Giant Crown Jewels

Zhan stood up and turned towards the giant just as the giant looked down towards him. For a 25 foot tall muscle clad monster, it sure was annoyingly fast. Not only that, but its body was too resilient. When Zhan attacked it just now, he only managed to cut the skin on its hand, whilst he himself was blown back pitifully.

"I usually don't like resorting to this tactic, but I have no other choice. Sorry dude." With that said, he rushed forwards once more.

"GORAAAAAH!" The giant crouched down and stared at Zhan as it roared. Zhan suddenly raised his spear and sliced down at thin air. Strangely, there was a large amount of resistance and an eery grating sound echoed outwards. Zhan was pushed backwards, sliding across the concrete for a few feet until he came to a stop.

The giant's voice seemed to contain some sort of power. He managed to cut through most of it as he felt a strong sense of danger, but the residual waves slammed into his body. He looked fine on the surface, but all of his internal organs and even his brain were now bleeding moderately. If it was just one organ it might be fine, but his entire body felt like it was about to fail at any moment.

"Tch." Zhan ignored the pain and rushed forwards once more.

The crouching giant looked startled, as if not expecting that he would survive that attack. It suddenly stood up and raised its foot once more, but Zhan didn't slow down. His mind was still somewhat blurred from the agility increase and the shockwave in the giant's voice only made this even worse. However, he was beginning to recover now and regained some mental clarity. Along with this, the agility finally came into full effect.

Just as Miu and Nui widened their eyes and the giant's foot was merely hree feet from his head, Zhan suddenly accelerated, narrowly avoiding being crushed once again.

BANG!

The ground exploded behind him. At the same time, Zhan jumped upwards, flying 10 feet into the air.

"Woah!" He panicked slightly as a certain 4 foot limb loosely swung towards him. He ducked his head and narrowly avoided being hit by an extremely embarrassing attack, then readied his spear and finally…

CHI!

Suddenly, the giant froze. Zhan pulled out his spear and grimaced, hardly even able to look at the wound he just created.

"KUAHHHHHH?!" The giant dropped to its knees and grabbed its groin, then two streams of red liquid started pouring out from its eyes. Zhan forced himself not to think about the fact that he just stabbed his opponent in the balls.

He quickly jumped out of the way of the flailing giant, then used a burst of speed to circle around to its other side.

Now in front of the giant, but unnoticed by the still screaming pitiful big guy, Zhan leapt up towards its face, gently placed one foot on the tip of its nose, then used the nose as a foothold as he threw his spear into its left eye.

Puchi!

As usual, the eye was a weak spot. The giant's screaming and crying stopped immediately, then it fell forwards as Zhan leapt on top of its head and took his ride down towards the ground.

BOOM!

The giant fell with an explosive force. Even for a creature as large as itself, it was extremely heavy, probably weighing in the hundreds of tonnes. Its body glowed with a bright white light, which gradually flowed into Zhan's body unbeknownst to anyone but him. After checking his status panel, he smiled before dropping to one knee.

-

Race: Human (Civilian)

Strength: 5.0

Defence: 4.0

Agility: 5.5

Stamina: 5.3

Vitality: 6.5

Perception: 3.0

Intelligence: 2.0

Will: 5.1

Life-points: 2.9

-

That one enemy actually gave him 2.2 life points! Also, his will increased slightly once again. Zhan could feel that he was in a precarious situation right now, he barely even noticed Miu and Nui rushing outside and anxiously waiting as he kneeled on the giant's head. They called out to him, but he didn't respond.

'0.5 to organ vitality, 0.5 to bone vitality, 0.5 to stamina…' He quickly added in more life-points as he felt his condition deteriorating. He wouldn't die from these wounds, but it would take too long to heal from. He didn't have the luxury to be severely injured right now, all the beasts around were currently wary of approaching after that battle, but he was sure that their instincts would kick in within another few minutes.

"Ah!" Nui cried out as Zhan fell forwards and dropped from the giant's head. It wasn't a long fall and Miu quickly managed to catch him. Nui supported her from behind, so although all three of them ended up falling to the ground, nobody was injured.

"Zhan, Zhan!" Miu hurriedly shook him slightly, but made sure not to be too violent.

"Ugh…" Zhan opened his eyes and grimaced, then painfully pulled himself to his feet. He lost consciousness for just a couple of seconds, but now, he was able to force himself to remain awake through the remainder of this enhancement.

