Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 137: The True Battle Ends

I looked up as Xhag’duul ranted at me. Ainash was putting her plan into place to kill the Demon. As he screamed at me, there was a rumbling up in the tops of the cliffs. Slowly, something came into view.

Something that rolled over the edge of the cliff. Something massive. It was…a boulder?

I limped back, away from the area it would impact, but Xhag’duul didn’t notice.

The rumbling stopped as the boulder left the edge of the cliff and entered freefall, meteoring down to the ground. It plummeted further and further, going faster and faster, the massive stone that was at least twice as wide as I was tall. A hunk of a mountain. A shadow formed around Xhag’duul’s feet, and he squinted at me.

And then he looked up, and for a split second, his eyes widened and I saw his face show fear.

And then the boulder crashed directly into him, shaking the entire earth with it. An ear-splitting BOOM rang throughout the entire canyon—the entire mountain range—from the hundred-pace drop of such a massive object. It literally split the earth as it sunk deep into the ground. The destabilization pushed me to the ground, unable to support myself through the veritable earthquake with my broken leg.

Blue blood, brown dust, and gray stone shrapnel scattered through the air, covering everything nearby. I could barely see through the debris in the air, and dirt filled my lungs, forcing me to cough it back up as I lay on the ground.

Seconds passed, and the chaos settled. Silence filled the air. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the sight in front of me. The stone had sunk at least half a pace into the ground, crushing the gravel and dirt beneath it, as well as its intended target. The glowing blue blood that splattered against the ground around the impact was enough evidence of that.

He was dead.

The absolute behemoth of a stone had killed him.

But…no. He didn’t die. I hadn’t gotten a kill notification. I’d obviously contributed to the damage dealt, so I should have gotten one. But there was no way he’d survived that. Maybe…maybe the System was just running behind? I’d get the notification in a bit?

Seconds passed. Nothing.

“Ainash,” I said, “did you get any—”

I was cut off by a noise. A groan. Coming from underneath the boulder. No. No, no, no. He was alive?! How?!

“He is,” Index said. “Still has a decent bit of Health.”

“...What?” I muttered.

Slowly, I saw the gigantic stone begin to shift. A tiny shake. Then a larger one. Then, to my horror, the boulder was shakily lifted up. And I saw Xhag’duul underneath it. Covered in cuts and wounds, more blue than he was red from the blood that covered him, but he was there. And his eyes showed nothing but unbridled fury. He groaned as he pushed himself up with his arms, lifting the boulder with his back.

“Ainash! He’s alive!” I said, frantically.

But she didn’t seem afraid. “Will fix it!”

And then there was another rumbling sound. This time, Xhag’duul seemed to recognize it. His eyes widened, and he looked up at me. He lifted up a hand, his other arm falling down so he was just on a single elbow, the boulder pushing him back down, and he brought his shaking fingers together in an attempt to snap them and set me ablaze.

But before he could, another boulder fell from the skies, and smashed straight into the first one, pulverizing it and crashing right into the crater the other had made. Another impact that shook the earth, filling the air with yet more dust. I could barely see, now, but when I looked, I could still make out the scene of the destruction in front of me. The second boulder was slightly smaller than the first, but not by much. Its rough edges had cracked straight through the first, splitting it into pieces and replacing it to fill the crater.

He had to be dead by now. Or at least put out of commission. But before I could even ponder that, I glanced up and saw the silhouette of yet another object being pushed over the edge of the cliff. Where in the hells was Ainash getting all of these?!

It tipped over the edge and fell. I could only barely make it out because of the dust filling the air, but I felt the impact all the same. The third boulder crashed into the sizable crater that’d already been made, full of shrapnel and rubble and blood. Once again, I was left coughing as dust filled the air.

I opened my eyes yet again and looked onward. The entire crash zone was a mess, no longer filled by a single stone, or even a stone that’d been split by another. It was just shards of rock piled on top of shards of rock, no discernable “main” piece that filled the hole in the ground. Everything was destroyed.

But there was still no kill message.

“He’s alive,” Index confirmed. “Low now, though. Extremely low. And unconscious. He had to use some sort of ability to keep himself alive, but it drained pretty much all of his strength.”

