Tumbling down the pile of eggs, Akiel scrambles away from the giant serpentine body lunging for him. Silently regretting how he took his curiosity too far, Akiel accidentally puts too much weight on one of the eggs. His right foot plunges in and he awkwardly dodges the beast by hugging the egg closer. Tucking himself inside the egg, Akiel finds himself face to jaw with a miniature version of the beast outside. Wrestling it into submission, he gets an idea. Digging his new squeaky fingers into the creature’s body, he pulls out some of the inactivated runes. Smearing one of the runes with a mixture of blood and embryonic fluid, he channels his mana through it. Seeing the rune glow a rusty red, he patiently waits for the beast to find him.
Turning his attention to his new body, he winces as every movement causes grating sounds. “I guess, I’ll have to use a softer material for the joints. This really is unbearable.” he mouths to himself silently. Feeling the eggshell shudder, Akiel looks up to find the beast’s massive glowing eyeball staring back at him. Getting ready, he quietly sinks lower into the fluid. Seeing the dead offspring at the top, the beast bites the entire eggshell and lobs it into its crevice.
Tumbling out of the shell, Akiel looks around. Finding a bigger space than imagined, He raises the ridge above his right eye. Hearing a small squeak, he sighs. “First order of business is getting better material for my joints. The second will be getting some hair. It’s hard enough not being able to raise my eyebrows, now I can’t even rub my chin properly.” Backing into the side of the massive chamber, he remodels himself into a more battle-ready form.
Mimicking the form he used on the ape king, he leaves his hands intact but splits the metal in his lower legs into four blades. Two serve as his legs and the other two fall off clean. Picking them up in his hands, He tests their weight, “I’m no swordsman, but I should be able to make quite a few cuts with these.” Taking his newly activated rune, he murmurs, “This should hold for another couple minutes. I just hope I can use it before it goes through with the sequence.” Flipping the rune, he traces a second rune on its back. Only half of the second rune had lit up, but every second caused more of it to glow.
Hearing the rumbling of debris shifting, he sees the massive serpent enter the chamber. “This just might just be the hardest or easiest fight I will ever have,” he muses. Starting his charge, he runs along the perimeter of the walls. Estimating that his legs would only get enough traction on the walls for two, maybe three quick steps, he hugs it closely. Running closer, Akiel finds it peculiar that it could see him. Living down here, It really shouldn’t have much need for sight. “Maybe, the monster in the sky scared this one underground,” he ponders as he gets closer.
The beast continues to watch Akiel as he grows in speed, only bringing more of its body in. finding it strange, Akiel increases the distance between him and the wall when he approaches the crevice. Just when he thought that it was waiting for him to get closer, a massive section of the serpent collapses at him. Running farther towards the center, he narrowly dodges the falling mass. Stabbing the swords in his hands down, he flips on top of the serpent. With his momentum all but gone, Akiel inspects the damage his swords had done. They penetrated great, but it drew very little blood. Estimating the girth of the serpent, Akiel sighs, “At least thirty of me need to link hands to wrap around it.”
Staring at the beast’s eyes, Akiel checks his new rune again. “You're my last hope. Seventy-five percent charged, let's hope I make it in time.” Starting off jogging, he quickly speeds up to a sprint. Running the full length of the body, He gets to the point where it starts to slope upwards when it attacks. Akiel, waiting for this moment, jumps straight upward. Flipping and digging his legs into its head, he quickly jumps again as the serpent smashes the rock wall. Falling freely, He wields his swords in a backward grip and hacks into its soft underside.
Using the swords to climb, Akiel slowly makes it higher up its body. Reaching the point where he could hear its heartbeat. Counting, he could tell that it was around 51 beats per minute. Climbing just a bit higher, Akiel stops. Taking out his new rune, he examines the flip side. The rusty red color had turned into a bright red and the flipside had started to glow blue. “Just a minute more!” he exclaims.
Checking on the beasts head, Akiel finds it charging something in its mouth. Too late to dodge, he gets as close to its body as he can. Taking the full force of the blast, he tumbles away through the air. Leaving his swords still in its body, he grasps the rune as tightly as he can. Falling onto a stalagmite, he smashes through it and rolls for a considerable distance. Sitting up, he finds that much of his body is starting to flake off. It isn’t hot, nor is it melting or dissolving. It’s just flaking off. Remodeling the outer most layer off, he back away as the rest flakes off into oblivion. Staring up at the beast, he finds his swords also flaking off. The remainder being in the beast itself.
