116 The Trap - Part 7

Olivia could only stand dumbfounded as she watched the shield user chug down the drink that he'd uncorked. She watched him drink it down as quickly as he could being in the midst of the battle. He did it so fast, there was no time for her to move and intercept him.

With the liquid fully drunk, Olivia then started to see odd things happen to the man. The first thing that happened was that his eyes ended up turning on a red hue. The next thing that happened was that it almost looked like red lights started to trickle down his arms and legs. It appeared to be just along the skin, passing down the entirety of his limbs.

As far as she could see none of the wounds that he'd received seemed to change, so it didn't appear to be a health potion.

It was also at this point that Olivia realised she probably should have picked up a health potion given the state she was in. The problem with health potions though, and most other potions, is that they're made of glass, which is not the toughest material, especially in this era. For an incredibly small bottle being kept on someone's person, it would be incredibly easy for it to be crushed in the midst of a fight. How the shield user managed to keep his intact was quite an achievement in its own right.

'I wonder if there's a way to solve that problem' Olivia thought. Having a way to make potions out of some sort of toughened glass or some other material altogether, would definitely help them, and many other in this world, but that would have to wait, as now she had another battle to fight.

The archer slash spear user was still on the floor, now unconscious. The shield user, threw the glass bottle to the floor after he had finished drinking it, and he just turned and sneered at Olivia. The redness in his eyes was prevalent, as was the lights along his limbs. What was startling though, was that where he had walked with a limp with a lot of pain showing on his face, it now seemed to not faze him at all. He then proceeded to walk back over to her menacingly, looking to get this fight started all over again.

Olivia wasn't sure what was in that bottle but if anything it seemed like the man had levelled up for lack of a better analogy and this fight was heating up to be another difficult one.

…

For the rest of the girls, things weren't going too badly as they continued to fire arrows and rocks at the oncoming onslaught of villagers.

As they were doing this, Lyrica turned to Philly

"I'm starting to feel bad about this."

Where Olivia had a very skilled combatant, two at that, Lyrica and Philly were fighting the villagers. If Olivia could have seen this battle, she would have said it looked like survivors fighting against zombies. Zombies that lacked their inherent strengths, such as being almost unkillable unless you hit them in the head.

The villagers had staggered out of the rubble and rubbish from the alleyway, and a few that joined them were the ones who had managed to get themselves back up after being knocked down by the girls as they ran through the village. The common factor between them was that they were all heavily injured in many different ways.

Some limped, some had damaged arms, some were still concussed and probably not even sure if they were walking in the right direction. This meant that they had a long line of villagers all slowly, staggering towards them. At the start and as the battle went by, the ones that were fit enough had been able to charge at them, all the while trying to engage the others to run alongside them. But, of the times it had happened, they had been alone in his charge as the others were still too injured to mount any sort of great offensive.

By the time they had realised this, they very quickly received an arrow or rock some part of their body which ended up taking them out once again.

The rest of the zombies continued to stagger, still adamant about taking them down, even as a few of them tripped and fell over from their injuries.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel and all of the girls just felt it was pointless, and a little sad to be doing to these people. The villagers were still trying to kill them, so while feeling a little sad for them, it didn't mean they stopped. They did make sure to try not kill them, given how easy it was for them to take them out as they were. They aimed for body parts such as the legs and the arms trying to just hurt them even more, to knock them to the floor, hoping to eventually demoralise them into running away instead of pursuing them.

It had started to work on a few of them, where some of the ones that had received a few hits from either the bow or the sling decided to cut their losses and turn the other way, heading out of the village. The others continued going forward not realizing this.

More and more arrows were fired, rocks were flung, and by the end of it all of the walking dead had been knocked down. They neither had the strength nor the ability in some cases to stand and maintain the chase.

All of which drew the battle to a close. The rest of the girls all came over to Lyrica and Philly, but there was no cheer. There were a few, are you okay, how are you feeling, but the battle itself was quite underwhelming and just depressing. All that was left was for them to turn and find where Olivia was in her battle, finding what was quite a horrible and brutal fight.

Thankfully though, it was coming to an end.

…

Olivia stepped back on a damaged leg, crying out in agony as she did, having to block yet another massive and decisive blow from the shield wielder. It was as she had suspected, whatever the potion was, it seemed to increase his aggression tenfold, and all manner of injuries he'd received were almost felt as if they were who had been scratches on his skin.

It must have dulled out the pain in some way and let him push on without caring, but it also meant that he was now almost a single-minded beast as he kept on charging, hacking and slashing.

His battle style before had been one of caution in some instances, and tactics. Hanging back when he needed to, jumping into the fray at the right moment, knowing when to block and when to attack. But now it was as if all of that had left his head. Not even his shield seemed to have any meaning.

That's not to say he didn't use it, he just didn't use it in the way you would use a shield. One hand held his sword to hack and slash. The other hand held his shield which he also used more as a blunt instrument to attack with than actually defend.

It was odd to see but his aggressive offensive did push her back quite substantially. The only saving grace in all of this was that while he didn't care too much about the pain, his wounds and injuries were still very much there and causing problems.

His leg buckled every now and then, stopping him mid-swing and sending him off balance. The other damage to his body reared its head in odd moments, causing his swing to fly off track, missing on a few occasions, which substantially helped and worked in Olivia's favour.

The only problem was that as soon as it happened he was right back to attacking her with as much brutality as he could.

Olivia stood on the defensive for most of it. Her Morningstar was up in the air to block an overhead slash. She quickly brought it back down to take care of the shield he had swung at her while he pulled his hand back for another swing with a sword. She did try to swing at him a few times with the mace and even with his single-mindedness, he was still relatively able to dodge these attacks. It must have been some sort of fighting instinct or something. Even with the potion and its effect, he was still a fighter and had likely been fighting for quite some time. So there's more muscle memory, if anything, where should a blade or some such weapon come towards you, he would instinctively try to move out of the way of it, as most people probably would.

But it was almost like there was a battle between his actual fighting instincts and what the potion was pushing him to do. He would move out of the way, but not enough, the potion likely spurring him on to actually make another attack rather than pull away from the morning star. That meant on the few occasions when Olivia was able to find an opening her morning star grazed right across his chest, digging into the leather and metal, making a horrible screeching sound as it ripped across it.

This knocked him off kilter causing him to fall to the ground where Olivia was there and then very quickly ready to pull a morning star up into the air and give a heavy-handed swing right down. As she did, again she couldn't tell whether it was his fighting instincts or was due to the potion, but he rolled to the side just as her Morningstar came down and embedded itself in the dirt.

He was very quickly up on his feet, shield in his hand, swinging it to its side to try and hit Olivia and he met its mark. The shield was not sharp on its edges, but the wild swing really saw it flying through the air, and when it hit her shoulder it did manage to embed itself into her skin.

Pain shot through her as she felt that and really in reckless abandon like the shield user, she was very quickly tugged on her Morningstar swinging it up into the air and at the man's body. She was able to smash his side right on his underarm which held his sword. She was sure she even lifted him up off the floor where he ended up flying backwards as a Morningstar continued its path.

The shield was roughly yanked from her arm and he fell to the ground with both weapons still being held. Olivia staggered backwards after that, and quickly looked to her shoulder to see the damage. She had to move to get a Morningstar back to a fighting stance but found it hard just to lift using her left-hand side.

It felt like this battle was coming to an end. The question would be, who was the one it would end badly for?

It was a pertinent question, and Olivia was not sure who it would be, as she saw the shield user very easily right himself and then start to charge at her again.