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Go Big To Go Home: A Kaiju-Fighting Isekai LitRPG
Chapter 11: Its Roar Is Worse Than Its Rime

Chapter 11: Its Roar Is Worse Than Its Rime

Mikayla flinched and grimaced as the Rimeroar Bear’s aggrieved bellow buffeted the Black Knight’s helmet. “So much for the easy kill,”

“Keep attacking! Press your advantage!” Nocturnus bellowed.

“Right!” Clumsily, she reversed her grip, and flicked the sword upwards and outwards once again, carving a gash into the side of the bear’s gut and causing it to stagger.

The bear’s eyes glinted with murderous intent as it sucked in a massive breath, and Mikayla had a suspicion that she was about to find out why it was called a ‘Rimeroar’ bear. “Brace yourself!” Nocturnus commanded.

A hailstorm erupted from the bear’s mouth. It was no mere roar nor snarl, it was as though a nexus of deadly cold had been squeezed into the creature’s gut and now the pressure was being released directly at the Black Knight.

Mikayla’s delusions of being invincible and unmovable were shattered, because either the Black Knight weighed less than she’d thought or the bear’s breath was disturbingly strong. Her arms flailed as first one leg was uprooted and forced backwards, and then the other. She tried to catch herself, the giant translucent gauntlet of her left hand digging into the wall, but it came apart at her touch, leaving a cloud of splinters as her fingers were dragged through the wall. With her other hand, she tried to drive the tip of her sword into the ground, and carved another massive trench into what was left of the carpet, the rotting wooden floor beneath, and the earth underneath that. She fell to one knee, driving the spiked kneepad and the points of her feet into the ground, finally arresting her momentum.

“Does this thing have any special powers?!” she hollered as the bear’s breath finally petered out, the sheer condensation having encrusted the joints of the armour with flakes of ice. Mikayla forced the Black Knight upright again, feeling painful cracks as showers of frost erupted from her knees.

“Not without my Techniques to channel through it! Don’t lose heart! Charge!” Nocturnus commanded as the bear rose to its full height. As it did, her eyes fell on the injury she had landed and how it was growing encrusted with frost. The bear had the ability to freeze its own injuries closed to prevent blood loss. Because another advantage was exactly what it needed.

Standing on its hind legs, with its icy armour and claws extended, the bear looked much more threatening than she felt she was, and the last of the monetary superiority she’d felt when the Black Knight finished growing evaporated. But Nocturnus hadn’t steered her wrong yet, so she pressed her weight onto her outstretched left foot and kicked off, throwing the Black Knight forward with a mighty thrust from the train-sized blade in her hand.

The bear’s arm came around and it pressed its claws together, deflecting the strike from its massive gut. Overextended, Mikayla had to catch herself with her free hand, and the monster twisted back around to deliver a crushing blow to her helmet.

“Ow!” she shrieked. “I felt that! Why did I feel that?!”

[HEALTH: 821/1000]

[MANA: 942/1200]

They’d been fighting for less than half a minute, she numbly realised as Nocturnus responded, “Trade-offs of going this big! The armour is your body! Keep going!”

Unfortunately, the Rimeroar Bear wasn’t willing to wait for her to recover. It lunged at her with its jaws opened as wide as they could go, exposing rows of teeth like an industrial shredder.

Mikayla knew instinctively that she couldn’t get upright in time, so she changed tack; she braced herself against her left arm, further annihilating the lobby in the process, and forced her helm upwards in a headbutt that drove the crown of spikes on her helmet into the monster’s belly.

It bellowed in pain and punished her by sinking its claws into her back. Mikayla let out a strangled squeak as the muted sensation of pain made its way back to her nerves, and tried to look down at her own body. For a brief moment, she had forgotten that she was controlling the Black Knight, not her own flesh, and couldn’t see her real body through the layers of mana. All that the motion had accomplished was pulling her bloodied head-spikes out of the wound, leaving it dripping with viscera for the seconds it took the monster to freeze its injury closed.

