Chapter 64 Not Over Yet.

“Fucking finally.” Esk swore half under his breath as he dropped to his knees exhausted. Not only was he out of mana but he had also been pushing himself to the limit just to keep up with Fable and Lenna.

“It’s not over yet.” Fable shattered his dreams of rest and recuperation.

Isaac took a step and appeared twenty feet away from their observer leaving behind a fading silhouette. Isaac and the mushroom man stared at each other in silence for a few long seconds. “Can I trust that you aren’t harboring any more of those?” Isaac asked and gestured towards the mushroomancer’s corpse.

The mushroom shifted, its body creaked and its one arm twisted slightly before returning to normal. Isaac got the feeling the mushroom was talking to him but his translation power didn’t seem to work on body language. “You can talk to them?” Fina questioned.

Isaac shook his head. “No, I have no idea what it’s saying but it is saying something.” He explained. “At the very least it isn’t hostile as long as we don’t try to enter its territory.” Isaac turned around to face the rest of the group while he lowered his boost back down to sustainable levels. “Let’s cle-” Isaac’s words were cut off by a sudden feeling of imminent death. Isaac tilted his head to the side while swaying with his step. Isaac could teleport at a moment’s notice when he was already expecting to teleport. The act of keeping a small amount of shadows just below the surface of his skin was what enabled near instant teleportation. Isaac had let his guard down and now he was going to pay for it.

Esk was the only one whose focus wasn’t on Isaac and the mushroom creature. The rest of the team watched in horror as the mushroom cyclops moved so quickly it almost seemed to teleport. It’s clawed hand came down in a heavy overhead blow that was aimed right for Isaac’s head. It was at that moment that Lenna realized something. Isaac’s mana was unique and the mushroom people remembered others based on their mana. Another thought came to her mind immediately afterwards. ‘The Ori-Masa didn’t have a mushroomancer controlling them until after Isaac and I went through the mushroom kingdom and Isaac melted a few mushrooms with his death flames. Mushrooms that had already proven to be adaptable. Did we make this problem?’ She had no more time to think however as she had already closed half the distance between her starting position and Isaac. Her body had been moving on its own from the start.

Isaac’s knee gave out as the clawed hand shoved his shoulder down with far more force than something of its size suggested. Isaac felt like an elephant had just stepped on his shoulder. The bones cracked and reformed as his skin and muscle was cleaved through. His armor did its best to keep the attack from simply going through him but it was not capable of keeping out the monster’s claws entirely. He teleported away just in time to dodge the follow up attack. A horizontal swing cleaved through the air where Isaac had just been. The air cracked under the insane display of speed. Isaac turned to see the monster coming for his head again. It had covered the thirty feet Isaac had teleported in an instant again. Every one of its steps left behind gouges as its clawed feet dug deep into the stone for traction. Isaac was running low on mana and as long as his boost was still active he wouldn’t be regenerating any. He was stuck with what he had, a bottomed out Lenna, Fina, Fable, and Esk. He also had an exhausted Mark and a rogue named Shy who seemed to have an infinite amount of magical knives.

Isaac leaned back sharply as a clawed hand just barely missed taking the tip of his nose off. Isaac teleported behind the monster and grabbed on. The monster twirled on one leg to build up momentum. Its ankle twisted like it wasn’t even attached to the main foot that was still clamped deep into the stone. The mushroom cyclops then abruptly bent and guided all of its momentum into slamming its back down onto the cold stone. Isaac felt his ribs all shatter and his consciousness wink out for the barest split second. His ribs flew back into place and his lungs reinflated. His head started to clear and that was when he realized that he was in mid air. The monster had spun again as soon as it had finished turning Isaac into a pancake. The motion caused Isaac to be flung like a rock out of a sling. He was moving too fast to risk letting himself impact anything and to make matters worse the monster was already launching itself at him.

Isaac prepared to teleport right as the monster’s clawed hand came crashing down towards him. Three swords caught the clawed hand arresting its, and the rest of the body’s, motion. Isaac saw a glinting blue blade, a shimmering silver rapier, and a perfectly forged longsword wreathed in flames catch the siege engine of a clawed hand. Isaac twisted in mid air and teleported while covering his right hand in death flames.

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Isaac teleported just behind the mushroom creature. He made sure that he was oriented properly to pull off his mugging. For the crime of ambushing the Lord of Darkness Isaac was going to charge the monster an arm and leg. Maybe the other arm and leg, along with its head and hopefully its life, too. Isaac’s hand grabbed the bicep of the monster’s left arm. Isaac was moving fast enough that, even though his death flames would burn through the life based creature almost instantly, he felt the mushroom’s arm in his bare hand. Isaac clamped down and was yanked in an odd direction while snapping the mushroom’s arm off. As he tumbled he saw Lenna and Fable’s threefold guard that had saved him from a good deal of pain if not actual death.

