“There they go!” Steven anxiously whispered, grabbing Conny’s hand tighter while watching the two small shadows darting over towards the huge monster.

“Those damned idiots!” Kate cursed, but then turned to Clayton and asked same thing she had asked many times this morning after they arrived on top of the cliff, “Do they have a chance?”

Clayton gave the same sigh as always, unable to provide a reasonable answer. What could he even say? He just saw how the experienced Qi masters failed to do any damage to the snake and were thrown away with a casual swing of its tail.

But with his Qi master vision he saw how both Nick and YunYun, grinning widely, jumped on the snake’s body and started furiously slash at it, almost aimlessly as if trying to inflict maximum amount of damage without targeting specific spots.

From Nick’s perspective it was a completely different word.

They closed up on the snake in a few seconds unhindered when he heard Katana behind him happily cheering with its ‘hum’ as YunYun infused her Qi into it. In reply he did the same and Wakizashi sang its tune after a long period of silence as well.

The plan was simple – YunYun would damage and, if possible, severe the snake’s spine in as many places as possible to cripple it and Nick would try kill it or severe the spine directly behind its head. But only when he stepped on the snake’s body, Nick understood the increased difficulty of this ‘boss event’.

Not only the body was constantly moving in unpredictable ways, it was covered in a thin layer of slime and not only it was slippery, it had the property to repel his Qi, making it incredibly difficult to hold on. After noticing it, Nick still dashed up the snake’s tube-like body and, as soon as he was close enough to the huge head, plunged Wakizashi deep below snakes thick skin and made the first cut.

YunYun also immediately noticed the characteristics of the snake’s skin and realized that the training on the wet cliff wall was not even close to being enough for her to feel comfortable in this fight. But, inspired by Nick’s performance in the fight with the black wolves, she decided to change her tactics into ‘hit and run’. She jumped up on the snake, on the closest spot she could, made a deep cut or two and then directly or with a flip jumped back down, sometimes rolling on the ground a bit to recover. Then got back on her feet and instantly launched herself at the snake again.

“They are hurting it!” Clayton excitedly whispered.

“Then … can they win?” Kate was hugging his arm in stress.

“Too early to say.” He shook his head.

At this moment the snake finally realized that the pain in its long stomach was not the only one it experienced. In a crazed speed it began to revolve around itself slashing tail around and destroying everything in its reach. Nick and YunYun continued to jump around like two small monkeys, not forgetting to cut the huge body when it came closer or when they jumped on it. At some point Nick managed to hold on behind its head for almost ten seconds inflicting huge damage when his hand with the last strike sunk in almost to the elbow.

Unfortunately the snake felt it as well and slammed its head directly on the ground, trying to squish this pest, but Nick already slid down while leaving a deep bloody wound behind him.

The problem was that after this cut the only thing they could do was to evade the snake’s chaotic twisting and rolling while huge spurts of mud splashed around at every given second and there was no possibility to get up on it to strike directly again.

From the top of the cliff Clayton saw how Nick’s earlier mentioned example came to life – the panicked reptile really acted like a worm that was cut in two, except more energetically and, of course, in a more deadly and destructive fashion.

“It will soon fall in the water if it goes like this!” YunYun shouted while rolling away from another tail swing.

In answer to that Nick finally found another opening and jumped directly on the snake’s head that just slammed down. He was going to move towards the ‘usual’ spot, when noticed a huge eye larger than a human head staring at him. In an instant, he squatted down and stuck Wakizashi deep in the most vulnerable part of the snake’s body and with all his might propelled away from it.

“Fall back!” He shouted and immediately retreated almost hundred meters with the confused YunYun following him.

“What happened?” She asked.

“It is now blind with its right eye, but I think it might …” Nick didn’t even manage to complete the sentence when the long tail swung exactly at the spot they were standing and both youths barely dodged it, gluing themselves to the ground.

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There was no way to currently make another attack. If earlier the snake was slashing its tail around furiously, trying to kill the attackers, then now it was simply in panic, smashing everything and everyone around it. Besides being blind to its right, it wasn’t even able to see much with the left eye as well, as its gigantic body covered the view most of the time and, in addition, the splashes of mud obstructed the view constantly.

It was in excruciating pain and wasn’t able to discern the location of the attackers as the air around it was filled with the smell of few thousand different people. The snake’s huge head was darting in all directions, trying to sniff with its nostrils and mouth, flicking its tongue in and out repeatedly while continuously hissing in pain. From inability to defend it went to even bigger frenzy when its body crushed in to nearby buildings.

‘Damn it! If it goes like this, the thing will destroy the whole town!’ Nick saw the beast’s convulsing body flattening another two storey building.

He darted three hundred meters away, towards the spot where the fair was held earlier and, infusing Qi in his voice, shouted, “Come here, you beast!”

