Fractured God

It had now been fifteen minutes since the battle had started. The air was saturated with the smell of blood.

The dirt beneath their feet had now formed a burgundy mud from the amount of blood that was being spilt, with the occasional burn marks scattered about.

Ezekiel himself was now caked in blood. To kobolds he looked like a crimson demon sent straight directly from the lowest pits of hell.

Did this not mean they ran away from him? Far from it. They had lost too much to give up now. Looking at the mud, that was made through their comrades' sacrifices, only served to send them into a blinding rage.

Stuck in Ezekiel were various fragments of teeth and claws from the kobolds that tried their damndest to kill him. His breathing was ragged as if he had just run a marathon.

It also didn't help that he was now starting to feel his magic reach its limit. He had to slow down or else he would be stuck fighting this horde without his magic which allowed them to get more and more hits on him.

His claymore was now looking more like a cursed blade than the sword of a high and mighty adventurer. It was dyed in crimson just like himself, and when he had originally got it back it could slice a fruit by dropping one on it.

Now, however, due to the constant slashing of his enemies, it was nothing but an oversized bread knife. Even then he kept hacking the little bastards apart.

Instead of cleanly cutting them into halves, sometimes it would smash them like a club and other times it would only be able to make a cut that went halfway through them.

The corpses stopped looking like they were created by an expert executioner and instead looked like they had been attacked by a wild beast on a rampage that cared very little about the efficiency at which it slaughtered its victims.

On Tibaut's side of things, for better or for worse the kobolds really seemed like they wanted Ezekiel gone. This left him a fraction of the beasts that Ezekiel had to deal with.

Even then it was no walk in the park. He would occasionally land in areas that had mud over it slowly down his evasion noticeably.

While he was grateful for the training Elizabeth had given him, as he was doing better handling the women in his arms' weight than he would otherwise, it still did not change the fact a full-grown woman was within his arms and her weight was slowing him down.

Thankfully the kobolds had not been able to reach her, however, the same could not be said for Tibaut. His legs and his back had various bruises, scratches and bites from the kobolds on them.

His fireballs were sometimes not able to clear areas he could jump to so he was forced to use the few kicking moves he knew while aiming for their heads and necks like his life depended on it, as it did.

If there was something to be grateful for in this hell he stood in, it was the fact they weren't physically gifted enough to dodge his attacks nor had the mental capacity to read his attacks.

He felt exhaustion growing whenever he threw his fireballs but he didn't stop. He knew if he did the woman in his hands and himself would be swarmed by them like ants.

Once that happened they'd be lucky if even their bones were left behind.

Seeing the number of enemies Ezekiel was throwing himself at, it would be laughable if he was not able to deal with this amount of kobolds.

It had now been thirty gruelling minutes.

The crimson that formed the outer coat of Ezekiel's body was now a mixture of his own and the enemies' blood.

His sword had been chipped so much by the battle it was now much more appropriate to call it a crimson saw. The upside of this was the efficiency was no longer inconsistent.

It made an unnerving noise each time it cut through a kobold. You could hear the ripping of muscles as it went through and the shattering of bone.

He could no longer use his magic anymore. He was completely out. No matter how much he tried, he could no longer move his opponents or himself. They would now be free to bite, claw and bash him to their heart's content.

He did still dodge and evade whenever he saw the opportunity however there was very little he could do when surrounded from every angle imaginable. None of this mattered to him. He had a job to do and he was gonna do it.

His sword did not relent in its cruelty. Because if he stopped now, they would, without a doubt, all be killed.

Nothing changed much on Tibaut's side of things other than the fact he was now fighting exhaustion he had only felt a few times before in his life.

He gave it five minutes before he collapsed. The woman in his arms looked as though she had accepted death and was very tightly hugging Tibaut. "Fuck that!" He thought.

"In the next five minutes, I'll kill all these bastards." He said while gritting his teeth so much it was a miracle they didn't crack.

He now had a defiant look in his eyes. He sure as hell wasn't gonna let it end here, not without getting revenge for what happened four years ago.

An hour had passed. The room, for the first time since the battle started, had now been blessed with silence. There was no one left standing.

The battle was over.