It didn’t bother closing the distance.
Noem batted aside one thrown skill and ducked under the other. His back screamed at him for the sudden sweeping motion, but it would’ve screamed even harder if he hadn’t dodged the second skill. He summoned and threw a migraine grenade in the same motion, then charged forward after darkening his contacts and turning his earbuds into earplugs.
The masked thing cast its arm to the side, which carried with it a burst of wind that caught and tossed the grenade harmlessly into the underbrush. Noem latched onto the thing’s outstretched right arm and brought his knife down in a deadly arc.
Green metal bit deep. A wave of Qi burst free of the fresh wound.
Vine and wood stood no chance. The arm fell away uselessly as the thing raised its remaining arm to deliver another attack, but Noem swapped out his knife for a migraine grenade that he’d kept in a stasis field. The creature stared at it for a split second before the grenade detonated into a horrific flash of light and Qi.
The fact that it still made no sound was incredibly disturbing. Noem planted his fist in the thing’s gut and shoved a Heavy Blow into it, then let himself fall to the ground as its skill passed right over his head. He grimaced at the pain of pushing off the ground with his injured back, but forced himself to work through it and spun backwards into a crouch. The migraine grenade couldn’t have affected something made mostly of Qi as much as it affected flesh and blood, so he wasn’t going to risk standing near the masked thing any longer than he needed to.
It shook its head as the green came back to its empty eye sockets, then looked down at the stump of its right arm. Then at Noem. He smiled and waved the thing’s disembodied hand back at it, then tossed it to the side when the masked thing moved to attack again. But the second the arm left his hand, the masked thing changed directions.
The wind picked up and carried the masked thing to its arm before Noem could act. Even with all three of his skills acting in tandem, all he could do was summon another migraine grenade to his left hand while his right was filled by his knife. His face fell to a sullen grimace as the thing pressed its arm back to the stump, and was swiftly repaired as if nothing had happened. Even the wound on its left had knit together, although that one left a long line that was its version of a scar.
Within moments, the thing swirled up two more skills–its protective sheen of wind dulling ever so slightly as the skills burst to life. The lone beacon of hope against a monster that had regeneration beyond anything Noem had ever seen. Well, beyond anything that packed an offensive punch.
“Migraine grenade count.” Noem demanded as he sidestepped a skill that he was slowly getting used to dodging.
{Current migraine grenades in inventory: 0.}
Noem grimaced and stepped into the masked thing’s second launched skill. He brushed it aside with the blade of his knife, then fell into a very low stance. The masked thing backed up a step in caution, its wind dying down by the second even without spinning up another skill. Its posture spoke of confusion, but shifted back to absolute unreadability a heartbeat later.
It threw a skill with one hand while keeping a second swirling in the same palm, then sagged to one side. The wind around it died out completely, but instead of slowing it, the masked thing seemed energized. It wordlessly ran at Noem with its hand held at its side in a claw-like manner, the skill inside growing larger and larger as it poured more and more Qi into it.
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With a thrust carried on gale-force winds, the masked thing aimed directly for Noem’s heart. The technique spilled over the side of its hand, wrapped around its viny fingers with little tendrils of Qi that bit away chunks of its flesh. The aura it gave off was terrifying; if Noem let that skill touch him, he had a feeling it wouldn’t be satisfied with the flesh scraping he’d gotten before. It would devour him whole, just like the Ceridaunt from before. Spirit and all.
He forced himself to fall backwards as if he’d slipped on ice. His feet flew out from under him as the back of his head screamed towards the ground, then slammed hard against it with a split second of involuntary darkness. When the darkness cleared, the thing’s hand was sailing directly through where his heart had been a moment ago. It looked down at him, and tried to alter its path, but it had used its winds as a boost.
Noem kicked at the thing’s shin with a Heavy Blow infused boot, and the masked thing fell head over heels in a continuous trail of destruction. Horrible crunches and splintering cracks sounded as the thing’s head and limbs were crushed under the weight of its body and the boost from Windrider. Its technique unwound the first time its hand touched the ground, ripping apart its arm from the elbow down in a flurry of predatory hunger.
“It was going to sacrifice its own arm to kill me.” Noem shook his head and laughed. He walked away from the masked creature while twirling his knife, only turning to look over his shoulder when the shambling form of the creature managed to pull itself off the ground. “Well, look who’s still got some fight left in ‘em. At least until my little gift takes everything you’ve got left.”
He gestured at the thing’s destroyed right arm, which from the stump, now revealed a blinking blue light. Ice crystals spread out and away from the light, invading the creature’s flesh like a parasite. It didn’t react to his motion, with all of its body being so broken that it had to shamble as it walked towards him.
Noem smiled cruelly and sent his knife back to his inventory. In its place, he summoned his bow. The masked thing tried to coat itself in wind Qi, but the skill failed halfway through its wind-up. Noem lazily grabbed the skill-infused arrow from his hip-mounted quiver and set it against the bowstring, then took aim directly at the masked thing’s center mass.
“How’d you like the little Qi converter I shoved in your arm?” He asked. The thing didn’t answer. “Turns any radiant Qi it touches into ice Qi. That includes the stuff you had to use to stitch your arm back on, and all the wasteful wind you whipped around yourself. Oh, you must feel so stupid right now knowing that you’re the reason you lost.”
No answer. Obviously. The thing even tried to activate its predatory skill, but this time, it didn’t even start to form. Its Qi reserves were completely and utterly empty. A strange noise emerged from deep in the thing’s head, like the creak of a massive tree splintering. It looked down at its hand, then up at Noem.
His smile only grew. “Looks like you finally understand. Bye-bye.”
The arrow flew true. Its tip sunk deep into the masked thing’s chest and flared with Qi, then released its stored skill. Wood and vine exploded as the thing was blown apart by an internal application of a skill that was designed to strike hard enough to dent steel. Noem sent his bow and quiver back to his inventory, then slowly walked back towards the motionless and Qi-less bottom half of the creature.
He knelt down next to the carnage and began to sift through the ‘flesh’. There was a reason he’d come out here in the first place, and he hadn’t forgotten it just because his prey gave him a little more trouble than expected. His fingers brushed against something solid. He felt the Qi the moment he touched it, fierce and unrestrained like a gale-force wind. His fingers curled around the long thing, and pulled.
A series of wet pops rang out as he pulled what looked like the bottom third of a wooden spine free. Panic rose in his throat for a second as he thought he’d destroyed part of the anchor, but he reminded himself that the arrow didn’t have enough destructive power to do that. He stared at the white wooden spine shot through with vibrant green lines. It didn’t look like any natural anchor he’d ever seen.
Something fell into his other hand. Warmth and cold braided together into something more. He raised an eyebrow and lifted the cube he definitely hadn’t summoned to his eyes. A spark of chi lept to it from the spine, then continued to Noem.
Unrestrained desire. Hunger beyond hunger, yet no matter how much it ate, it was never sated. Enough blood spilled forth to fill an ocean, which grew storms unlike anything imagined in the minds of the most cruel monsters to ever live. Blood hurricanes and tsunamis destroyed the coast and ravaged the mainland, forcing people further and further in until they were closed off on all sides by a bloody rising tide of utter violence.
Noem dropped both the cube and the spine and stumbled back. His heart pounded harder than it ever had. He couldn’t catch his breath. It was too hot and too cold.
“What the fuck was that?!”