By this point, more than half of the monsters were dead, but one of the warriors, the one with the ax, was on his last legs, bleeding out on the ash. His partner was fighting desperately to head off a trio of Ash Prowlers, but the wolf-like beasts were slowly overwhelming him, and forcing the man backwards so that they could get at the weakened warrior he was protecting. The two mages were too busy fending off the other monsters with bolts of blue light, and the mage with the empowerment abilities was facing off against the Fetid Oozes, tossing rocks into their gaping maws. One of the downsides of the monster’s massive jaws was that it was unable to close them fully, leaving a weak spot. When the explosive rocks were tossed into the monster’s mouth, they did considerable damage.
Jonathan saw that his aid was needed most with the two warriors, and he pushed off the ground, running as quickly as he could towards his beleaguered allies. He reached the duo within seconds, and his fist took a monster out of the fight, sending the Ash Prowler skidding across the ground, a bloody wound gaping open on its side.
Jonathan followed the monster, and pummeled it into the ground with his spiked gauntlets, brutally killing the creature. Turning around, he saw that his efforts had allowed the warriors to fend off the last two creatures, with the dying one getting the odd strike off. Jonathan admired the man’s tenacity, and he quickly made his way back towards him, trying to get there in time to kill another one of the Prowlers.
His mana imbued fist came in like a blue streaked meteor, sending blood and bone flying as it slammed into the nearest one of the monsters. It howled in pain, and he flipped over its back, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck. He brought it flying over his head, and slammed it into the other Ash Prowler, breaking bones.
The first one expired, its body unable to take the stress anymore, and the second one was heavily injured. Jonathan withdrew, allowing the warrior with the sword to kill the remaining Ash Prowler. The man nodded in thanks, and attended to his wounded companion.
Jonathan quickly ran off in search of another monster. The nearest one, a strange hybrid of a monkey and a slug, oozed across the ash towards him, its slime leaving a trail of caustic acid behind. It was incredibly slow, at least compared to him, but it was heavily armored, with plates of rocky bone covering the majority of its upper body.
The only thing left unexposed was the underside of its body, where it slid across the ground. The top half of its body was dominated by two muscular arms and a huge torso, which ended in a grotesquely elongated monkey’s head. Jonathan narrowed his eyes and renewed the mana on his fists, getting ready to eliminate the creature. The thing swung its right arm towards him as he approached, trying to catch him off guard.
He dashed past its ponderous strike, and drove his fist into its side. Rather than breaking through the armor however, one of his knuckles cracked. The mana dissipated across the surface, sinking into the armor. Jonathan quickly withdrew and scanned the monster.
Simian Mana Leech(Elite)
Level 34
The name told him everything he needed to know about why his attack had been ineffective. Using his mana had actually weakened the effect of his punch, giving power to the monster rather than damaging it. He quickly banished the mana, and punched again, this time managing to crack the armor.
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The creature let out a low grunt, and swung its fist towards him, trying to trap him between its arm and its body. Jonathan ducked down, and came surging upwards when the arm passed above him, cracking his gauntlet into the monster’s chin. The creature grunted, and was driven up and off its slug-like lower half, almost falling backwards. Jonathan pressed the advantage, but as he punched again, the monster began to exude a torrent of sticky and acidic slime, covering most of its body with the stuff.
Jonathan quickly aborted his strike, not wanting to have his flesh melt off his bones. There was a place where there was no slime however, which was on the monster’s face, where there was no rocky coating. That would be the only place that he could effectively strike.
With a shout, he leaped off the ground, and punched forwards with all of his might, aiming his fist, summited with a large ball of mana, towards the monster’s face. It grinned at him wickedly and lifted up its slime covered arm, placing it in the way of his strike. However, the mana had not been for the monster, rather there to burn away the slime.
The liquid crackled and burned away as the mana crashed into it, and as soon as the slime was gone in that area, Jonathan banished the skill and used the raw power of his fist, imbued with his strength score of over one hundred points. The monster’s arm bent backwards with the force of the blow, and Jonathan drove his fist through the rocky covering and into the bone beneath. The coating on its arms was thinner than on the rest of its body, meaning that the attack did not do too much damage to the rest of the creature, but it was still rocked backwards by the strike.
Jonathan quickly followed up with a barrage of such strikes, tearing into the creature’s body. Normally this thing would have been the bane of adventurers, with its resistance to mana and its high defense, but he was strong and fast enough to cancel out both advantages, relying solely on his own body.
Soon the monster was covered in cracks, with a few gaping holes from where Jonathan had landed more than one strike in the same spot. He grinned at the monster, before thrusting his gauntlet into one such hole, on the monster’s arm, and grabbing its bone.
The creature bucked, trying to get him off, but he held firm, and with a disgusting tearing noise, he ripped the creature’s arm apart at the elbow. It keened in agony, and brought its other fist streaking towards Jonathan. He redirected the attack with a clever use of his skill, sending the strike up and over his head, before swinging around and tossing the monster. It was too heavy for him to toss over his shoulder, but what happened was arguably better.
The monster’s arm broke off at the shoulder, and he was left holding it like a club. To add insult to injury, he whirled around, and smashed the rocky appendage into the Mana Leech’s face. The monster howled from the pain of all its injuries, and Jonathan ran forwards, intending to finish the fight quickly. However, the monster had other plans.
There was a brief flash of blinding blue light, and an orb of power blossomed in front of the creature. Tendrils ran from the orb and into the monster’s body, and as the orb grew bigger, the creature shrunk and deflated, as if its lifeforce was being drained. Jonathan backed away, and when the ball grew to its full size, it detonated, blasting him away. The blast radius was far more than he had expected, and his arms almost broke from the power contained within that strike. He came to a sudden halt, slamming into the city walls.
More bones broke, but he was able to push past the pain, noting that none of them were anything especially vital to his fighting prowess. Jonathan extricated himself from the wall, having sunk into the stone by a small amount, and found himself back on his feet in no time. The man looked in the direction of the Mana Leech, only seeing a splatter of blood and slime across a good portion of the ash. It had killed itself with its final strike, and Jonathan felt its essence enter him. However, it was significantly less than he had expected, meaning that the monster had been credited with its own death for some absurd reason.