Gasping for air, the war hammer in his hand, he had already let the first healing potion wet his throat. Healing, regeneration or not, it just wasn't enough. His own blood flowed from various new openings in his body, where it seemed to mix with that of various beasts.
The trench had long been filled with those creatures that could not make it through the wall but onto the stone underground. Even on the wall, a single one of these curly beasts had degraded itself to a shish kebab. The trench had long been burning from its Greek fire, while the stone floor beneath the various corpses could no longer be seen.
Not every one of his attackers began to attack him directly or even to grab hold of him in the ground. Whenever more than one made it into his improvised Coliseum, chaos broke out. A battle royale without equal.
It may sound like he fought there all day. Cursing, he spat a clot of blood on one of the corpses at the foot of its ridge. The sense of time during a fight was deceptive, because the position of the sun taught him better. This massacre had lasted a few hours at the most.
Did it take that long to develop? He didn't really think he had any sense of time. Damn it, underground, far from every day and night cycle, a sense of time was like a pipe dream.
But the fight wasn't over yet. It would last as long as she moved on. His mana perception followed a few strands in more distant regions from which a roar came, which overshadowed everything that had been before. Damn ax, even through his boots he could feel vibrations in the ground. Something was on the way to them. Something bloody big! Hopefully Leica was hurrying up a bit, because he did not doubt for a second that what was in store for their location would still have been within its league, no. Reluctantly, he could make out a shadow in the trees. A shade that slowly took shape. The thing was the size of a Spinosaurus, but that's where the similarities stopped. An identification only gave him a few question marks for both his animal level and the current level.
The appearance was reminiscent of a Spinosaurus only from the base and the head. Body armor, like a tail, vaguely reminiscent of an ankylosaurus. It must undoubtedly look several tons. It is also bigger than expected. With a length of over 20 meters and a height of 9 meters, it could look down on its tower like a plate. How should he fight that?
Despite his arrival, the footsteps did not stop. Too late he realized that this was not the only Super Predator on the way to them, but behind his back on the other side a gigantic bear creature peeled itself out of the thicket.
But with two the bad luck was not yet complete. A third creature that revealed itself as a titanic serpent came from a further direction. Only from the lighter area of the forest did nothing come towards him. At least when it was all over they had a clear direction of escape.
These giants of the forest had scared away all other life for miles around. Their dimensions reminded him more of titans, presumably they were the true rulers of entire areas. Hell, even the blood willows would probably just be a better toilet for her.
As soon as the monsters in Godzilla erupted into a battle royal, it would be just damn collateral damage. Something to toss aside casually, like an annoying insect crushed. Either they would choke it down with a single bite or it would just be turned to slush under their bodies with the rest of the area. This was no longer a fight he could take part in.
What the hell did Leica develop into down there?
The connection still failed, but he couldn't stay up there any longer. Without hesitation, he created a passage for himself with which he could get down to her. As in one of those old films with brave archaeologists, he slid down his created passage to the capsule! Once there, he quickly found that the place was completely taken up by the cube. He had already made the room more than generous. Damn it, what was it developing into? No wonder their evolution took so long and attracted so many different creatures.
Somehow he, too, was attracted to what was inside the cube, but in an uncomfortable way. Was it the silt in which the development took place? Finally reminded of an organic variant of the Mana Schlick. So a variant that you could eat. Perhaps, a delicacy or a natural treasure, which lost its attraction with the completion of a development?
At the moment when he seemed to be leaning against the wall, so that he could take a little rest, one of the titans, because he was probably thrown in a fight, sabered a trace deep into the earth. The new ceiling of his underground room was barely cut off. He didn't even want to imagine the destruction above ground.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
With a few simple movements, he and Leica sank deeper and deeper into the shrinking earth and rock layers. Everything he removed from under them he moved up where he condensed it further. Very soon they were twice as deep, but despite the great depth, he could still easily feel the vibrations from the battle.
During the fight he was even forced to distribute the new points. This time he had kept them for such an incident and preferred to hand them out when he needed them, because there was often a world of difference between what you had to believe and what was really necessary!
Besides, he knew his luck better than many other things, which made it possible for him to predict such an event with a high degree of probability. There was no longer any art in knowing such a thing. It was hardly any different in his last life.
If he wished people bad luck, they were lucky. If he got on a train, the likelihood was high that it provoked delays, breakdowns, or other incidents. His luck mostly consisted in the fact that if he was unlucky, that bad luck did not cost him head and neck, but he always got out of it with a black eye.
