CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

BEATDOWN

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Theo

I lost my shit.

The bear form came with an instinct that wanted me to close in and crush any opponent I saw and a fearless confidence that I could do so no matter what I faced. It had overwhelmed me a little with the rockworm, and it had done so again with the knight.

Watching my wife’s body fly across the room like a baseball, I realized I hadn’t even known what rage was.

My claws moved like industrial saw blades. One of them had been cut open by the sword, but I barely felt the pain. My backfeet propelled me into the knight with unbridled fury. Before, I’d barely managed to budge him. This time, the knight tumbled to the ground, and I pounced.

Bloodlust overwhelmed me as I unhinged my jaw to bite down on his armored face. When that didn’t work, I used my claws to slash at the junction where the helmet connected to the rest of the armor and jarred it loose. I didn’t know how the hell he wore a helmet with demon horns in the first place, but the other one ripped off just fine.

The demon screamed but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to see it dead.

It was ugly. Grotesque pockmarks lined a pale red face vaguely reminiscent of the muscle demons and their imp cousins.

The knight tried to punch me in the throat again, but I bit his fist between my teeth and crunched. Even as I heard bones breaking, the knight still displayed no pain. Another swipe of my claws for his throat changed that.

I didn’t quite get his neck, but I gouged his chin, exposing bones under a spray of blue blood.

Rio.

I had to help her. He’d punched her so fucking hard. I couldn’t help her while this fucker was around to attack me in the back, though. I’d learned that lesson with Bethany and the fireball imp.

The knight kicked me, buffeting my huge frame off him before using the remains of the staff to bash me to the side. I was about to surge forward and renew my assault, but to my relief, the Barbarian was there, his two swords swinging for the knight’s now exposed throat.

Two more of the troopers, now freed from the nausea attack, began firing bullets. The demon moved quickly though, shielding his vulnerable head with his armored arms as the sound of ricochets filled the cave once more.

One of them bit me in the… flank? My back leg, but I barely noticed.

Potions were everywhere and I took the opportunity for what it was, resolving to make sure I kept an eye on the fight even while I got Rio back on her feet.

I’d… I’d heard her skull crack. She’d been in my healing aura’s range from the moment she’d been hit, though. Even if she wasn’t okay, as long as she was still alive, a potion should be enough to restore her. I’d seen firsthand how miraculous they were, and I wasted no time grabbing one and getting to her side.

Her face was a mess of blood. I shuddered at what I saw as I rolled her over from where she’d flopped against the wall just inside the prison’s entrance but ignored that in favor of sheer relief as I realized she was still breathing.

I poured the potion down her throat, noting with surprise that I’d reverted back to my human form without even thinking about it. My hand was fucking killing me as I realized that a huge cut had between my fingers had left half my hand hanging limply.

Without the adrenaline coursing through me, I was certain I would be screaming. As it was, it just seemed strange that it didn’t hurt as much as it looked like it should.

The knight was wrecking the troopers. Of the six, one still didn’t seem to have recovered from the nausea attack, and two more were already down. The Barbarian was moving as fast as he could but seemed to be barely able to fend off the knight’s sword strikes, each one strong enough to physically move him whenever he blocked.

The Cleric was nearby, constantly healing him and keeping him in the fight through attacks that should’ve killed him long ago. He was bleeding everywhere, but he didn’t seem to be slowing down as he let out another one of those invigorating warcries.

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The last trooper knelt near where their shield wall had been, occasionally firing at the few straggling imps and gorilla dogs to prevent them from flanking the cleric or Barbarian. He held a ball of ominous red light that kept pulsing like something out of a dragonball cartoon, but he wasn’t doing anything with it.

Rio’s face popped back into alignment as the potion began its work. Fucking hell, these things were amazing. She didn’t wake up, though. Finding another potion nearby, this one a smaller quality than the first one I’d found, I poured that into her mouth as well.

I was no longer in my Bearform, and I didn’t have the mana to revert back. There were mana potions everywhere, but with the demon’s head exposed, would it be better for me to try and shoot it?

