Maxine had arrived on the planet safely and undetected, but it wasn't as easy as she had foreseen. She had expected a few blindspots in the planetary detection grid, but once she got there, there was only one very small one. It was just barely big enough for her ship to slip through, and it was open for only five minutes every few days. She left it to the ship's onboard computer to time their entry into the planet's atomosphere and land it in a rather large lake to hide it. As far as she could tell, the locals hadn't shown any sign that they detected her ship. Thus Maxine was free to adjust to her new lifestyle, which involved hunting and cooking her own food.
Speaking of which, she was currently stalking a type of elk through thick jungle foliage in her battle form. She had tried to attack just like this one two days ago from above, but failed to break it's neck using a pouncing attack like a panther would. In retaliation, it struch her hard in the ribs with it's antlers before running off. She still managed to kill it in the end, but the training clothes she had been wearing were shredded during that encounter. To avoid ruining anymore of her clothes, she made a few sets of hide tank tops and shorts to wear instead.
She took one more look at the deer and checked the time by looking at the position of the sun. It was less than four hours before the four-horned kanzils were supposed to begin their invasion and she needed this fresh meal to be at her best. It bothered her that she needed to eat at least ten pounds of meat a day to maintain her full strength while in her battleform. However if she gorged herself, she wouldn't feel her hunger for a couple days. It didn't work as well if she used the food stored in her dimensional ring and her increased consumption meant she had to spend more time voiding her bowels. She hated being in a vunerable state like that for any period of time. Still it was a small price to pay to be at her maximum battle readiness.
Maxine slowly climbed up a tree while staying out of sight and finally sighted her prey. It was a large buck, but unlike Earth's deer, this thing had six legs and it's antlers were green. It also had peak iron stage cultivation. She watching it bite and tear bark off of a tree a large tree for a few moments to make sure it hadn't scented her yet. She stealthily moving on all fours along a branch that ran above it.
After checking one last time that the elk hadn't noticed her yet, she leaped out and slashed it's throat with her claws before leaping away to avoid getting hit with it's counter attack. However instead of attacking, it bolted away at top speed. She chased after it through dense foliage to avoid another predator from getting a free meal once her venom took it down. Thankfully, it didn't get far before it succumed to her venom and blood loss.
Still she didn't approach it just yet. It might still have enough life in it to hit her hard with one of it's hooved feet. Even though she could heal quickly, a mild head wound would take half her half a day to completely heal. Head wounds just healed far more slowly than any other injury she's had and she wanted to avoid it.
So she waited while scanning it with her spiritual sense until it's heart stopped before taking the now dead elk back to one of her dens. She had five of them roughly fifty miles from the nearest city and another twenty scattered near other cities.
A short distance from her den, which was little more than a hole in the ground, she had a cooking pit set up. She quickly skinned, gutted and beheaded the deer. After throwing the innards and the head off to the side, she placed the deer skin on a rock for now and she started the fire in the bottom of the pit. She quickly assembled a makeshift cooking spit to hold the entire carcass of the deer so that she could spint it to cook it evenly. She really hated eating raw meat, but she could if she needed to.
She began to rotate the deer carcass on the cooking spit slowly and periodically added a log to the fire in order to keep the heat up. It would take an hour to cook it enough for Maxine's tastes, but even with her immense appetite, she wouldn't be able to eat all of this meat on her own. She could at most eat a fifth of it before it went bad, but there was at least two hundred pounds of edible meat on this carcass. Thankfully, she knew that she would be gettting some company.
As if on cue, several serpents of various sizes started approaching her and waited patiently for the meat to finish cooking. They had been coming to her ever since she arrived on this world and since they were peaceful, she had shared her recent kills with these serpents. She could always use a few friends even if they were just beasts.
The biggest of them was at least sixty feet long and could probably eat this elk carcass whole without being fully sated. She playfully named it 'Titania' due to it being both a female and it's size.
But three quarters the way through cooking the deer carcass, she felt several sets of curious eyes on her and reflexively extended out her spiritual sense. As usual, her instincts were spot on and she found seven humans. Only one of them was a non-cultivator and he looked a great deal like a scholar with a set of glasses and short cropped brown hair.
The cultivators with him were wearing armor over most of their body, except for their hands and heads. But that lack of armor was mostly due to the fact that they had a set of narrow, sharp horns on their heads that prevented them from wearing any kind of helmet and gloves would've been torn apart by the claws on their hands. Brown scales covered their faces and hands, and she couldn't help noticing that none of them had tails or wings. The lack of a tail was a dead giveaway that they weren't born with a draconic bloodline. So they have a captive or tamed dragon and have a way to effectively bestow a bloodline to people. Judging by the type and coloration of their scales and horns, the dragon they have could be a variety of drake or wyvern. Although I can't be sure without actually seeing it.
