Vlad and Lirael approached the centre of the stone forest in long leaps, leaving shattered rock and disturbed undead in their wake. Lirael didn’t care much about the commotion she was making as her goal was to hunt the Tier 5 Revenant at the centre of the forest. The sound of the fight would alert everything in the region anyway. As she passed, she flared the aura of her Tier 5 Undead Marrow shard unscrupulously. To the lower tier undead here, she would seem like another Revenant that had come to challenge the resident one for its territory.
The undead were extremely hierarchical and although they would battle others of the same tier without compunction, rarely would they attack those at a higher or lower tier. They wouldn't interfere in the fight – capitulating to whichever one of them was left standing.
Dense miasma covered the entirety of the forest of jagged stone like a blanket, blocking the sight of the sky and smothering the entire region in a suffocating darkness. Even sound seemed to be muffled by the wisps of coloured mists that wound around the pillars. Vlad’s shield of morning light was extremely eye-catching in this world of shadow and death.
Just as Vlad touched down on another one of the unfortunate spikes of stone, his shield shattering the tip to make space for them to stand, the entire world seemed to rock. The ground fissured and caved as it fell away into a gaping maw that dwarfed even the hundred feet tall pillars of rock. Then with a shriek that was a cross between the dying scream of a man and the sound of fingernails against glass, a colossal monstrosity smashed its way out of the earth right beneath them.
Lirael’s eyes glowed silver and time slowed to a crawl, almost framing the world in the moment. In this stillness, only two figures moved at the normal speed. Vlad stamped down on the cracked spike he was standing on which had snapped in half with the emergence of the monster. The rock shattered under the force of the blow, shooting like shrapnel towards the monster’s mouth as they moved out of the range of its jaws with the help of the recoil. Time returned to its regular rhythm as Lirael blinked her eyes, cutting off the supply to her Agility shard.
They caught a glimpse of the creature in the bright orange light of Vlad’s shield as it brushed past them, filling the air with the rank stench of death and decay. Its jet-black carapace glinted like metal under the light, covered by a layer of viscous slime. Countless pairs of legs, each the size of the rocky spires and with serrated edges just as sharp, trailed down the sides of the centipede. They paddled disgustingly in the air even as its upper half remained airborne; the momentum of its lunge carrying it past them.
Multiple pairs of pale human arms covered with slime stuck out of its carapace like fur, grasping around as if seeking escape. As though sensing them, as one, all the palms turned to face them. Noxious blood poured out of slits that appeared in the hearts of the palms. Some of the slits revealed mouths full of jagged teeth while the rest exposed bloodshot yellow eyes with serpentine pupils. The eyes rolled wildly in their sockets before locking onto the forms of the Vampire and her Thrall. As the patch of orange light travelled down the interminable length of the centipede’s body, more and more palms awoke, turning eyes and fangs to follow their fall.
Vlad’s feet slammed into the ground, raising a ring of dust as his Aura cushioned the impact. He leapt backwards several times, rapidly taking distance from the eldritch monstrosity – the Revenant they had come to hunt.
Midway, Lirael leapt off his shoulder, her hair glowing bluish-white as it lengthened and wrapped itself around her body, forming a crystalline armour of frosted ice.
~ Frostmane Armour ~
She slid back several feet as her toe touched the ground, bleeding off momentum. Vlad continued taking his distance until he was nearly twice as far from the monster as she was.
The Revenant screeched its fell battle cry yet again as it tried to curb its momentum by smashing its body against the rocky spires in a bid to turn around to face them. Its impossibly large body seemed to stretch on for miles as it emerged from the ground, turning the forest to rubble. Taking a deep breath and feeling the familiar tang of the toxins in the air, Lirael clenched her fists. Her fingernails dug into her palms, making them bleed.
~ Tier 3 Blood Source shard ~
~ Tier 3 Blood Manipulation shard ~
Blood gushed out of her wounds as she activated two shards in quick succession, freezing as it encountered her icy armour. A bow of frozen blood took shape in her left hand and a corresponding arrow in her right – sparkling like rubies in the dim white glow of her armour.
The wisps of icy mist twining around her turned red as she flared her sanguine Aura, coating her eyes and the bow with it. Her vision shifted; the darkness parting as it suddenly felt like someone had upended a bucket of glowing paints on the world. In her Aura Sight, the form of the creature was highlighted in a mix of noxious yellows, earthy browns and a deathly black.
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Her eyes glowed silver as she activated her Agility shard and time bent to her will. The world stilled. A string formed out of Aura as she nocked the arrow on the bow and drew it. Taking aim, she fired.
A brilliant streak of red blazed through the darkness, slamming into the creature’s side and penetrating its steel-hard carapace with little more trouble than a needle would cloth. Without pause, Lirael nocked, drew, aimed and fired again and again and again. Her blood gushed out of her wounded palms, was twisted by the Blood Manipulation shard into the shape of an arrow and frozen solid by her frigid armour. The Blood Source shard replenished her lost blood. Her mana flowed out of her like water down a sink as she used several shards at once.
