These creatures were fast.

Although I had quickly attacked and dispatched my first target, two of them caught up with the rest, making me to face four at the same time.

They were already closing upon me, hissing and snapping.

I brought my poleaxe down onto the back of one in a hacking axe blow, but it only resulted in louder angered hissing and the body slightly buckling upon impact.

No sense of penetration or crushing, and that was with my strength, likely reaching multiple tons of force upon impact.

I jumped sideways, avoiding an attack from the sides.  Slipping between the creatures and avoiding the jaws that were snapping at me from all sides, I tried hitting again.

I had no idea about the anatomy of these beasts, but I hoped that the part which was looking like head and was attached to the creatures’ forward side would contain brain or other crucial organs.

I aimed a quick stab at that, using the momentum of my body, adding some strength from my hips and waist. The spear end of the poleaxe actually pierced the creature through its mouth somewhere deep inside and kept going.

With a feeling of rupturing something, a jet of steam-like gas billowed out from the wound, densing up the surrounding fog. As I was straight on the path of the jet, I felt that it was quite a bit warmer than surrounding air, and had unpleasant chemical smell.

To be safe, I pulled out my weapon, and with quick steps retreated from the two remaining creatures.

---

The creatures, seeing the defeat of another of their kin, became more cautious and kept their distance. They kept constantly moving on the opposite sides from me, showing uncanny cooperation.

I attempted to attack the one on my left, but even with my almost perfect reflexes, speed and muscle strength I barely avoided getting hit by the creature on my right, while another one was waiting for a chance to strike from behind.

They could actually use their front limb pair as a means to attack, retaining other two pairs for movement. That gave them an advantage in reach and increased their variety of attacking and movement patterns.

I was certain that my body had reached unprecedented in Earth’s biology toughness and hardness, but I was not too keen on doing crash tests, so I did my best in avoiding the attacks.

---

In a few exchanges I also noticed, that my weapon was unable to endure my full power.

The wooden shaft started to make cracking sounds, and the metal parts were losing their edge from hitting that surprisingly tough ice-covered fur.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Also, it seemed that the creatures were very resilient and strong themselves, with no notable carapace or spine to break, and most of the body was capable of absorbing astonishing blows with rubber-like resistance.

Most likely my first attack was successful through pure luck. It seemed that only the direct spot behind their heads had a vital internal structure close enough to the surface of the skin that I managed to break through with the beak spike.

But unfortunately, the creatures were surprisingly adaptable, and rapidly learned to guard their weak spots.

---

I could have dropped the poleaxe and used my full strength with fists, but I had multiple reasons not to do that.

First of all, I wanted to check my abilities in handling local life forms with available weapons.

Secondly, I needed some practical tests to check my skill and efficiency.

And thirdly, I had to learn to control myself. That would be bad, if I easily broke weapons with each swing, and I totally did not want to be seen as a freak or angry Hulk by possible friendly sentient beings.

Therefore, I switched my tactics from trying to score a telling blow to crippling.

With a strong kick against a pillar, I shot towards another pillar, and borrowing speed from the rapid acceleration, jumped up before pushing off the pillar several meters above the ground, which brought me above the two of the creatures.

Such sudden movements confused my reaction and orientation, proving that even perfected reaction times and anatomically unlimited body still requires the mind guiding it to practice and adapt.

Despite that, I managed to sweep a wide slash with the axe across the upper joints of one of the creatures’ legs, effectively smashing them with the force coming from the acceleration and the spin of the swing.

Creature, having lost its body’s support from one side, toppled over, flailing around with intact limbs.

But in that moment, the creature next to it reacted in an unpredicted way by kicking its limbs sideways towards me while I was still in mid-fall.

---

Luckily, it did not see me, but rather felt and reacted instinctively, so that was only a glancing blow.

But due to the difference in our masses, it was enough to fling me away like a cannon ball. I flew away spinning only to crash against a wall.

The impact was tremendous, and I felt that some of the flexible and soft body parts had been torn or overstretched.

While I had specifically removed the feeling of pain per se when creating this body of mine, I kept in mind the usefulness of pain signals as the organism’s warning system. Records about congenital insensitivity to pain described fully how dangerous might be the lack of warning signals, so instead of pain I experienced highly unpleasant feeling similar to itching.

Now, my whole left side was complaining about the abuse, especially shoulder and neck vertebrae.

Having no time to properly reconnect and strengthen the tissues, I pushed there extra energy, hoping that it will help to support the body.

I praised myself for making my bones especially dense and strong. I had used graphene as a template, so breaking those would be quite a challenge.  

Meanwhile, those of my opponents that retained their mobility, were approaching at surprisingly high speed.

With the clacking sound their four limb pairs burrowed into the icedust on the ground, before launching them onwards, while their frontal limb pairs were kept ready for attack.

That looked a lot like a scene of big, hairy, reptilian-headed sharp-toothed spiders rushing for food.

“Spiders have four leg pairs!” - I strongly disagreed with the picture, keeping my phobia on leash.

I turned to meet the two remaining creatures while complaining in my head about the difficulty of identifying these organisms, and the problem with fitting them into known taxonomy.