I was picked away from the meadow and dropped upon a wide tree branch.
The system welcomed me with diminutive fanfare before dimming away into inexistence, allowing silence to take control of my surroundings. It was part of the ritual I assumed, the dungeons method to warm the challengers of its seriousness.
The first boss room was set in darkness, the second one had me fall endlessly, and this one though scarcely lit by moonlight, was absolutely soundless and directly brought out from one of my earliest memories.
Yes. I remembered the place and its importance. Upon looking behind with Hawkeye I could see the outline of a beehive I had found myself being a captive of in the earlier days of my adventure, though it was not thriving with activity as the real one had been. That which had started as an exciting day had quickly turned into a strange night, which had first slowly dissolved into madness and then —a Nightmare.
The emotions of past surging emotional ripples inside my body, I was reminded once again of the one being I had come to fear after my escape from the hive. The bees sacred me, the hoppers even more so, but nothing had made me fall into despair like that vicious assassin of the night I had chanced upon hunting the hunter.
As my antennas turned taut from the feeling, a sickly cold pressure washed over my body, and I sensed something standing behind me. My body betrayed me and moved, making the thing aware of my awareness and turning it aggressive.
I fell into wonderment as its liquid aura clashed against my will, tasting my strength and odor in the process. It hadn’t found me appetizing enough during our first encounter and had let me live. What about now? With no snake or frog to sate its appetite, would it prey upon me?
I remembered the metallic sheen of the small spikes lining the length of its agile pincers, which had effortlessly managed to capture the head of the immense creature I had appraised as a snake and held on against all resistance. It had tasted the snake then, alive I must add, and then pounced at me moving with unprecedented speed and agility.
Past never leaves us, I had recently come to learn. Time erodes its sharp corners, but that’s a slow process, an agonizing process. The incident could have left me scared and fearful of the shade —mindful of every shadow, nook and crony— turning me into a useless sod, but it hadn’t come to be, thankfully.
The fateful encounter had taught me vigilance, the importance of strength and most of all — humility.
It was although a nightmare, a monster of my dreams; I had grown in the time since we had first met. Reckless courage was already active, and from my list of skills vengeance also popped up into activation to help.
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You have met your sworn enemy. Vengeance has activated.
Under the skill effect, your Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Vitality have increased by 170%.
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Everything you fear is an enemy, so the system wasn’t wrong about it. However, being able to consider the past and the haunts while the monster moved behind me in the shadows meant that I wasn’t afraid of it, and that wasn’t right. In actuality, I considered the creature a hurdle, like the hoppers and the pit hunter, both of which I had already beaten and gotten over. I was confident that I could win against the thing and that made me think. How could the dungeon blunder like this when it had precisely nailed the previous boss rooms?
I wouldn’t have found out the reason even if I was given all the time in the world. Perhaps . . . my thoughts were cut short when the Asian Giant Barbed Mantis (as appraised in the past) acted, and I had to come out of my thoughts and physically respond.
It stopped behind me and swiveled. I ducked and moved. Under the pale ray of moonlight, its open pincer gave the illusion of a large teethed maw trying to swallow something largely insignificant. The wind began to caress my body as I swirled ahead. I was the light and it became my shadow, inseparable. Our movement wasn’t a dance, but a sound link of unsound steps, which sometimes fell and at other times rose, slid inwards to compact or outwards to collapse.
I wanted to see how it looked, how much it had changed since our first meeting —whether it had grown larger or smaller, compact or robust— it gave me no chance, however.
I regretted not having enough mana to further fuel my agility. My missing legs hadn’t troubled me yet, but then I stumbled upon a node and found it impossible to stop my descent. I marginally dodged a swipe of its pincers by crumbling further out of its reach and rolling behind the cover of a leaf cluster, which easily tore apart at the touch of its hook ended pincer, allowing me to finally get a sight of my enemy.
The mantis looked not a hair different from the past. Still the same white spikes on its green arms. It was similar in height to the being of my memory and familiarly sat on its haunches. I thought of appraising it then chased the thought away. It will notice the distraction; my mind said. I agreed.
Our little game of tag had given me an idea as to where it stood in terms of stats. At least its agility was the same as mine. My skills would have made all the difference, were they available, but the trap laid out by the dungeon had caught me while resting, literally.
Not everything you see with your eyes or believe with your mind is true. We have all heard the idiom, but only those who have suffered and lived through its venom understand its true meaning, because only suffering teaches.
I was fed the lie called ‘neutral zone’ so thoroughly and affectionately that I had made it an unshakable truth in my mind, absolute and universal. Whether I would have used overdrive had I know the truth was all but rhetorical at this point; however, I would have come prepared, for sure.
The fictional pause between us ended and it moved, this time by becoming invisible to my eyes. It could have been the effect of its speed, but I wasn’t sure that was the case because I could still clearly sense it. I called upon mana vision to set my course alight and found a line of fading mana trailing to the left of its last position.
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It could become invisible.
That explained a few things.
I followed the fading line and luckily chanced upon two impressively black spherical bullets that had somehow managed to penetrate my senses and come alarmingly close to my body.
My antennas stiffened at their sight and I could not dodge them. They stuck me dead in the center of my chest, made a shock wave travel through my exoskeleton, deformed and exploded. Some of the magical and physical damage reflected back toward the proprietor, bringing it out of invisibility, behind me. The energy which managed to pass through my defenses, some I controlled stored in battery as an offset idea which worked (Control: the skill evolved from equilibrium which allows me some control over the explosive forces around), and whatever remained damaged and threw me back toward the Mantis who was no longer in condition to receive me.