They continued to watch her in silence even after she finished cooking the deer. They are observing me. But why? She took a thigh for herself while keeping track of the locals and cut a few pieces of flesh off to feed the smaller snakes before tossing the remainder of the carcass into the open mouth of Titania. All of the snakes gulped down the meat greedily.
While she ate, her observers were talking to each other very softly. However Maxine didn't understand a word of it and felt frustrated about it. Her ship had nothing in relation to the local language and that left Maxine without a means to communicate. Still, she picked up the meaning of a few of their words as well as the name of the scholar: Decaan. Hmm, based on their behavior, they must think I'm either a new species on their world or that I've recently migrated to this area. Or they may think I'm an alien, but they would be bringing a lot more than just those guys in that case. Regardless, I'm thinking they want to recruit me to help defend their world.
After taking the last bite of meat off the bone, she stared directly at them and so did the serpents around her. Decaan paled, but his bodyguards were instantly on guard. Well, this is as good a time as any to show I'm not hostile.
Maxine slowly walked towards them while standing fully upright with her claws retracted and made sure that none of the serpents were following her. She was careful to appear as non-threatening as possible. Regardless all of the cultivators were putting themselves between Maxine and Decaan. Decaan, on the other hand, was studying her movements very carefully and she was just a few steps away from them when she noticed that all of them were shorter than her. Decaan, being the shortest, was half a head shorter than herself. Now that's wierd. No matter where I've gone, I've always been either slightly above or below average height and most men were taller than me.
Unfortunately her greater height made them more nervous than they would be normally and it was clear that they were going to attack her out of fear in mere moments even if she turned around and ran. Damn it. They are too wound up. I need to find a way to calm them down. I wish it was as easy as talking to them through spiritual sense but I can't. A dumb human-beast hybrid is way less threatening than a telepathic one. I guess there is only the simplest method left.
Maxine quickly raised up her hand slowly and pointed at Decaan before saying his name. Thankfully the simple act of her speaking was enough to stun them into inaction. She quickly patted her own chest just above her breasts and said her own name. She repeated those actions several times before Decaan figured out what she was doing. He swiftly said 'Maxine' while pointing at her with a smile on his lips and Maxine nodded her head while mimicking his smile. His bodyguards had calmed down at this point. That's right. I'm friendly. I'm not going to attack you like some mindless beast.
To solidify her peaceful intentions, she slowly reached for a small bag tied to her pants and retrieved a strip of jerky. She held out the jerky towards Decaan and was careful not to let her claws touch it to avoid poisoning him by accident. He took it carefully against the protests of his bodyguards, and took a big bite out of it.
Once he finished eating it, he retrieved a small package out of his backpack and took off it's wrapper before handing it to Maxine. It looked a lot like a fruit bar, but she had no idea what it was made of. She took it from him and sniffed at it as a cover while scanning it with her spiritual sense. It wasn't toxic as far as she could tell, so she figured it was safe to eat. She bit down on it to see what it tastes like.
As soon as it touched her tongue, she moaned with enjoyment and her tail was swishing back and forth excitedly. It was quite possibly the best thing she had ever tasted in her life and it felt like her body craved what it was made out of. Even as she quickly devoured it, she knew whatever fruit it was made out of was, quite possibly, the medicinal herb that she needed for her breakthrough potion.
She had enjoyed it so much that she hadn't noticed Decaan had recieved a call via a small earbud and was holding his hand up to his ear to hear it more clearly. His previous friendly demeanor had vanished and he looked very concerned. If they've just now detected the four-horned kanzil ships, their early detection systems leave much to be desired. Still they are way better than Earth's.
She took one more glance at Decaan's bodyguards and reached out with a very thin thread of spiritual sense to touch Decaan's mind. She was going to learn as many words of his language as possible from his conversation.
"...us?" a voice in Decaan's earbud said.
"Possibly, but I can't say for sure until we break the language barrier," Decaan said.
"You don't have time for that. Just drag her back with you. Those four-armed pricks made landfall and will be on top of you in less than an hour," the voice said.
"I don't advise using force of any kind against her, general. She is an ambush hunter and even if one of our people manages to mostly avoid her initial attack, all it would take is a scratch for her envenomed claws to kill," Decaan said, "And that's not even taking into account the damage she could cause with her brute strength and speed."