She hollered, “Did it get me?!”

“No idea! Doesn’t matter! Fight!”

She didn’t feel dead, or all that hurt, and that had to be good enough. Tucking her knees in, she forced herself back to her feet, already bringing her sword around to defend against another assault. Her every motion carved crevices into the ground, and she had to mind her footing or risk a fatal fall.

The bear was wary, clearly taking her seriously now. It inhaled, and Mikayla recognised the wind-up for its powerful roar. She forced herself forward, launching a slash that it wasn’t quite quick enough to block this time and opening a red line from its left shoulder to its right hip.

She couldn’t bring herself to regret landing that strike even as it left her off-balance for the roar, which knocked the Black Knight off its feet and sent her flying into the open doorway of the atrium.

Massive fingers gripped the side of the doorway, and to her relief, it buckled but held as she used it to get back to her feet. “Okay. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be a very lost polar bear or a regular bear with ice magic, but I don’t care because either way I’m going to grind you into shaved ice!”

“Hm. Not bad for your first threat. Would benefit from an oath or two. We’ll work on it,” Nocturnus idly mused as Mikayla held her crude guard stance, sword up to cover her body, and advanced once more.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

[MANA: 789/1200]

The bear came to meet her, dropping to all fours momentarily to springboard off the ground and launch itself forwards with fangs and claws thrust outwards. She swept her sword up to meet it, and staggered under the blow. On an impulse, her free hand shot out to grab at the bear’s face as it slid off the flat of her sword. Her armoured fingers found purchase, ignoring the way the bear’s teeth sank into them, and twisted its neck.

It rolled in mid-air and crashed to the ground on its back, clawing at the gauntlet that had shifted to pinning its head in place. Mikayla took advantage, adjusting the angle of her sword to come down on its throat.

With a howl of furious panic, the bear exploded with quick-forming ice, forming a spontaneous glacier around its entire body. Mikayla shrieked in shock as the ice wrapped around her left hand and the tip of her sword, trapping them both in place. “The hell?!”

“It’s getting desperate! Good going, girlie, I knew you could do it! Smash it open and cut its head off!” Nocturnus demanded.

“With my hand stuck?” Mikayla thought for a second. “Wait,” She crouched down and pressed a foot atop the most even chunk of the bear’s spiky shield that she could find. “Mana Assistance! Reduce the size of my equipment, down to, um, let’s try five times the default size!”

“Huh?” Nocturnus sounded shocked by the thought.

Shrinking down was even more disorienting than growing. There was an uncomfortable sense of tightness, as though her clothes were shrinking while she wore them. But Mikayla blocked that out, focusing on first pulling her sword free as it shrunk out of the form-fitting ice that had trapped its tip in place, then ripping her left hand free in a similar manner. Placing her weight on her foot, she stepped upwards while shrinking down, coming to rest squarely atop the beast’s neck.

“Huh?!” Nocturnus seemed even more surprised that her spur-of-the-moment strategy had worked.

Moving while changing the Black Knight’s size was awful, she was struggling to suppress a feeling of vertigo. It was like the world around her had become a funhouse mirror. But Mikayla powered through it, lining up her sword with the hole in the armour left behind by her giant hand, through which she could see the eye and cheek of the frenzied bear.

Putting the entire weight of the still-quite-oversized armour behind her arm, she thrust down into the cavity while commanding, “Sword, size seven!” Mana flowed down her arm and out through her fingertips, down the Black Knight’s limb and into the sword as it stretched and discharged. She felt the moment that it dug into the Rimeroar Bear’s face through the vibrations of the blade striking flesh and the way the glacier quivered in pain.

“That was Yevgenia’s technique! You’re doing it? With Mana Assistance?!” Nocturnus was still catching up to Mikayla’s moves.

Before she could respond, a concussive blast of cold air blew her away from the bear’s head. At her reduced size, she didn’t have the bulk to resist being blown into the air, which was the worst place to be when the shell of ice exploded and caught her in a wave of shrapnel.