Indecision paralyzed me, but the choice was taken out of my hands as the knight finally broke through the Barbarian’s speed. His shirt and body armor had completely fallen off at this point, leaving him exposed from the chest up, so I was able to see the knight’s colossal sword cleave from his shoulder halfway through his sternum before stopping, lodged there in the trooper’s gut.

The man screamed in agony, his swords dropping to the ground.

Terror gripped me. I… couldn’t take that thing. Not without my bearform. Holy fuck, even with it, what the hell had I been thinking charging it!? It was like twelve feet tall, and suddenly enormous compared to before. I didn’t have a choice, though. If I didn’t engage, it would make short work of the remaining troopers…

…and then Rio.

I grit my teeth and scrounged around the cave for a mana potion while the knight kicked the barbarian’s body off of its bloody sword. I downed it as fast as I could, guzzling the strange liquid faster than I’d drank anything in my life.

To my complete shock, the Cleric was still healing the Barbarian. I could see his terror as the Knight approached, but I couldn’t help but focus on the Barbarian. The guy’s lung was hanging out, but he was still gasping weakly and trying to grab a sword.

‘Badass…’ I thought as I once again assumed my bear form, my mana plummeting the moment I had enough.

There it was. This was what I needed. I felt strength flood my muscles. My teeth could puncture holes in solid plate armor, and my claws could cut through steel. Mid-change, I was already charging. This son of a bitch had hurt my wife, and if it was the last thing I did, I would tear his fucking head off and dance on his corpse.

This time though, the Knight was ready. Its staff was broken, but it didn’t seem that it was entirely out of tricks. It held its empty left hand forward, and a strange sigil appeared in the air before it, glowing with that same sickly green pallor as the miasmic aura. A circle filled with runes in a language that felt wrong to me on a fundamental level. A demonic language.

Faster than I could dodge, a ray of blinding green light erupted out of the sigil. It didn’t physically slow me down, but the moment it hit me, my stomach began to roil. I’d hardly noticed whatever the staff was doing to the others, my bear form clearly resistant to it.

Not resistant enough. I slowed, my vision becoming blurry under the debilitating effects of the sickness ray.

That wasn’t enough to stop me, though. Bullheaded stubbornness kept me moving forward.

“No wait! Don’t–!” Came a scream as the Knight lowered its sword.

Moving too fast and woozy from the ray, I felt the sword skewer straight through my chest. I was pretty sure it erupted out of my furry back somewhere between my shoulder blades.

I grinned, which stretched incredibly wide across my rows of jagged teeth. There were potions everywhere, and now my jaw was right next to his exposed face.

I saw in his eyes the moment when triumph turned to horror just before my teeth clamped around the sides of his head and crunched.

Blue blood and demon bone filled my mouth. In this form, I found it surprisingly good.

The massive knight crumpled to the ground, its brain crushed, a scream of terror permanently etched on its disfigured face.

“Meteor…” came a sudden whisper behind me.

My eyes widened. I turned in horror towards the trooper holding the ball of light as a sun erupted above me.

“He’s dead!” I tried to shout, but all that came out was a series of hoarse growls.

A burning ball of rock the size of the entire cave seemed to appear out of nowhere. Where its fire burned, the ceiling evaporated like water into mist, and moments later, the giant flaming rock hurtled down towards me like a comet…

…or a meteor.

I had no chance to run. I was too sick, and there was a fucking sword in my gut that suddenly didn’t seem nearly as terrifying as the massive ball of molten rock about to flatten me into paste.

I turned and looked over to Rio. She was woozily getting back up. Dazed and staring at the miniature sun in confusion, eyes uncomprehending.

The meteor struck the knight, and a crater formed beneath my feet. For a moment I hung suspended in midair before the shockwave threw me back away from the prison all the way up towards the cieling. I crashed through stalactites and rock before my back slammed into the wall, coincidentally dislodging the tree-trunk sized sword from my chest, before gravity took over and I fell all the way to the cave floor with an undignified thump.

‘The… the attacks. Don’t hurt other classers. Just like how Rio’s Frostbite Traps went right through us,’ I thought dimly, as bloodloss and the pain of being tossed around like a ragdoll all began to add up.

Meteor.

The wizard could summon a fucking… meteor.

I really picked the wrong class.

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