Realizing that it was immune to collateral damage, he dashes over to the closest part of the beast. Rushing madly as the beast charges another shot, he checks on the rune. Just a few seconds left! Reaching its coils, he slices into them with his legs and reaches inside. Widening the cut with brute force, he smears the creature’s blood all over himself and waits. The blinding beam of energy finally finishes charging when Akeil notices the numerous tiny runes forming a ring inside its mouth. Sighing in regret, he says, “If only I could copy them all down. Then I could just fire random beams of destruction.”
Covering his head, He faces the beam. Sliding back as he gets baptized, he smiles. Nothing is flaking off! Ending the burst of magic, the serpent stares at Akiel in intrigue. Finally noticing its own blood on him, it bellows in anger. Striking down at breakneck speeds, it swallows him whole.
Akiel, not even given the time to adjust, quickly slides down its esophagus. In his disorientation, he tumbles past the point where its heartbeat loudest and down into a dark pit of stomach fluid. Trying to sigh, he uses a light rune. Finding the lower extremities of his body dissolving, he widens his eyes. Checking the new rune, he finds it just seconds away from progressing into the second rune. Smiling, he remodels his arms into ice picks. Climbing up the stomach walls, he desperately hacks harder. Estimating, he counts down, “seven seconds!” Clawing closer to the top of the stomach, he mutters, “five seconds!” prying open the walls of muscle pushing him downward, he heaves himself higher. Suddenly feeling the loss of direction, he continues down the contracting muscles towards the heart. Feeling snake tossing and turning, he sputters as the gastric juices wash over him, “two!” Fighting through one last muscle contraction, he throws the rune as far as possible.
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Starting to lose integrity, Akiel remodels more mass to his icepicks and claws towards the beating heart when the rune explodes in a discharge of electricity. Watching hopefully, Akiel slowly makes his way closer as the snake writhes harder than ever. Thanks to the tight hugging walls of muscle, Akiel stays in one orientation throughout the snake's tantrum, but with the electrical shock, the walls all relaxed for just a moment before constricting harder than ever.
Without any way to move, he hopes that the shock is enough. Counting the heart beats changing at erratic rates, he waits as his body starts to fold in on itself. The heartbeat seems to speed up for several seconds while Akiel struggles to keep himself from being compacted into a ball. Just when his ice picks folded into his chest, the heartbeat runs flat. Whistling awkwardly, Akiel sighs. Remodeling himself into a smaller but complete form as the walls loosen their grip. Chucking, he crawls up the toned walls of flesh.
Breaking out in full-blown laughter, he tumbles out of its mouth, right into a smashed eggshell. Getting up, he whistles at the destruction. Several stalagmites had fallen, and practically all of the eggs seemed broken. Looking back at the giant serpent, Akiel shakes his head and clambers back to the spot where the darker green metal was. Taking the rest of the metal and a good amount of the lighter material, he remodels his body. Keeping the lighter and more pliable material for his joints, he keeps the rest as it was. Flexing his finger first, he exhales in relief.
Now back to his normal size, he carefully hikes down to the serpent's mouth. Dragging a fallen stalagmite over, he props the enormous head open. Removing the many banana sized hooked teeth, he sets them aside. Stepping into the mouth, he grabs ahold of one of the many bleeding gums and hauls himself up onto the top of the snakes head. Reaching the eyeball, he exhales slowly before lunging at it. Remodeling his fingers to be more like claws meant for digging, Burrows his way into the head. Slowly digging around, he finally finds the mana core. Checking his mana capacity, he finds that his current mana concentration when full is just shy of a quarter compared to what his body can hold.
Excavation the head-sized monster core, he stares at it. “Just how do I eat this?” he murmurs. Getting an idea, he tries to siphon the mana out of it. Quickly hitting his cap, he withdraws his hand in a panic. The core, still a quarter full, cracks and dims. Sighing in frustration, I climb out of the head. “At least I’m topped off. I’ll just raise my capacity next time,” he mutters. Jumping off the head, he looks over the pile of teeth. He counts eighteen in all. Bringing out another one of his unactivated runes, he sets it down. Breaking off a small part of a tooth, he remodels his hands into a pestle and mortar. Grinding it down to dust, he mixes some of its blood to make a paste. Remodeling his hands back, he applies the paste to the rune, carefully tracing the rune.
