Chapter 115: To Build
Within the mouth of a great and terrible beast— a monster which was the very size of mountains, within it was a young creature in the shape of a human youth.
His heart glowed purple through his flesh and skin, and spreading from his heart, a maze of energy pathways glowed purple in the form of nanochip-like circuits.
If one was perceptive and observed his body closer, they would see that the energy lines spreading from his heartcore, were moving very slowly forward.
Whimsically, the glowing youth was similar to the battery icon on a phone interface. Zan was slowly charging up, and the glowing lines spreading further from his heart were a direct indicator of the activation progress.
By the completion of the process, a concentrated beam would then manifest from his mouth, and annihilate his path forward from out of the monstrosity’s insides.
Of course, things would never play out that smoothly.
As he hung from a massive stalagmite that was actually just one of the monster’s many deformed-teeth, his eyes widened in surprise.
‘Holy fuck.’
Below him, tens of thousands of teeth in the form of flagpole-sized spears, were blasted upward by the worm’s powerful gums.
The youth did not know when, but the monster had densely accumulated them to the point that all Zan saw was a rising floor of massive needles.
He could not even see the bile pools of acid anymore.
…But if he did, he would see that just the same as the spears were rising towards Zan, the very floor of flesh beneath was also rising upwards to meet him.
A feeling of urgency and haste surrounded the situation.
Yet, not only did it envelop Zan in its anxious embrace…but oddly enough, the monster too.
The worm-monstrosity seemed to be just as desperate to consume him, as the young man was desperate to get out of its mouth.
And that conjecture was correct. The radioactive, mountain-sized worm, had defective DNA and genetics. It lost energy at a rapid pace, and the only solution for its soul not to leave its then cold body, was to ceaselessly devour.
Although great and terrible, its existence was also pitiful, and tragic.
Even if it ate Zan— who was a great source of nutrition by the way— it would only fuel the monstrosity’s body for a day or two at best, and then it would have to look for its next prey.
…But it still had to eat the snappy young man first. Just the same as Zan had a timer for his energy pathways to light up, the clock was ticking for the monster’s very life.
BANG!
Zan snapped out of his surprise and sundered the monster’s tooth with his free hand.
Humongous shards of white enamel and yellow dentin fell from the collision with Zan’s fist, and he fell downwards with them, right towards the rising floor of teeth-spears aiming to skewer him like barbeque.
But Zan was not giving up, he had never planned to.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions rang out in mid air, as a thunderous storm of fists and feet smashed the falling shards of teeth around the young man.
Blasting forward with extreme force and momentum, they careened towards the many bone spears that were about to pierce him, and in their collision, both materials exploded into white-yellow dust.
Zan had eliminated the threat of any of the spears impaling him like Vlad The Impaler tortured his foes…but unfortunately, that did not mean that none of them were going to skewer him.
Zan’s falling body met with the rising floor of teeth spikes, and although he had created a small gap in that same floor, one of the thinner spears tore a hole right through his forearm, while another one tore a hole straight through thigh.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The one that pierced through his left thigh almost skewered the base of his neck too, but the youth leaned his head back at the last moment to escape its trajectory.
Now normally, most weapons would not even scratch Zan’s flesh, but unluckily, the young man had unknowingly traveled to a region way beyond his level.
And while the extremely lengthy spears entered his flesh, they did not exit his body.
The teeth spears continued their ascent, and the driving momentum shot Zan’s body back towards the ceiling of the monster’s mouth.
SHHHHCK!
Blood and corrosive bile dripped down from the ceiling, as all of the flagpole sized spears lodged themselves into the worm’s now bleeding gums.
Zan’s body, was presently hanging in the air through the bone spears piercing through his right forearm and left thigh.
“Rrgh.”
The young man issued a grunt, as gravity pulled his heavy body down, and his flesh sunk further into the bone spears.
It was kind of like how a skewered pig, when placed upside-down, would slide further into the center of the stick piercing it.
Gritting his teeth, he stretched his left arm as far back as he could, before driving and smashing his fist onto the spear piercing his right forearm.
Under his alien might the thing shattered, and with that relatively “free” arm, he shattered the spear piercing through his thigh.
As Zan fell, he grabbed onto another, thicker bone spear, before he watched, and felt, as all eighty feet of enamel slid down and exited both holes in his flesh.
His meat and bone then started to fester, quickly regenerating the massive gaping holes within his arm and thigh.
The youth breathed in and out, as he was awarded a momentary break.
Turning his head, the young man then looked to his heartcore. At the sight of it, he stifled a helpless laugh. Through that urgent and exhilarating turn of events, his energy had only inched forward by around four centimeters.
A long way to go till activation.
…And a long way to go till his escape.