"I don't care. Drug it if you have to. Just bring it back here before those four armed freaks kill it. We need it to help us defend against those things," the general said. It seems the four-horned kanzils have arrived early. Still, I don't like being called an 'it.' It's insulting.
Maxine felt several spiritual senses wash over her from the right and she immediately whipped her head in that direction they were coming from. Her face refexively twisted into anger since she knew it was the four-horned kanzils. "I think that's no longer a possibility, general. She's entered an aggitated state and may attack us if we even make any sudden moves," Decaan said nervously and added, "I think she may have detected the invaders and sensed their intent. Although I have no idea how."
"Then run your ass back here," the general growled in obvious frustration, "You can only hope that this 'Maxine' is smart enough to run the other direction once she sees how many of those four armed bastards there are."
"But..," Decaan said, but Maxine heard enough. She leaned in close to his face and said a single word, "Run." Decaan looked dumbfounded, but his bodyguards had apparently recieved some orders at that moment. They grabbed and dragged him away at a sprint while shielding Decaan with a barrier. Smart. That way they can make it back to the city long before the four-horned Kanzils show up. Now, let's size up the forces of the invading forces.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Maxine spread her spiritual sense in the direction of the spiritual sense signals from earlier. Her earlier assumption was proven correct when she spotted a few thousand four-horned kanzils approaching to her right roughly one hundred miles away. They had touched down on this world ahead of schedule. Oh? That force seems kind of small to invade the nearby city. It's got mounted plasma and particle turrets. It's basically suicide. Perhaps this is a probing attack and those idiots somehow pissed off their leader. Still, this would be a good time to see how strong they really are.
Maxine wasn't going to flee from this force. She planned on skirting the edges of that force while performing short, but deadly, assaults. With that in mind, she ran over to pick up the deer hide before putting it in her dimensional ring and ran towards the right edge the approaching four-horned kanzils. Halfway there she completely masked her energies and bent light around her to effectively become invisible.
As soon as she spotted them, it looked like a small sea of red was moving forward. The ones infront were wielding axes and were cutting down the jungle to clear the way for the rest of their forces. The remaining four-horned kanzils used either swords or blades. Although she spotted a couple using war picks. None of them wore shirts and she had to look hard to find any of them that wore armor of any kind. It seemed like a stupid way to engage in large scale warfare to her, but she guessed their lack of armor was cultural. Maybe they consider wearing armor as a form of cowardice. I will definitely make them rethink that belief.
She let them approach her rather than risk getting spotted prematurely. When they were close enough, Maxine made sure that they were down wind of her before taking a deep breath in and unleashed her acid breath attack over their heads. Immediately after, she charged into their ranks slashing her claws at any of them in reach and began to hear screams of agony as a large group of their forces were coated in her acid breath attack a dozen feet away from her.
It took them nearly two seconds before the four horned kanzils began to retaliate. By then, Maxine had clawed no less than fourty of them, but none of her attacks were meant to be immediately lethal. The venom on her claws woud take care of that part.
Maxine avoided every attack that she could as she continued her assault, but some of the attacks still landed on her. Thankfully they only put small scratches on her scales, but damage was slowly beginning to accumulate as scratches overlaped. Thankfully, after ten seconds, her scales had held up, but her hide tank top was torn to ribbons. If she didn't retreat, her shorts were soon to follow. Okay, time to retreat. I don't want to end up fighting naked. It's embaressing enough as it is to be topless.
She quickly formed energy darts all over her and launched them out in a rapidly expanding ring to force the four-horned kanzils back. Unexpectedly, she ended up killing them instead. Regardless, she turned to flee back into the jungle, but quickly discovered, her path of retreat had been blocked. The four horned kanzils had moved to surround her without her realizing it. That's not good. I got too caught up ripping these pricks apart. Shit, now I have to fight my way out. She glanced up and cursed that there were no clouds out today. If there were, she could simply wait for one to move over her to Shadow Step away.
Maxine spread out her spiritual sense instantly to find the shortest path out of her encirclement but the five hundred of the three thousand four-horned kanzils had completely surounded her while kanzils while the rest of their forces continued on to the city. Well, I should be able to handle this many on my own. Let's see how they like my draconic essence armor doubled up over my Shadow's Embrace armor.
With a battle-crazed smile on her lips, she summoned her Shadow's Embrace armor onto herself and ordered her dragon hiding within her shadow to merge with her armor. As always, her draconic essence armor covered her from head to toe in heavy silver scales, a large set of bat-like wings sprouted out of her back and a draconic head with golden horns served as her helmet.
