Some hunters had a sort of psychological block, where they were afraid to use a powerful and irreplicable potion because there might be a better opportunity to use it later. Velik could understand that, up to a point. He certainly wasn’t going to use his trump card on the first tough fight he found himself in.

That having been said, it was a champion elite. If ever there was a time to pull out all the stops, this was that time. There were three potions in the pouch. Two were for healing, rated to restore life-threatening injuries immediately and patch him up to the point where he could function over the next few minutes. The third was something else.

It was a dark golden color and thin like water, except it didn’t move at all when he held the potion up. It wasn’t until he flicked the cork off with his thumb and tilted it back that the liquid all rushed out at once, like it had taken until just that exact moment to become unstuck in time.

There was just a bit under two hundred feet from wall to wall, and the champion elite had appeared right in the center. That left maybe seventy or eighty feet between him and Balzarith, a trivial amount of space that he was sure either of them could cross in less than a second. It even lurched forward, no doubt starting its run with whatever strange form of movement its tentacle-like limbs used.

The golden liquid touched his tongue, and the world seemed to freeze. Velik swallowed, fully imbibing the potion, and then turned his head to watch the suddenly ponderous monster surge forward, its body undulating strangely to push against the ground. He could see the tentacles flexing in slow-motion, and easily tracked the movements.

Completely worth five thousand decarmas, he thought with a wolfish grin.

Then he leveled his spear and charged, his own body moving at its normal speed. To his eyes, Balzarith just stood there, waiting to take a spear to the chest. Or is it the face? Eh, who cares. I’ve only got thirty seconds to demolish this thing if I want to survive.

The potion didn’t increase his strength, only his speed and perception. Fortunately, Velik had spent the last week figuring out how to punch through the armored fur and skin of all sorts of monsters, and while he hadn’t encountered one made of living dirt and fire before, he was confident he could crack its shell, too. That glass looked fragile, but he was betting it was the strongest part of the champion’s body.

They impacted, spear to chest, and that was the moment Velik learned that Balzarith wasn’t just big, it was heavy. Its chest repelled the spear, sending it skittering off to the side as Velik arrested his momentum on his leading foot. A spiderweb of thin cracks appeared, giving him some hope that he could break through with enough effort, but that assumed he had enough time.

Let’s see how well those limbs do.

He widened the tip of his spear into a flat, double-edged blade and slashed downward, hacking deep into the monster’s right hip where glass transitioned to red-veined dirt. The spear sunk in half way, but the veins didn’t cut with the dirt. Instead, they stretched until they were pulled taut, or until there were just too many for him to push through. Either way, he failed to cut them, which meant that dismembering Balzarith probably wasn’t on the table.

That didn’t mean he hadn’t hurt the monster, and he was quick to spin his spear around to cut more mass off from the leg. Dirt might not be muscle, but it was obviously performing a similar role. If Balzarith couldn’t support its own weight once Velik finished carving up its legs, it would be easy to finish the monster off even after the potion ran out.

Just to be safe, though, I should probably take out the arms, too. Don’t want it pulling any tricks on me.

He raced around the champion elite, circling it over and over as his spear flashed through the air. Hundreds of pounds of blackened dirt fell from the monster’s body, and without that filler material reinforcing it, the network of red, stringy veins couldn’t keep it upright. It didn’t just stand there and take it, of course, but with Balzarith moving in slow motion, it was trivial to avoid its attacks.

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Thirty seconds wasn’t a long time, certainly not long enough to win a fight against a champion, but Velik could—and did—do his best to stack the odds in his favor. He crippled the monster, then resumed hammering on its glass chest. He wasn’t sure exactly what would happen to the fire inside, but he was betting it wouldn’t be good for Balzarith when it spilled out.

Then the world snapped back to normal, sending a wave of vertigo through Velik. Worse, the monster’s movements were no longer laughably slow. Even wounded, its arm lashed out like a whip, catching Velik across the chest and picking him up off his feet. He landed fifteen feet away, shook off the accompanying dizziness, and rushed back in.

Now that he was moving in real time again, he could see something he hadn’t really noticed before: Balzarith was healing. Scorched earth climbed up its leg, packing itself in between the red veins and building on what was left between them. It wasn’t an instantaneous process, but it did put some pressure on Velik to end the fight before the monster got back up to full strength.

Doesn’t seem to feel pain. Can’t permanently destroy a limb or cut through the veins. I managed to slow it down, but I need to break that glass. Hopefully that ends the fight, otherwise I’m screwed.

He slipped under its lashing tentacle arm and dragged his spear across the glass core, chipping it slightly at impact but otherwise doing nothing but scratching the surface. The good news was that, unlike the limbs that were pulling in new earth to replace what he’d carved out, the torso didn’t seem to be healing itself.

But he was worried about just how little damage his attacks were doing. The only openings he could see were where the four limbs attached to the center, but those were just seams that were flooded with that red, squishy vein substance. He’d already proven he couldn’t cut through them individually or in bulk, so that didn’t seem like a viable point of attack.

He backed off when Balzarith started kicking at him, apparently having given up the idea of regaining its feet. Its limbs were spindly, barely more than the vein net with almost no mass held inside it, but the monster was still fast enough to make those whip-thin attacks draw blood if Velik wasn’t careful.

He kept his distance, deflecting the flailing tentacles with his spear while he tried to figure out what to do. Some sort of long hammer was probably the ideal weapon, but the [Shape Shifting] enchantment couldn’t alter his spear’s shape that far from baseline. He could make the spearhead wider or flatter, pointed or broad, everything from a needle tip to something resembling a thin shovel, but he couldn’t turn it into a solid block of metal.

Again and again, his eyes were drawn back to the seam. It was less than a quarter inch wide and completely filled with gummy red veins. They were elastic, and he could pull on them, but he couldn’t cut through them. He’d proven that with every strike against its tentacle limbs. If I can’t cut, but I can push them aside, could a long enough and thin enough spear head slip between them?

It was worth a shot. He shaped his spear to have a two-foot tip that tapered down to a point, then selected Balzarith’s left arm as his test target. It was in the worst shape and also the easiest to access. That didn’t mean there were no problems, as all four limbs could easily attack him at once, regardless of where they were anchored to the core, but Velik was at the height of his strength and agility.

He twisted, dodged, blocked, and otherwise slipped past the attacking limbs, lined his spear up, and jabbed it straight into the seam. To his delight, his hunch was absolutely correct, and the blade sank a full foot into the champion elite’s glass chest, skewering the living fire trapped inside. Nothing he’d done before had gotten a reaction, but that face appeared again, this time screaming in pain.

I’ve got you now.

The fight had taken about two minutes of total time for Velik to figure out Balzarith’s weakness, and he was honestly kicking himself for wasting the haste potion earlier. Then again, crippling the monster’s limbs had made it far easier to handle once he was back to moving at normal speeds, so it wasn’t like he’d accomplished nothing.

With his spear embedded deep in the monster’s main body, Velik heaved upward, holding the creature overhead for just an instant, then brought it down to slam its body against the ground. Clumps of blackened dirt went flying everywhere, and more cracks spread through Balzarith’s glass chest.

Velik brought it up again, then slammed it back down. Wisps of fire started leaking out as the cracks went all the way through the glass this time. A third attack was all it took for the chest to fracture completely, and the monster split into pieces as its shell shattered.

Flames roared out in every direction, forcing Velik to leap back a full twenty feet just to avoid getting burnt. Then they started to pull themselves back into the center, and Balzarith rose back up off the ground. It had no discernable shape, but that laughing face mocked him as it surged forward, a wave of living fire intent on engulfing Velik.