Suddenly, she winced, shutting her eyes tight. Her personal time slowed back down to match the world as her Agility shard stopped affecting it. Her eyes felt like she had rubbed sand into them. Opening her bloodshot eyes a sliver, she inspected the results of her attack.
She had spaced the arrows evenly along the length of the centipede’s body, the very last one aimed at its head which was in the process of turning back towards her. Each one had hit its target. In her Aura Sight, twenty-three rapidly spreading patches of red could be seen tainting the centipede’s yellow and black Aura.
The monster screeched in pain and rage as gaping wounds blasted out on its body, the flesh melting like wax wherever the arrows had pierced it. Lirael had activated her Tier 5 Dissolving Blood shard each time she had shot an arrow. Not only did it allow the arrow to penetrate the defense of the Revenant like it was air, when the arrow lodged inside its flesh and melted in the warmth of its body, it dissolved all the tissues around it into blood, expanding the wound.
~ Bloodskull Gate ~
Three floating skulls of red stone appeared above Lirael’s head and they opened their mouths and a strong suction presented in the depths of their jaws. The blood of the centipede flowed out of its wounds, turning into floating streams that were drawn into her Dungeon through the skulls.
Within the Dungeon, Sand suddenly looked up from his fishy repast to see a broad portal opening over the centre of the Dungeon. A bloody cataract emerged from the portal, pouring down on the pit of fire below. The thick column of red steam grew even denser as the new blood evaporated, assimilating into the Dungeon.
Lirael felt a surge of mana feeding back from her Dungeon and replenishing her body’s depleted reserves. With a resounding crack and shower of stones, the last of the centipede’s body emerged from the earth, revealing its tail with two long spines sticking out of its end. The earth vibrated as it finally completed its turn and slithered towards her, its multitude of legs creating a rustling sound as they propelled it forward. Its razor-sharp mandibles glinted in the darkness as it activated some sort of shard. Now all its hands were focused on her, wrath clear in the glaring of its million eyes and the gnashing of its billion teeth.
Lirael calmly took a step backwards. Her body blurred as the single step carried her hundreds of metres back. Raising her bow, she created another arrow and fired.
This was the most correct procedure for dealing with such a massive Revenant. Its Undead Marrow shard had surely upgraded to a Tier 5 Regeneration shard so injuring it was an effort in futility unless one had a way to inflict wounds that wouldn’t heal or resist healing. Lirael’s attack was one such case where her blood remaining in the wound would unceasingly corrode its flesh, forcing it to waste its mana healing the wounds. The blood from the gashes could also be absorbed by her Dungeon to replenish her mana, putting her in an impregnable position.
Now, with her Shrinking Space shard, she was faster than the ponderous behemoth and much more maneuverable. All she had to do was kite it until it ran out of mana to regenerate its injuries. After all, it didn’t have unlimited mana like she did, and its only other Tier 5 shard seemed to be a close combat shard that enhanced the sharpness of its mandibles. Thankfully, it wasn’t a defensive shard otherwise things would have become much tougher for her.
As the injuries began piling up and it failed to narrow the gap between them, the centipede grew hot-tempered, repeatedly screeching a challenge at her to stand and fight as it smashed a huge clearing in the stone forest with its body. Lirael ignored it, strolling backwards leisurely, each step carrying her hundreds of metres, and shooting her arrows.
Suddenly, a dull throb of pain ran up her left ankle, sending her tumbling onto the ground when her shard failed to activate. Her mana senses told her that the damaged shard had cracked yet again. It was a great opportunity to narrow the distance, but the creature halted its advance, growing deathly still instead. The hairs on the back of Lirael’s neck stood on end as a strong sense of crisis oppressed her heart.
Turning her head, she screamed, “Vlad!”
As though he had read her mind, the Thrall was already dashing towards her. With a stamp that cracked the ground, he leapt the last of the distance between them. Bringing his shield around midair, he roared as he slammed the construct of solid light into the ground. Circular ripples of orange light emanated from the point of impact, dyeing the ground with its warm brilliance. White flames roared to life where the ripples tailed off, surrounding the two of them in a protective circle.
~ Noon Circle ~
Not a moment too soon as millions of centipedes swarmed out of the ground beneath them with their mandibles stretched wide. They ranged in size from the size of a palm to over ten metres long. Each of them had the same metallic black carapace as the monster as well as the coat of glistening slime. The larger of the centipedes even had several pairs of the restless hands.
As they touched the radiance or were licked by the white flames, they screamed in agony as they were scorched inside out; blackening before crumbling into ash. Yet there was no end to them. The ground outside the circle became a writhing sea of darkness as the creatures swarmed towards them from all sides disregarding their lives.
In the distance, the huge body of the monster slowly crumbled inwards, revealing that all that was left of it was a shell of dry earth.