The four-horned kanzils surrounding her retreated a step at seeing her apparent transformation, but shortly after, she felt their greed-filled eyes roaming over her body. Oh, shit. I forgot. They wanted a draconic bloodline and I look a hell of a lot like a humaniod dragon right now.
Maxine couldn't wait for them to attack her. She had a limited amount of time that she could sustain this state due to how rapidly it drained her energies and she charged at them with a roar. They, of course, unleashed a barage of attacks at her of every shape and form, but most of the attacks were aimed at her arms and legs. It was clear they were intent on wounding and capturing her, but only the attacks from the silver stages amongst them were able to barely scratch her draconic essence armor.
Once she was close enough, she slashed out with her claws and swiped at them with her tail she plowed through them with brutal efficiency. She was like a wolf among sheep. That was until an attack actually got through her defenses and left a very shallow wound on her left shoulder. Still, the force of the attack nearly knocked her down. I really need to pay more attention to attacks from behind. That's the second time I've been wounded by an attack from behind.
Maxine quickly spun around to rake her claws against the one that wounded her. Her claws tore open his gut spilling his entrails onto the ground. He tried to grab his intestines and put them back into himself as his war picks fell uselessly to the ground. She didn't pay him any more attention as she continued to slaughter them. She wasn't sure how long it took her to kill all of them, and she felt rather tired when she struck down the last one of them. Damn. I used up more of my strength than I intended to. I still have about 30% of my reserves, so I should be able to run if a weaker gold stage warrior shows up.
Some of the scales on her draconic essence armor were damaged, and it's wings had a few holes in them. Thankfully now that she was out of combat, the damage to her draconic essence armor was repairing itself. However she didn't drop it because she suddenly sensed a powerful presence above and behind her.
Instinctively, she dodged to the side and an attack that was meant to sever her right arm completely destroyed half of her right wing instead. Shit, he's at least gold stage rank six! I might be able to fight him evenly at full strength, but right now I don't have the stamina to deal with him. Time to run!
She bolted towards the jungle at top speed. Meanwhile, the powerful four horned kanzil kept raining attacks down at her from above almost lazily. Even in her haste to retreat, she noticed that all of his attacks were non-lethal and that he seemed to be charging an attack in his upper right hand. She knew the other attacks were mere distractions while he charged up his powerful attack. She had no choice, but hoped she made it to the jungle and Shadow Step away before he finished charging it.
Unfortunately she couldn't reach it before he unleashed his charged attack. It moved far faster than his other attacks and she barely managed to avoid a crippling blow to her right leg by moving her tail in the way. She howled in pain as she collasped on the ground as a sizeable part of her tail was blown off. Even through the onslaught of pain, she heard the four-horned kanzil touch down onto the ground before slowly walking towards her.
She could literately feel her blood gushing out of her tail, but she still assessed the damage done to her to figure out just how badly she was hurt. The attack that hit had hit her tail dead center and completely disintegrated away a twelve inch section of her tail leaving two and a half foot of it on either end. She looked over her shoulder and saw a still twitching section of her tail just behind the gold stage four-horned kanzil sixty feet away. With her injury, his proximity and her current reserves, she knew she couldn't get away anymore and that she had to come up with something quickly before he reached her.
In a moment of inspiration, she whimpered in pain and she acted like she was going into shock. This was her only chance to lure him into being careless and if it worked, it would cause him to drop his guard just enough for her to hit him with a surprise attack.
She began twitching the stump of her tail sporadically as she splattered her blood in every which direction and she continued to whimper in pain while breathing rapidly as she tried to weakly crawl away. Next, she dismissed her dragon back to her shadow and retracted her Shadow's Embrace armor just as he got within ten feet of her. That's it. Just a couple more steps.
The four-horned kanzil continued to get closer, but he was being cautious as he walked around the area her blood was splattered to grab her right arm. NOW! Maxine used her energies to tear the wound on her tail wide open since the wound had almost completely closed up and she lashed her tail violently at him to cause the resulting bloodflow to be hurled at the four-horned kanzil's face. She leapt up in the next instant and lashed out with her claws. However, he grabbed her wrists as if expecting it before her claws could reach him and she finally got a good look at him.
Aside from the horns, red skin and extra set of arms, he could have passed as a handsome man and unlike the member of his race that tried to rape her, his gaze was deviod of lust. Only cold indifference was reflected on his face. Still, she smiled when she noticed he'd only avoided some of the blood she hurled at him and quite a bit of it got into his eyes. Excellent. The toxins in my blood should be able to enter his bloodstream more easily through soft tissue like his eyes than through his skin. I should see it effect him much faster than with the orc warchief.
