The Fourth Secret: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Divine Apostasy Book 4) A. Kay (best management books of all time .TXT) 📖

The venom had numbed his skin, which greatly decreased his ability to sense vibrations or changes in air pressure. Losing both would significantly impact his ability to fight. Thankfully, the red sorrow fruit counteracted enough of the venom’s potency, that he could still walk on his numb feet.

A viper bit him on his right calf and another on the left thigh. The noise from all the surrounding snakes made hearing individual attacks difficult. He flinched as another viper bit him in the stomach. He ripped the three snakes from his body. The venom, even with the red sorrow fruit, had deadened his senses enough that detecting the snakes’ attacks seemed impossible.

Retreating now might be possible, but Ruwen felt like he could only win this portion of the trial with aggressiveness. A viper bit into his left bicep and he pulverized its head with his right hand. Almost immediately another viper attacked, biting the back of his right hand. He ripped the snake off and smashed it into a bamboo trunk. In the last few seconds, he’d lost twenty-five minutes because of damage.

But the last attack had given Ruwen an idea. Just like when he’d spoken to Pine earlier, and again just now, the vipers attacked any sound they heard. The numbing venom made it difficult to tell where the snakes were, so he just needed to gather them into a location he could control.

Ruwen ate one of the three remaining red sorrow fruits, and then whistled his favorite song from a bard named Bad Alchemy. Then, as if practicing his punching, he struck the area in front of his face as quickly as possible.

The strikes met the mass of snakes attracted to the noise. A couple got through, one bit his cheek, and another his ear. Warm fluid spattered Ruwen’s face and hands, and he hoped it wasn’t more venom. Wherever the fluid struck, his skin tingled as the numbness disappeared, and it slowly spread outward across his body.

Ruwen’s vision returned and his strikes became more accurate. He winced at the snake blood covering his body, and realized it provided an antidote to the venom. Once again, he strode toward the Elder Viper.

The Elder Viper had used over half its snakes in attacks against Ruwen, and it made the hissing call again to gather more. But no new snakes arrived because Ruwen’s whistling acted like a siren’s call. Even the snakes on the ground would leap upward toward the sound instead of biting his legs.

As Ruwen approached the Elder Viper, it moved back into the glade. He slowed his punching as the number of snakes dramatically decreased. Three more snakes had gotten through, but his total minutes remained over one hundred.

Ruwen entered the glade, the ankle high grass providing excellent cover for the snakes. He focused on his bare feet, alert for any vibration. The Elder Viper stood ten feet from him. As he watched, the seven-foot portion he could see collapsed to the ground, and Ruwen stopped whistling.

The Elder Viper’s large black body didn’t appear in the mass of snakes, and Ruwen thought about moving toward the stone temple in the middle of the glade. The grass gave the snakes an advantage, and he wanted to take that away from them. But his aggressiveness had worked, and he didn’t want to abandon that success.

So instead, Ruwen moved toward the mass of snakes. He used powerful sweeps to kill the vipers on the ground and quick crescent kicks on anything that jumped at him. When the snakes became more dense, he resorted to stomping on them.

The grass in a ten-foot area had become matted down and soaked in blood. Ruwen pulled ten vipers from his legs, ripping them in half and throwing the pieces into the glade. He had increased his total minutes to one hundred eighty-eight.

Ruwen turned in a slow circle, not able to see any snakes. The temple sat a hundred feet from him, and even the snakes there had disappeared. He wondered where the Elder Viper had gone. Had it returned to the forest to collect more vipers?

A faint vibration tickled the bottom of Ruwen’s feet, and he immediately dove to the left. A moment later, the large black Elder Viper exploded from the ground. Ruwen didn’t bother with a kick, knowing his were still too slow against something as agile as the Elder Viper.

As Ruwen moved toward the large snake, the energy from all his strikes soaked his muscles, ready to power even more strikes, as the Viper Steps built on each other.

This close, Ruwen could see the black eyes of the large snake. The Elder Viper used a third of its length to stand, bringing those dead eyes even with Ruwen’s. Remembering what had happened with Thorn, Ruwen shifted his gaze to focus on the snake’s nose, just in case the Elder Viper had the same hypnotizing power with its eyes.

Not waiting for the Elder Viper to attack first, Ruwen struck at the area just below the snake’s head. The viper bowed its body, avoiding his punch. Not wasting the momentum of the missed punch, Ruwen stepped closer, twisting his body, and bringing his elbow around.

Again, the Elder Viper dodged his blow, but this time Ruwen recognized how. The snake’s movements were identical to how the body moved through the Viper Steps, like an opponent without arms.

Ruwen attacked with this in mind, aiming a kick where the Elder Viper’s body arced off the ground. As the snake dodged the kick, Ruwen punched where he knew the head would be, and felt the satisfying crunch of his fist striking scales.

As the Elder Viper fell to the ground, it used the momentum to lift its tail and stab Ruwen in the side. Jerking its tail violently out, Ruwen staggered to the left holding his side. The vicious strike had cost him twenty-five minutes, bringing him down to one hundred sixty-three.

Ruwen cursed himself for not realizing the tail could be