeon where there was even more commotion.

  “Holy crap, the city’s still burning,” an adventurer commented.

  “When do y’all think it will be safe to head back.”

  “Not now, that’s for sure.”

  The tiniest whiff of charcoal tickled my nose as we emerged to find the day had turned to late evening, and the sun was going down. That didn’t garner nearly as much attention, however, as the black puffs of smoke we could clearly see off in the distance.

  “Jeez, this day just went from bad to worse,” I grumbled, mostly to myself.

  “Indeed, handsome,” Clarissa agreed. “I wonder if it is related at all to the presence of those idiot Demons in the dungeon.”

  “What now?”

  “Normally, I would check my Clan messages in times like these but that won’t help us.” She sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “We will have to rely on Juliana to tell us what is going on in town, if she wakes up anytime soon.”

  Oh yeah, Clarissa wasn’t able to check her old Clan messages, which would no doubt be full of orders from her father and his subordinates.

  “I want to get Juliana back to safety,” I said and headed off, “so let’s get going.”

  In no time at all, another group of adventurers stepped in front of us, a large brute of a man crossing his arms.

  “You don’t want to head to the city right now,” he said behind a full plated helmet. “Demons have shown up in large numbers and several Demonkin have gone crazy.”

  I looked up at the tall man and tried to keep the flash of annoyance that burned through me from showing on my face. “That’s cool and all, but I gotta head back for my friend, if you would kindly step aside,” I said.

  “You ain’t listening to me,” the man growled. “As a Gold rank adventurer lead, let me tell you straight. Everyone who heads into the city either gets drafted into the garrison or gets cut down by wild Demons. Been telling folk to wait it out here, until it all blows over.”

  “Ah yes,” Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I’m sure stopping able bodied adventurers from aiding the city is a fine plan. Did you come up with it all by yourself?”

  That last part was said sarcastically, hands still on her hips. The man breathed heavily from behind his helmet in what I could only guess was a fit of rage.

  “Why you… Fine. You want to throw your lives away fighting Demons? Be my guest. Go right ahead. When one is eating your guts, just remember that I told ya so.”

  The group talked amongst themselves as they wandered back towards the entrance of the Dungeon and I looked up to see Clarissa bristle in contempt.

  “Those fools,” she hissed.

  “Should we tell them that there are Demons inside the Dungeon too?” I wondered.

  “They likely already know, but as it was with that other group, they figure strength in numbers will allow them to survive.”

  Clarissa looked at me, her eyes filled with fury. “I bet if Demons poured out of the Dungeon, they will be the first ones to flee after they convince the rest of the adventurers to stay and fight in their stead.”

  “Jeez, things really have taken a turn for the worse.”

  “Quite,” she huffed, “let’s leave this place.”

  There were a few other adventurers along the path, but that trickle quickly dried up, the closer we got to the city. I wasn’t sure if the black smoke darkening the sky was from active fires or just the charred remains of one, but I knew that there was most likely fighting still going on in town, thanks to the steady, constant panicked clamor we could hear.

  The first thing I noticed when we got to the city gate was that the gatehouse was empty, absent of any and all guards. There were people fleeing the city, but not one of them was a guard.

  It felt weird, this was the first time I’d entered the city without some guard or another checking my adventurer’s badge. Excluding the time Juliana gave me a ride in, of course.

  “Where should we head to?” I asked as a woman dashed passed me with terror in her eyes.

  “The Academy is this way,” Clarissa said as she tugged on my arm. “I’m sure it will be safe—well, relatively safe, at least. The teachers would wish us to return immediately, anyway.
”

  I had never been to this Academy that I’d heard so much about. I guess today was the day I would finally see it. A place full of nobles and people like Daiver…

  Although, on the other hand, there would be beauties like Clarissa and Juliana as well. That would be a major bonus!

  As we walked the streets, it was almost like we were in a different city. The streets were either pure chaos, as people scrambled to get back to their homes, or the streets were completely devoid of all life.

  It took us only a bit of walking to find out the reason.

  “Demona will pound the life out of you!” a Demon snarled as five guards held him down to the ground. “She will defeat the Overlord and return Demonkin to our traditional role over miserable creatures like you!”

  “Hold him down!” one of the guards shouted, before a flailing arm knocked him back.

  “Shit, he’s damn strong!”

  “Get those manacles on him already!”

  The Demon managed to push them back and knocked most of the guards off of him as he got to his feet before one stabbed a sword through his back, causing him to fall and go still.

  “Damn idiot, it was like he’d gone mad,” another guard hissed.

  So there really were Demons here, but this encounter seemed unlike my experience in the dungeon. I tried to figure out what was different.

  It was the clothes.

  The Demons in the Dungeon were clearly feral and had armor that represented that fact. Black soot covered both their skin and armor—tell-tale signs they weren’t civilized.

  This Demon wore normal clothes, clothes I would expect a human to have: a clean jerkin with matching pants.

  “Oh my,” Clarissa muttered, holding a hand to her mouth. “It seems the problem is worse than I imagined.”

  “Got any insights into what’s happening?” I asked. “What was he spouting about before? Something about Demona and an Overlord? Didn’t that feral Demon mention this Demona, too?”

  “I have an inkling, but its best we leave it for another time, handsome. Now, come,” she said, pulling me along. “As I have said before, Demons are far outside what we could face, even with enhanced stats, especially with Juliana incapacitated. The Academy will provide safety.”