When he finishes, he giddily wipes the excess paste on the broken tooth. Channeling his mana through the room, it glows a fiery red. Satisfied, he points it away from the serpent corpse and injects a considerable amount of mana into it. The rune, pulsing once as if signaling it is full, spews an enormous amount of fire before dimming. Checking the damage, Akiel smiles when he finds out he cleaned up half of the room. There are no eggshells nor are there any signs of there ever being any. The ground glows orange with spots of luminescent green. Looking closer he could see the lighter green material that seemed to almost be metallic was almost unaffected. It only glowed brighter in response.
Sitting down, he fuses the run into his palm when the opposing wall breaks open. Hissing, a giant scorpion peers through the embers and dust. Seeing the serpent's body it steps forward only to reel back. Grappling with the wall, It makes its way across the charred region. Skittering over the serpent's head, It spots Akiel watching it. Watching it tiredly, Akiel crosses his fingers. “Not again. Please, just ignore me and my teeth,” he mutters.
Looking around, the scorpion looks for other signs of life before turning back to Akiel. Putting some distance between them, it motions with its claws at Akiel and then at the new entrance. Nodding his head, Akiel glares at the Scorpion in confusion. Rearing back, it screeches, signaling hundreds of scorpions to enter the chamber. Forming a path, the scorpions positioned themselves around the charred region. Clicking their claws in unison, they sway back and forth. Watching in astonishment, Akiel turns to the giant scorpion and gestures to the pile of teeth and then to himself.
Rubbing its claw on its head as if thinking, the scorpion hisses and clicks a few times gesturing to the teeth. Not understanding, Akiel just away when several smaller scorpions grab the teeth and scuttle away. Turning to the giant scorpion, it waves its claw at Akiel and then at the smaller scorpions carrying his teeth away. Shaking his head, he reluctantly follows the smaller scorpions out of the chamber.
Passing through several tunnels, he spots another chunk, albeit smaller, of the dark green metal. Stopping, he stomps on the ground to get the smaller scorpions’ attention. Walking over to the chunk, he pours mana into it, remodeling it into a backpack. “The way things are going, It won’t be long before I need to repair my body. Might as well take some extra while I can,” he utters to himself. Motioning to move on, the scorpions continue their mindless scuttling.
Arriving at the cave entrance just an hour later, Akiel blinks in disbelief. “No revenge? No complications? Is this really happening?” Stepping out of the cave, Akiel looks back at the pile of teeth. Sighing, He looks around in the abandoned buildings for some kind of rope. Not finding any rope, Akiel gathers the rotting sheets left behind and makes a bundle to hold the teeth. Breaking off one of the wooden planks, he hacks at it with his hand making a crude stick and sticks it through the top of the bundle. Resting it on his shoulder he starts his trek back home.
Walking through the barren land, Akiel freezes as a massive shadow flies by overhead. Easily dwarfing the serpent, It flew in a circle, watching him. “Not even hiding this time. I knew it was too good to be true,” Akiel chuckles. Cursing his luck, he continues to walk with his eyes on the sky. Noticing it isn’t the one he saw before, he quickens his pace. It’s still possible to get away from one, but two would make it almost impossible. Annoyed, Akiel walks faster in silence, waiting for it to pass over again. The moment, the shadow covers him, he dashes away at an angle. As long as he can make it to some trees, it should be easier to lose it.
Seeing the thing make a loop and turning around, Akiel starts supplying greater and greater amounts of mana to his feet, sending clouds of dust flying into the air as he accelerates. Smiling slightly at the exhilaration of running as fast as a car, he suddenly burst forward as his feet touch solid land. Leaving behind the sandy dunes, his speed easily starts to become uncontrollable. Not wanting to slow down, Akiel tries to maintain his current speed when he hears a shriek behind him. Passing him in just a moment, the creature slams into the ground in front of him, causing him to collide, spilling the teeth everywhere.
Sitting up, Akiel remodels his body back into pristine shape before looking up. Squatting several hundred meters high, the creature lets out a weird whimper before it starts shrinking. Rapidly changing sizes, It slows its changes once it becomes 2 meters high. Instead of becoming shorter, it gets thinner. The wings start to recede and the bones that frame the wing shrink in length. Eventually, what stands in front of Akiel is a moderately sized humanoid with the head of a falcon and raptorial feet.
Gesturing with its almost wingless appendage to the scattered teeth, “My good sir slash ma’am slash them, did you bring these for me? If you did, this lord will be very pleased. Yes! Yes, I will be!”