17 Boom (1/2)

Now the whole royal family held their breath, wondering if he had survived the waterfall. After just over ten minutes they had begun to think he was dead, when Darius emerged out of the water, panting as he struggled to clamber onto the banks of the river. Much to Lionel's dismay. He was exhausted and out of breath, only to be met with the entire troop of spirits waiting for him. The Emperor and co marveled at the young man's lung capacity.

They had simply followed the river and watched all that had happened. Darius had no time to stop and think as immediately one of the man sized beasts attacked. Darius instinctively swung his hammer, killing the spirit instantly. He was far too frightened to even marvel at the fact that he had killed a spirit.

To most people spirits were extremely frightening. They were far more capable than most frightening beasts. Even the weakest of these primates could instantly massacre a pride of lions. Thus killing your first spirit was quite an achievement. Darius couldn't care less as he was far too occupied with staying alive.

Still more and more kept coming as Darius battered each one with a single swing, sending corpses flying in all directions. But there just seemed to be no end to the things. In the stands those watching Darius fight couldn't help but watch with awe. It was as if he had an endless amount of energy.

”Just what kind of body does he have to have so much stamina? Lionel where on earth did you find this boy?” The Emperor thought to himself as he eagerly stroked his chin.

Darius continued to swing and swing but after a few hours, eventually, they were beginning to wear him down.

That was when Darius noticed something, these weren't individual spirits, they were just one! After a while he began to notice the presence of a large spirit at the back of the pack. It looked like all the rest, but much bigger. Darius saw the way it seemed to be reaching inside itself. Its hands becoming temporarily intangible and then yanking out four smaller versions of itself, which would immediately join the fight. That was why the spirits felt like they were endless, because they were.

Darius knew what he had to do. He began clearing a path towards the original spirit. Battering its replicas as he moved though. As soon as it was within reach of his hammer Darius used all the energy he had left to leap up into the air and swing down with all his might. Bringing the full force of his hammer down onto the original copy.

Boom!

Again everything in the forest stopped moving. This was the second time a deafening sound like thunder rang out through the forest accompanied by what felt like a small earthquake. All the other participants where stricken with fear at the thought that that could be an immensely powerful spirit and all the spirits were equally scared at the possibility that it could be an immensely powerful human. Unfortunately for the spirits, they were right.

The hammer vibrated in Darius' hands as the copies of the spirit he had just destroyed all vanished into nothing. All that was left of the corpse was a mess of blood and guts left on the ground.

Darius fell back onto the ground. He was tired and hungry. Also not quite sure what to do now. The jungle air was thick and humid and various flies did not hesitate to swarm on the dead spirit's corpse.

Darius was riddled in small cuts and scratches, the biggest one being a large gash where he had hit his head earlier. It was bleeding profusely as he tried to wipe some of the blood of his forehead.

He knew he couldn't stay in one place for long, so he walked up to the river and cleaned his forehead with some of the water.

Can this whole fucking day just end already?

As he cleaned his wounds he noticed something move on the river bed, but wasn't quite sure what it was. He had no idea what he was looking at. It was like one giant claw was slowly opening in the water, taking its time. Whatever creature it belonged to was buried underneath all the silt. In hindsight given his situation Darius would later acknowledge that just watching the claw instead of running as far as he could was a bad idea, but in the moment he simply watched, when suddenly with an explosive crack, a bomb went off under the water.