Regardless of what one might think, it wasn’t easy to hold on to a giant mantis, it was quite challenging. The mantis had a partially developed soul too, apart from other things, so it put up quite a fight!
The mantis stopped being observant, and tried to attack now. Despite Tim’s grip, it started walking forward slowly, and it was apparent on its stubborn stride that it wanted goblins for its lunch today!
“Guss… what are you thinking about? He’s gonna bite you in half if he gets any closer!” Tim warned, and he couldn’t do anything else to attack the mantis, because both of his hands were tied, as he tried to push it away using the Soul Grabber ability.
“Hmm…” Gustav stroked his chin, and for once, he didn’t seem as nervous. “If one species has a weak spot, shouldn’t every other seemingly indestructible creature have one as well? Oh, this is going to go very much against protocol, but it’s worth a shot!”
With a plan in mind, he allowed the mantis to get just a little bit closer, and when it swung its long arms as a form of its attack, that was when Gustav made a move. He slapped the mantis’ hand away with the aid of a bunch of fireballs, and then ran forward!
With such little effort, he was under the beast’s belly afterwards, so he had a sort of a vantage point now. He didn’t plan to attack its belly directly, as he guessed that it would be a waste of mana. Instead, he first aimed at the arm socket’s of this beast, and dual shot about twenty fireballs from each of his palms, attacking those sockets!
The mantis finally made a sound now, which was a good sign. It made this sound as if it was chewing on metal balls, and seconds later, its large, dangerous arms snapped off and fell to the ground! Gustav’s plan was an absolute success!
“You smart bastard,” Tim complimented, and was hoping that he could let go of the cricket now, because it was a costly task.
“Don’t let go,” Gustav stared right into his eyes afterwards, his demand was firm.
Afterwards, carrying out the rest of his plan, he attacked its leg sockets. The mantis’ legs were thinner in comparison to its huge arms, so it took less firepower to burn through each of them. In less than five seconds, he left the mantis immobile, and then bounced out of the way, so he wouldn't get crushed by the remainder of its body!
Tim then let go of the mantis’ soul, and heaved. “Jesus, you’re a good fighter! If you let me fight that thing I’d spend fifteen-thousand mana points on it, that’s for sure, so maybe you're better than you thought?”
Tim was aware of his own shortfallings, so he could respect an efficient kill. In this case, he only had to spend a thousand mana points in order to avoid certain death. The cricket would’ve destroyed the two of them if they hadn’t worked together on this, and from the looks of it, there was a bit of a reward out of this exchange as well.
“It’s not dead yet, but it’s gonna die.” Gustav pointed out.
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That was when Tim saw a great opportunity, he got really excited. He may get a lot of points here if he killed the mantis himself!
“I’ll put it out of its misery, it suffered enough today.” He said, as he pretended to be noble.
Afterwards, he walked over to the mantis’ side, and blew a thunder clap on its head. The proximity to the mantis, and its current condition allowed for a quick death after Timothy attacked it. It died off, and successfully escaped that brutal state it was in.
“That’s good of you,” The other said.
Timothy couldn’t care about that mantis at all, but he did care about the points he won over. He delivered the final blow on it, so technically this was his kill, and the system then confirmed half of his conclusions.
[Giant Mantis killed.] She beeped, [However, since this is an assisted kill, you only get half of the reward, which is 3,000 system points. You’ve accumulated a total of 10,000 system points now.]
“I can live with that,” He thought, and he was happy, because he was quite rich now in terms of system points, even though he had bought a couple of upgrades last night, which had been a bit costly together. He felt that he progressed just now.
Anyway, after this, the two of them had to pick their next course of action. The world around them was still crimson red, it was difficult to walk through it, and they couldn’t stand in this place for long, because the smoke around them was becoming too much to handle! Tim set one too many trees on fire earlier on.
“Are you ready to go?” He asked.
“Ready to go back, you mean?” Gustav argued, “There aren’t any beetles here, and we almost got killed by an overgrown cricket, it’s a miracle we survived. I don’t know what I was thinking, scratch the volunteers, it’s stupid to walk in this universe without an entire platoon!”
“It wasn’t a miracle that we survived,” He refused, “I paralyzed the bastard, and you killed it. That’s as efficient as it gets, we work well together.”
Gustav was enthralled, because that was a very good point, it was difficult to argue with it. A second later, just as he was about to agree to explore more, he noticed something weird on the mantis’ burnt head.
“Why’s there a lump of coal in its head?” Gustav asked, and reached his hand in to grab it.
Despite their first impression, this was not a lump of coal, it wasn’t on fire, despite how the mantis’ head was still sizzling hot. It was its brain from the looks of it, but they couldn’t understand why it was so solid, and also cold to the touch.
“It has that for its brain?” Tim grunted, and then he thought to himself. “No wonder I couldn’t kill it with the nerve splitter, this bastard doesn’t have a brain to split!”
The two of them didn’t understand what they were seeing, but it wasn’t expected of them to know everything either. Since this large, black lump wasn’t dangerous, they just grabbed it, and put it in Gustav's bag. He could take it back to the city later on, and have brighter people analyze what it was.
“Looks like there’s more to this universe rather than just big insects, so, how about we explore it a bit more?” Gustav pitched, and this was uncharacteristic from his side, so it was quite interesting. “But if we’re outnumbered, we run, okay? No shame in retreating if we get to escape with our lives.”
“Okie dokie,” Tim said, and also, he was quite happy to get that lump off of his hands.
Regarding weird treasures, he and his friends still had that ring which was protected by this unbreakable casing of sorts. For that matter alone, he wasn’t so enthusiastic about weird treasures that he couldn’t understand.
“Why can’t I ever find a cool sword instead?” He muttered.