For this reason, he pumped almost half of his points into the new regeneration, bringing them to 517, 200 in his toughness, 200 in his vitality, 100 in his agility, 100 in his endurance and he used the remaining 50 with his Could round off strength.
With that all points were not invested once in his hobby horses, but there he got closer to the creatures than he wanted and giving up his position remained a closed option. He just needed more resistance, more life, more endurance, but most of all more regeneration. Void was freaking quick when it came to repairing his injuries.
He also had to discard the idea that there was something left up there after this battle. Would these titans kill each other? Maybe he could still land a fatal blow and win with it. Damn it, he didn't mind a good fight, but suicide was clearly not on his bucket list. He had limited healing capabilities, but that didn't mean he could be used as a doormat.
After this event, he decided to weave flight magic, gravity magic, and other futuristic magic. He had already gathered some ideas, but had not yet felt the leisure or urgency to do so.
After a few hours, the frequency of the vibrations decreased. They were still there and no doubt the fighting was still going on, but maybe one in three had it? Leica had to hurry, because once it was decided who the egg belonged to, the creatures would start digging for the delicacy.
Maybe it should go deeper? What he ultimately felt as a low could just be felt as an outhouse for the titanic beings above him. A little nervous with this thought, he went back to digging down and compressing up. If that came after them about them, then he wanted to make it as difficult as possible!
Soon they separated 20 meters of earth, as well as stone, from the uppermost hollow that the battle created there! All he could do was hope he didn't dig too deep, which would throw them together into a cave system, dungeon, or something else crazy.
There were moments like this when there wasn't very much he could do other than rest, hope for the best, and relax. The second he closed his eyes he heard a crack from the cube, but it did not break open, it continued to swell. Whatever Leica evolved into, it had to be at least shoulder height for a full-grown horse. Was it really that easy to set size over other advantages?
Without much choice he had to expand the space again, but this time he immediately set about adding a few extras so that it simply got the space it seemed to need for its development. While reshaping his surroundings, he no longer noticed the further cracking of the cube, which began to open in fragments. The silt ran out of the capsule. Shortly afterwards it immediately lost its attractive smell.
Magna's gaze, however, was drawn to the pierced wall. His luck had caught up with him again, he thought to himself as he watched the cave in front of him, but the cave did not have the classic dimensions that he had come to know from them. Much more, it gave the impression that something had been dug. Whatever lived there was certainly not pleased with its direct intrusion into its native realm. Much sooner than expected he could make out a couple of eyes staring at him from the other end of the cave. His mana eyes gave him the image of a rodent the size of a hippopotamus, so whatever focused him, it usually seemed easier to prey in those areas of the forest.
The only thing that came as a surprise to him was that it was not pointing towards him, but was moving away from him. Far too late he noticed the amber colored eyes staring at this rodent behind him. Before he understood what was really going on, he could already feel the connection to her again. She had just jumped out of her cube.
Her new set of teeth just towered a head above him, baring her teeth violently. The rodent must either retreat or face a damn angry wolf. If he hadn't been in contact with her, he would certainly have had his pants full too. Her eyes shimmered in the darkness and the system titled her with the term
[Eisenfellwandler: A very rare further development of an iron skin. Their increased size is intimidating to most creatures, but they are not tied to this form of appearance. In addition to this shape, they also retain their originally smaller appearance, which has a few wings. Caution: This form of iron skin is extremely dangerous, known for its special intelligence.]
Maybe his luck wasn't always shitty after all, maybe it was the black eye he was talking about before, but Leica didn't seem to be an inch from him. After a few more seconds, the tunnel rat moved out of view, on the other hand, they now had a presumably safe way back to the surface.
The earth above them still seemed to shake, but the question from Leica came really unexpectedly via the thought link: "Dangerous upstairs?"
Magna simply sent her the images of the giants he still had in his head, whereupon she simply nodded seemed. Anyone who had ever seen a bloody big wolf nod slowly could cross something off their spoon list. What ate more of his pride, however, was probably the fact that she seemed to be able to fly in front of him. On the other hand, he now had a fast means of travel, although he doubted that it seemed particularly intelligent to fly over such a forest. At least not as long as he had a few more developments behind him.
Together they made their way through the rodent nest, which they only tried to leave after a few kilometers to the lighter area of the forest. From there, her home was still a few days away from her location, but he vowed that once they were back it would lock itself up in his library for a while and exchange a few concepts with her. Maybe he could benefit more from their development after all?