Zan looked upward at the colossal monster’s mouth, where he then watched as the ceiling started to slowly descend.
‘Hahaha…’
The young man blew air out of his nose.
The floor was rising— the ceiling was descending— the very world that was the monster’s mouth wanted to crush him and consume him, yet here he was finding the situation just a tad silly.
He shook his head as if to snap himself back into the present. A series of dark clouds and negative thoughts creeped up on him within his mind, and they were filled with worry, and self doubt. Yet, before even a single thought could take hold within, he brushed them off. The dark clouds swept away by powerful resolve and will.
‘Let’s fucking do this then.’
A sharp glint shot through his eyes, as Zan assessed his surroundings. The tens of thousands of bone spears hanging from the falling ceiling, almost looked like an upside down bamboo forest.
Oddly, it bore an alien sense of beauty. One, that Zan was going to destroy to preserve his life.
The young man put both his feet on the pole of a massive teeth spear, before gathering his strength and leaping off of it.
His booming leap put him on a direct collision course with the forest of teeth, but he did not shy nor cower, and instead swung his fists to shatter them.
He moved gracefully and powerfully, jumping from tooth to tooth within the upside-down jungle of spears. And while doing so, he destroyed as many of them as he could, while sending the broken flying pieces towards a certain spot.
From time to time, new teeth would grow out from the monster’s gums, before being propelled by the worm’s massaging gums. The air, or more accurately the monster’s breath, would break under the whizzing of those gigantic needles.
Like an acrobatic, Zan spun through the air conducting odd and unusual movements. At one moment he looked like a rotating shuriken, and at the next he looked like a thrown boomerang. At one point he even looked like a falling leaf, dodging everything effortlessly while moving as little as possible.
Within the chaos, Zan’s eyes then moved to the rising waters below. He watched as the heavy slabs of teeth that he broke off from the ceiling splashed through the same spot over and over.
The young man had hastily conceived a plan, although it was a somewhat wild and stupid one…
And in a situation where the ceiling was descending and the floor was rising, he thought of the most “effective” yet “masterfully simple” plan he could muster. Well, at least by his own standards.
To buy himself the time needed for that plan, and vice-versa the time needed for his energy circuits to execute the annihilating beam, he started to put to use the rich creativity he was born with.
Zan played with the same tricks he used previously, while inventing new and ingenious ways to survive and fight back.
He made use of the weapons launched against him to both maneuver, defend, and thwart the monster’s attempts to consume him.
He used a few broken pieces of teeth as heaven-sent javelins. Whenever a tooth started to grow from out of the monster’s flesh, it would be smited by a tooth-javelin whose speed exceeded the sound barrier.
At one point he held sixty foot spears in each hand, using them almost like dual rapiers to defend. At another moment, he somehow formed makeshift gauntlets on each hand, using them to more easily destroy everything that dared to oppose him.
And just like this, time slowly passed by.
Seconds passed into minutes, although for Zan it felt as if hours were passing by.
Every passing moment of time was hard fought, as he dodged teeth spears launched from both below and above, and dealt with the acid bile that started off as a light drizzle, to a harsh flooding storm.
Of course, it was nothing like being rained on. It wasn’t clouds above Zan’s head after all. Instead, the young man felt like buckets of burning liquid were being poured on top of his head.
Currently, the glowing energy pathways that looked more like energy circuits from a computer chip, had fully encompassed his torso. They even extended towards his shoulders, while the ones on his legs had extended just below his thighs.
‘Around a minute and a half left.’ The young man thought to himself.
His energy was still slowly moving forward, yet, the corrosive acid below also rose ever higher, and the ceiling above still continued to press down on him, almost like a sky-sized hydraulic press.
At this point in time, there was only a hundred feet separating the ceiling, and the hellish waters below. The monster’s mouth had turned from an enormous and spacious cave, to a long and narrow tunnel.
From a certain point of view, it looked as if cinematic bars were framing the scene of a mortal warrior fighting against the world itself.
Those bars of course, were made out of moving flesh, and they intended to close the curtains on all those watching.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A series of gigantic slabs of enamel splashed into the corrosive waters, but this time they did not sink. Rather, they landed on something just beneath the surface of the bubbling and furious tides.
That thing they landed on, was not unlike a Jenga tower made out of uneven and mismatched debris. It was the result of Zan’s tireless efforts to sunder the monster’s teeth, and from its broken pieces, make a sunken tower that peaked out of the hellish waters below.
BOOM!
Right after the slabs fell, the young man himself slammed on to the platform he made. The sunken tower shook and trembled from his great impact, but obviously the structure’s foundations were not at all solid.
Zan raised his head, and a dark red glow placed itself onto the descending ceiling. That was just before, he felt the churning tides and rising acid briefly wash over his ankles.