John descended into the mad scramble of bodies. Mortal families all pushing and screaming, desperate to get into the safety of the Sect. Monstrous beasts of all sorts were tearing the crowd to pieces, it was enough to make one's stomach churn. The other disciples were doing their best but it was not enough, they were poorly adapted to the oddities of Weird qi. It was up to John.
He dropped in the middle of one wave of demons, an eclectic mix of twisted carnivores, their original forms were only barely recognizable. John slashed outward with claws and piercing fangs easily dispatching the smaller demons. The largest of them took several more attacks before its black blood drained enough to kill the beast. A flood of qi entered his dantian with each kill, the wild Weird qi was significantly easier to digest than ordinary qi, melting inside of him like ice in boiling water. John barely had time to notice as he leapt in front of a charging boar the size of a palanquin that was moments away from plowing deep into the crowd.
The boar's tusks were as sharp as razors but John still caught them. His skin sliced open and his feet were pushed through the dirt several yards, but the tusks caught in the steel-like muscles and tendons of his palms. They stood in deadlock for several agonizing moments. John didn't dare let go to attack and he couldn't afford to use his legs to strike out lest he fall and get trampled either. He could probably survive being trampled, but it would put him out of the fight. His free floating tendrils of qi scratched ineffectively against the armor-like hide of the beasts back and sides.
An Outer disciple crashed into the side of the hog like a wave against a great boulder. His qi might be ineffective but the sheer momentum of the tackle was enough to break Johns stalemate and twist the beast onto its side. John wasted no time in leaping forward to attack its soft underbelly, his whole arm covered in a qi construct of a fang pierced deep in the monsters belly and sliced up to its heart. Blood splashed on his face and covered his arms and most of his torso. He sputtered and tried to wipe his eyes clean with his free hand but a mountain lion jumped on his back at the next moment, slashing open his back and shredding his robe. With a roar he grasped back, his hands turning into vicious claws to grip the demon raking his flesh. With a yank, he pulled and rolled forward at the same time, flinging the engorged cat off of him. It had mangled his skin painfully, and the continued attacks on his muscles meant they were moderately damaged.
John grimaced as he faced the cougar, which looked ready to pounce back on top of him. Everything he'd fought so far was between a strong peak Qi condensing and a weak early Foundation establishment stage. That meant he was well matched for any of the monsters in an even fight, but he was likely to continue accumulating wounds and it was unlikely he'd get fair fights forever. Even now, each kill was paid for in the lives of countless mortals as they took up most of the attention from the horde of demons.
'Damn it.' John cursed to himself. He had privately thought how nice it was to have a problem that was so straight forward as killing, why did everything have to be so damned complicated? He needed to take stock and look at his options.
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Peering into his dantian, John was shocked at just how full it was. His last advancement cost him the majority of his free qi but it was rapidly filling up, it was achieving double the results for half the work! A voice in the back of his mind whispered that he could advance even faster if he simply let the mortals continue to die and pick off weak demons, retreating when there was nothing but blood and corpses remaining. John grit his teeth and fended off several attacking wolves and firmly shoved that voice down.
Maybe that was true, but it was just as possible that fighting to protect the crowd would get him to advancement anyway. John eviscerated the wolves that had distracted him but he was charged by a goat, sent flying through the air in a turnabout of his earlier fight with the cougar. John coughed up blood as his organs shuddered. A pain deep in his side told him he was probably bleeding internally.
John shook his head to clear it, he was bloody inside and out now, philosophizing could wait. Keeping one eye on the ram, he cast his attention around the chaos, searching for where he could make the most difference. Many families had made it through the Sect gate, but there was still too many out and vulnerable. A few new faces were fighting in the crowd but they were having difficulties still. Some disciples were now directing the masses--an orderly retreat would be faster so John approved. Looking back toward the entrance, John noticed there was... an unusual dearth of blood on the ground.
The ram charged immediately. John leapt up into the air, preparing to slice the beast's neck as it passed but he was intercepted by several large birds. Robins and finches gigantified, with hooked beaks and razor sharp talons dived on him. The cacophony of beating wings was enough of a distraction but worse was the beaks which were sharp enough to take big bites out of his sides, easily stripping muscle from his bones in beak sized divots.
John hissed at the pain and crushed the birds as best he could while still mid-air. One between his clawed fingers, another between his elbow and knee, the last he strangled with qi directly. John counted himself lucky his lungs weren't pierced as the black demons' ichor mixed with his own white blood into a muddy grey. The ram charged a third time and John shoved himself to the side with qi faster than his legs would have taken him. He grabbed onto the ram with that same qi and pulled himself back to it before it could defend with its hard horns, once again piercing through with a fanged arm, destroying its heart.
The blood, something was wrong with the blood! John was practically painted in white and black across his now bare chest and back. His robe was torn to less than ribbons, but it remained clean, even now. Blood spurted from the dead animal and didn't flow downhill. John turned in the direction the blood was crawling and spotted an enormous elk. There was no way John could have missed it, but it was the first time he was seeing it.
The world slowed down.
Each page flip showed the broken action; the elk stood up suddenly on its hide legs which swelled into massive haunches which easily supported it upright, its arms and chest thickened and twisted, resembling a human's more than a ruminants, its foreclaws lengthened into two curled digits. The worst was its mouth, its jaw opened many times too large, nearly the entire length of its skull split to reveal huge glinting teeth. Massive antlers dripped with black blood and hung with flesh like shedding felt. Red and black blood floated in orbs around the horns like so many ornaments.
The world returned to normal and John found he could move once more. Blood rushed along the ground to the adversary, pooling up into its clawed hand and becoming a long and vicious whip. The demon gave it a few cracks before whipping it out at John's feet.