Bloodbull reached me, lashing out with a wild strike with his right arm. I stepped forward, ducking under the strike. As he charged me, I bashed a blow into his stomach with my right arm. The empowered force of the blow slowed his charge as I spun on my heels once more. Spinning like a top, I drilled my left hand into Bloodbull’s side.
I used the recoil to drag me out from in front of him. He pa.s.sed by me, undeterred and smiling. The eldritch mask on his face grinned,
“Is that all you have?”
I dashed forwards, jabbing towards his face with my right hand. He leaned far backwards, like he was trying to do the limbo. Back when I boxed, some people would dodge punches this way. There was an easy counter to it.
I stepped forward and pulled my left hand back. The momentum traveled up my feet as I arched my right hand over my head. Like swinging a club downwards, the inertia in my fist built before slamming down into his solar plexus. Just like in boxing, Bloodbull couldn’t hold himself upright because of the destabilizing strike.
He fell onto his back, the sea of hands held him up. As he crawled away, I followed him with measured, balanced steps. With each step, I shot out vicious leg kicks into the hands on his back. Each kick that landed snapped the bones in the arms. Bloodbull groaned, trying to escape. I didn’t let him.
This continued for the length of a football field. A third of the arms on his back were broken, some of them were even amputated. This threw him off balance. As he slowed down and hobbled away, I put more and more weight into each kick. The carnage continued until we reached the forest.
He reached a tree and crawled up it. With his front facing me now, he kicked towards me. I ducked under the kick and whipped a condensed tendril of oppression through the tree. The tree’s core rotted, forcing it to fall over to the left.
Bloodbull stayed attached to the tree, not understanding why he was falling. I shifted the tendril of oppression onto him. As he fell to his left side, I stomped towards my left. I bent towards my left and pressed through my heel. As I spun, my hand tucked towards my side. Ascendant mana roared up my left arm, and the telekinetic fields gave me the grip I needed.
With enough power to snap a tree, my uppercut collided with Bloodbull’s jaw. His head whipped sideways, snapping his upper body upwards. Before he tumbled out of my range, I clasped my right hand and spun on my heels once more. I shot my right hand out, letting my arm stretch out wide. The centripetal force built before I tucked the arm in before my fist landed, compacting the ama.s.sed strength of the strike.
Kinetic energy whipped into the head of Bloodbull, even greater than the last. The sound of metal clapping against bone echoed through the empty camp. The sound rippled across the barren earth, a testament to the death my aura left behind. Bloodbull’s body bolted towards the ground before impacting the earth beneath him. Cracks fissured around him, webbing outwards.
A crater formed beneath him like driving a giant nail into the ground. After landing, he grasped out with his right hand towards my foot. I stepped back, just outside the reach of his grasp. As he pulled his hand back in, I dashed forward and torqued a kick into his face. He grabbed for my leg again, but I stepped just shy of his grip once more.
He turned onto his belly, his head facing me. He lunged out with his right hand, trying to claw at my leg. I stepped forward, meeting his lunge with my right fist. A shockwave shot out from the concussive collision. Bloodbull fumbled upward, swiping again with his left hand, I sidestepped him and slammed a left hook against his jaw.
He stumbled towards his left, catching himself with his left hand. I followed him, maintaining a distance just close enough to attack, but just far enough so that I could dodge. As his left hand touched the ground, I sliced a whipping kick into the arm.
The joint caved in, bending his elbow backward. Bloodbull roared in agony, falling onto the ground. As he howled, I stepped forward and lifted a heel. Aiming at the center of his mouth, I stomped downward. Yellow teeth snapped, and his jaw bone fractured as my foot mangled his face. He covered his face, but I just lifted my heel and slammed it down onto him.
It’s an interesting conundrum in street fighting. People don’t understand how dangerous being grounded is. Unlike in sanctioned fights, normal people wear shoes or boots. This means stomping towards the head, which isn’t allowed in normal fights, is brutally effective. In fact, there isn’t a counter towards it.
Bloodbull was finding this out the hard way. Even if you block with your arms, a well-placed heel stomp would slam their hands into their face. A few more stomps, and the bones in the hand and arm could be fractured and broken. Then the hands would fall down, opening the head and neck to damage. Either of those places were deadly if struck with a hard heel.
I watched the familiar scenario play out with Bloodbull. Several of the arms from his back blocked the first few strikes. His normal arms followed. Then his head absorbed the trauma. I kept stomping, more and more blood spraying up with each kinetic impact. Over a minute, I trampled his face into mush.