I grabbed onto the rough cliff wall and pulled myself up with my one good arm, standing on my one good leg, and limped forward, over to the crash site.

“Heal mother,” I said to Ainash. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Okay, will go and help mother!”

Step after step, pace after pace, I moved closer and closer to the pile of rubble that buried Xhag’duul alive. It was at least five paces wide, itself, the massive hole that was full of rock. Each of the stones could, in itself, be classified as a boulder—many were larger than my entire torso—but none of them were so massive as to be completely immovable by me.

So I fell to my knees and began digging. I gripped my hand around the rocks and tossed them away, my own red blood mixing with the glowing blue of Xhag’duul which covered the rocks already.

For some of the stones, I was forced to leverage my entire body to roll them aside, using my boosted Strength to lift the weights I’d normally never be able to budge. But slowly, I was able to dig deeper and deeper into the hole, until I saw it. A scrap of red beneath it all. Not from my blood, but from the Demon.

I brushed more rocks and dust aside, and was left staring down at the bastard’s face. His mouth was half-open, leaking blood, and his eyes were in a daze, looking off at nothing. His hands and legs were splayed out, beaten and battered, bent in too many directions to count. His body was completely broken. But I didn’t waste time appreciating the damage that’d been done to him. I needed to finish things.

So I reached down, and placed my hand on his chest. And I activated Noxious Grasp.

Seconds passed. I’d emptied out my Mana pool earlier, when I cast all those stacks of Expedite, but enough time had passed by now that it’d refilled quite a bit. So I silently drained away the monster’s life.

He blinked and his eyes came into focus, as I was sure the steady damage woke him from whatever stupor he was in. He looked over at me, but didn’t move otherwise. Must’ve been paralyzed, with whatever ability he’d activated, plus the drain of Noxious Grasp active on him. But he could still talk, just barely.

“P…please,” he gasped. “Don’t…don’t…”

I just stayed silent and continued draining. I didn’t even meet his eyes.

“Please…spare me,” he got out. “You don’t…you don’t understand. What they’ll do to me.”

I just took a breath and kept casting.

“I won’t die,” he coughed. “I’ll be sent, sent back to the Underworld. They’ll know I failed. You dont…you don’t understand what they do to failures there. It’s a fate worse than death.”

I only barely listened to what he said.

“We live for so long in the Underworld,” he coughed yet again. “We experience time differently. They’ll keep me alive forever. They’ll torture me. You don’t understand what it’s like…to be seen as useless to them. They don’t ever let you forget it. How useless you are.”

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 449 damage and drained 449 Stamina over the course of 21.6 seconds using Noxious Grasp.

115 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 0.

My Mana ran out, and Noxious Grasp shut off automatically. So I retracted my hand.

His eyes widened as I did so, mistaking my action for one of mercy. “Th…thank you! Please, let me go, and I’ll leave you alive. I'll stay in the Overworld and hide. I won’t ever do anything to you again. Thank—”

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 29 damage using Fist.

I interrupted him with a punch to the face. His head was forcefully turned to the side, and he spat out a glob of blue blood. I drew my hand back again.

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 27 damage using Fist.

Another hit. He coughed and looked up at me, now with a snarl on his face. “Y-you…you’ll regret this. You can’t just kill someone like me and get away with it. I know things, too. The Faerie Queene, I made a deal with her. She’s going to destroy the kingdom unless I do something. Nobody else knows what to do to prevent it. If you kill me, she’ll go on a rampage. And the Demons, too. I don’t care if I die, the rest of the Demons will never forgive you. It won’t even be about Temporus anymore. It’ll be about revenge. You hear me? Revenge. You will never live another peaceful day in your—”

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 26 damage using Fist.

He was interrupted with another strike, coughing up more blood.

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 29 damage using Fist.

And another.

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 28 damage using Fist.

And another.

He gasped for breath as his Health was chipped away. And the less Health he had, the less of a shield there was to protect him from bodily harm, and from pain. As low as he was right now, this was probably the most he’d been hurt—the most pain he’d felt—in a very, very long time.

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 30 damage using Fist.

