“What?”
The elf giant looked at me as if I had just declared myself king of the fucking world while standing ankle deep in corpses.
There was confusion first.
Then disbelief followed.
Then, as the bodies behind me began to rise one after another, his expression shifted.
His eyes widened.
Not in fear.
Not yet.
But in genuine surprise.
I could almost see the thought forming in his head.
What the hell is this human?
The reanimated soldiers stepped forward in uneven synchronization, weapons lifting, hollow gazes locking onto the living. The newly upgraded Rank B Shielded Spear Elf moved to the front instinctively, shield raised with improved steadiness.
I guess this is a normal reaction.
Summoners were not rare. But effective summons?
That was another story.
Most summoned creatures were temporary. Fragile. Decorative distractions at best. The kind of shit that fizzled out after one good hit.
Necromancers like me?
Extremely rare.
And ones that could rebuild an army mid battle?
Even rarer. I must thank this system for this amazing skill.
But the giant did not look afraid for long.
He snorted.
A deep, mocking sound.
“Tricks,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders as if loosening up before real exercise. “I’ve crushed better.”
And then he moved.
The hammer swung again.
Not downward this time.
Sideways.
A wide, brutal sweep that sent three of my lesser reanimated soldiers flying like broken dolls. Armor dented. Bones snapped. One of them split in half on impact.
My brute stepped forward to block the next strike but was smashed backward regardless, skidding across the ground with a heavy thud.
The female elf samurai tried to close distance, slicing at the giant’s calf, but her blade barely scratched the thick armored plating.
For a giant like him, he must have tons of battle experience.
The way he shifted his stance.
The way he anticipated angles.
The way he repositioned after every swing.
This wasn’t just raw strength he is depending on…. This is what I call training.
Plus, because of that, he probably saw foes stronger than me before.
Which meant in his mind…
I was just another pest.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He laughed as he knocked another summon aside.
“You think numbers matter?” he bellowed. “I’ve walked through battlefields thicker than this!”
Maybe.
But he had never fought me. And I was about to show him he was wrong.
I tightened my grip on the branch.
My cooldown had long since reset.
The ability was ready.
This is it.
I inhaled once.
Then sprinted.
Not toward his chest.
Not toward his arms.
His legs.
I darted between the chaos, slipping past a falling corpse, sliding under the arc of his returning hammer swing. The ground shook with each of his movements, but I stayed low.
He noticed too late.
I reached his leg and drove the branch straight into the gap between his armor plates.
It pierced through the thinner section.
But his skin-
His skin was thick and definitely dense.
It felt like trying to stab into layered leather reinforced with iron.
“Is that it?” he scoffed, looking down at me.
I gritted my teeth.
I pulled the branch out.
And stabbed again.
And again.
Each thrust deeper than the last. (A/N: That sounds weird without context XD)
The giant roared, more annoyed than hurt, and finally dropped his hammer to free his hands.
The weapon crashed onto the ground with a heavy impact.
Even unarmed, he was terrifying.
His fist alone was the size of my torso.
“The fuck’s wrong with you?” he roared, bending down to grab me.
His hand slammed into the dirt where I had been standing a split second earlier.
I rolled to the side, popped back up, and sprinted around him to his blind spot.
He turned slower than I moved.
That was his weakness.
Size.
I reached his foot.
And without hesitation, I dug the branch deep into it.
This time, I felt it.
The activation was like a pulse.
The branch vibrated faintly.
A small leaf sprouted from the wound.
The giant froze for half a second.
“What the hell—”
The leaf grew.
Then the stem thickened.
But it was not a vine this time.
It was bamboo. Green and 100% solid.
It was even growing steadily. A few inches every second.
The giant tried to shake his leg violently.
He punched at the growth.
But it did not stop.
It thickened. Hardened.
And then—
The tip sharpened.
Instantly.
No gradual tapering.
It became a spear.
And in the span of a heartbeat- It shot upward.
Straight through flesh.
Through the muscle.
Through the organs.
Up the entire length of his massive body.
And out of the top of his skull.
Silence.
For one second.
Then—
Blood.
A massive torrent poured downward. Not a small spill and not even a trickle.
It was a fucking flood.
This was a giant roughly ten meters tall.
That meant ten meters worth of ruptured arteries and shattered tissue.
The blood cascaded down like a red waterfall, soaking the dirt path beneath him. It splattered outward in thick arcs, coating nearby corpses and staining the ground deep crimson.
Some of it hit my pants.
Warm.
Sticky.
Disgusting.
“Yuck,” I muttered instinctively.
But I did not look away.
The giant’s eyes rolled upward.
His massive body swayed once.
Twice.
Then collapsed sideways with an earth shaking crash that sent dust rising around us.
The bamboo remained impaled through him like a grotesque monument.
I stood there, breathing hard, covered in blood that was not mine.
Holy shit…
Around me, the remaining living elves stared in horror.
One of them dropped his weapon.
Another stumbled backward.
Their commander.
Their towering wall of confidence…. Dead.
And I had done it with a fucking branch.
I slowly looked down at my hands.
Then at the body.
Then at the system window that I knew was about to appear.
Please tell me you’re worth a lot.