He didn’t die, however. The mask kept him alive, even though his body just wanted to die. Leaves rustled behind me. I stepped away from Bloodbull and turned around. Three of the Enigmatta were pulled back to life. On their faces, the hands I tore off Bloodbull’s back clasped tightly. He hadn’t been escaping and losing arms. He had sowed seeds for backup later.
Before they reached me, I tripled the speed of my stomping. I growled, burning through my health bar to increase the power and speed of my savagery. I grit my teeth and mauled Bloodbull with my entire heel turning him to slush. As the revived Enigmatta closed in, Bloodbull’s experience notification appeared.
Turning around, I found the Enigmatta reaching towards me. The hands leaked purple mana, keeping the haggard flesh sacks alive. The first of the trio stumbled up to me, a head shorter than me. The purple mana acted as an elastic coating, grafting the destroyed corpse together. It enhanced the strength of the guard by two hundred levels as well, leaving it around 950.
With elongated, whipping arms, the Enigmatta lashed a deformed arm at me. The astounding quickness caught me off guard. The tendril smacked the side of my face. I staggered sideways before grounding myself. Another hand lashed, but I raised my shoulder and deflected the whipping strike. Sparks flew before I charged towards it.
Oppression condensed over the creature, freezing it in pain for a moment. Abusing that single second, I tackled it to the ground before raising my right fist. Several slams of my fist later, and the hand mushed. I kept hitting even after the notification sounded. I didn’t want to fight it again.
A clubbing arm slammed across my jaw. I fell sideways, dazed and confused. My vision stabilized before I glanced up. An Enigmatta lifted an enlarged arm above its head, ready to pound my skull into the dirt. Without hesitating, I kicked with my legs, pushing into a telekinetic field. The field absorbed the momentum of the kick, firing a telekinetic bullet. The bullet of force shot into the monster, hitting it in the face.
I tumbled across the dirt before rolling back to my feet. Another Enigmatta reached me, its body more intact when compared with the others. Two bony tendrils jutted from its shoulders, giving it four limbs to attack with. The deformed Enigmatta sliced downwards with its tendrils while flailing towards me with its arms.
I ducked, parried, and deflected strikes. Handling this monster took far more focus than the others. The awkward angles, bizarre tempo, and odd timing of its attacks only made fighting it even harder. The Enigmatta with the enlarged arm reached us, adding even more chaos to the encounter.
Pushing my limits, I stretched as my armor had to shift with the movements of my body. Otherwise, I couldn’t keep up. Defending the strikes took my entire being, like looking at the world through a tunnel. Only this mattered. Only my survival mattered.
The two Enigmatta turned into a monster more devastating than Bloodbull. They complemented one another to perfection. One of them would suppress me with a percussive symphony of strikes. The other would act as a deterrent for retaliation. After dealing with them for several minutes, I turned and sprinted away. I needed my health capped back out so that I could function at full force.
As I sprinted away, a siphoning sound echoed in the distance. I turned, seeing the dead body of Bloodbull. The hands across his back, both the broken and the fine, had left him. All across the encampment, revived lumps of flesh came together. The stumbled back towards the mask atop Bloodbull’s corpse.
As my health regenerated, the flesh and bones and skin surrounding the mask fused into a ma.s.sive structure. The purple mana bubbled, turning the monster into a single piece. It molded into one. I frowned before shifting oppression over the monster. It slowed the amalgamation, but the process continued at a steady pace.
A chill ran down my spine. If that thing finished, I was f.u.c.ked. I couldn’t beat these two Enigmatta unless I was at full strength, let alone this f.u.c.king monstrous abomination. Fear crawled across my skin and desperation burned through my blood. A bead of cold sweat dripped down my forehead, underneath my armor.
I might die.
The cautious approach I was taking died right then and there. This was all or nothing, life or death. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream with each beat of my heart, the frenzy of battle coming over me. I charged towards the shifting flesh sack. Before I reached it, a long tendril wrapped around my foot and pulled me to the ground.
I turned back, and the whipping Enigmatta had been brought back to life once more. Missing its head, another hand had grasped against its heart, pouring the purple miasma into it. I pushed myself up before jerking it towards me. The monster fell to the ground before the others reached me. Surging my ascendant mana despite the damage, I charged towards the Enigmatta with the huge arm. A plan formed in my head.
I ducked underneath the large arm’s first strike before slamming a fist into its stomach. The flesh held together, the purple miasma acting as a shock absorbent. The four-armed Enigmatta stabbed a bony tendril into my back. I ignored it. The clubbing Enigmatta needed to die if my plan was going to work. Besides that, I invested into health for this one reason. When I needed to soak damage, I could.
