Foaming at the mouth, deadly killing stick in his hand. The little gargoyle was ready to make good on his promise of sticking me like a pig. But he was still blind, but that wouldn't last forever as he immediately realised it wasn't magic but a status message. I could see the realisation on his face. I think he just found the dismiss button.

  Eyes now focused, trained on me without a single distraction. The warrior was ready, spear in hand, his will affirmed and deadly intent in his heart.

  "I don't know how you did this. But I'll extract the truth from your corpse."

  "Are you a necromancer?" I casually asked, raising my sword in defence.

  "What?" he said, stopping in his tracks.

  The gargoyle was perplexed, but not enough to lower his guard. I asked because I was curious if he had such capabilities to extract answers from the dead. If that is the case, he would have to be a necromancer or maybe a cleric.

  "Yeah, you would need to be a necromancer to bring me back for answers, right? Or maybe a cleric? But this place looks very godless." I pointed out.

  Which was kind of a crappy assumption. Maybe one of the guest gods got involved on Grimgard. I heard rumours that the upper management was bringing in other deities from outside the universe.

  "Shut up, human!" He screamed, and I didn't feel like shutting up.

  "Clerk." I corrected, but that didn't seem to matter to him.

  The spear came at me like a pissed-off rhino. All rage and power backing the entire weapon's lunge. Before it could skewer me, I activated my broadcast skill. With a thought configuring it to max volume and myself to about a quarter of that.

  Eagerly I awaited the next track in my random blast your eardrums playlist, and very familiar music played. Suddenly and without warning, somebody kicked a door open to a glittery nineties dance club. Someone set the rapid synth beat to max, making it bouncy and loud.

  I grinned as the full weight of the spicy girls descended upon this poor soul. The entire group just told this monster of myth what they really, really want. The suddenness of the maxed-out music interrupted his lunge and gave me time to sidestep and then slice his midsection.

  The moment my blade touched his skin, the area turned to stone in an instant. The screeching sound of metal against stone showed no damage. Not letting the momentum go, I went forward and turned to slice his back. Again meeting skin made of stone, with barely a crack.

  Seeing the futility of continuing strikes, I sped away to get some distance. Regrouping to come up with a better plan. In the meantime, Gravok got his mind in order and turned to me, eyes bloodshot and rage at its peak.

  The chilling sight of an extremely angry gargoyle as a girl band played on repeat in the background made the whole situation surreal.

  With a roar of pure wrath, Gravok went into a dead sprint, his wings outstretched, he reached me before I could even think of fleeing. The glow that briefly surrounded him suggested he used a skill to boost his speed.

  Spear against sword, not exactly good odds. He lunged, and I tried to parry the spear, but it was a feint. His grip reversed, and instead of impaling my chest, he went for the shoulder.

  Now, my complete lack of training in combat made itself known. Pain struck me in consecutive waves, odd since it was only a single stab wound. But with the shimmering spear tip, magical stuff was afoot.

  Alas, I didn't have the time to ponder this, with the excruciating pain and all. By instinct as if guided by the beast inside, I performed a counterattack. Except my internal beast didn't have a cool bloodline, and I just flailed about trying to bash the bastard with the flat of my blade.

  Brutal hands grabbed me off the ground and lifted me up. Spear still stuck in my shoulder, he pressed me against the wall and twisted the blade.

  "Die!" he screamed, frothing at the mouth.

  My eyes grew heavy, blood flowed down my shoulder and drenched my suit. Oh, that stuff will never come out. With a squelch of flesh tearing, the spear withdrew and made ready to plunge into my chest.

  A deadly gleam in his eye assured him of his victory. And then a massive fur ball leapt onto his face and scratched his eyes out. Jeremy came out of nowhere and went to town on the man.

  I was bleeding out, barely holding myself up. Luckily, the wound wasn't enough to kill me, and I had little stamina left for my next move. Just as Jeremy went flying, thrown by a furious Gargoyle.

  Using that moment, I charged him with all my meagre stamina could muster. Delivering a kinetic strike to his chest, cracking the petrified flesh and punching the air out of his lungs.

  We fell to the floor, his spear scattered to the side and me on top. In a pain-fueled rage, I raised my sword and plunged the weapon into cracked flesh. It sank deep, biting into the skin that desperately tried to seal over with stone.

  Still alive and coughing up blood. I tried to withdraw my sword, but found it stuck. Looking down, I saw the steel blade petrifying to stone, somehow fusing to Gravok's body. Not wanting to lose my weapon, I put all my force points into tearing it away.

  The sound of a stone snapping in two signalled my success. Except the weapon I retrieved was practically a handle, absent the blade. Despite this setback, I dropped the weapon and withdrew a machete.

  Like a madman, I tried to bury the weapon in his skull. But he kept turning himself to stone. Not backing down, I kept hacking and praying. Finally, after I don't know how many strikes, the petrifying effect lessened, and the blade sank true.

