Li Jiayu had not engaged in close-quarters combat for a very long time.
Since mastering the summoning arts, he had relied on his summoned beasts to lead charges and take the brunt of battle. When foes proved troublesome, he might at most harry them with a spell; at his former height, hand-to-hand fighting contributed little to victory.
Now, reborn, Li Jiayu was no longer a wielder of storms and legions. He was merely an ordinary student, and before the snarling, nightmarish insects his only reliance was the fire axe in his hand.
His odds of survival in this fight were only seventy percent.
If he prevailed, he would claim his first talisman—
But if he failed, the entire class would be buried with him.
"Hah!"
His pupils contracted to pinpoints. The calm that usually steadied him shattered in an instant; eyes and hands synchronized flawlessly. In a single fluid motion he unleashed a perfect swing.
Clang.
A metallic rasp filled the air. Pain lanced up both his arms; the axe jolted his wrists until they nearly dislocated. Yet fortune favored him: in his first clash with the Scythe Beetle he suffered only a minor wound. The beast's wicked mandible sliced the air at his face, leaving a faint, bloody gash upon his pale cheek.
Li Jiayu's axe, however, struck true in the brief instant of passing—an overhand backhand cleave driven by the momentum of evasion. Under the tremendous force the beetle's black carapace yielded as if to a thunderbolt—
Thick insect flesh was rent—
Bones snapped like brittle timber—and with ruthless dispatch Li Jiayu severed nearly half of the creature's body.
Three ebony legs, slick with glaucous ichor, together with a portion of wing, tore free from the torso.
To lose half one's body in such fashion was catastrophic; even an insect so dull to pain writhed as if scorched by agony.
Ssssh.
A keening cry exploded from the beetle. Struck off-balance, its mangled mass careened outward—slamming into a nearby table beneath which a student had been hiding.
"Aaah!"
A single, horrifying shriek. The beetle's scythe-like mandibles sheared through the tabletop's veneer and lodged into the thin sheet of steel beneath.
Luck held: the beast could not pierce solid metal, or the hiding pupil would have been crushed beyond hope. Still, the brute's inertial force hurled the student clear; he tumbled and lay dazed amid the wreckage. The beetle collapsed, its fractured wings fluttering in desperate spasms; three remaining legs scrabbled futilely as the mandibles snapped and clacked, attempting reflexively to catch those nearby.
Everyone realized at once who lay nearest—the danger closest to Sun Weiwei.
Whether spurred by pure instinct or a sudden burst of madness, her face flushed scarlet as she lunged at the insect's rear. One brutal swing of her hammer struck a hind joint, staggering the creature. Enraged, it spun with blinding speed and fixed its remaining scythe on her—but Lin Zhibin and another boy had already hefted two tables and brought them down upon the left flank of the beetle—the very wound Li Jiayu had carved.
Creak.
The beetle skittered two meters, its damaged side spewing green blood. Pain birthed fear; its wings beat furiously in a last attempt to flee.
Too late.
The hunter had become the hunted.
"Thinking of escaping? As if."
Li Jiayu had recovered from the earlier impact. Feet planted, axe raised, he bore down like a tiger upon the beetle's exposed, pallid abdomen—and struck with lethal intent.
Close-quarters combat, crude and brutal, ignited a feral fervor in him. A war-cry built in his chest, the axe descending with all his force as if to split the world.
Tear.
The sound was like fabric rent. The comparatively tender belly of the beetle opened under the blow, a gash nearly a meter long and twenty centimeters deep exposing ruined organs—far worse than the half-body wound before. The creature's thorax and abdomen were devastated.
Having been driven from the air, the beetle fell as a laden cart plunges off a cliff. Li Jiayu pursued in three strides and brought the axe down again.
Thud, thud, thud.
In a relentless flurry he hacked at its head and eyes—each blow delivered with every ounce of his strength—until the skull was crushed, warped, and the crimson compound eyes burst, disgorging viscous green ichor.
"Li Jiayu... Jiayu... is it—dead?"
A girl watched him—cold, decisive, the executioner's composure—her mind racing between fear and a perverse admiration. Under ordinary circumstances she would have called him mad, but at the world's end, faced with such monstrous savagery, his ferocity took on the air of a master at work.
So handsome...
How had she never noticed before? Her cheeks warmed at her own folly—what a ridiculous time for infatuation. And worse, she feared that Li Jiayu had seen her earlier humiliation, that he would now despise her.
Li Jiayu, of course, did not know this. Even if he did, he had no wish to be a protector for every enamored pupil who happened to fancy him; affection from a schoolgirl would not sway him.
"Phew... finally dead," he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. "That was close. If not for your help in dragging and distracting it, it might have killed two more before I finished it off."
"It's true... did we really slay such a terrible thing?""It feels like a dream.""Li Jiayu—you're incredible. How did you do it?""So calm. Sharper than a street fighter or a soldier. If it were me, I'd have been torn apart in the first strike."
Faces that had been numb to terror now flooded with tears of relief. Though greater dangers still loomed, this victory kindled hope. In their despair, the sight of that slashed beetle proved a salve; a single spark of hope can move people to weeping.
"You truly surprised me," one said. "How can you be so formidable? Are you—truly a reincarnated god?"
"No," Li Jiayu replied coolly. "I'm merely human. If you keep your wits, none of you need be far worse than I am."
He glared down at the beetle's twitching form, then planted his boot upon its ruptured head, grinding its ruined eye.
"So," he whispered, "my talisman... I have it at last. What follows is a gamble. If my offering summons a worthy beast, I will thank the goddess of fortune—though she has never favored me before."