He knew that snakes can’t really hear sounds, but the loud voice vibrations together with the infused Qi would be definitely spotted by the beast. And he wasn’t wrong.

The snake instantly noticed Nick and like an arrow in a lightning speed moved towards him. YunYun used this opportunity to jump on it and inflicted more damage, but the snake didn’t pay attention to her as it clearly remembered the evildoer who crippled its vision and crazily darted towards him.

Just before snake closed up on Nick, YunYun finally managed to seriously injure it. For that she even had to thrust her Katana in the snake’s body up to her shoulder. She wasn’t certain if she severed a nerve or even the spine, but after feeling Katana touch some bones, she furiously repeated the strike several times just to get thrown down right after.

The snake stopped as if paralyzed and hissed loudly, rising its head high up in the sky. The anger and fury in its only eye was replaced with pure panic when it turned around and tried to reach the Lochi river as fast as possible. Unfortunately for the beast, its lover half of the body was, in fact, paralyzed by YunYun cutting its spinal cord.

“Its escaping!” She shouted anxiously. After all these efforts the snake finally became their pray and it was almost dead as well. There was no way she would let it ‘run’ away.

Nick clearly knew there wasn’t possible for the snake to survive even if it escaped, but he decided to do his best to keep it here since YunYun wanted it so badly. The snake was almost right next to him when it turned around and thus it took him only a moment to jump back up besides its head and start energetically slash at the same deep wound he created earlier.

Maybe the snake didn’t feel the pain anymore or it was in so much pain there was no more pain left to feel, it didn’t notice the incoming damage while both youths, covered in blood and dirt, tried to stop it from escaping in the water.

Learning from her earlier success, YunYun managed to disable another part of the moving body and now almost three quarters were paralyzed and the front part weakly tried to pull along the lifeless tons of meat.

“Those maniacs really did it.” Clayton finally sighed in relief while the people around them were already cheering. Everyone could see the snake was at its last meters and even if it went into the river, it would just end up dead somewhere downstream.

The guards and the crowd that escaped earlier also ran back when they heard the cheers while the Qi masters watched the unfolding events with mixed feelings. They couldn’t even damage this thing, but the two kids simply slaughtered it. This was way too much for them to handle.

Just before the snake reached the river, Nick finally dug deep enough to end its misery. He jumped down from the beast’s head and kicked it as if to check if it was still alive. YunYun landed next to him, widely grinning and they bumped their fists. This was a real hunt!

“Weapons, face-cover!” Nick whispered bringing them back to reality. While hiding their actions from the onlookers they switched their weapons into similar looking ‘regular’ ones and bathed them in the snake’s blood. Then, with the same regular weapons in hand they stood at the side and admired their own work.

“Do you know any good recipe for cooking a snake?” Nick seriously asked YunYun and the closest Qi master who came to congratulate them almost fell over. Did these these two really just hunted some game for dinner?

When more and more people encircled the huge dead monster and the two even bigger monsters who managed to kill it, Nick closed his eyes for a moment to concentrate and then approached the snake’s body and with the same bloody iron dagger that was in his hand, cut off a large piece of meat.

“Alright, this will be our dinner.” He simply said and walked towards their campsite. YunYun silently nodded and followed.

The crowd watched them leave and the governor stepped out to say something, but then changed his mind. These two just battled for almost twenty minutes and definitely were tired. For him the most amazing realization was that now he really believed Nick had encountered those rank five or maybe even rank six beasts he mentioned two days ago. It was simply unreal.

But for the local Qi masters there was another mystery.

“How the hell did they injure the beast? None of us could even leave a scratch on its scales! Even now when it can’t protect itself I can barely leave a mark.” One of the hunters complained in a loud voice.

“Few days ago our caravan was held back by a large landslide. Those two and their boss cut apart huge pieces of blackrock stones with the same simple weapons that they just had in their hands.” Vice caravan leader Rushdi sighed. He was watching from the top of the cliff while holding his breath similar to hundreds of others and still couldn’t believe the result.

“Aren’t … aren’t they just your caravan guards?” One onlooker stuttered.

“Sigh, no. They are from an elite mercenary group and we only hired them by a chance. In fact, they use this convoy job as a training opportunity … you … you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you how on our way here that kid killed off over seventy rank three black wolves in one fight by himself.” Rushdi shook his head, sighed and left. He decided to not say that in that mercenary group was only one Qi master who wasn’t even taking part in this fight. Everything he said was already shocking enough.

While people from the caravan and town were trying their best to cut off pieces of the snake meat for the evening celebration, Nick and YunYun quickly washed up and cooked their own feast. The others were sitting around and teased them, reminding of few clumsy looking jumps and falls during the fight, and no one mentioned the stress, fear and danger that had already passed.