Still, Maxine couldn't rely on just that to put him down and struggled to free her arms. She shifted and jerked this way and that, but his grip was solid as stone. So, she reared her head back slightly to bite one of his arms, but one of his free hands clamped over her mouth before she could. Not only did he stop her from biting him, he prevented her from using her acid breath attack as well. Wow, he must have seen that fight from start to finish and was waiting for me to exhaust myself. This guy is smart. Too bad he doesn't know just how toxic my blood is. It should start to take effect on him any second now.
Without wasting her breath, she lashed out a kick, but her leg wasn't long enough to reach him. He was keeping her beyond her kicking range. His superior height, not to mention arm length, was too great of an advantage over her. Before she could come up with any other strategies to deal with him, he tightened his grip on her wrists, which confused Maxine, but she paled when she saw him lean backwards to headbutt her. Oh, god please not that. However she could tell this was a desperation move when she noticed his eyes were watering. So he figured out my blood has some poisons in it and he wants to knock me out before it incapacitates him. I guess I can't wait for it to do it's work anymore.
When he struck with his head headbutt, Maxine leaned back to avoid it and threw her legs around his neck since he was now much closer. She quickly hooked her feet together behind his neck and tried to strangle him. In the process of this, he released his hand from her face and grabed her thighs in an attempt to pry her legs off of him. However his attempts were futile. She had a lot more leverage than he did and he was quickly weakening. Regardless his hands were still strong enough that his fingers digging into her thighs hurt like hell.
Even after all of this, he still hadn't released her wrists from his grasp, but when his face started changing colors, he became desperate. He let go of her to use all four of his arms to pry her legs off his neck. Unfortunately for him, Maxine was waiting just for this situation.
She allowed her upper body to fall and even as her thighs were pried off of his neck, she arched her back as far as she could. When she saw his thighs, she dug her claws deeply into them near his crotch and dragged down. She didn't even get halfway down his thighs before her legs were pried off his neck and she violently flung away from him. She landed headfirst onto a rather large rock causing her to be dazed for a moment. Oddly she wasn't attacked afterwards while in this state.
When Maxine regained her senses, she looked up and saw him laying on the ground bleeding out. She still hadn't fully recovered from hitting her head and staggered over to him. She slashed out his throat to ensure that he died. She didn't want to take the chance that he was strong enough to survive from both her venom, toxic blood exposure, and bloodloss. God, my legs hurt. Running is going to suck.
She fell to her knees in exhaustion and pain eminating from her very bruised thighs. If she could, she would lay down on the spot to sleep, but she knew that she couldn't. She could already sense five more gold stage warriors rapidly approaching her position and she was quite positive that they were not friendly.
She forced herself to stand and glanced at her severed tail. I can't leave that there. They may be able to figure out how to extract my bloodlines using it. I need to take it with me. She quickly ran and grabbed her severed tail before sprinting at top speed, regardless of how much it hurt, back into the jungle and while she was at it, she masked her energies to avoid being tracked via spiritual sense. She made it just as they arrived and used Shadow Step repeatedly until she was safely inside of her closest lair. The large meal she had earlier had already been completely absorbed and the wound on her tail had almost completely sealed up. Her shoulder had long since healed. Sadly, her tail would require more time to regrow. Fuck that was just the opening skirmish and I've already more than half of my tail. Who knows how long that's going to grow back! And I don't dare revert back to my baseform to heal. The wound could cause a good chunk of my spine to end up missing and I do not want to be paralyzed from the waist down.
She laid down on a pile of leaves to rest, but was hit with a sudden realization. "I'm such a fucking idiot!" Maxine said outloud. She had forgotten about her shadow wolves that she left at the shadow world. She could have easily summoned them to her to help fight a large portion of the four-horned kanzils' forces since the Shadow Lords probably knew she was alive at this point. It wouldn't have revealed anything they didn't already know. I guess I got too used to living my life without my constructs. Time to remedy that.
With a thought, she summoned fifty of her Shadow Wolves. Their cultivation had jumped to silver stage rank three since she saw them last. Excellent, my wolves will definitely increase my survivability. With that done, she sent her wolves to act as bodyguards while she rested up and healed. However there was a nagging thought in the back of her head as she closed her eyes to take a nap. Why do I feel like someone else is going to be upset about my tail?