Eri shot forward like a greyhound, greatsword already swinging in a wide arc for a deep slice out the gate.

The demon met the strike with its longsword, sparks flying as enchanted Nathir steel met regular unenchanted tarnished steel.

The impact should have sent any normal opponent stumbling, but the demon absorbed the blow like it was nothing, blackrot-enhanced muscles rippling beneath its skin.

The skeleton immediately pivoted, using his blade like a massive shield to block the demon's counter-slash.

Wade watched the exchange with growing dread as he prepared his gear. Eri wasn't winning. He was surviving. Every move the skeleton made cost him. His health bar ticked down with a mana-fueled dodge, and ticked down again as he empowered the greatsword for another cut. The blackrotten demon moved like muscle memory alone guided its blade - perfect form, zero thought.

And like the wolves before it, the blackrot creature wanted nothing to do with the angry skeleton and everything to do with the Wade-sized snack hiding further out in the ruins. In fact, Wade was pretty sure that's the only reason Eri hadn't been bulldozed downwards. The blackrotten demon just wanted to get to him, and shove off the skeleton harassing it.

Wade took a breath. Trust Eri to do his role, he just needed to handle his. Panic got nobody anywhere. He held the grenade in his main hand, and then chucked a stone at his foot and triggered the dodge. Any direction really, it didn't matter.

The moment he'd completed his dodge, he put the grenade back into the holster and pulled out his glock. The lightning dodge buff appeared on his stats sheet. Nine seconds left.

Twenty five percent of his main hand weapon as electric damage for his next attack. So if his main hand held a grenade when he'd done the dodge, what was the damage of his next attack, using a bullet to deliver that pain directly?

Eight seconds on the buff, plenty of time. The buff said his next attack would have all that damage addition. So if he missed his next attack, he'd be screwed.

He focused. Glock aiming down at the struggling demon fighting off the skeleton.

Now.

"Eri! Duck!"

The skeleton's mana flared blue, and a kick against the mud propelled him sideways in a blur of motion that was way too fast to be natural.

Perfect. Wade opened fire.

The bullet cracked out, and dug right into the demon's oversized chest. Electric damage zapped out… and did absolutely nothing.

Uh oh.

The demon saw only two things: Future-meal had made a sound, and the annoying skeleton had gotten conveniently out of the way. The second part was the important one: So it made a very happy direct rush right for Wade, teeth gnashing.

The water master boon came in clutch. Wade turned and leaped out of the ruins like an oversized frog, hit the muddy ground, and started sprinting as fast as he could. His limp vanished, forgotten as adrenaline rushed through his body with an electric tingle.

Just in time, the demon reached a hand out and almost caught Wade - until Eri's greatsword slashed right into it, nearly cutting it off.

Level 59 Blackrotten Greater Infernal Essence - 91%

The demon pulled its hand free, twisted around, and attacked again with its sword. There was no sign of pain, and Wade knew that feeling. He'd had Blackrot before - all pain stopped being a thing. All he'd felt was just a minor sting, enough to remind him where the damage was and nothing more.

And the other part about Blackrot was immediately obvious: The deep wound Eri cleaved into the demon's forearm sealed itself within seconds, black mist knitting flesh back together. Meanwhile, every block Eri made rattled his bones, every near-miss forced another expensive burst of mana to escape.

Wade's hand tightened on the grenade. The demon wasn't just stronger than Eri, it had sustainability. Because every mana trick Eri was using came at a permanent cost of the skeleton's healthbar.

Then he heard the sound of metal snapping as he was midsprint making distance.

Wade looked behind him and saw Eri standing back up, cracking his neck as if getting ready for more, the Nathir longsword glowing a faint blue. If the skeleton could cackle, he probably would be laughing like a maniac right about now.

The demon, on the other hand, had stopped to stare at its own sword: It was sliced straight through, looking more like a poor man's broken dagger.

High quality Nathir metal, powered by enchantments from Eri, pitted against whatever the demon had been using for all these years, likely kept in terrible condition.

"Good shit, Eri!" Wade called out, and the skeleton shot him a quick salute before turning back to his prey.

Overall danger was still there. The demon was still completely Blackrotten with a high biomass, which meant it could punch hard enough to break Eri's bones, so that was a problem on its own to deal with.

