The necrotic puppet stared down both Michael and Zurra, its blue eyes acting like spotlights on them as it snarled through its boney jaws. The black meaty muck covering its form tightening.
Zurra snorted a growl back in response as she tapped the bottom of her halbert onto the ground, the green flames on the blade reigniting stronger. "I won' be brought down by a heapin' pile o' meat scraps! Ya hear?!" She squealed angrily.
Michael simply stared down the oozing construct with a focused gaze, he still felt like he was burning up akin to a candle inside a living flame. The clothes he wore, under the Earth Armor put up by Runhar, were slowly being drenched by the young man sweating buckets. The poison was still in his system and he could feel it affecting him. The lack of glasses though have made him cautious, as he could only see a large blackish figure with two blurry dots, shining in his direction, for eyes.
This stand-off of stares lasted for what felt like ages while in reality only seconds passed until the crude meat golem growled and slammed a sludge covered fist into the ground. The liquefied darkened goo seemed to quickly seep into the soil, making it bulge and crack into the direction of the human and his blacksmithing teacher.
Michael didn't need to clearly see to notice it as the shifting blur of the ground in front of him and the ground quaking prompted him to action. His brown eyes flashed once more with that emerald color as he moved, the speeding effect put on him by Urla, intensifying. He tackled Zurra into a hug and drag as he ran to the side.
"Michael?! What the blo- " The old boar woman exclaim taken by surprise, her sentence cut short by the sight of the ground she stood on, just a few moments ago, bursting upwards with that black ichor and sharp curved rib like bones jutting upwards from that same spot. "Shit- good reaction, bo- Whoa!" She squaled as Michael kept dragging her, the hills of her shoes carving the dirt.
The ichor seemed to continue to follow them, something Michael felt quick enough to keep avoiding it. It trailed akin to a devilish serpent, sharp crooked bones jutting from the ground as it kept close. "We need a strategy a-and quick." he said panting, gritting his teeth with each close call of the bones skewering them. "Please, tell me ya got something, because I have been out of good ideas, for a while now, and shit ones don't do me any favors." He added as he tried getting as far away from the meat golem as possible, it's blue burning eyes trailing the two as well as the snaking goo serpent.
Zurra groaned from having her gut held onto tightly, swinging her burning halbert at bones nearly clipping them, or at least, getting too close for comfort. Despite her quick reaction on countering the boney spikes, her eyes darted quickly in empty spots around her as if she was looking for something, the pupils focusing with the spark of an idea. "Aye... but I'll need time."
"We're about to get some and I'll try to buy you more." Michael replied as his pace slightly slowed. He noticed the tremble of the ground lessening and the jutting out of bones was less frequent. "It's running out..." he said taking big gulping gasps of air. At this point the two were a good 150 meters from Vespertilia's minion, which only warranted some loud shrieks from it as the black ooze seemed to return to it, before it began moving.
Once the grip on her loosened Zurra took off and kept on with the run. "DON'T DO ANYTHIN' STUPID OR I'LL KILL YA!" She squealed in a loud declaration to her newest apprentice as she continued putting distance between herself and the creature.
'Well... let's hope it isn't stupid...' Michael groaned mentally as he charged back towards the undead Hay-yen amalgamation.
"Finally growing some guts, Daeman?!" Vespertilia's monstrosity roared as it began running at him, giant claws open to its sides as the two got closer to collision.
Michael only responded with growled strained grunts, the taunts of his opponent falling on half deaf ears, as his raising steady heart rate warranted him to only hear his heartbeat in his ears. As he kept up his charging dash, armored knuckle duster fist raised, the both of them seemed prepared to duke it out. Still, human nature as it is in a fight or competition, always attempts to one up their opponent.
The young man barely avoided a swiping claw to his head, which ripped a good chunk of the earth helmet off, but that didn't stop his motions. He lowered gradually as he got closer, this maneuver allowing to avoid getting his face fileted and gaining him access to one of the beast's legs. He shoulder tackled the creature's leg below the knee, pressing himself harshly and violently against the amalgam's secondary leg joint that normally bent inwards. The momentum carried on as Michael swiped the leg backwards, himself ending up behind the creature.