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  Gravok fell limply, his body twitching. Which made sense, as he's got my machete embedded in his nervous system. Or whatever Gargoyle brains used for such things. It could be magic, who knows.

  With his death, I could finally rest, but only for a second. The pain that my adrenaline was so helpfully suppressing came back in a wave of suffering. Quickly, I clutched the wound in my shoulder, trying to staunch the bleeding. I leaned back against the wall, attempting some semblance of comfort.

  Not sure how long I lingered there, trying to keep myself from bleeding out. Can you even die from a shoulder wound? I didn't want to find out, but it would be good to know beforehand.

  Minutes, or perhaps hours, passed by as I sat there. Exhausted beyond reason and wanting to sleep, but knowing that was a bad idea. Jeremy came by. I think I saw him for a moment before a pain struck my hand.

  "Ow, bloody hell, Jer, mind the claws." I said out of habit. The little bastard liked to scratch me whenever I was about to fall asleep on the job.

  Sometimes I stopped drinking energy drinks. Hours of uninterrupted consciousness are not good for mental health. But I could see the love and compassion of my great feline companion. Despite the pain in my hand, he just wanted to keep me from sleeping and bleeding out.

  Looking at the compassionate face of my great friend, I saw nothing but malice and evil. The little bastard was smiling at me, enjoying my suffering. Or that could have just been the blood loss talking.

  "Wake up, asshole." Jeremy hissed. He was right; he needed to stay awake.

  That was a good idea; sleep was bad. Good job, Jer, you are such a smart kitty. I tried petting him and got bitten in response. Another shot of pain woke me up again, and realisation dawned on me.

  "Did you just talk?"

  Jeremy replied with a hiss and then a soft meow. Glaring at the suspicious animal, I chalked it up to blood loss induced hallucinations. But I would monitor this guy; my little feline friend had secrets. Just look at his face; he was hiding things.

  "Wait a second, I'm feeling oddly better." I noted as my gaze shifted to my wound.

  It had stopped bleeding and was slowly but surely knitting together. Scabbing over at a visible rate. Was I regenerating? Then it hit me; my resilience attribute was based on healing potion effects and reinforcement magic.

  In bringing up my character sheet, the truth became apparent. My health was slowly ticking back up. It was pretty low, under half, but slowly rising.

  "Well, isn't that cool?"

  With my life no longer on the line, I relaxed. Healing took half an hour, not bad with such a wound. But now it was thinking time, but even before that it was time to rob some corpses.

  "Woah, this is going to become normalised for me." I realised and then shrugged.

  Stealing from the dead was called looting down here. And as a wise man from Earth once said. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. But probably put a limit on that, since the Romans were pretty messed up. I mean, if you weren't Roman, you were scum.

  [Stoneward Spear. Description: A spear of the gargoyle champion, able to summon up the power of heaviness itself. Enchantments: Shockwave. Requirements: 12 Strength.]

  Featuring a cool enchantment, the spear was decent. The image of me sending powerful shockwaves from a magic spear came to the forefront of my imagination. The fantasy looked really cool and epic. My closer examination of the enchantment sadly extinguished the fantasy.

  The damn thing required you to infuse mana to perform the attack. It was a spear, not with its own reserve of mana, but a channel for the wielder's power. And what is the issue? It's because I had no magic! Not even a mana bar! The mana on the character sheet was just a placeholder.

  Perhaps I could gain the power of magic someday, but right now, it wasn't an option. Examining the spear, the sudden and intense urge to cast aside the useless thing. I squashed that foolish thought. It was still a well-crafted spear and even if I couldn't use the magic within. I could still stab people with it.

  It was better than nothing as I was running out of machetes. My two machetes had already dulled, and a vital piece was missing from my newly gained sword. But sitting here wouldn't solve my problems, so I got up and looted the wizard.

  [Volkaran Eyeball (x5). Description: The preserved left eye of a Volkaran. Arcane Affinity: Divination.]

  [Pebble Of Iron (x3). Description: Iron pebble made from a deceased gargoyle. Arcane Affinity: Protection.]

  The items inside the former wizard's bag were pretty generic spell components and all useless to me. Despite my lack of magic, I looted his corpse anyway. Dropping his satchel of eyes and pebbles into my suitcase of wonders. I scanned the room for more loot and found only empty corpses. Absent souls and material goods.

  Looking down at my broken sword, I tried to think of a way to fix it. The enchantment didn't require mana infusion; it was a passive buff with a cooldown. Cooldown-type magic was the only piece of magic I could use. They charged up on ambient mana, thus the lag time between uses.

  "Maybe I could fix it somehow, even integrate it into our system."

  The thought just came to me, and why not? If we could integrate a person, for example myself. Why couldn't we integrate an item or even create new Jenny-approved gear? The questions came one after the other, and only my girl had the answers. Regardless, I feel a crafting montage coming on.

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