And also that healing factor. Mostly the healing factor. Because in under twenty seconds, the demon was back to 100% health - but Wade was also back to 100% stamina and far enough from the fight to start thinking in peace while the skeleton and demon went back into a snarling fight.

First: Why hadn't the grenade caused any damage? He decided he needed to test whether the lightning damage had any effect at all, or if the boss's high level made things impossible.

Wade repeated his dodge roll routine, and this time kept the glock in his main hand. Same conditions he'd done with the wolves.

"Eri, round two!" He called out, and once more the skeleton dove out of the way to give Wade a clear shot.

The Blackrotten demon wasn't dumb about it. It had noticed the last time the tasty meal had shouted something, the skeleton got out of the way and opened a direct line to its target.

So the demon instantly sprinted right for Wade without a shred of hesitation, mouth open wide, teeth looking to bit down on a happy meal.

Wade shot it right through the gullet.

Lightning sprang through it, causing its legs to bunch up and spasm. It gave a shocked screech, which rapidly turned into a highly pissed off screech as it crushed into the mud, rolling over itself. The Blackrotten empowered sprint's inertia had turned against it, leaving it way out of position and scrambling back onto its legs again.

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Level 59 Blackrotten Greater Infernal Essence - 94%

Okay.

So a greatsword cut into the forearm dealt more damage than a bullet's worth of damage plus twenty five percent of that same bullet as electric damage. And once more it didn't mean much since that things was regenerating like the asshole it was. A few seconds and it would be back to 100%.

Wade raced off, abusing his water mastery boon as the demon got back to its feet, legs shaking off the electric remains.

At least the electric damage meant Wade could properly retreat at anytime. So long as he had stamina in the tank to dodge roll with.

Eri sprinted and jumped, descending down on it without mercy, greatsword glowing bright blue.

The demon turned on itself out of reflex, lifting the sliced off blade to parry - and swiped the half-cut sword stupidly through nothing. Its reach was simply too short.

Muscle memory. Too used to the longsword length. The stump in its hand did nothing to prevent the skeleton from landing on its shoulders while a Nathir sword stabbed directly through the neck and out the other side.

Wow, that looked gnarly.

Damage wise, it took the demon down by 27%. A critical hit. The thing was clearly pissed from that, because it swiped out blindly for Eri, and the skeleton deftly escaped, yanking out his sword with a push off his feet.

The healthbar was regenerating fast, but that didn't matter - Wade had already gotten away scott free.

71% on the healthbar, and now forced back into a one on one against Eri.

Despite losing the sword, the enemy level didn't go down, but Wade had a suspicion this was some other quirk of the System.

He cleared his head about that, not the time to start thinking levels during an engagement. If they won or made it out of this fight alive, he'd go back to this and really give it a think.

Win first, theorycraft later.

Options floated to Wade's mind as he focused. The electric damage had taken its toll, so the grenade's lack of results here was due to something about the grenade itself. Either that, or explosive damage really didn't affect Blackrot at all.

Which was a disturbingly possible situation.

Blackrot would be the natural counter to bullets. Unless they were large enough to blow entire holes into a target.

If physics were a thing, then this demon just couldn't be killed by a glock unless he somehow got all these shots straight through the skull.

Except physics could be messed with. Because it had a health bar. And if Wade could burn through that health bar down to 0%, he'd win. The System didn't seem to care if all those shots went through the thing's hand and left the rest completely fine.

If that health bar said 0%, then that demon should be dead. Same thing that happened to Lapushka. And while bullets didn't do lethal damage or lasting damage - they did do damage.

The glock had fifteen rounds completely fresh. If each bullet did roughly five percent damage to it, then that would be roughly three quarters of this thing's overall health.

Which meant mag dumping was a perfectly viable strategy.

Problem: He didn't have fifteen shots right this moment. If he tried to mag dump right now, he might not make it to 0%.

If he missed even one shot, or hit the metal blade instead, he might just piss it off and be in bad shape.

His plan snapped into place: Mag dump only as a last resort, or if the demon is within execution range health bar wise. And execution range would technically be 75% health if he had a full magazine and zero error in his shots, so to round out murphy's law, he put execution range at 40% health. That would let him go full tilt on the damage and still have room for error.

When he got back home to Earth, Wade added another to-do list item: Buy himself those costco-sized extended magazines that were larger than his arm. Mag dump his way into beating anything.

For now, he didn't have that.