And so, I did. I weaved between the strikes of the clubbing zombie, each strike able to chunk my health. The four armed monster couldn’t dish out damage like it could, so I ignored it while bombarding the larger armed zombie. Four punches later, and mister large arm barely stood. My back bled torrents of blood, but I grinned as I grabbed the hand on the face of the large arm as it died.
My plan hinged on that factor. So far, I learned two things from the hands and mask. First, just because the monster beneath it died, that didn’t mean the hand or mask had. Second, the hand controlled people by pouring miasma into it. The mask stabbed its feelers into the target, controlling the brain directly. If I was right, I could abuse these factors.
Praying for the best, the hand snapped onto my right wrist, pouring the miasma into my armor. My armor gorged on the energy, filling like a hungry animal. As I ducked, deflected, and weaved between the strikes of the four-armed Enigmatta, I sunk my armor’s tendrils into the hand on my wrist.
As the armor’s tendrils finally sunk into the hand, another whipping arm struck my back. My legs failed me as I fell to the ground. The hit had severed my spine. As I landed on the ground, I redirected oppression from the giant mound of flesh onto the four-armed zombie. This stunned it, making it fumble backwards.
Crawling with my arms, I gripped onto the monster before chomping into it with my armor teeth. Another whipping strike hit my back, dipping my health down to less than 5%. The edges of my vision blurred black. My arms grew weak. My eyelids grew heavy. My breathing hastened. My eyes dilated. A deep unease overtook me. For a fraction of a second, I walked along the edges of despair.
Thoughts pa.s.sed through my mind. Even if I did kill these Enigmatta, would I be able to kill the amalgamation? I hardly beat an abusive, alcoholic man. Versus Baldag-Ruhl, I only beat him with Alfred worm’s help. Most of the fights past that had been easy and simple affairs. There wasn’t true struggle. There wasn’t true despair. My arms turned numb. My eyes went blank.
No one was here to help. It was now or never. I dug into the pits of my will. I dived into the abyss. I crushed the last shred of weakness in me. I sacrificed who I was, for who I wanted to be. A force of nature, something unstoppable. A cataclysm, a tempest, even a monster, I channeled the fear I felt. Fear of death? No, I would fear my own weakness.
I commanded my eyelids to open, and so they did. I demanded my arms obey, and so they moved. I roared at my hands to ball into fists, and so they clamped with force to bend steel. I lunged forward and tore into the throat of four arm. I gnashed and chomped and tore. I urged my armor to send spikes through the monster, tearing him apart.
I did so, even as blood poured from my own mouth. The sound of a whip surged in my ears. This strike would end me, but I wouldn’t die groveling. I would go down biting at their heels. Before the strike landed across my back, the death notification for the monster appeared.
Almost as if in slow motion, I opened my status screen and poured all my points into willpower. I prayed it was enough. The points adjusted, and the perk screen appeared.
Legion of One (Have 1000 points in a single attribute before level 1000, Willpower over 1000) – Within you, the might of many is made one. Every eldritch killed over level 1000 adds another year of life. Immunity to corruption and mental attacks. +10% more mana regen (Health Regen due to Arcane Blood), internal motivation, and augmentation affinity per 1000 points in willpower. You may choose to add 1/10th of willpower to any attribute besides Endurance or Willpower. You may now unlock a legacy.
Mentally, I selected the perk screen.
Which attribute will you select for the 1/10th addition? Con, Strength, Intel, Luck, Char, Dex, or Per?
Once again, I used a thought to select const.i.tution. The rush of clarity filled my head, even as it grew and expanded. The whipping strike lashed out against my back. I grinned at the hit. It wouldn’t be enough now. On my left wrist, another hand latched onto my arm. Draining the energy and health from the hands, my feeling in my legs came back.
I stood before turning back towards the whipping zombie. He struck out towards me. My hand moved like swimming through molten lead, but it couldn’t resist the mandate of my will. I deflected the whipping strike, my health coming back. Lucidity returned. My senses sharpened. My strength built.
I walked over towards the Enigmatta, deflecting strike after whipping strike. With each step, I grew bolder. With each deflection, I learned the movements. Once I reached it, my ascendant mana returned. Power flooded my veins. Energy swarmed my blood. Might engulfed my bones.
I turned on my heels, driving a hook like thunder into the monster’s face. The head exploded before I shot another hook into its chest. Even as the flesh fell apart, I delivered punishing blow after pushing blow. I would leave nothing left.
Once the Enigmatta disintegrated, I heaved out a heavy sigh. I turned towards the ball of flesh, moving oppression over where it was. It wasn’t malformed meat anymore. The body of it condensed, creating a smooth, dull, and yellow armor. It had two ma.s.sive, muscular legs that it stood on. With six arms, it opened its hands, brandishing spikes of sanguine color. The mask melted onto the face, creating a thickened plate of armor attached to its face.
