I knew I could defeat this psionic urchin. It was a matter of time until I severed enough tentacles to attack the main body. But with the doomsday beam shooting straight at the ocean trench below, it was time I couldn't have. I had no idea how much power it used but by now I was pretty sure the urchin could not turn it off until the beam had run its course.
The short straw went to the reef fish. With the boiling bubbles coming up, they literally cooked in the few hiding spots that remained intact. Dory wouldn't keep swimming anymore.
But the lack of coordination gave me a golden opportunity. I stowed my daggers and went back to my ice elemental form with claws. Triggering my dozen claw Perks, especially {Vorpal Claws} allowed me to harvest the tubular appendages at astonishing speeds. If only it didn't have thousands of them.
Light gave up as the beam weakened and sputtered out. A very angry pulse of psionic energy rang from the urchin's core, slamming my brain like a sledgehammer. My last thought before unconsciousness was to finally spend a couple of my unused Perks.
> You purchased the Perk: Psychic Resistance I (uncommon) - You take 50% less damage from psionic attacks. The duration of all mind-affecting debuffs is reduced by 25%.
>
> You purchased the Perk: Psychic Resistance II (uncommon) - You take 75% less damage from psionic attacks. The duration of all mind-affecting debuffs is reduced by 43,7%.
>
> You are unconscious.
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I came back to my senses fully healed. I missed half my MP and SP pools but HP was topped. A quick appraisal of my situation told me {Cyst Hybernation} activated. I floated in a cloud of black blood. As the now brittle shell shattered, my detection pinpointed the urchin a hundred yards to the side of the trench along with a second monster signature. The signals' erratic movement told me they were fighting.
Swimming out of the blood and dust cloud, I noticed the sun had already set. The urchin fought some monster long and agile and was actually on the defensive. Did an urchin this big had natural enemies? Of course, it did.
Before I could decide to either investigate, intervene, or get the heck out of dodge and leave the big boys to play with one another, the fight came my way. The urchin used a technique similar to my {Water Jet} to propel itself in open waters, using its hundreds of sucker-tipped tentacles to control its velocity vector. It shot past me and the newcomer assailant sailed smoothly after the prickly morsel.
> Fenrir-wolf Eel
>
> Level [BLOCKED].
>
> Appraisal resisted. No further information is available.
I clicked my tongue. The eel actually spent Perks on blocking Appraisal.
The eel had easily around a hundred meters of length and was covered in soft, flowing fur everywhere except its fins. The water chilled after its passing, an indicator of what element it favored. The turbulence of their wake threatened to send me tumbling.
Down in the trench, I could sense several monsters fighting each other. The beam must've killed some creatures and triggered a feeding frenzy. In this Age of Eclipse, food was at a premium. Starvation was a terrible beast.
The battle between the titanic monsters continued. The urchin now used its massive ivory spikes to attack the Fenrir-eel. The spikes appeared to glow and grow instantly, lashing out as an afterimage like a knight's lance. It was weird. There was little warning before it just seemed to grow half as long, blur, shake, and in the next blink of eyes, it was back to its original size as if it never struck out.
The flash of light allowed me to see the head of the Fenrir-eel. It wasn't the round stubby head of an eel but an actual wolf head with actual triangular ears and a toothy snarling snout. The next flash gave me a different angle and I saw it was very top-heavy, a mix of both fish and canine features. I also noticed it was bleeding from some puncture wounds. Today's dinner would come at a hefty cost, it seemed.
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I became a water elemental, activated my {invisibility} and stealth skills, and followed them. The ocean around the trench's entrance was far from empty, the fight drew several creatures that came to investigate out of curiosity.
Fenrir-eel opened its maw, losing some speed and letting the urchin get some distance. it spat a jet of icy magic moments after, freezing a cone of seawater and trapping the gigantic urchin whole. The block of ice topped and turned as it quickly rose to the surface. The eel followed and so did I. The urchin, however, was far from done. Flashes of light denounced it kept using the projection power of its spikes to try and crack the ice. Given enough time, it would break free.
