A battle like no other was about to take place. Of course, Benny had been in such situations before, but those were street thugs, not two monsters vying for his flesh to be eaten.
The question remained: how would he do it? After a minute of strategizing, he now had some sort of plan against these two rats. The first strike would be the most crucial.
Since these creatures could be temporarily blinded, he'd throw one of the light crystals in their direction while they were busy foraging along the walls and ground. The second part of his plan would be to kill or immobilize one of them directly. If he couldn't manage to cut off its head, he had to at least immobilize it to fight off the other rat.
Visualizing the motion was easy. The implementation would be the hard part. To begin his assault, he first quietly set down most of the things he was carrying from the second floor on the stairway.
Making no sound at first was crucial, and he was somewhat protected by the smell of the bone rat armor he wore, which meant those critters couldn't recognize him directly.
Throwing the light crystal toward the two mutated rats with all his force created a booming effect that surprised even him. "What the actual fuck?"
Boom! It hit one of the rats head on, somehow concussing it while the light blinded the other. Without hesitation, he ran toward the second rat with all his might. Within just a couple of steps, he reached his enemy. A motion he'd only practiced in his mind. A single slash of his broken sword that he'd envisioned and practiced time and time again. One slash to the rat's neck.
But this was reality, and he wasn't expecting what happened next.
The sword arced in its natural course of predetermined motion. The broken blade sliced into the rat's hide, followed by the feeling of meat being cut and bones being crushed by the edged weapon. The world around him seemed to slow down enough for him to see every detail of what he was doing.
It was a skill called ACCELERATED THINKING. This ability came with his title "The Will of the Weak." It temporarily accelerated his thinking process so he could see minute details of his actions. It also boosted his speed and strength temporarily. The duration was 10 seconds, but it cost all of his mana since this was a High Tier Skill and he had a measly mana capacity. This would drain his entire mana pool. When mana was sufficiently drained, there would be a penalty from his mana heart that caused immense pain. Since this skill used most of his mana pool, it also had to compensate by draining his stamina. Though he had sufficient stamina, it would leave him barely able to walk when the skill ended.
All of this was unknown to Benny. He was just as surprised at what he was seeing. He'd managed to kill one of the rats in a single swing of his broken sword. Now for the rat that was left concussed.
He rushed toward the second rat to finish it off, but his skill was about to end. The drawbacks weren't instantaneous, but he could feel an impending doom washing over him. He didn't understand it, but he could definitely feel it coming.
Rushing toward the rat to finish it off, he made a single slash with his sword. The blade arced and hit the nape of the rat, but the cut was shallow as his heart began to throb painfully.
His attack had failed, but using his momentum, he wasn't about to let go of this opportunity. He kicked the rat and stabbed it in its open wounded neck, targeting its spinal cord. That ended the rat, but it also put him in a perilous situation.
The drawback was here. The foreboding feeling of helplessness pressed down on him. Drained of his mana and three-quarters of his stamina, Benny could only scream out in pain as his new organ, the mana heart, was emptied out. It was such a painful experience, like being stabbed directly in the heart.
His mana veins, spread throughout his body, screamed in painful agony. The mana had been sufficiently drained from his entire vessel and even the passageways. It was an instantaneous consumption. His body became gaunt, and he was bleeding from every orifice.
You could hear his wailing scream of pain echoing throughout the entirety of the first floor and even down to the entrance leading to the second floor. "Ahhhhhghggg! Ahgghhhhggg!" He screamed and screamed. His mind thought only of death.
But his body once again moved unconsciously, crawling toward the stairwell that linked the two floors. Even with this unbearable pain, he managed to get away from the open area and possibly away from where additional enemies might threaten him further. It wasn't Benny who did that but his subconscious, a tool so powerful that even death couldn't overwhelm it. The power of self-preservation.
The skill he'd used involuntarily was something he wasn't yet ready for. But it might have saved him in some way and shown him the possibilities of this newfound power, though not without a profound warning through painful consequences. Once his body was prepared and his mana was sufficient, he could fully utilize this powerful skill to his advantage.
But would he be alright? He'd managed to crawl to the stairwell, but wasn't this like signing his own death warrant? His remaining consciousness faded as his bleeding body lost all strength, and he now lay half-dead once again. He wasn't inside a sanctuary this time. All he could do was wait for his natural healing capacity to work for him.
The irony wasn't lost on the situation. Here was Benny, finally showing real combat prowess, finally accessing the power that had been growing inside him, and it had nearly killed him. The mana heart that was supposed to make him stronger had become a source of excruciating agony.
He lay there on the cold stone steps, blood slowly pooling beneath him, wondering if this was how his journey would end. Not torn apart by monsters, but destroyed by his own untrained power. His breathing was shallow, his vision blurry, but somehow he was still alive.
The question now was whether his body could recover from this ordeal before something else found him in this vulnerable state. The labyrinth didn't pause its dangers just because someone was dying on its stairs.