Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP Chapter 378: Harry VS Jax [2]

What followed wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. Harry watched his army thin out faster than it ever had under Malice’s blade, and the truly terrifying part was the change creeping over Jax with every kill. He was slipping into something wild. Bloodthirsty. Unhinged.

His face hung painted red, his clothes soaked clean through, and the open, hungry way he savored the carnage sent a cold finger straight down Harry’s spine.

And it wasn’t only Jax thirsting for blood. His blade thirsted too. With every wet splash it drank the gore down and glowed a deeper, darker red for it.

This was the first time Jax had ever drawn on the full strength of the Carnage Blade, and the thing was dragging him further down into the madness with each and every strike.

’Is this what level 100 looks like?’ Harry thought, rattled. ’But how in the hells did he climb that high, that fast? Something’s wrong with him. Everything about him is wrong. I should call them in, or this lunatic is going to kill me.’

Then he slapped his own cheek hard and bit out a curse. ’No. This is your battle, you fool. Yours.’

So this time he used his puppets with some actual care. He sent five giants to ring Jax in, building a living wall of them, but they left a thin gap in that wall, and through it Jax caught sight of mages and demons already weaving a spell.

Jax read the trap in a heartbeat. He hurled one sword straight into a giant’s eye, vaulted up off the ground, hauled himself higher, and landed standing atop its head, only to find a second ring of mages already preparing their attack inside the prison formed by the giants, who had been nothing more than bait.

But their spells all misfired, because by then Jax was already airborne and screaming down on them, taking them one by one and using their bodies as his own personal sheath.

Watching that, Harry switched tactics and sent his sea elves to ruin Jax’s footing, drowning the ground in water magic. Within minutes the whole battlefield sat ankle-deep, the work of hundreds of sea elves all pouring it out at once.

Jax gave them no time to flood in any more of it. He grabbed the giant charging him from behind and threw the whole thing into the first rank of elves, then tore straight in after it. He kept the carnage going until every last elf lay dead, only for them to be replaced at once by a fresh horde, near a hundred skeletons and lizardmen strong.

Jax didn’t slow for a second. The Carnage Blade’s buff scrubbed the exhaustion clean out of his body, and he drove deeper and deeper into the swarm, killing, punching, piercing, kicking, shattering the brittle skeletons as he went.

Amid the swarm, he drove his sword through what he thought was another skeleton, only to realize it was a lich hidden among them.

The moment it registered his mind, Jax remembered the liches’ death curses in this world. His gaze immediately dropped to his feet.

There, glowing beneath the water they all stood in, was a sigil. A ritual laid down well in advance by the liches to curse whoever killed them. The kind of trap only an amateur ever falls for, since the ritual is usually plain to see and simple enough to avoid by just refusing to fight on top of it.

But Jax understood it now, far too late. This had been Harry’s plan from the very beginning. The giants had never been the bait. The whole thing was the bait. The mages to herd him in this exact direction. The sea elves to drown the surface so the sigil stayed hidden from his eyes. And the lich tucked in among the disposable skeletons to spring it.

Harry laughed from his safe distance. "I genuinely regret that killing you is my only option, because letting you keep breathing would only ever come back to bite me. So die, you motherfucker. For now. And once I’m finished with this little game, I’ll take my proper revenge with the wish I’d be granted upon by the godess."

Echidna’s voice slid through Jax’s skull. ’You’ve been marked with Curse of Finality. Honestly, the single stupidest spell a person could ever die to. But, ah, unlucky for me as it can’t so much as scratch your life with me sitting right here. So. You may begin worshipping me at your earliest convenience.’

Jax held onto a smile, knowing her mere presence had nullified both the curse and Harry’s plan. Even so, the lingering curse still left his body stunned. And seeing Jax still standing there, still grinning at him, Harry bit down on his tongue and shrieked, "Why won’t you just die, you mosquito?"

At his word, the ogres and orcs piled on and pinned Jax flat to the flooded ground, while Harry turned and ordered Vergis to end it all.

Vergis rose into the air, conjuring a ball of light above his head. It grew, and grew, swelling larger and larger until it had taken the shape of a sun, scorching horror and all, the heat so monstrous that even Vergis struggled near it, his own dead fabric smoldering and catching. And then he let it fall.

It struck the earth with a sound that surely carried for miles. The whole of the land was annihilated in an instant, Harry’s own summons swallowed up along with it, leaving only a scattered handful of them still standing.

Everything went silent.

Then Harry was already savoring his victory when a sword came tearing up out of the ruined ground. It punched clean through Vergis’s forehead and dropped him out of the sky, sending the mage tumbling down to land in a heap at Harry’s feet.

Confused, Harry turned toward the source of the commotion, and found Jax. Wreathed in his own anger, and in flames.

He stood there nearly naked, barely a scrap of fabric clinging to him, his body and face a ruined mess and after downing an advanced healing potion, he staggered toward Harry through the pain.

Harry’s eyes flicked to Jax’s status screen.

[HP: 11 / 80,000]

[MP: 7 / 10,000]

He tripped backward over Vergis’s slack face and scrambled away on his heels in fear. "Impossible... what are you..."

"You’ve wasted more than enough of my time," Jax said, the fury low and flat in his throat. "Let’s make your death a quick and brutal one now."

Panic ripped through Harry, and he screamed at the top of his lungs. "I was wrong! I need your help, all of you! Please, get over here before this devil claims my life!"

And that was when three figures stepped out of the shadows behind the ruined gardens and walked, slow and certain, toward Harry.

Jax knew all three of them on sight. More than that, the sight of them handed him a sharp stab of déjà vu, dragging him back to a night just a few weeks gone.

Harry laughed in his pathetic, crawling state, dragging himself backward across the scorched ground. "You see? I’m not the only one in this world hungry for your head."

He twisted to look back at the trio. Duchess Sianna. Delphine. And the corpse commander Nadia. All three of them standing there in a row, every pair of eyes glued, unblinking, to Jax.