That armor split as a mouth and four eyes opened. It stood ten feet (3 meters) tall, towering and ma.s.sive. As it moved, the earth shook beneath its steps. Turning to me, black lines formed over the yellow carapace. The slabs of muscle on its back rippled as it tested its new-found form. I sighed with relief as I identified it. While strong, it wouldn’t be overwhelming.
Typhon, Mover of Mountains (lvl 1131) – Created by a conglomeration of Yawm’s mutant plague plus the purple miasma of Bloodbull’s mask, Typhon is mighty. By fusing the bodies of different species with different chaotic energies and forces, the mask of Bloodbull sacrificed itself to become this monster.
And a monster it is. The six arms are powered by the thick musculature of its back. The senses of the creature can see and smell food from kilometers away. Its roar is loud enough to be considered a sonic attack. Its arms are numerous, and it uses them like weighted clubs. The black lines that traverse its yellow, armored hide can grow, turning the monster into a shadow.
This makes it immune to physical attacks, outside of its core that’s left open during this maneuver. Fighting this head on is a recipe for disaster.
After fighting the four-armed Enigmatta, I decided on a different approach. Boundless Storm could only cover so much distance in physique and levels. Facing something this much stronger and bigger than me when I didn’t have to could be summed up in single phrase; it was a straight up dumb as f.u.c.k.
Besides that, what if it revived some of the other corpses left here? I didn’t want to be caught fighting an endless army of reviving flesh. Instead, I set my stance far away from it. The monster turned towards me, annoyed by oppression as it heaved for breath. Drool leaked from between its yellow teeth, and as it breathed in, I covered ears with my armor.
The roar created a sonic boom, the sound pa.s.sing through my body. It was so loud, the vibrations shook my bones. If it wasn’t for blocking my ears, they’d be busted again. I wouldn’t let that s.h.i.t keep going on. Guarding my senses took more priority now. All the higher-level enemies seemed to have dozens of ways to destroy them after all.
I kept steady, using oppression as my damage instead of running towards the monster. It breathed in once more, firing a cannon of sound towards me. The same vibrations pa.s.sed through me before I grinned. If that was all this thing had, the fight was good as over.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The monster dashed towards me, crawling like a spider on all six hands. Instead of running away, I burrowed into the ground with my new drill arm technique. The spines dug into the ground while I unblocked my hearing and used it to keep oppression over Typhon. It dug towards me, chasing me for a minute or two before I resurfaced.
It busted out of the ground before I sprinted away towards the trees. My red mana pulsed as I stampeded with all my might. The creature chased not far behind. It caught up to me right as we reached an untarnished patch of forest.
It dashed towards me, but I leapt upwards, onto a tree. Dispersing my weight with Telekinesis, I could land on trees to make the process easier. The monster crashed through a tree trunk before turning back to me. It slammed into the tree I was on as I leapt to another one.
Again and again, the process repeated. After ten minutes of jumping between trees. Typhon seemed exhausted. The whole time I kited, I molded oppression over the monster. Sliding the aura between trees was the only hard part, but I got the hang of it quickly. Over time, Typhon slowed down to an abysmal crawl. This was like an advanced level of the strategy I used to kill my first BloodHollow bat.
Oppression didn’t have insanely high damage against tankier foes, but it whittled them down over time. In this case, the strategy proved undeniably effective. So effective, the monster quit moving with the same speed and voracity as before. After realizing my plan, the monster tried escaping. It was too late.
I leapt from tree to tree, keeping pace with the monster. It turned back towards me several times, but I would leap away from it until its escape. Frustration set in, making the movements of the creature wilder. During this time, the hands on my chest and wrists disintegrated into nothing, my gorger of mana skill absorbing them.
Watching the mighty beast fall to such simple tactics was almost sad. Almost. Once it slowed to a crawl, I leapt on top of it. The sheer tenacity and strength of its build was stolen by oppression. Crushing it from there proved simple. By the time I was swimming in the creature’s blood from beating the s.h.i.t out of it, I finally gained the notification I was looking for. It died.
With great antic.i.p.ation, I checked out my level with my fingers crossed. If I gained too many levels, I wouldn’t be able to get my last level 1000 perk, which would suck. I covered my eyes at first, but I forgot the status screens couldn’t be blocked from my vision, even by blindness.
When I saw my level, I sighed with relief. I’d walked a fine line, right along the edge of a razor.
Level 997. It was time to see my spoils.