Chapter 4: The Beginning of The End
[ Name: Yarost ]
[Level: 1 Minotaur ]
[ Experience 0 / 200 ]
[ Strength: 20 ]
[ Dexterity: 12 ]
[ Agility: 12 ]
[ Constitution: 16 ]
[ Endurance: 16 ]
[ Mana: 5 ]
[ Blood: 0 ]
[ Description: Monstrous strength echoes through your veins, the forest has given you strength and you hear it all around you. ]
The air reverberated with the monstrous roar of the minotaur, and Yarost felt the air catch in his throat before he started choking. He saw the system message reflected in front of his eyes, a blue ethereal glow coating the minotaur's face, his face. His hands tensed and he looked down to see his large hands covered in blood, blood still spurting from the maimed neck of the human he slammed into the floor.
The corridor was a scene of nightmarish brutality, with the lone older human gasping in frightful breaths trying to retain their sanity. Yarost couldn't believe what he had become, but he felt an unending rage cloud his mind. Every single inch of his being was filled with fury that numbed his senses.
"How did I get here…" Yarost's chaotic mind piled together his last breath on earth, a shivering, frightful experience, slowly bleeding to death as he watched a gigantic tree collapse to the side and the forest grounds go silent, the incessant chewing, the glorifying rage of the fire grew then. As if he stunned the forest into shock.
Yarost, with his broken mind finally calming, saw the old man shakily aim their crossbow at him, and, with both hands, he closed his eyes tightly and shot the bolt. The bolt rammed into his dark fur, sinking slightly, before becoming stuck in his hide.
As Yarost felt the first pang of pain rock his chest, he ran forward with an inhuman growl, raising his hoof high into the air and slamming it into the old man's skull. Hot blood and brain matter splattered across Yarost's feet.
Yarost trampled the poor man until the body stopped twitching.
[ Mission: 'Kill Intruders' ]
[ Kill the 3 Intruders! ]
[ Completed! ]
[ Reward! ]
[ 100 Experience! ]
Yarost felt a cooling sensation running in his head, and he slowly felt his humanity return to him. However, he was never the same. The blood and gore around him did not give him the same nauseous feeling he felt back on earth, he felt hungry instead. The sin of killing another human did not ever seem to bother him before, and it wouldn't do so now, but the brutality of physically smashing his opponent into the ground filled him with pride.
However, the system was the only annoying thing buzzing around his head, and he looked at it with unparalleled rage. "Control." Yarost muttered, "It seeks control over me." His one track mind found the thought disgusting, and he saw through the system in an instant, it fed him, it'll make him grow, It'll numb his thoughts, just like a drug addict he'll become dependent on it for everything.
The moment it's robbed from him he'll become a cub.
[ Important! ]
[ Mission: Protect the Artifact! ]
[ You have chosen your path, peace, with the humans is irreconcilable. They've destroyed your home and they've murdered your cousins. You have paid blood with blood and rage filters into your veins, they shall never have the artifact! Kill all humans! Destroy them! Make them feel the rage of the forest! ]
The system didn't speak; instead the instructions were spoken in crass whispers that came from everywhere assailing his mind, nearly making him deaf.
"Shut up!" Yarost barked in rage.
Movement was caught in the corner of his ear, a grunt, some stumbling, and a wrathful sigh. Yarost turned around to see a tall human with longsword in hand pointed at him, their body so battered and bruised that Yarost swore they were the walking dead, but the human was alive, and breathing.
A wicked idea began forming in the pits of his head, and the system unknowingly gave him fuel to the fire he was going to burn.
[ Mission: Eliminate Awakened Human! ]
[ The races chosen few imbued with mana properties to make their bodies larger, and more unearthly than your normal human. Make the chosen feel pain, and let their blood run against the temple grounds! ]
Yarost's mind began to be contorted with rage, however, he desperately tried to resist. His large body coiled up together before a wrathful shout echoed in the temple once more.
…
His vision discombobulated before him, Lod stumbled to his feet, and felt the coldness of the temple bite his skin like the thousand tiny swords that stabbed itself into his muscles. He glimpsed and saw the carnage the beast had done, and Lod felt rage swelling from within his chest. He prayed that god accepted the souls of the fallen, and to give him enough strength to strike this beast down.
