CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
TEDDY BEAR
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Rio
‘Holy fucking shit, that thing is enormous!’ I thought as I fired bullet after bullet into the rock worm’s gray skin. Officer Dancer hadn’t been lying. The thing was massive, and even my new assault rifle was only making it screech. I was certainly hurting it, but I didn’t know if all the bullets we had would be able to put a real dent in this thing. It should be tearing it to pieces. I thought it should. But it wasn't. I thought its skin was made of actual rock. Even then, the bullets were still clearly hurting it as it flailed blindly, hoping to hit something.
They just weren't hurting it enough.
Dancer had said there was more than one, but fortunately, it seemed like we were only facing a single worm. That was terrifying enough.
Dane might be dead, and Theo didn’t have the dexterity to keep outrunning this monster for long. Weirdly, in this situation, I felt like the frostbite trap wouldn’t help much either. It was great for large waves of enemies but one huge one? We hadn’t really prepared for that. Stupid, in hindsight, because for some reason, I couldn’t imagine the demon knight guarding the prison having trouble facing this worm.
“Get it focused on me!” I screamed, but Theo wasn’t listening. Instead, he was… standing still!? What the…?
I had to assume he had something in mind else he’d just get eaten the next time the worm tried to pounce on us. The best idea I could come up with was to slow the thing down. Big and fast as it was falling, I didn’t think it would be able to dodge a constant stream of ice bolts. Ice had worked against almost everything so far, so I began peppering the entire area with Ice Traps as soon as I ran out of bullets.
My intelligence attribute was twenty-one, the highest stat any of us had. I didn’t feel any smarter, but I did have a ton of batteries. Greed’s Reward wouldn’t help me here because there weren’t any tiny monsters to collect gold from but fortunately I had one mana potion from our fight with the spiders.
Nimbly dodging the massive body as it tried to slam its upper half into me, I grinned as I realized how incredibly slow it seemed. Blood and gore flowed from the impact site where my bullets had landed, and the ice bolts seemed to hone in on that spot, causing the huge creature to screech in agony, its wild flailing becoming more and more chaotic.
The rock worm slunk back beneath the cave as it screeched at me, chunks of its body frozen but otherwise unimpeded. My army of traps went inert as soon as it was out of sight.
“Come back, you fucker!” I screamed, angry that I’d wasted so much of my mana only for the monster to leave the kill zone. Stupid! I wasn’t dead in the water, not yet, but I drank the mana potion while the creature was gone. I'd used way too many traps, and now they were going to be wasted!
Theo’s circlet provided most of the light we were seeing, and I spared a glance for him when the light grew much brighter all of a sudden.
My eyes widened as I saw the bear. He was the size of a small SUV. The crown was gone, but somehow, the light that had come from it still lingered, brightening the tunnel even further. I’d seen his bear form before, but now, down here in the cave, he looked bigger somehow.
The ground rumbled, and I knew the rock worm was about to attempt to burst forth from the ground again, still going for Theo. A few of the turrets were probably still in range to hit the giant worm, so I decided to only throw one more out as close to Theo as I could get it.
Sure enough, the ground rumbled once more. I danced atop it, untouched. The shaking earth felt almost like solid ground beneath my feet as I whirled like a gymnast to keep from losing my footing.
‘Fuck you Miss Darla! I’m a damn ballerina!’ I thought, idly remembering my old cheerleading coach when she told me I’d never be a flier. If only she could see me now, surfing on waves of rolling earth.
Now that the initial shock of the gigantic monster had worn off, even Theo seemed to have figured out when he needed to move. The bear, which had to be bigger than a full-grown grizzly, leaped out of the way a moment before the ground beneath him erupted once more. He didn’t go far, though. Instead, the grizzly began tossing out magic totems from… somewhere. Theo constantly had to grab those totems of his because they were much more expensive than my traps, but they seemed to last as long as he wanted them to.
The bear flung five of them around him all at once as the blind rock worm, frustrated at once again missing its lunch, began bashing itself all around in an attempt to kill everything in its range just as it had before. Wind Blades sliced through the air to little effect, save those few that happened to strike where my bullets had already pierced the worm’s tough skin.
Rather than run, Theo, now nearly as big as the Worm’s head himself, grappled it during one particularly slow body slam.
“Grrrooowwfff!” He screamed, his roar filling me with a primal terror as his massive claws sank deep into the worm’s stony flesh, cutting through the hard outer rock with little trouble. To my shock, despite the massive size difference, the bear began pinning the worm’s head to the ground while each strike of the massive claws ripped chunks out of its body.
I was dumbstruck by the sight for a moment, but as the bear met my eyes, I realized what he needed. He was holding the damn thing still. This was my chance!
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While the worm’s upper body was sliced and pinned by bear claws, its lower half wriggled beneath the earth, widening the hole it had erupted from but never quite leaving the ground. Like a pinned snake, the exposed portion of the rock worm wriggled desperately but was unable to free itself, giving me a perfect target.
I took aim and pushed mana into my newest ability, hoping this would work. I laid a… field, for lack of a better word, in front of myself and my reloaded gun before firing once. I felt a small drain on my mana.
The bullets were too fast to be certain if it worked, but I thought I saw two distinct impacts on the worm’s squirming side instead of one.
Not hesitating any further, I began pulling the trigger as fast as my hand could move. With each shot my mana began to rapidly drain again. For every bullet I fired, though, two hit the massive creature.
They never hit dead center. The ability seemed to sacrifice aim for quantity, but I was certain that Multi Shot was the most powerful ability that any of these classes could offer now. Bullets were doubled by its power. With more points in the skill, would they triple? Quadruple? What if the ability worked on grenades? Bazookas?
