The door to a larger house slowly opened and two figures climbed in. They had been looking for the armory for the past day, and now they finally found it. It was a little closer to the cathedral than they wanted to go, but Medea truly needed a weapon and Mal had also decided to get one. The umbrella was good for now, but only because he was putting his will into it. It wasn't the umbrella that cut so well; it was Mal's will. As such, a sword would be even more deadly if infused by his will than the umbrella.
They needed to be careful now, but they were not. Mal and Medea enjoyed each other's presence. They were of a similar age, and so they could understand each other. When they went down the stairs, they debated about exams and how they didn't really miss taking them.
The house they found looked much bigger than any other they had been in so far. Inside were multiple paintings, but the majority of them were destroyed or eroded away. He recognized one painting; it was that of the King of Men. He seemed to be everywhere.
"This guy is really important to the people who inhabited this town. He is the one who we have to kill, the one who reigns in the throne room."
They descended the stairs and finally found what they were looking for. Down there, in a little room, stood stands, and on them were a few weapons. It looked as though people actually needed them and took the majority with them before the unknown catastrophe struck. There were a few flails, two shortswords, six longswords, and three rapiers. That was a bigger range of choice than he had anticipated. He slowly walked toward the stands, took one longsword into his hands, and carefully measured it. He preferred lighter swords, but his view of what "lighter" meant had changed after awakening his first circle and with the number of knots he now had.
The swords looked alright in general. They, of course, weren't in the best condition they could be in after all this time - the town had been abandoned a long time ago - but they were also not in the worst. They were still somehow sharp. Their weight was also good enough for Mal. He decided to take one.
"Do you know which weapon you want, or do you want my help with choosing?" He glanced at Medea, who seemed a little lost.
She walked across the room and slowly tried all the weapons. Then she picked up a rapier with a satisfied smile on her face.
"I will be taking this. Let's poke some monsters to death," she laughed.
She was testing exactly how to use it, and Mal was watching her and correcting mistakes she made along the way. But there weren't many of those. Medea was now fluent in the basics of how to handle a sword. It was in the moment that Medea stopped fencing for a short period that he heard how heavily she was breathing. She sounded more like some old man than a young woman. She looked at him with a bright smile, but the breathing still continued. It was then that Mal realized it wasn't coming from the adorable girl in front of him, but from someone probably behind him.
He slowly turned around and, in the darkness of the small room, almost failed to see the helm sitting on the mutated head of a human soldier staring at them from the door. Its body was human-like but also wrong in almost all ways possible. It wore the destroyed remnants of some sort of merge between normal civil clothes and leather armor. It had one arm, and in it, it held a broken sword.
'Fuck, it's in front of the door. Our only escape route is cut. And this isn't just some monster. We are now close to the cathedral, so it will be a higher rank than us. Can we fight?'
Mal didn't have time to think about it further because the abomination suddenly jerked its body and dashed toward Medea, who hadn't become aware of its presence yet. Mal quickly rushed to intercept its attempt to kill his friend. Medea seemed to jump when she noticed the monster and would have been too late to react. Mal was just in time with his newly acquired sword to block the monster's broken one.
"We need to run. I can't win, but I can stall for a little. When you see a way to get to the door, do it and run away. I will then also escape."
Medea seemed to understand and didn't try to protest. That was good, since he really couldn't argue with her now. The monster collided with him with awesome strength. Mal put all his muscles to work and managed not to be thrown off balance, but he was still being pushed back.
The monster shook its head to the side as if it were surprised and then kicked Mal in the chest with impressive speed - a blow that he simply couldn't block. He was thrown back against the wall. The collision took his breath away, and he fell to the ground. The monster stood still, looking at him. It didn't seem to be in any sort of rush to finish him. Medea was a meter away, paralyzed by fear.
As it slowly shifted its gaze toward Medea, he quickly battled to get his breath back and chanted a spell. In the next instant, a ray of electricity that looked like fire flew directly into the chest of the abomination. It didn't seem to push it back in any way, but it put its attention back on him and gave him time to cast the spell again - this time in the form of three balls of electro-fire in his hand. He stood up and dashed toward the enemy. Before it could try to attack him, he sent two of the sparks at the enemy, both to its face. Without any time to spare, he willed the last spark to apply to his new sword and slashed toward the monster's neck.