"Pesky vermin! DAMN IT! HAH-... If only your blood didn't smell so divine... hmmngh~... I wouldn't go through the trouble..." Vespertilia talked to herself in her tent, droll dripping off of her fangs. As she moved her kneeling behemoth about, her view got blurred by an impact to the creature's head. The damned Daeman had now gotten close and he was wailing on her puppet. His arms up in a guard around his head, his upper body swayed left and right in a constant motion resembling an infinity sign. His fists trailed behind his body's motions, coming to impact the head of her minion at a side angle constantly. The fists of her pink morsel were juggling the undead's head from one side to the other, making the view shakey.
Michael growled and grunted with each hook thrown, putting all his weight into each fist impacting onto the hard skull, the earth armor around his hands chipping violently before reforming. His bloodshot eyes kept staring down into the blue blurry firey voids he just tossed around with his attacks. As blood trickled from his nose, he just huffed it out of his flared nostrils with each movement, his exhales in rhythm with the impacts. 'Stall! Stall! Stall! Just buy enough time...' He thought, his barrage of assault unrelenting, and aided in speed by Urla's spell.
Still, brute force is not enough to deal with something that doesn't register pain. The puppet swung a wild claw that caught the young man in his right side, the dirt armor fragmenting under the blow's force. The boney claw tips made contact with the flesh, shallowly, but they still managed to lightly impale Michael's side. If not for the shattering dirt, the young man might have not noticed, due to the pain he couldn't feel. Not entirely out of his mind, he began to back out quickly, putting space between himself and his target.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Before getting far away enough for his vision of the necromantic behemoth to blur, he noticed something that made his heart sink. The creature's skull was shattered into many chunks of various sizes, but none were crumpling or falling down, as the black ooze held it all together. This hesitation proved to be his undoing as Vespertilia's minion had enough time to go on the offensive. It approached with a huge bounding leap, dropping down onto Michael's position, which he barely avoided. Still the evasive movement wasn't without cost. A big clawed bone hand slapped him across the head, shattering the helmet entirely this time and sending the human tumbling to the side akin to a rock being skipped on water.
Michael's head was swimming as he laid on his back, his forehead's left side now trickling with blood from a gash. His expression convulsed and twitched due to the shock he was in, caused by the impact. He could feel the dirt beneath him slowly crawling on him and covering his body where his flesh was exposed, yet it felt more like the ground was swallowing him. In his mind there was this looming doom, as if he was being lowered in his grave before his very eyes, while still drawing breath.
Gritting his bloody teeth he rolled over and he began to force himself to his feet, his eyes darting about, his focus coming in and out as he struggled to recover. Two blue dots seemed to approach him at a slow speed, accompanied by a cackle oozing contempt and a poisonous glee.
"Hmm~ this suits you. Kneeling, it just looks right." The distorted voice said with a casually demeaning tone to it.
Michael struggled to get a grip on his senses as he managed to get to his feet. The thumping of heavy slow steps echoing louder in his head. 'Gotta do something... gotta move... move... keep moving.' As he came to this conclusion he began to mumble under his breath, in a chant, slow and unsure, as if he was struggling to remember something. Slowly the emerald green in his eyes began to intensify, the grass around his immediate vicinity drying and eventually turning to grey ashes.
The behemoth stopped in its tracks as Vespertilia gazed upon Michael in confusion. "What are you doing? Another futile attempt at retaliation?" The construct croaked in the shaman's slowly wrathful tone. "Why do you keep trying to defy me when you can clearly see, how pointless it is, morsel?" She inquired baffled at his useless attempts to struggle.
"Heh... I'm just too fucking stupid to know when to quit... sigh... it's been an issue." He retorted with a weak smirk on his face as he began moving towards the behemoth, his pace picking up quicker then before. The vegetation under his feet drying and turning to ashes where he stepped.
'This again? Gods, you're becoming awfully dull.' she thought to herself, as her puppet got ready to rear its leg back to kick with force into Michael. As the human got closer the motions were in place, but quickly Vespertilia realized that there was nothing to kick as Michael rushed past her construct and behind it. She quickly turned to see where the daeman went, but before her eyes could register what she looked for, her beast shuddered as it got impacted. A fist sized hole was now in its left hip.