Isaac was forced to teleport again as the disintegrating arm burned away in his grasp before falling and skipping across the ground. This time Isaac teleported himself to the other side of the cavern. He let gravity take him and he rolled with the fall as his still rather fast speed was dispersed by his contact with the ground. Isaac rolled and slid on his butt with one hand out to keep him balanced and both of his boots grinding on the stone to slow him down. He ended the slide by pushing up with his guiding hand letting the rest of his momentum take him up into a standing position. He looked over to see Fable and Lenna engaging the cyclops, three swords against one claw. It took everything they had to block one of its attacks but each of them was capable of parrying a blow successfully.

Lenna and Fable’s status quo held until the monster succeeded in learning while fighting them. Its leg snapped out and kicked Fable in the shoulder. The old man managed to start parrying the attack before it landed. This meant that he could push it slightly off course and use it to help push himself out of the way. The split second movement probably saved the old man’s life. Fable was sent flying from the impact. His shoulder was shattered but he somehow held down a cry of pain. His rapier clanged to the ground as he lost the ability to keep his hand closed. He spun around with the impact in mid air before landing in a long slide. He dropped to a knee and grabbed his closed wooden fingers with his teeth to pry them open. He couldn’t grab a healing potion with his only good hand out of commission and a sword still wedged in his bad one. Fable was effectively completely out of the fight for the foreseeable future.

Lenna knew that she was next but in classic V’Nova fashion she didn’t even think about trying to block or parry the next attack that was aimed for her. No, Lenna brought her sword in close and lowered the tip of the blade while thrusting forwards with everything she had into the incoming kick. Her sword’s crossguard and hilt were the only parts of it that weren’t stuck inside of the monster’s leg. Her aura flames were roaring with renewed fury after seeing Isaac get tossed around like a ragdoll. The kick’s impact still hit her with almost full force and she felt her right wrist sprain and fracture as it absorbed a disproportionate amount of the kick. Lenna let the attack toss her back a few feet so she wouldn’t get pushed over. Even with her fractured wrist she took her sword with her. She may have been in pain but her fury had not been abated, they would be done when she said that they were done.

Esk shot to his feet and moved towards his master while keeping almost all of his attention on the monster. He had to be careful not to fall prey to what had happened to Isaac because he knew that he would not survive such an engagement. He also was wary of engaging the monster directly like his master and Lenna because he knew that he would be overpowered by it easily if both of them were having so much trouble. He wanted to run to Fable to help him down some potions but the fear of getting turned into red paste as soon as he looked away from the monster was keeping that thought from becoming a reality.

Fina swore internally. She reached into her Bottomless Bag and grabbed a mana potion. She really didn’t like drinking them. The risk of a mana reversal was too high for her liking so she just stood there, off to the side, out of the way, with a mana potion in hand and watched. She would only risk it if there were no other options. She would only drink the potentially near fatal potion if her only other option was death. She liked her party, she liked Fable, she was interested in Lenna and Isaac, but her life was more important to her. She also had a feeling that Shy would be able to escape if the worst happened and if Shy was the only member of the group to survive it would be a bad look. The rogue being the only survivor was never a good look.

Mark launched one of his spears at the back of the monster with all of his strength before he drew a shortsword. This sword’s blade was a bit thinner than his broadsword which made it a bit lighter and easier to handle. His spear hit the back of the monster and then fell to the ground. The tip of the magically enhanced spear only penetrated about an inch into the monster which was not nearly enough to keep the weapon in place. He braced for impact as he assumed the monster would want to get rid of him for dealing damage to it but only time would tell.

Shy wasn’t sure if it was the time to start throwing more magic knives or not. She had burned through most of her more straightforward ones. Acid, fire, poison, lightning, those were all standard means of killing monsters. With Orb of Shadows, Split Second Daylight, Silence, and Concussion being all of the strange ones that she had left. She gripped the handles of six of her twelve ice knives tighter. The monster that they were fighting was moving far too fast for most of them to handle so she really wanted to slow it down but like usual her ice would be counter intuitive to the fire magic getting tossed around. ‘Unless, yes.’ She thought and ran towards the monster. Twenty feet would be too far for what she was planning. If she was going to do this she needed to make sure it worked.