Chapter 69

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Chapter 069: Shadow Rampage

The wizard chanted a spell quickly, and the Gnoll instantly burst into flames.

Instead of backing down after the Gnoll started shouting, it became even more frenzied. It screamed and swung its club again towards Jesse. Jesse lifted his sword and deflected the blow to the side. The impact made his right arm go numb, causing his sword to fall to the ground.

When the Gnoll warrior saw Jesse drop his weapon and was about to strike with his club, Jesse quickly used a spell called Fear. The Gnoll’s smile vanished instantly, it paused, its shoulder trembled twice. Jesse swiftly drew Gakin’s dagger from his waist and stabbed it under the Gnoll’s jaw from below, piercing through its mouth and emerging from the side of its lips.

Jesse pulled out the dagger and stabbed it into the Gnoll’s eye socket!

These two stabs were lightning-fast. The Gnoll suddenly snapped out of its shock from before, howling in pain as it fell off the city wall. But Jesse hadn’t had time to pull out the dagger stuck in its eye socket.

"My… this!"

This dagger could be worth a lot of money.

He saw the Gnoll fall into the forest, and from the nearby city wall, another pair of dumbfounded eyes looked up at him.

"Ah!"

The imp yelled loudly. Jesse turned around and saw a Gnoll on fire grabbing Saenor. Jesse quickly picked up a sword, rushed over, chopped off the Gnoll’s arm, and kicked it off the city wall.

The imp freed itself from the Gnoll’s claws and excitedly roared, "My master still cares about me, my master doesn’t want me to die!"

"Pay attention to me!" Jesse shouted, but the Gnoll that had been staring at him pounced.

Seeing the Gnolls climbing the watchtower walls in groups, Jesse and Saenor knew they couldn’t stop them. Suddenly, Saenor chanted a completely different spell.

An explosion erupted from Jesse’s right hand. He was astonished to see his sword burst into flames!

"Master, you’ve been empowered, hurry!" Saenor cackled strangely.

Empowered?

After the sword started burning, Jesse felt a surge of courage filling his heart.

The fire crackled and burned brightly, hurting his eyes, but as he stared, he felt like he could see a flickering soul inside it.

Jesse gripped his sword tightly and swung it at the two Gnolls in front of him. The one in the back got scared by the burning fire and fell down.

As a Gnoll tried to sneak up behind him, Jesse turned around and swung at them, causing the Gnolls to retreat several steps back against the city wall.

The Gnolls seemed to be very afraid of the roaring fire, and they hesitated to come closer. Even those who were approaching were now unsure.

Jesse understood why. These flames were not ordinary fire but were controlled and fueled by an unknown force, a corrupted fire.

The courage he felt earlier was not the bravery one has in facing enemies, but the chaos and killing brought by demonic power.

Every time he swung his sword, he heard the flames making a strange wailing sound as they cut through the air. The imps behind him kept igniting the frightened Gnolls with sacrifices, adding to the eerie atmosphere at the top of the watchtower.

Somehow, he wanted to embrace this madness.

The Gnolls wanted to kill him, strangle him with ropes, chop off his limbs, impale him from mouth to back with iron rods, and roast him for dinner.

They aimed to capture Stonewatch Keep and eliminate all the humans here.

But Jesse would never allow it.

He wanted to kill these monsters, burn their fur, chop off their hands and feet. These foolish half-dog half-human creatures did not deserve to live.

A surge of hatred welled up from within, as he looked at these dim-witted, deformed human-like monsters with awkward movements. They seemed like a complete mistake, twisted and hybrid for some unknown reason. He raised his sword, the flames on it surged like a scorching hot wind swirling around his body, drowning out the excited cries of the monsters with the wailing of the inferno.

The fiery storm gradually darkened from its original brightness, turning red, emitting a strange purple glow.

"Die, all of you!"

Jesse’s speed was so fast that even he couldn’t believe it. The sword pierced straight into the head of a Gnoll, its skull bursting in a crackling sound of searing flesh, juices splattering. Jesse pulled out the sword horizontally, slashing into another Gnoll’s shoulder, then thrusting it into the chest, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air.

"You want to kill me, right? Well, who’s dead now?! Where are your heads? Where are your hands and feet?"

Jesse kept shouting, slashing the Gnolls crawling towards him into a mangled mess of burnt and gray flesh, swinging his sword countless times until there was nothing standing around, the ground covered with shredded meat and limbs, the Gnolls’ terrified wails echoing.

Everything seemed to calm down again.

At that moment, Jesse heard loud horse hooves getting closer and closer, the blowing horns drowning out all the Gnolls’ cries.

The monsters retreated, running away like crazy. Some were so scared that they jumped directly from the city walls into the forest. The Gnolls in front of Jesse also fled, they were already on the verge of collapsing. They must have been afraid of the cavalry, afraid of the main force of Stonewatch Keep returning, that’s why they ran away, Jesse reassured himself.

In front of him were piles of bodies, severed limbs, and Gnoll corpses with only half a body left, all burning with a dark red evil fire.

He rushed forward and stomped on the fire relentlessly until he extinguished it all, but at that moment, there was only one word left in his mind – Shadow Flame.

Is this the Shadow Flame?

Logically, it’s impossible.

Shadow Flame is the breath of a black dragon, it is the scorching lava spewed out by a black dragon contaminated with Shadow Power.

And he was just a regular human, and Saenor was just a weak demon, how could they create such an evil fire element disaster?

A simple guess, maybe the imp ignited his sword and the shadows inside him contaminated the imp’s evil fire, eventually forming a Shadowflame similar to a black dragon’s breath.

But before he could think about how to make it work, he suddenly felt very tired and had a pounding headache.

After all, his body couldn’t handle such intense fighting for long. It was just a temporary strain.

"Master?" Saenor cautiously asked from behind. Jesse, holding his forehead, turned to look at the imp. He had never seen the imp act so cautiously before. Leaning against the battlement, some faint or distinct blood vessels had appeared on his skin, and his brain buzzed with each heartbeat.

Suddenly, his right hand stung, causing the sword to slip from his grip and fall to the ground. The sword had turned black and bent, even the crossguard had deformed from the heat, burning his index finger and palm.

Jesse watched as the skin on his hand gradually changed color under the corrosive shadow. He felt around for his clothes, hoping to find something to bandage it with, only to realize that bandages wouldn’t help against this shadow burn.

"Master, take this and drink it!" The imp held out a bottle of Shadow Protection Potion, saying, "This is the only bottle, master!"

Jesse grabbed the bottle and drank it in one gulp, leaning against the city wall. The burning sensation in his throat instantly sharpened his senses many times over.

The excruciating pain of the shadow corruption on his hand eased significantly, and the unholy fire burning in his chest slowly extinguished.

While the ongoing damage was neutralized, the scarring on his right hand remained unchanged.

He stared blankly ahead until the hot night cooled down, and the sounds of people in Stonewatch Keep gradually drowned out the howls of the Gnolls.

"Was it you who sent the signal?"

Jesse suddenly looked up and realized that a few soldiers were standing in front of him, and imp was nowhere to be seen.