The furred fish-monster wrapped itself around the block of ice and started to resonate. I could feel powerful magic emanating from the eel and into the ice block. It was regrowing what the urchin cracked and further damaging the guardian echinoderm. Now that I could see its body, the eel had several puncture wounds along its body mostly focused around and on its head. Red blood seeped into the waters and several fishes and smaller monsters waited at a distance for the leftovers of the banquet. They didn't dare approach the giant predator.
The urchin became desperate, punching with its spike projections more often. I could feel the faint influence of its psionic attack but the creature had optimized it to work up close and fade quickly with the distance. The Fenrir-eel twitched but didn't let go of the block of... iceberg was a better word for the urchin's casing. That was a terrible predicament. While the urchin tired itself, the Fenrir-eel rested. Or not... Upon close inspection, I saw trickles of blood seeping into the oceanic currents from the eel's mouth, eyes, and gills. The psychic attack was taking its toll.
I was clearly out of my league. I could take the few dozen tentacles I'd harvested as my trophy and just leave but the bitter taste of not getting the Exp stung. That alone left me hovering nearby, waiting and watching my MP trickle back.
Half an hour later, the urchin apparently grew tired of fighting back and became completely still. It wasn't dead, I knew it because I got no Exp notification. While the damage I caused was negligible, I knew the System still considered me as having a small contribution to the defeat of the crevasse's guardian. The eel seemed happy just guarding the iceberg and resting. Had the millennia-old spike ball gave up on life?
Not at all. I saw the telltale glow of its beam attack inside the ice and before the eel could react, it shot straight at the mid-section of the furry fish body, carving a hole on the Fenrir-wolf eel's flank. Then it pulsed all of its spikes at once, shattering the iceberg into hundreds of pieces and breaking free. Wounded and desperate, the eel tried to run away but all it accomplished was to turn the hole into a gaping gash because the urchin proved incapable of turning it off in a jiffy.
But boy, the urchin was mad. As I approached without breaking stealth, the tentacles squirmed and swarmed jetting water out and pushing the urchin toward the dying eel on one side and angrily snapping their claws on the other side. The eel was indeed about to die. Its appraisal resistance broke and I could see it had just a few million HP, and dropping fast. Previously cautious opportunists were already swimming in an attempt to get the premium, front row bites.
The beam finally ended, faster than before. The urchin probably didn't have the energy to keep it up for the whole duration and I doubted it could fire it a third time today. Fenrir-eel tried to swim away with all its might. Tired as the urchin guardian was, it slowly gained distance. It was my time to shine. I burned MP to bring {Water Jet} to a hundred times my normal speed and darted toward the eel. Switching to {Ice Elemental} I used {Flash Step} at the earliest possible and found myself next to the base of its head.
**SLASH**
If it has a head, it can be beheaded. A surprise strike from yours truly's {Vorpal Claws} was a guaranteed critical.
> You killed level 164 Fenrir-wolf eel. You gained 20.5B Exp (268.960 base x8 size x3,05 Exp Boost x3,05 Monster x32,768 Fast Learner x0.25 Partial Contribution)
Turning around, I noticed the urchin had leveled up to 178. The ball of death hovered a hundred meters behind me. The eel body and head had already vanished into my item box. Now that I didn't have the boggart's whirlwind of anger and resentment slamming in my heart, I wondered if I needed to kill him.
"Greetings, guardian," I waved back. "Shall we..."
I never got to finish my sentence. The swarm of scavengers descended... no, they were swimming from below. The swarm swam upon us and the blood in the water triggered another feeding frenzy. The urchin started to pinch and eat the sharks and fishes by the dozens as the tentacles pinched them and unceremoniously tossed them down his maw. I turned intangible and spent my Exp.
> You reached Arcane Diva level 14.
>
> [...]
>
> Ultimate Surpasser granted you 1 Attribute Point
Two measly levels. I dismissed the notifications. Another psionic pulse and the low-leveled fish around us all died.
"Are we finishing our fight?" I asked, irritated.
Aww, fuck.
"Which ancient evil?"