A Warlock's Ascent

The apes that had surrounded the clearing were screaming loudly, their lively behavior reminded him of the wrestling matches, one of the players had arrived, and now the other player has to make an entrance.

The apes were getting pretty rowdy, they were screaming, jumping around here and there, and excited about what was about happen. And when the two-ton monstrosity landed in the middle of the clearing, every one of the apes became deadly quiet.

Every single one of them stayed glued to their places with their mouth shut. The big monster landed in the clearing, it created a big dust screen that covered the whole arena. Because of this, it would have been hard to see what was happening there for most of them.

But to Dave, everything was as clear as it could be. Even from the dust screen, he could see a shadow of the hulking figure that had landed in front of him. The figure was very taller than him and seemed to be standing on his hind legs and appears to be holding a club in its hand. As the dust screen got cleared up, he was finally able to see what was in front of him.

The figure in front of him belonged to a humanoid giant. This thing was covered in green color fur, it had a face human-like face, while the only bizarre thing about the creature was that it had no nose. Instead, it had two slits between his mouth and eyes which acted like his nose. While there were two small tusks-like intrusions coming out of the creature's human-like mouth, making him look like a warthog.

In front of the hulking figure of the creature, he looks like a small teenage boy who had just hit puberty. And one would think that the stature of the creature was the intimidating factor about it. But they would be wrong. The most terrifying thing about the creature was its weapon. This creature was holding what looked like a 5-foot-long cleaver. And the cleaver itself was so big and heavy that the creature was supporting the weight of the thing on its back.

The creature glared at him with his black beady eyes. And it was then the creature opened its mouth and roared….

RRRROOOOOOAAAAARRRR!!!!

The roar of the creature was so loud that he had to cover his ears to protect them. But for the apes,  the roar was like a cheering drug because as soon as they heard the roar they all started shouting, jumping, and started creating a ruckus again…

He could see that there was a thick layer of solidified blood on it. Seeing the huge thing he understood what caused the slashes that he had seen so far. And he also understood that this creature must be the so-called Tribal Chief that he had been listening about. He knew that the creature was dangerous, thus he started formulating a plan to get the hell out of here.

It was then messages started flooding in front of his eyes…

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You have been challenged to fight to the Death by the Tribal chief's escort.

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The only way to escape is to kill the Tribal Chief's escort.

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You have only gathered the attention of many gods interested in your fight.

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The Muscular Monkey has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Chaos Creator has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Hot Head has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Tinkerer has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Pacifist Warrior has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Electric Pervert has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Lord of Shadows and Death has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Enchantress of Death has joined in to witness your fight.

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The Earth Shaker has joined in to witness your fight.

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And like that he received several names of gods who came to watch his fight. But seeing those messages only made him angrier. It was bad enough that he was stuck here in this place, now he had to fight for the entertainment of the Gods. This was his worst nightmare.

But he knew that this was not the time to get angry. He had carefully read all the messages, and according to them, he could not run away from here before he kills that monster. But it was better said than done. If he is right then it would only take one hit from the Cleaver to chop him up in half,  and then he would be done for…

The Tribal Chief or the overgrown ape then raised his cleaver up in the air. And all the apes around the arena started to cheer for him. It then started leisurely walking around the arena, completely ignoring his existence. From what it looked like the creature wanted to hype up the apes before he would kill him.

Seeing this as a good opportunity, he then summoned his stat screen and looked at the 15 unused stats points that he had. He had previously thought that he would only use them in an emergency and now the time has come. He immediately started pouring stats points into his Strength, Agility, and Dexterity. He thought as he would not need Arcane and Intellect right now, he let them be…

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Stats

Exp-35/100

Strength- 16 [+]

Dexterity- 11 [+]

Agility- 10 [+]

Arcane- 2 [+]

Intellect- 6 [+]

Stats point available- 0

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After he was done, he immediately started formulating a plan in his mind. He had no intention of dying today. He was a little bit irritated and angry that all the gods that come to see him were watching him like he was some sort of entertainer. But that didn't stop him from clutching his sword tightly in his hands.

As the creature walked around the area hyping the crowd up, he started maintaining some distance between himself and the creature. While clutching his sword tightly in his hands he nervously looked at the giant who could attack him at any moment in time.

And he was right, the creature did attack him all of a sudden…

The creature was on the other side of the arena. But then suddenly it turned around and jumped towards him slamming his cleaver down, trying to cut him in half. While on the other hand, he was anticipating the attack. That is why he was quickly able to move out of the way of the attack because of his increased agility.

CLING

The cleaver made a loud sound as it got slammed on the ground. But the creature didn't stop at that. It instantly rotated the cleaver on its axis and made a horizontal arc coming toward him. He didn't anticipate the attack, there was only one thing he could do in that situation, he let himself fall down on his back, so he did just that.