His vitality was now quite extreme, meaning that his wounds were no longer worsening. Soon, they would start to heal over. The bone damage would take some time, but the organs were only moderately injured and would heal quite quickly.

"Z-Zhan, can you walk?" Nui asked hurriedly.

"Mm, I'm fine." Zhan smiled and nodded lightly, then walked back towards the door with the two girls' assistance. By the time he reached the door, he was just about able to hold himself upright.

He continued forwards and didn't stop until reaching a couch, then allowed himself to fall backwards and groaned slightly as he sunk into the soft leather.

"Miu, there should be something you can do, right? How can I help?" Nui looked genuinely worried as she turned to her sister. Miu wasn't surprised, this was simply Nui's personality, but Zhan was a bit stunned on seeing how honestly she was concerned with his well-being.

'I suppose I'm her only real hope of surviving.' Zhan ended up coming to this conclusion.

"Nui, just keep yourself safe and don't do anything else so stupid, ok?" Miu turned towards her sister and sighed. Nui lowered her head slightly, feeling awful that she had forced her sister to step in to save her.

"I, I'm sorry, I just wanted to help Zhan…"

Zhan was suddenly reminded of how Nui appeared outside after he was hit by that surprise attack. He frowned slightly, now unable to understand it. He knew that to a weak girl like Nui, the pressure released by that giant should have been enough to make her entire body tremble in terror. Just how and why did she run outside exactly?

To help him…?

"I'm sorry Zhan, I, I'm useless, I couldn't do anything to help…" She continued to look down. He couldn't see her face, but he could tell that her emotions were in disarray right now.

"Nui, if you really want to help me-"

"Yes, anything!" She suddenly looked up and stared at him with red teary eyes, taking Zhan aback once more.

"Sit here." In the end, he just finished what he was going to say.

Nui didn't hesitate and quickly sat down besides him.

"What do you…huh? Eh?!" She became unable to talk as she felt something on her head, then felt Zhan's hand stroking her head and ears.

'Ah, why does he keep doing this?' She thought. She felt embarrassed whenever he petted her like a kitten, it made her mind go blank and she froze up, she felt totally defenceless.

"Nui, you don't need to do anything to help me, I said I'm going to protect you as best I can, so I won't go back on that promise."

She stared at him blankly, unable to understand why he was telling her this.

"You're a real pessimist, you know that Zhan? Or maybe you've just spent too long around those syndicate higher ups and now your world view is all twisted." Miu sighed as she examined his body. Normally, these sorts of injuries would land someone in the emergency unit in hospital, there wasn't a whole lot she could do except adding a few bandages here and there to stop the bleeding, and changing his posture to something more suitable for recovery.

Seeing Zhan's questioningly look, she rolled her eyes.

"Not everyone is some scheming sociopath you know. Do you really think Nui is worrying about herself right now? Do you really think everyone is so self centred?"

"She's not worrying about herself?" Zhan didn't get it…who the hell had time to worry about others when they were so weak that a stray dog could kill them, no matter any of these beasts!

"Wh- of, of course not!" Nui cried out, feeling like she'd created a misunderstanding. Before she could explain herself though, Shia arrived back from the basement alongside a few select staff members with all of the melee weapons that were requested and more.

Seeing Zhan's condition, Shia dropped what she was doing and hurried over. Miu briefly recounted what had happened, and after seeing the giant's corpse outside, she shivered slightly.

"Seriously…after nearly dying to a terrifying monster, you still have the energy to try seducing girls?" Shia asked with a complicated sigh after turning back towards him. Zhan laughed but quickly stopped when he felt pain in his lungs. Nui on the other hand took a few seconds to realise that Shia was talking about her, causing her to suddenly panic.

"Seduce?!"

Zhan glanced at Nui again as he pondered Miu's words…it was true that he didn't interact with people all that often prior to this past month, and when he did speak to people, they were usually syndicate higher ups, people with deep ambitions and hearts filled only with schemes. He knew that Nui wasn't this kind of person, but he simply couldn't comprehend her caring about him enough to put herself in harms way.

He couldn't understand anyone doing this, even himself. This wasn't some TV action drama, in the real world, people valued their own safety above all else, whether they were willing to accept this or not.

'Maybe I am being pessimistic.' Zhan smiled at himself wryly after seeing Nui's embarrassed and dazed expression. This girl…perhaps she really was stupid enough to care about others, even in this horrifying predicament.