Michael had put as much speed as his casting of Urla's spell would let him, this time his motions being a rushing blur. The impact of his right fist with the puppet made the armor splinter on contact, leaving his hand bare and the skin on his knuckles splitting and bleeding. The singular hit wasn't the end of it, though. The human's muscles flexed, starting to slowly fray due to the tremendous force needed to stop or turn, his joints popping. He began attacking the mid section of the Hay-yen undead from all directions, blow away in splatters the goo that formed the bulk of it. He would alternate between his fists, the armor rebuilding on them between attacks. Still this strategy wasn't without a cost, as the skin on his right hand was blown apart. Each turn and twist was more of a strain on him as the force ripped muscle fibers and bruised his legs' bones inside.
Vespertilia began to growl with each landing attack, her minion was quick, but not this quick. The ichor at the base of its form struggled to stay together as it got splattered all over. Blood began dripping from inbetween her own teeth and out her nose, due to sheer amount of mana it required from her. "YOU BASTARD LOWLY SCUM! YOU AND YOUR CURSED TRICKS!" She roared, guiding her minion to lash out wildly, as frustration clouded her judgement.
Once the mid section of the creature was thin enough, Michael quickly turned and began dashing at from its left side, this time reaching outwards with his full right arm instead of his fist. His teeth crackled from pressure as he gritted them, bracing himself. The young man then proceeded to arm bar it where its abdomen was thinnest. The impact exploded the armor off of him and it shot out a large vertebrae from the construct's mid section.
Panting, shaking and with lightly bloody tears running down his face, he looked upon the severed in half creature, the form now still. He then stared down, pulling in air in uneven breaths as he stared at his right arm. The forearm was bent quite a few degrees upwards at the half point, the skin split and blood pouring like crazy. The pain was like a crazy warmth in the limb which quickly turned into a sharp stab as the earth armor began to reform over it, forcing the limb straight as it encased it. "FUCK! HMM- Ngh...! S-shit..." He hiccuped a cry.
Michael's pity party didn't last long though as the top side of the creature, straightened itself upwards, the burning blue lights for eyes staring at him with a fury like none other.
"Oh you gotta be- hah... fucking joking." Michael said running again, forcing his legs to break themselves apart one last time. He rushed up once more like a windy blur and this time he reared back his left fist, tightening the grip on his knuckle duster.
"All you are doing is delay the inevitable you insole-" The construct kept on preaching its master's tirade, but it got cut short by Michael impaling his left fist into the creature's left eye socket, akin to a fish getting hooked in the eye.
Vespertilia looked on wide eyed as her unrelenting determination seemed to finally crack, especially she could feel her hold onto her construct partially breaking apart. 'I am about to lose to my lunch... oh how the mighty have fallen.' She sighed, lamenting to herself. Just as she was about to give up, her remaining vision from the golem caught her attention as she began noticing its remains splattered all over the field. With a new spark in her eyes Vespertilia let out a howled cackle.
Michael meanwhile looked at the lethargic undead construct as it slowly fell silent and leaning to the side, while he extracted his fist from its head. His left arm was cut up in place by bone shards, but it faired much better than his right. The boy's right arm had actually managed to stain the dirt around it red, the blood seeping through it and slowly dripping off onto ground.
As he thought himself finally triumphant, the necromantic servant turned its head to face him with a crack in the neck as it croaked a chuckle and uttered. "You lose, you insipid bug." As it finished its insult each tiny pool of the black goo on the ground around Michael began to shake and he quickly found both his legs stabbed from all directions by boney spikes.
The young man cried a shriek of surprised pain as both his legs got impaled, the now brittle bones breaking in multiple spots. He collapsed onto the ground like a rag doll, the ooze around him now starting to envelop him akin to chains, holding him down. He gasped for air as his system got wrecked by a pure shock boiling with adrenaline.
The undead Hay-yen giant began to clamber on top of its lower half and reattach itself whole, giving out one of those iconic hyena like laughs mixed in with Vespertilia's voice. "The game is over, bug." She said as the golem stared down upon Michael with its one remaining blue firey eye.