[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 22: Free Fallin’

Sam’s stomach did flips as gravity suddenly pulled the rug out from under him. The golem and Sam plunged through the misted depths, still fighting, forcing Sam onto the defense.

Current Heat Level: 8/100

Undeterred by the rapid change in scenery, the golem kept swinging after Sam.

Leveraging his buffed Strength, Sam swept his claymore back and forth into what blows he could even see, deflecting the worst of the damage while spinning uncontrolled through the air.

The direction of up and down kept nauseatingly changing.

Free falling, the monster and Sam broke through cliff side tree after tree jutting out of the side of the ravine. Chunk after chunk tore through Sam’s health.

Despite the coal’s diminished strength, it allowed Sam to burn brighter and stronger at the cost of its own dwindling life.

Komachi yowled by his ear, holding on with one paw, while shaking her Cleric wand with the other. Its bell rang out with each healing spell cast on him.

How she had the MP to keep using magic, Sam didn’t know. Maybe the embers flickering across the wand had something to do with it.

The coal continued to drain dangerously low.

Current Heat Level: 4/100

The golem battered him into the ravine’s wall, using one of its blackened limbs to press Sam into it. The rocky cliff side shredded Sam’s HP.

The fringes of his vision turned red, narrowing his focus onto his enemy. He swung the blade out wide. Burning with flames, the blade scorched through the golem’s limb, lopping it off.

With both hands, Sam plunged his greatsword into the broad target of its chest, where his previous strike had created a smoldering hole.

How the thing was still alive, Sam couldn’t begin to guess. But if he was going to die, he was going to be sure to kill this monster if it was the last thing he did.

The weapon sank up to the hilt into the monster, inflicting a significant enough wound in Sam’s books.

Hauling on his blade like an anchor, while kicking off the wall, Sam yanked sideways, pulling himself away from the rock.

The golem unleashed an ethereal howl of agony as flames spread across its bark, blackening it to char. The golem’s bulky form smashed against the ravine wall as the flames sprang up all around it, crackling like a bonfire.

Current Heat Level: 1/100

Then the roar of countless waterfalls enveloped Sam. They plunged through the water, dousing some, but not all of the burning golem.

He saw a flicker of the world below through a great opening in the ravine’s floor, bordered by rapids the walls sloped down into.

Open sky, a sea of clouds, and countless small floating islands. Similar, but starkly different from what Sam saw when this all started.

“Oh, heck!” Komachi cried.

He hardly had any time to figure out which fate would be worse. Falling into the clouds or crashing into the rapids.

Sam desperately held onto his blade’s hilt, still buried in the golem. Wrenching, he poured all his might into bringing the monster around to stack things higher in his favor.

Still howling, it lashed out.

Through the rush of power and adrenaline, he could hardly feel the pain of his arm breaking, but he refused to relent. Despite his arm now having one more bend than he was born with, Sam clung to his [Dull Claymore] for all he was worth.

Really, that was nothing compared to hitting the bottom of the ravine.

His life flashed before his eyes.

All that typical sappy junk of seeing people and places seared into his memories.

The smell of the ocean, and his first time seeing it. Adorable Komachi looking up at him on his doorstep as a kitten, when he surfed some of the gnarliest waves of Hawai’i, his friends when they went to the arcade, and curiously enough Raiko grinning at him like she wanted to take a bite out of him.

But the last memory that went through his head before his imminent death was one that he didn’t recognize. He held the [Shatterblade] in his gauntleted fist, and raised it high, arcing lightning lancing off its scintillating blade to strike the countless monsters before him.

Speared on his claymore, the golem struggled with the last of its strength, but gravity was a hell of a thing and it could only scrabble like a beetle on its back as Sam and the golem plunged into the ravine below.

[Endure] Trait activated!

HP: 1

There were no words to describe the pain that soaked every cell of Sam’s body. His mind went blank, and his body simply gave up as the waters closed over him and the golem.

Had Death extended a bony hand at that moment, even Sam’s stalwart soul would have been tempted.

You defeat the [Dire Hoary Wood Golem (Level 9)].

You gain immense Experience for slaying a Very Tough monster!

Within an inch of his life, Sam rode the rapids that carved their way through the bottom of the starting island.

Falling in and out of consciousness, Sam, atop his makeshift boat, swerved around worn, smooth rocks and boulders. What he couldn’t avoid, the golem’s sturdy body soaked up the damage that would have surely ended him.

His armor wasn’t going to do him much good, not with a single point of health.

He could only see from the light of the fitfully burning coal, and the wan sunlight that filtered through the opening high above.

He prayed to whatever god was watching that these rushing waters wouldn’t dump him and Komachi into the clouds below. As the rapids curved back and forth across the rocky shoals, Sam got a glimpse of just how close he was to the edge.

A few feet to the left, and he would fall forever into the blue sky that seemed to stretch into infinity below.

Darkness enshrouded him as he struggled to steer the awkward boat. The tip of his blade speared through the golem’s chest worked as an incredibly poor makeshift rudder, but mostly it scraped and bumped against the rocks, slowing him down and eventually running him aground.