He looked up at me, breathing heavily. Blood dribbled down his chin from his mouth, and down the cheek I’d been striking with my one good hand, several cuts and bruises having formed by now.

“You will regret this every day. For the rest of your life,” he coughed. “You can’t…you can’t kill me.

My Mana was back. So I grabbed onto his face from the chin and the same cheek I’d been hitting, and activated Noxious Grasp again. He gasped out in shock and pain the moment I toggled the Spell on.

“You can’t…please…I don’t…I don’t want go back. Not back there. I don’t want to go back to them. They’ll…they’ll…”

He sobbed, though if it was from the pain or from the fear, I didn’t know. Nor did I care.

Smoke seeped from my fingers as I kept the Spell active for as long as my Mana would allow, forming a steady stream that rose into the air, mixing with the kicked-up dust that already filled the skies around us.

You have struck Level 61 Devil for 114 damage and drained 114 Stamina over the course of 5.5 seconds using Noxious Grasp.

29 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 0.

Mana ran out again. I drew my hand away from him. This time, he didn’t react at all. He knew what was coming.

“He’s just about there,” Index said. “Maybe forty, fifty Health left. A Ray of Frost should do it.”

I nodded wordlessly and stood up, looking down at him.

He gazed up at me.

I waited for a few seconds for my Mana to regenerate up to 25—enough for a Ray. In that time, I just stared into his tear-filled, begging eyes.

“I can be useful to you,” he sobbed. “I don’t—I don’t have to be your enemy. I’ll do anything! Anything! Don’t make me go back!”

I breathed. Mana was up to 10.

“Please! Don’t do this! Don’t! You don’t have to! This—this isn’t self defense anymore, it’s an execution! Don’t you have some form of empathy, Human?! Don’t you care?! All you’re doing is hurting someone, someone who doesn’t deserve it. For no reason. Leave me be! Please!”

Up to 20.

“Please, please, please! Don’t do this!”

25. I raised my hand and pointed at him.

For a moment, I considered saying something. There was a lot I could say. Some sort of eloquent diatribe, explaining the exact reasons he was such a terrible being. I could point out the hypocrisy in his actions, trying so hard to make me suffer, only to turn around and cry when he was faced with the same fate. I could give a witty monologue, quoting him and turning his own words back at him. Something to humiliate him, turn him into a laughingstock, destroy his entire sense of self-confidence. I could give some rousing speech, something to show the pure evil of the Demons to everyone in the vicinity—to inspire Erani, Ainash, even me, into dedicating ourselves to fighting off the vile fiends.

There was a lot I could say. But, in the end, there was only one thing I wanted to tell this Demon.

“Please, spare me!”

“No.”

You have offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 61 Devil.

You have earned 3.1k XP. Your XP is 4.93k.

Level 32 Draconiad has offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 61 Devil.

Due to having a Bond with Draconiad, you have earned 155 XP. Your XP is 5.09k.

Threshold reached. 2.20k XP.

Your Level has increased to 19.

Due to achieving Level 19 in the Minute Mage Class, you have been granted the following benefits:

-You have gained 1 Endurance.

-You have gained 2 Conjuration.

-You have gained 1 Intelligence.

-You have gained 3 Stat Points.

-Recursive Growth has activated. You have gained 1 Endurance, 2 Dexterity, and 1 Intelligence.

-Time Loop Talent Rank has increased to 19.

Threshold reached. 2.50k XP.

Your Level has increased to 20.

Due to achieving Level 20 in the Minute Mage Class, you have been granted the following benefits:

-You have gained 1 Endurance.

-You have gained 2 Conjuration.

-You have gained 1 Intelligence.

-You have gained 3 Stat Points.

-Recursive Growth has improved from reaching a tenth Level. You now gain 6 random Stats each time your Level increases.

-Recursive Growth has activated. You have gained 3 Strength, 1 Endurance, 1 Dexterity, and 1 Conjuration.

-Soft Cap has increased to Rank 11.

-Time Loop Talent Rank has increased to 20.

-Time Loop has received a Usage Increase.

-You may choose an Upgrade for Time Loop.

-You may choose a Talent to obtain.