With the damage suffered from the bugs and the Trent still not completely healed, and the recent damage added on top of it, it isn’t difficult to understand why my health was down to double digits. 95 Hp was all that remained of my 400 large health pool, and I was now fumbling away on the branch, tumbling down the slope without any control.
I filled the momentum carrying me senseless in battery and came to stop upon a small offshoot covered in a thicket of young pale leaves, a meter and half away from where I was last struck. My thin enemy had gone invisible again, but it couldn’t escape me this time.
It moved away again while I stood my ground, keeping my senses on it and the area around. No surprises this time. It rushed to my back and charged. I waited and waited until its left pincer was about half closed around my head until its body was no longer stiff with vigilance until it stopped considering me a threat. Then and only then did I slip through its pincers using ghostly steps —burning what small amount of mana I had recovered and gaining a mock headache in the process— and pushed a slotted wind cannonball at its face, spending some of the momentum stored in battery to raise its speed. I had subconsciously used transformer to do my bidding and that had given me a very acute sense of control over the energy stored in the battery, a tingle of joy in my chest like it was a part of my strength, a sensation I had never felt before.
The wind cannonball, however, was dodged with but a left turn taken at the right time. At arm’s length, I moved first this time. A head butt to the chest made it take two steps back. Stopping, it looked at me with its unmoving orbs, jerked its leg, and then looked down. I followed his eyes and saw a spider web keeping it trapped. Our eyes met. It must have perceived the change in my temperament because it threateningly raised its serrated hook ended pincers to warn me. But I took the chance without caring about keeping the fight clean any longer.
Hasting into position with quivering legs, I lowered my back for stability and let lose the last three cannonballs I had remaining.
It’s finally over. I thought, watching the cannonballs streaking through the air toward their target. Then I heard a snap and one of the three cannonballs exploded. From its remains whirled my way a long elliptical bullet of jet black. We were too close. There was no place to dodge. The bullet grew to cover my sight as the remaining wind cannonballs disappeared behind it and along with them the Mantis.
I barely had enough time to raise my mandibles and detach them before the bullet struck; it touched my detached mandibles and exploded them into bits. The resulting shrapnel’s ground directly against my face, shredding it. I lost an eye again. The pain which came was overwhelming. Yet, I raised my head to see how the mantis had faired and relaxed —seething— upon finding it headless and crushed and very possibly, dead.
The pain was a red hot ingot burning inside my stomach. I was losing health by the seconds. I had a few other minor issues at hand, but I ignored them all and lied down on the branch with my head facing the butchered body of my opponent, my obstacle, my hurdle.
I had won. Although it wasn’t a clean victory, I was still alive and it was not. That’s all that matters. Life is the only thing that matters.
I closed my eyes and sprawled without worry.
I had won.
But the dungeon thought otherwise. I noticed a while later that the system hadn’t yet rung in my head to congratulate me for completing the stage.
And when I looked —with mana sight still active— I found the reason.
The Mantis stirred. It was still pretty dead as displayed by its wounded, mana lacking body. There was, however, a black worm digging into the wound where its head once used to sit.
A few memories from the past surfaced, but I buried them back to where they had originated from. It wasn’t time to be melancholic. Although bleeding was no longer in effect, it had already brought me halfway to death by bringing my health down to the last forty points. One-eyed with no mandibles, and only three working limbs; I was once again in the worst-worst condition of my life. The word miserable wasn’t enough to justice my feelings anymore.
The worm entered the body, which entered a fit of spasms at its inclusion, then became inactive for a few seconds after which chaos ensued. It grew a new head: one which was but a large horizontal slit filed with rings of needle-shaped teeth. Its body withered quickly —a phenomenon I was aware of— and blotted first, then hardened. Its green body grew grey while the hooks at the ends of its pincers grew into two large scythes with real blades. Spikes contorted its back and its legs thickened unhealthily.
Its glass wings fell, and in their place grew out another set of arms. Its abdomen also constricted and grew into a dexterous tail with a sharp blade protruding out from the end. Black scaled armor covered its chest and the rest of its body. And appraisal only gave me its general information: [Limitless Paracitilus] [Rank: 2] [Tier: D]. which made me hold my breath.
But the situation wasn’t yet hopeless. The brutal its transformation, the brighter my chance, is what I was thinking. I knew its weakness. Know thy opponent—the first rule of fighting. Heal could kill it. So, I healed it with the seven points of mana I had regenerated while resting.
The golden light from the skill covered its body, hovered for a few seconds, then dissipated — bringing no change.
It didn’t work.
Somehow, it made sense to me. Although worrying, the mantis didn’t scare me enough to induce the feeling of helplessness in my being. It was the same with the parasites. Heal had helped me successfully curb the infestation in the past. I had wondered then about a possible future against a similar enemy but without Heal and hadn’t come out with any result which didn’t include burning the infected.
The sight of my true enemy cleared my previous doubts. The dungeon hadn’t blundered. The mantis wasn’t the real boss of the stage. It was just a prop, a preparation to bring out the real monster on stage. The parasitic worm inhibiting the strongest being I had ever faced, and immunity to heal.
I finally knew why the stage was called the graveyard of fear.