Sam staggered to the narrow beach of pebbles, dropped to his knees, and grasped desperately at his pouch as cogent thought returned.

Where the fuck is my [Health Potion]?

His hand numbly gripped the glass neck of a bottle and with only a bare glance to make sure he hadn’t stupidly grabbed a [Mana Potion], Sam downed the ruddy contents.

It tasted sickly sweet, a little like cherries, and tingled on his tongue. The effects were instant.

As his strength returned, so too did his mental clarity, and hitching along for the ride was a tidal wave of pain he had been too numb to properly appreciate.

A number of status afflictions littered the corner of his vision, most notably among them were red teardrops that he could guess what they represented. Some kind of bleeding. With so much going on, he hadn’t seen any debuff prompts.

The pain slowly receded, leaving Sam gasping for breath and staring up at the crack in the sky that was the top of the ravine.

I can’t believe I survived, Sam thought. Then he frantically remembered his cat and managed to snake a hand into his waterlogged breastplate.

Komachi, looking quite like a drowned rat, whimpered as she was pulled free and set down atop his chest. Despite the discomfort of the stones pressing into his back, Sam didn’t feel up to moving just yet.

“Komachi, you good?”

“Eh, whose Komachi?” She blinked out of sync, or… winked twice?

“You,” Sam said. “You are Komachi. My cat.”

Nodding slowly, her focus seemed to come back at his reassuring voice. “Oh, I’m aiight. Took some damage, my MP is poof. But you’re real down bad.…”

Sam reached up with his right arm, then paused, remembering how it had broken. He stared at it. The pain was muted to that of a savage bruise, but it didn’t seem broken or even deformed.

Do potions heal you back to whatever is normal for you instead of setting bones twisted about? Sam wondered.

“Yeah, I am,” Sam said, petting her. All her fluffy fur was now soaked through. “We’re alive though. That’s what counts.”

What he was going to do now, however, Sam hadn’t a clue.

He tried to remember back to the days he used to watch survival shows for fun. Not the “drink my own piss” kind, but the legit ones where they were as informative as entertaining.

Water first, he thought. A glance at the white rushing waters checked that off the list. His [Camping Kit] didn’t have any fresh water.

Shelter was next, but thanks to the magical Inventory of this world, he didn’t have to worry about losing his backpack to the rapids he rode.

A hand clapped the pouch at his hip, but it didn’t seem damaged in the slightest. He wasn’t even sure if it could be damaged, but its presence was a comfort.

I don’t want to know what happens to the items inside if I lose my pouch.

More pressing by far was that the bleeding affliction wasn’t falling off. His HP was slowly dropping despite the [Health Potion].

And he didn’t have another.

Komachi seemed to sense this. She rummaged through his things and took out a [Mana Potion].

At any other point he would have been transfixed to watch a cat pull out a glass bottle, break the wax seal, and then drink the blue liquid inside, but Sam barely noticed in his daze as Komachi handled the bottle with the ease of any five-fingered human.

Jingling her little bell plant at the end of her wand, she cast [Regen] on him several times over the next few hours. Long enough for the [Bleed] debuff to finally fall off.

The scene was vaguely familiar. He could have sworn Komachi cast [Regen] on him while he was fading in and out of consciousness on that river ride from hell.

She absolutely saved his life.

“Let’s have a look at you,” Sam said, sitting up slowly and looking over Komachi for any obvious wounds.

Sam sighed and pet her sodden head. She seemed all right. Far better than he had fared, that’s for sure.

“Let’s get a fire going and dry off,” he offered. “We can think about how we’re going to get out of here after we’ve had a bite to eat and a moment to rest, yeah?”

Slower than he would have liked, Sam set up the [Camping Kit] and collapsed atop one of the padded bedrolls. Only then did he remember about the coal. It had been so low, even before the rapids.

There was no way it could have survived. Yet, some part of him must have been conscious enough to keep it safe. With his other hand clenched into a fist, Sam slowly uncurled his fingers to reveal a faintly glowing coal now giving off a gentle yellow-orange glow.

Your [Coal of the First Flame] has evolved into:

[Archflame Coal]

When the coal’s life was guttering to an end, you spilled your Incarnate blood upon its stone, offering your lifeforce for its survival. Bonded with an Alloy of War and a bearer of the Prometheus Title, the coal’s life is now linked with yours.

Current Heat Level: 5/150

I don’t remember doing that… then again, I don’t remember much after the fall. Sam gently arranged a ring of larger stones and pulled himself to his feet. Setting the coal in the center, he staggered off to retrieve his claymore and began to hack away at the dead golem.

“At least you can be useful in death,” he said spitefully to the creature as he dragged a woody arm back to the makeshift camp. He dropped it into the circle of stones.

The [Archflame Coal] surged with heat and despite the wood being dripping wet, it went up into a crackling blaze and the dwindling Heat of the coal finally ticked up as its flame consumed the golem’s arm.

Current Heat Level: 6/150

Sam grinned and, dragging his blade behind him, lumbered back to the dead creature to feed the flame. He would never let it get that low again.