Seeing Luck's body sway from side to side, the group immediately rushed towards him.
They had finished off the remaining villagers a long time ago, and the only reason they didn't join the fight between Luck and the chief was that they wouldn't be of much help.
In fact, the two were moving so fast that they couldn't even find a moment to intervene.
The chief's swings seemed as heavy as a mountain, with each one shaking the village walls.
Luck, on the other hand, was a blur. He had so many movement skills that allowed him to reach places almost instantaneously. Even Luke, who also still had his bracers on, knew he couldn't compare with his brother in matters of speed.
With this, Luck managed to put up an amazing fight. All the way till he finally gained an opportunity to kill the Variant.
Tara was the first to reach him as she began to inspect his body. Seeing the obvious damage, panic overtook her senses as she began to call his name again and again, like a broken fax machine.
Luck didn't seem to hear her as he stared lifelessly at the chief's corpse. His body seemed paralyzed as he stood, unmoving, as if waiting for something.
And he was. He may have seemed near dead on the outside, but inside, he was in pure chaos.
Luck thoughts were everywhere as he patiently waited for enough mana to be regenerated in his system. With the way his body was, he could only rely on external energies for him to perform any basic function. Luckily, his mana core didn't shatter, so he could still hold mana.
On top of the panic he was feeling, Luck was in excruciating pain. Feeling himself breaking down was not a.... pleasant experience, and it didn't help that Luck could not perform any action, practically imprisoned in his own mind.
The seconds ticked by as soon as the entire party was huddled around Luck in concern.
Not that he was complaining, though, as before he knew it, he was being force-fed with several healing and mana pills, giving him just enough energy to kick-start his plan to save himself from the clutches of Lady Death.
With a sudden, abrupt movement, Luck's shadow wriggled as a bag of pills appeared in his hand.
He immediately downed the contents.
That bag contained all his mana pills, so he did not bother as he felt a large rush of mana flooding his core.
Luck looked at the corpse again as Darkfang appeared in his hand. (Now for the next part of my plan.)
With neither flourish nor skill, Luck plunged the dagger into the X-shaped cut on the halfling's chest, and with a straight face that doctors would envy, he began to explore its insides.
It took a full minute before he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a heart and a transparent sphere filled with clear and formless energy.
What Luck wanted to do was simple. He wanted to acquire the orcling's regeneration. Although his body, which had already passed the thresholds of a normal mortal, had a decent regeneration speed, it was not enough to keep him alive, as it did its job.
(With the rate it moves, I'll be long dead before it could even close my open wounds.)
What he needed was something faster and more reliable. And the chief had the solution.
The problem with this plan was probability. On a normal day, an awakener only had a 30% chance of getting a skill.
Coupled with the fact that the skill selection was completely random, it was almost laughable what Luck was putting his hopes on.
Fortunately, though, Luck had a solution to that.
There was another way of increasing the chances of getting a skill. It was only not popularized due to how inhumane it was.
To increase their chances of getting a skill, a person must eat a part of the monster's raw flesh while using the core.
Eating raw monster meat wasn't ideal, but it had its perks. One was increasing the chance of acquiring the desired skill from the monster.
That's right; as long as an awakener eats the part where the skill originated from, they're almost guaranteed to get the skill.
And where would regeneration not originate from if not the heart? It was the engine that drove the machine called the body, after all.
Tara's face visibly darkened as she saw what Luck pulled out. "Luck, what are you doing?"
Without answering, and much to the others' shock, Luck bit into the heart, ignoring the taste and smell of blood as he began to chew and swallow the heart, bit by bit.
"..."
They were speechless. The worst part was that they couldn't even stop him after he had taken that first bite.
Without delay, Luck used the core as well, completing the procedure.
"Here comes the hard part." Luck grimaced as he suddenly went to his knees, coughing up black blood.
There was a reason this process was not ideal, aside from the barbaric consumption of monster flesh. I mean, people did all sorts of things in the quest to become strong. They would be able to handle a little monster meat.
The problem was in the meat itself.
The energy contained in monster meat was very harmful to humanoids and could even kill a person instantly if strong enough.
Once it entered the body, it would attack the body from the inside, devouring any mana, qi, e.t.c, in them for its own benefit.
The only way to circumvent this was to make the energy your own.
(That is through manipulation.) As he began to circulate the little mana in his systems rapidly to combat the foreign invader.
Luck needed to overwhelm the orcling's remnant mana. It sounded like an easy job, as the owner had long died, leaving its energy ownerless.
But it wasn't, actually. Even while ownerless, it was still the qi that belonged to a Variant monster, a rank above him.
It slapped away its measly amount of mana like an annoying insect, as it began its path of destruction, further weakening Luck's already weak body.
Luck didn't stop fighting as he continued to mobilize his mana, only to meet with several resounding defeats.
Soon, it got to where his vision began to blur as dark spots began to fill his sight.
He was losing consciousness and fast.
Luck sighed with melancholy. He really didn't want to die here. He glanced at his brother, who was standing there with lifeless eyes as if he had already given up on saving him.
Luck flashed a small smile. A smile that conveyed all his feelings towards Luke, who threatened to start crying.
And with that, he dropped onto the floor, his body rapidly losing warmth and unconscious.
Luck opened his eyes to see... nothing.
There was nothing before him, just darkness; in fact, he couldn't perceive his body. If he had a body, that is.
Luck sighed again as frustration began to creep in.
This was definitely not how or when he wished to die.
"You're not dead."
A voice penetrated through the seemingly never-ending darkness, causing Luck to turn his head in the direction it came from, and for the first time since he had come here a few seconds ago, he saw something other than darkness.
She was tall and had an hourglass figure that was barely hidden by the black dress she wore.
Her skin was like porcelain; smooth, while her midnight black hair fluttered in the non-existent wind.
Her hair also seemed special; it looked unnaturally silken and sparkled as though a million stars were inside it.
Her eyes also weren't normal. No part of her eyes contained any normal color, as it was all pitch black, filled as one would see in an endless abyss.
These were eyes one could lose oneself in.
Luck, though, was different, though he didn't know it, as he felt warm when he stared into those eyes.
All in all, she was a captivating woman, capable of bringing the downfall of worlds.
"Who are you?" Luck muttered in barely a whisper. He was actually extremely wary of the individual who appeared when he was 'dead'.
Who wouldn't?
The woman unexpectedly smiled at the blatant suspicion. " Since I already know your name, I guess it's only fair you know mine." Her smile grew wider. " Very well, I am Nyx, Goddess of the Night."