…Nukes? I shuddered at the logical extension and put it out of my mind.
The worm was slowing, its wriggles becoming weaker, but as I glanced over at Theo, claws tearing chunks and blender teeth out of the rock worm’s massive mouth, I wondered if perhaps I’d been mistaken about which skill was really the best we’d seen so far.
‘Grizzly bears are not that strong,’ I thought.
Together, Theo and I methodically dismantled the worm. Its writhing slowly became jerks, then twitches, as the monster perished.
Theo didn’t escape unscathed. The sharp teeth caught him repeatedly as I saw cuts form on his fur with every graze. He was bleeding and hurt, but he didn’t even seem to slow down as his claws kept slicing over and over again.
My traps had run out long ago, but with the creature slowly losing strength, I decided to stop wasting ammo on it and switched back to laying them. Ice bolts pelted the dying creature in a flurry of spikes that penetrated the now pockmarked skin easily.
We’d already won, but Theo didn’t stop slicing until the massive worm that had tried to eat him was completely still.
The gong that accompanied the creature's death was entirely expected. What wasn’t was Theo’s roar of triumph as his last strike cleanly severed something vital deep within the worm’s half-hewn head.
Despite all my balance earlier, I fell to the floor, shocked at the roar that was louder than any gunshot.
When Theo turned to look at me, I grimaced. His entire front end was covered in gore. I hesitated to say blood because the black ichor that came from the worm didn’t seem like any blood I’d ever seen. The bear panted, rage in his eyes, even as coins and a series of items dropped at the rock worm’s side.
I stood slowly, a little fearfully. I was ready to phase at a moment's notice, horrified that the Large Creature skill was making him lose his mind. But no. After the adrenaline faded and the fight was truly over, I saw the focus return to his eyes.
“You… okay there, Teddy?” I asked, partially teasing while trying to hide my concern.
“Groowff…” he said, rolling his eyes as he unsuccessfully attempted to wipe muck off his face.
I smiled. He was fine.
“That was scary,” I said.
The gigantic bear flopped onto its colossal ass and wiped its shoulders off like a 90s rapper.
“It was not that easy, you dork!” I shouted.
A bear chuckling was a strange sight to see.
I frowned as I looked up the tunnel warily. “We need to go see if Dane’s okay. I’m going to grab the drops real fast, and we’ll head back to check on him, okay?”
Theo nodded solemnly.
“You staying a bear?” I asked as he set about collecting his totems.
The bear shrugged and nodded again. I mentally translated that to something like, “Yep. There's no reason to waste the mana.”
His transformations didn’t appear to have a time limit, but I supposed we’d find out for sure soon enough. Dane had been separated from us, but he hadn’t come looking for us when the fight was obviously over. He might’ve run into a fight of his own, and the bear form seemed very capable. Not only that, it seemed like he was still able to use his other abilities somehow.
The totems hadn’t done much against the rock worm even after Theo pinned it, but they’d been very effective against almost every enemy we’d fought up till this point. Each totem seemed to disappear when Theo picked it up, as if the system knew he’d need some assistance carrying his shit around as a bear. I wondered how the hell that worked, but Dane was a higher priority. For now, I could just be satisfied that it did work and worry about why later.
The loot was unusual. Apparently, creatures could drop more than one thing, which I didn’t think I’d seen happen yet. Then again, perhaps the size or power of the creature in question led to the curse giving us better drops. The stronger the creature, the more value earned when we killed it. The curse’s whole point had been to incentivize Valam, and later humans, to kill demons, so it made sense. Bigger demon, bigger rewards. The rock worm didn’t drop anything that glowed, but it certainly dropped plenty of items.
A large potion, bigger than the others, but still noticeably a health potion. A wand, of all things. I happily put on a pair of leather boots, as they provided two armor points, but had no other magic effects on them. My running shoes had already taken a beating down here. The new boots were archaic, and seemed like they were made by hand five hundred years ago, but at the same time they looked great.
Annoyingly, they’d required five strength to wear, so I’d put an extra point into the stat from my newest level. One more into intelligence. The final two I’d been conflicted on. Dexterity to avoid taking damage at all, or constitution to be able to handle it when I inevitably did?
I decided that avoiding damage was the better part of valor and brought my dexterity stat up to eighteen before continuing to catalog our findings.
About seven gold pieces dropped, which I quickly scooped up to replenish my mana. Lastly, an unidentified necklace that I almost missed before it glinted in the light cast by my glowing bear of a husband.
Taking the initiative, I decided to use our last identifier on it, and was somewhat disappointed by what I found.
Armored Amulet of Poison Resistance
Magic
Light
Armor: 2
Increased Resistance to Poison
It was an ugly thing. A metal chain with a small bangle hanging off the front. It looked like something that might be sold in a demented mixture of Claires and Spencers. Gaudy black rhinestones shaped into the rough image of a skull. I’d never be caught dead wearing it in real life, but more armor couldn't hurt. Hopefully the poison resistance would be effective against the demon knight’s nausea attack if we had to fight him again.
I mentioned it to Theo and asked if he wanted it. He just raised an eyebrow at me, which was incredibly effective as a bear. The chain would never fit around his huge neck. Then again, what the hell happened to all of his equipment when he was in this form?
I had no idea, and neither did he.
Fully provisioned and having successfully killed a monster straight out of a nightmare without even being hurt, I was actually starting to feel just a little bit like a badass as we walked back down the tunnel.
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