Godless and Faithless Chapter 8_(0)

Swamp slimes. He’d never heard of them but they existed. The small blobs were composed of puddles of green goo, twigs, and moss.

He’d battled them throughout the swamp, his hammer having little effect. Brute force failed to defeat them.

Instead, he looked for other monsters and the dumb swamp slimes would get distracted and engage them instead. Using this method, he made his way through the forest with swamp slimes acting as his unknowing allies.

He needed more varied skills. For one, when force failed him, he found himself in a disadvantageous position. Another point he wrote in his notes.

They also needed another party member. Not to round out the balance of their party but to have another body if they had to split up like this again. Now he was in a swamp looking for dragons alone.

He pulled out the compass, checking again the distance to his goal. He was getting close. The compass was an incredibly useful item, always pointing him toward the exit. If he went the opposite direction, it led him to the center of any location. He made a note to get more items like it.

Something was strange. The villagers made it seem there were many dragons infesting the area, yet he had seen none since coming to the swamp. He saw no signs of them when passing the villages on his way here as if they were never there. Once he got to his destination, all would be known. The women and girls about to be sacrificed to the dragon needed him. He would be a hero.

Reaching a clearing he finally saw the evidence of the dragons, fallen trees marking the ground where they had slithered. But the dragons themselves remained elusive. Then he remembered this was a swamp. These dragons must have adapted to the area meaning—a sound came from his right, a mighty beastly screech.

Here comes the dragon. He ignored the little swamp puddles before, now he knew them for what they were: It was where the dragons slept. Another dragon joined it, then another and another.

Axel told him if he had learned anything from his battles, it was that the one who hesitated died. Taking Axel’s advice, he activated all of his skills. He used Roar at the closest dragon, knocking it back. Then he let out a Battle Cry feeling confidence and vigor flooding his body. It stunned the dragon; he ran at it and activated Rampage for the first time by his own will. Battle Cry improved his morale and made his body feel filled with life, while Rampage felt like a jolt to his mind and heart, forcing his body to push forward. Rayner leaped at the dragon and used Force Hammer on its head, green light smashing into it.

The dragon screamed, trying to get him off its head. Instead, he continued to smash it on the head until it stopped moving.

The creature still lived but as long as it wasn’t attacking him, he could kill it later. Another dragon slithered toward him. Rayner jumped behind the body of the unconscious dragon. When the attacking dragon raised its body above the defeated dragon to peer down at him it got a Roar to its jaw, followed by a Force Hammer. It was not enough to knock it out so Rayner switched tactics. He would make it hurt. He didn’t need a skill like Pain Knife to do that.

Rayner grabbed onto the dragon’s mouth and smashed its teeth with his hammer right at the base of the tooth. It produced the desired painful result, causing it to thrash around on the spot. Ignoring the pain in his back due to the haze of Rampage, he got back up in time to roll to the side to avoid another dragon’s bite. He used the pick on the other side of his hammer to drive it into the side of the dragon. The dragon’s own forward momentum created a giant wound all along its scaled side.

He took stock of his surroundings. One dragon down and two screaming in pain. Weak. These dragons were weak. Truly not the fearsome beasts from the stories. The others that had come out of their swamp puddles were hesitating. The ones that hesitated died. He said that over and over again in his head.

Briefly, he wondered where the maidens were being held but he would find out later. For now, he had to fight. These things were able to steal EXP, that’s why they wanted the maidens, or so he was told. It all seemed strange to him.

He expected a boss to appear but only more dragons followed, most of them smaller than the ones he had just fought. Like the villagers had told him, their scales were not hard, but they were thick. Bad for stabbing if Axel was here. Good for smashing and it was him they were fighting, not Axel. Too bad for them.

He’d downed four and killed six of the creatures, moving deeper into the swamp, using the trees to his advantage. Most of the dragons were not big or strong enough to smash through the trees to attack him. Instead, they hurt their own jaws when he rolled out the way and they bit into the trunk of the trees.

Rayner could tell they were angry, they had to be. Some puny human had come into their home and tried to ruin a sweet deal for them. All the creatures did was sleep in their swamp beds and wait for sacrifices to come to them. No natural predators hunted them. No strong Worshipers were in the area, and few would come to the Alea region of Alta. The easy living they had before was over.

Deeper into the forest the fight went on. He didn’t need to worry about other monsters attacking him, he’d cleared out many of them on his way here. That was his plan, for what the dragons didn’t know is that they had a predator or at least an annoying creature to deal with.

The swamp slimes fell upon the dragons. They were vastly weaker than the dragons but the swamp slimes didn’t have the intelligence to know that. The dragons slithered around on the ground trying to rub them off their bodies. Some of them succeeded. Most of them only rubbed themselves onto more swamp slimes.

Still, no boss appeared. He had to keep reminding himself that this was not a game, no law required a boss to exist. This was it. Yet the villagers told him the largest dragon could wrap around a small hill. He counted himself lucky for once.

He took the chance to stab them all in their soft spots with the pick end of his hammer. It didn’t kill them all, but it didn’t need to. The point was to leave them weak enough for the swamp slimes to finish them off.

He had counted twenty-four dragons. The villagers had made it sound like more. He gave it no further thought, the path was clear to find the maidens. After spending several hours looking for the maidens and killing a stray dragon, he began to think they were already dead.

Then he remembered the swamp beds. Heading back to the clearing that the dragons once called home he searched for an undisturbed swamp puddle. When he found it, he put his hand down into the puddle.

He felt a hand and pulled the body up; it was a girl, naked under all the mud. He would ask how she survived under there later. He tried waking her up but nothing worked. He hoped it would not be like this for all of them.

He spent the next few minutes looking for similar puddles and hauled the maidens out. The girls who were awake explained what happened.

“They did not want us because we are virgins; that makes no sense. Men are virgins as well ya know,” the oldest of the girls told him.

“True.