He was able to avoid the cleaver this way, but the creature was not happy about this. So in the middle of its horizontal slash, it stopped. Then he raised the cleaver in the air and then slammed it on the ground where he had fell. All of this happened so suddenly that he could not react on time. So the only thing he could do was predict the trajectory of cleaver and get the hell away from it.

So he predicted it to the best of his abilities and then simply rolled away from it…

CLING

He was able to get away from the cleaver in the nick of time or his hand would have been cut off. He also understood that it would be dangerous to stay on the ground for a long time. That is why as soon as he saw that he was out of the way of the cleaver, he instantly jumped up and got on his feet, and made some distance between him and it…

The creature was stuck in its place. It was not moving at all. But the head of the creature was still looking in his direction. Seeing this, he started having a bad feeling. He clutched the sword in his hands, sweating profusely.

He then started thinking about Grump, more specifically he started thinking about how he have been handled this situation. It is then he remembered the old man's fight with the centaur, which gave him an idea…

The creature when saw that Dave was on the other corner, showed his teeth to him, which kind of looked like an evil and scary smirk. It then started twisting its neck, arms, its spine, and other body parts, essentially, cracking them. Seeing this he realized that this creature would now take fighting seriously. And the shit is going to take an ugly turn from here.

But he had also formulated a plan in his mind. He put the sword in his hands back in his inventory and waited for an opportune moment. While on the other hand, after the creature had cracked all of its body parts, it started roaring again, trying to rile up the crowd….

RRRROOOOAAAARRR!!!

But to the creature's surprise, he also started screaming

AAAAHHHHHH!!!

His cries were dampened by the roar of the creature, but when it realized that a human was screaming, the creature shut his mouth, and then the whole arena was able to hear his cry. After hearing his battle cry, the apes around the arena started going wild. And then abruptly both the fighters then started running toward each other.

The creature wanted to cleave him in half. That is why as soon as it reached him, it made a long and strong horizontal intending to tear him apart. But he did something unexpected at the last moment. He dove down on the ground and started sliding down on the arena. And as soon as he reached the legs of the creature he instantly brought out its sword and swung it on the foot of the creature with all the strength that he could muster.

He tried to copy the exact move that Grump did with the Centaurs. But he failed to consider the fact that the legs of the centaurs were thinner at the bottom. That is why the sharp knife like the Kukuri knife that the old man had was able to cut off the hoves like it was made of butter.

But this creature on the other hand big muscles and thick bones. Because of this as soon as he swung his sword on its legs, the sword got stuck in the creature's leg bone. But the sword was able to do enough damage that made the creature fall on the ground head first…

After lodging the sword in the leg of the creature, he made some distance between himself and the creature again. While on the other hand, the creature started wailing in pain. It then pulled the sword out and then threw it out of the arena.

He was unhappy that he lost his sword, that sword and he had seen some tough times together. But he didn't have the time to sulk because now the creature looked like he was angry as ever. And the blood lust in its eyes was enough to send chills running down his spine.

He had initially planned to attack in such a way that the creature would not be able to jump around the arena like it was before. He wanted to cut off something that would dampen its agility. Although he was not able to accomplish what he wanted, he did get pretty close.

So he then took out his bow and arrow and knocked an arrow. His aim was trash before as one of his eyes was still swelled. And he is unable to see anything from his left eye. But with such a big opponent, using a bow and arrow would be a cakewalk…

RRRROOOOAAAARRR!!!

The creature then roared loudly once more and then started limping towards him. He on the other hand started shooting arrows toward the creature as fast as he could while maintaining some distance between them. Some of the arrows got lodged in the torso of the creature. But the arrows didn't seem to have any effect on him.

As he constantly ran around and shot arrows at the creature, it started getting angrier and angrier. Because of its reduced speed, the creature was not able to catch up to him no matter what he did. The creature finally lost control after getting frustrated after dealing with all of this. It then threw its cleaver toward him, which he was barely able to avoid.

As he jumped back to avoid the flying cleaver, he fell down on his bottom. Seeing this the creature growled and started making its way toward him with good speed. And by the time he got here, he was already up on his feet. He then tried to run in the opposite direction, away from the cleaver. But the creature had already made its way to him. And then it tried to grab him in its hands.

But at that exact moment, he had an idea. He easily avoided the grabbing attempt by doing a barrel roll toward its left. And after doing the barrel roll, he quickly got up and whipped out a spear from his inventory…

He had practiced all three of the weapons that he possessed. But still, he was confident in only two of those weapons, which were sword and bow. His spear-throwing was very questionable and he was pretty bad at it.

But he figured that if he were to throw the spear from this distance he might be able to make a clear shot. So he did that. After he took his spear, he stretched his hand and threw the spear toward the creature with all the strength that he could muster. The spear got launched into the air and went straight toward the face of the creature…