The minotaur suddenly roared and he felt his bones shake, then it surged toward him with hoof beating against the ground. Lod lifted his blade to strike at him, practically throwing himself to the side to dodge the minotaur's first blow. The strength of his blade found little purchase on the beast's towering frame and sliced off a bit of its skin making it roar in pain, and slam its arms down.
He fell backward toward the stone floor, throwing himself again to the side and the blurring speed of the strike caused the almost invincible stone to fly off the floor, the blast throwing him further down the corridor, struggling to get to his feet, lifting his sword weakly in his hand.
From the cloud of dust and stone, a body was thrown at him with force. Lod dove to the side, slamming his already wounded body into the cursed walls, that prevented him from running. The body bent unnaturally against the stone, its spine, its face, and its limbs being contorted into a pitched ball. Behind the minotaur that was roaring with anger, Lod saw that it had piled the bodies on top of each other, and was readying to chuck another at him.
Lod saw the face of the body that was thrown, and it was barely recognizable. But the shield still wrapped tightly to its body made him disgusted and he couldn't stomach it anymore so he hurled.
Another body was thrown at him. The body was smaller and more youthful, it was a clean kill, which made it all the more horrible. Lod dodged the shot put, but barely, the body's arms and legs flew off and struck him like shrapnel, throwing him further down the corridor until he could see it narrow down a bit more. Lod thought of the artifact, the thing that they were here for, the item that could make him king.
Lod shambled to his feet, blundering and taking an accidental dive that seemed fortunate, as the next body the beast threw was more like a grenade than anything else only skin making it stay solid, but dissolving in the air, to be thrown at him like a mist of bone, and guts.
The minotaur gave a frustrated growl stomping its hoofed feet like a bull.
Lod finally got to his feet, then began his stumbling sprint down the corridor. The room narrowed to the point that it could only fit the minotaur, but just barely, and Lod finally recognized some form of decay of a thousand years etched onto the walls, it was crumbling apart, and barely sustaining itself.
Pillars erected themselves on either side of the walls, like toothpicks holding up a massive house. The glorious colors of the temple had dulled themselves to the point the ancient temple finally looked more like an ancient temple crumbling in the dusts of time.
Lod noticed that the erosion didn't seem natural, and the stone looked nearly the same as the one in the corridor before, but it oddly decayed still. But there was not enough time to think about the odd details, the minotaur plunged through the doorway, and was on its way charging forward.
The sudden rumble of the temple shook very close, and the tall muscular beast appeared in clouds of dust from behind, charging through the pillars in violent explosions with its cow-like eyes latched onto his back, roaring and shouting with sheer hatred keeping it going, as tiles of stone struck its head and body.
The temple was shaking and it wasn't going to last long if the beast continued, but that was opportunity!
Lod felt his body grow hot, like a furnace, and his sprinting grew even more desperate.
The beast's roars grew closer, and he desperately prayed to not be able to see the scene behind him.
The minotaur's maw opened, and its jagged serrated knives like teeth opened with slobber. The dust covered its brown fur turning it a mushy gray and red from the blood and gore that stuck to it.
The Minotaur reeled his arm back, stone tiles and gravel was ripped from the wall, spilling out, then it struck forward. Lod's pathetic stumble saved him and the minotaur's strike sailed above his head, striking another pillar, dust and stone bellowing out like a torrent.
One pillar was eventually struck and a piece of it was shot through the air like a spike, while the rest of it crumbled the same. Lod felt a gnawing feeling, and his stumbling made his running nearly unpredictable, the spike struck hard against the pillar ahead of Lod, and from that pillar he could see a dark light blaring at him.
From his left as he approached the exit, he saw a separate corridor going down a looping path, but his momentum gathered in for one final last jump. The minotaur was breathing down on his neck. Its massive arms ached from the stones that pelted it, which only made it more angrier, more filled with rage. It suddenly took a wide step large enough to cross chasms and slammed its fist down with enough force to break a human in two.
Lod at the same time had jumped, his legs gathering air behind him, and a flame-like energy running across his fist as he slammed it into the pillar in front of him. The minotaur caught air and the shockwave of his strike created a deep hole in the floor, large enough to fit him.
It seemed like the temple couldn't take it anymore, and the stone slabs like hale began falling from the ceiling. It collapsed on itself, and The Minotaur with rage was about to walk forward but stopped itself, watching Lod heave on the ground with wrathful eyes.
The stone made a pile that separated them from each other.