He did have a grenade and the original problem to solve: Why hadn't it worked?

Eri continued battling the creature in the background as Wade schemed, though only seconds had passed. He was leaping from assumption to assumption like a caffeinated hamster.

The only thing he had spent time actually calculating was the napkin math to determine his total damage per second with the Glock's fire rate set to Texas.

Could blackrot be just a perfect counter to a grenade? Pressure waves would crush and break internal organs, except the blackrot could certainly outheal that or even be immune to it. Moving more like jello even, completely fine. Hell, blackrot might be able to insta-heal from pressure damage, since it's everywhere, and starts healing damage everywhere all at once.

The grenade shrapnel itself would be like harder hitting bullets. Completely healable.

And heat wise, the grenades didn't really do that super well. Sure the very center was going to be real hot, but as heat expanded outwards the square-cube law applied and rapidly dissipated that heat. Burn damage was generally not something grenades did, the main aim was on the blast wave and shrapnel.

So was this demon just flat out immune to blast damage or not? Because this was all speculation right now.

He could find out by actually using the grenade, which had a dozen ways that could backfire on all of them. And 100% guarantee of using up one of the few grenades he'd brought.

No, there was another possible theory Wade had: It hadn't been primed, so if Wade had tried to use it as is, it might as well be a thrown rock.

The System wanted him to live in the danger zone. "Fine, fuck you." Wade hissed, and pulled the pin.

He kept his thumb firmly on the spoon, held it tight in his right hand while he threw another rock at his foot and started the dodge roll bullshit.

He prayed to everything out there that while his animation lock happened, his thumb remained on that spoon.

Blessedly, it did.

When he was back on his feet, he still had the energy to hold that spoon down. Wade worked fast to carefully stuff the pin back into the grenade, before hooking it back on his grenade bandolier. Then he drew the glock and called out.

But the blackrotten demon was capable of recognizing patterns. Last two times its future-meal had yelled out, the skeleton got out of the way.

And so the monster went all in and rushed right for Wade, correctly predicting it would have a clear line to supper.

Second problem is that last time it did so, future-meal managed to hurt it somehow. It didn't know what was used or how, but it had come up with a counter-tactic: The demon full on leaped with Blackrot empowered strength, hands outstretched to the side as if it were going to tackle him down. Even if it got hit, it would still land right into Wade.

It felt like time slowed down for Wade as he saw the monster's maw fully open, filled with teeth and black rotten mist. Falling straight for him.

Wade leveled his gun in the face of death.

I cast gun motherfucker.

He squeezed the trigger.

The round catapulted from his Glock, flew right through into the gullet, down to the stomach and lodged deep inside.

The health went down five percent.

And then electric damage surged out from within. The bar rammed straight down to 21%, deep in the red.

Holy shit. It worked.

But nearly dead, wasn't completely dead.

Still spasming in midair, the giant monster was sailing right for Wade at a speed that would knock him off his feet, and have him land under the thing's entire weight.

And if that happened, there was no running away, just an immediate mauling by a royally pissed off half-electrocuted monster.

Wade held his ground, tensed his feet… and then Lightning Dodged forward. Into the danger.

It might have been the first time he'd actually used that boon like it was intended.

His body immediately sprang to action and began to roll into the air - right at the demon's maw. And then went through it all, immaterial.

He rolled back onto his feet, the System released its control over his body.

Not even a blink of an eye passed before the demon had sailed by, out of reach, crushing into the mud and ground, still spasming like a seizure victim.

22% health now, already climbing back up, the shock dissipating.

Eri was still on the other end, speeding to catch up to the demon before it could turn and maul Wade. He wouldn't arrive in time.

But that was fine.

Because Wade had already won.

22% health. Execution range.

He smoothly turned, aimed, and then mag dumped every bullet in his gun.

It should have been able to charge through Wade's rain of gunfire, tank the hits and chomp the target.

Instead, it once more spasmed back into the ground on the very first bullet fire - because Wade had dodge rolled through the lunge, and that meant dodge rolling through damage. The boon had triggered.

His first shot had been to incapacitate the demon. The next dozen were to put it down.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

18%

13%

8%

3%

0%

He continued firing until the glock clicked empty, breathing hard.

The demon slumped down onto the ground. And it did not get back up.

Challenge Gauntlet complete! One storefront coin added to inventory.

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