Spinning through the air at a speed that reminded her of the worst rollercoaster she’d ever been on, Mikayla crashed into the wall at the rear of the atrium, the warded stone arresting her approach. She slid to the ground and barely managed to land on her feet, the sword’s tip coming to rest in the dirt as she shook herself to regain her bearings.

The ursine monster’s left eye had been reduced to a mess of disfigured flesh, a wound that was rapidly freezing itself shut, but it was picking itself up and bearing down on her once more.

“Mana Assistance, armour and sword back to size ten!” Her veins filled with fire as the mana was sucked from them once more, and the disorienting feeling of the ground falling away as her limbs lengthened almost overwhelmed her. On instinct more than conscious choice, she held up her sword to guard just in time for the bear to crash into her defence and bounce off.

A second too late, she cursed herself for not taking the chance to impale it, and went for a follow-up strike, but the opportunity was gone and it deflected the sword with a massive paw.

“Go on the defensive! Bait it into exposing itself, then counterattack!” Nocturnus commanded.

Mikayla swallowed a mean-spirited comment about back-seat fighting, pulling her sword back into defensive position and checking her mana.

[MANA: 651/1200]

The bear ripped into her, and she did her best to block the attacks with her sword, but her reflexes were still too slow and several strikes made it through to her arms and shoulders.

[HEALTH: 581/1000]

She stayed on the defensive, baiting it back towards the crevices in the ground she’d created earlier.

The bear advanced, focused on her to a fault. It was lured in by the smell of her feigned weakness, and it was thrilled to seal the fight in its favour. It advanced, beating against her guard, claws raking against her gauntlets, and it was all Mikayla could do to keep it off her while also watching her footing.

She landed one final parry and darted back, and the bear leapt forward to maintain close contact.

It didn’t even notice the hole its foot fell into. It went stumbling, off-balance, and while it was still correcting from the trip she had baited it into, she twisted her blade around, then stabbed, ripping open the flesh at the base of its neck.

The bear howled in pain as its lifeblood spilled out and ran down her sword.

“Haha! A fatal blow! Now pin it down!” Nocturnus commanded. “Do not let it exact revenge with its dying breath!”

Mikayla stifled her instinct to retreat and thrust even deeper, holding the creature in place and preventing it from coming any closer. She gripped the sword’s hilt with both hands to keep it at a distance as it clawed at the blade, and she could see it retching from an attempt to unleash another blizzard from its maw that failed due to the blade embedded in its windpipe.

She saw the moment the life left its eyes, and it collapsed. Unable to support its weight, she let the tip of the sword fall to the ground.

[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING A RIMEROAR BEAR!]

[LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP! CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 9!]

“. . Mana Assistance. Armour and sword back to size one,” Mikayla heaved out a ragged breath as the Black Knight shrank back to normal size, and she finally relaxed as her feet touched the ground again. “That . . was awesome!”

“I didn’t doubt you for a second! Well done, lass!” Nocturnus cheered.

“Hah! And you were right. Three whole levels. That’s great news! Three levels for a minute and a half of fighting. That feels broken, actually, the System really wasn’t balanced around a novice like me having equipment like this, was it?”

“Lass, I was Level 112 afore my untimely demise. Three levels is good progress for a single fight, but you’ve still a long way to go and it only gets harder,” Nocturnus chuckled. “No, the really great news is that Rimeroar Bear meat is edible, and will stay preserved for a long time. What did you say you were going to do? Shaved ice? Sounds scrumptious!”

“I . . no. Ew. I didn’t mean that literally. I’m not really going to grind it up and eat it. I don’t know where this thing’s been. That would be way too unsanitary!”

“Milksop,” Nocturnus snorted. “Why not knit yourself a cozy scarf and be done with it, lass?”

“Did you forget that we don’t have any way to cook this meat?!”

“. . Oh. Right,”