On the ground, Lod stared numbly at the wide ceiling above him that looked like it stretched into a deep abyss. He registered small spikes on the ceiling above, but the more he looked at it, the more it looked like spikes from a cave.
Lod's hands were shaking as he stood up, and he took a moment to take a deep breath, exhausted from the run, his body wracking with pangs of pains, and popping as he stood up. It felt like he had been running for hours.
His eyes suddenly caught where he actually was. Lod pressed his back against the debris. The ice coolness of the cave washed over him like a wave, and he understood why the temple was so cold. It was the artifact itself.
The cave had a single pathway, a withering stone path, and on either sides of it was a vast emptiness of space that looked like the void had come to life.
Blue torches, swamped with ethereal likeness bathed Lod's face, and enlightened the entire room. The room looked empty and he could feel a draft of wind swim from the abyss below, biting into the cold stone.
The temple no longer had any colors, instead it was a mundane rock edge with a single rock bridge that looked like it could crumble at any moment, that narrowed even more into a pathway toward the other side of the bridge where another doorway was.
Lod knew what he had to do, and trying his best to stay calm he began walking the narrow path.
It was a long drop, Lod was sure of that. If it weren't for the cave having a ceiling he would've doubted that there was even an end to the long drop. The crumbling stone shivered as he made his way across, cracks were spread along the bridge, as if it had eroded.
Lod didn't even know where he was anymore, as if the temple had been connected to a labyrinth he had gone up a few stairs and now stood impossibly in a cave with a thousand foot drop…
…
Meanwhile, an angry minotaur puffed a ring of smoke. Then, it reared its head and let out a frightening roar. Lod felt the roar from the other side of the wall blocking them, and he almost lost his balance for a moment.
Then the minotaur with its hooves cracking stone as it moved walked down the other corridor.
…
"Oh, You roar, bitch. I'll make sure you'll see red." Lod held on tightly to the bridge, unwilling to let go. He began slowly crawling across the bridge.
The crumbling stone looked to be decaying, visibly, eroding.
Reaching the end of the crumbling path was like a heavy weight lifting off of Lod's back. The blue torches were even brighter than they were at the other side of the path. What was causing this, Lod thought, he didn't understand a lick about mana, and he wished he had Trel explaining what the significance of all those lights meant, and what they were at least.
A shiver that had nothing to do with the coldness of the room bit into his spine as he crossed into the altar room. The air was heavy and cold, like it was trying to suffocate him, with a calm pressure around his neck that felt like someone's hand was trying to strangle him. Even as he dismissed this thought, he choked from the air and began coughing and wheezing. A low mist stuck to the floor like it was its second skin.
He regained his bearings, and pressed forward. His eyes on the prize, a blue gem at the center of the altar room. It was restless and beautiful, and within it reflected an ocean of power. Its edges were nowhere to be seen at all. Lod's eyes widened at its beauty, and took it all in with awe. Approaching it with slow easy steps.
He thought of the mythical stories Tristine had told him. The stories are filled with legendary heroes, saving the world, with mythical powers only seen in legend or demonstrated by the most powerful archmages of the time.
He lifted it and he felt as if he had already grown stronger. Then he heard it.
The sudden clops of hoofed feet driving in silently closer, and Lod whipped around gem in hand to see the gigantic minotaur, bursting from a separate doorway, roaring at him.
Lod raised his hand, flames peeling off of it with an inhuman glare, and struck hard against the minotaur, confidence filling his entire being. Only to be met with a blinding strike to his hand holding the gem, it was a strike the minotaur had never displayed before, it was cold, calculated, efficient, nothing like the raging bull it acted like. Before, he even realized the minotaur's hand had latched onto his face and stuffed the gem down his gullet. His own warm blood and teeth ran into his throat.
The Minotaur seemed to laugh, and then Lod heard with frightening accuracy.
"That's it." Yarost, the minotaur, growled with a feral roar, lifting Lod from his feet and holding him by his face. "You'll pull me from my chains, and I'll give you a gift for free."
Then he tossed him away, and Lod could feel power running through his entire being.
"Survive." Yarost growled. "You did good."
Yarost saw the system screen in front of his face turn an eerie red and the whispers yelling at him to kill all humans stopped, and then turned into screams. The words appearing on his system screen and at the same time being said in a slow monotonous voice.
[ "You've failed." ]
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
I_lIke_writing
I_lIke_writing Yarost has plans... and their going to get even more bloodier as the story continues.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story.
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