I grab its face with my left hand. I don’t want it to die.
My hands glow red and the little healing I can offer prevents it from dying. With my hand still on it, it turns into black energy and gets sucked into my hand.
It hurts like hell, but this time… It's bearable… I am guessing it’s because it has no more fight in it.
But goodness me, I am tired… So tired. It’s a weird tiredness, one I only feel when I use my healing skill.
I fall forward. I don’t think I can use my healing anymore. I’m that low on energy.
If I even try to heal a little more, I will run out of ether, faint, and risk dying. I know from experience, from when I was trying to regenerate my legs after losing them to a boulder.
I tried to do it in a single go and that resulted in me experiencing cardiac rest for the second time. This time, I got lucky.
But damn it, It hurts so much.
My ribs are exposed and I am sure many of them were ripped off.
I need more ether and Jer-kel can’t help.
I’m in so much pain. I don’t want to do anything, but I can’t stay here.
Walking isn’t an option. Crawling is nearly impossible.
Oh wait. I have a monster now.
I send it out, and with a flash of black, it's formed. That isn’t all.
I can see what it sees, hears, smells. Everything!
That also means I can ‘hear’ its thoughts.
Kill… Plunder, take devour, Rip the guts, feast on the muscles, drink on the blood, play with the brain parts, breed, have a million descendants, grow stronger, become strongest.
Over and over those thoughts repeat.
It’s making me nauseous. The monster’s thoughts is so damn immersive it feels like I have a second brain.
If I am not careful, I will think its thoughts are mine.
Guh… With the amount of blood I am losing perhaps that’s the least of my concerns.
The monster's thoughts are present, but the will behind them is currently very weak.
The red and purple blood that I am lying in is getting blurrier by the second.
What can I do?
Think.
Think.
I need more ether.
I am going to do something insane.
Bring me the corpse of your brethren. Or the ether organ in it.
The monster near me forces its body to move, and… it hurts. Every time it moves I feel the stab wounds in its neck.
It hurts so much.
I breathe heavily. I can’t even make any more movements. I’m too weak to.
I am so weak that my control of the monster feels weak, but the monster is also weak so I guess that negates the difference.
Jer-kel is still fighting. Ah, I can see her through ‘my’ monster eyes. She is bloodied but the Shafeline is in a worse state than her.
Its tail is cut, half of its face gone and most of its body has spider legs in it like a bunch of spears.
Yet it’s moving, still trying to kill her.
Breathing is getting hard. I am struggling to pull in air. I’m making weird gurgling sounds. I think I have blood in my mouth. I guess my sense of taste and touch must also be dull if I didn’t realize that.
The monster under my command exhaustively tears through its sibling’s abdomen until it finds a wrinkly ball-like organ that’s beating like a heart. The ether processing organ, EPO.
Mon (Its temporary nickname) brings it to me. With my own eyes, I can’t really make it out. I just know it’s still covered in blood and fat.
I waste no time and bite down on it. Lucky for me, I can’t taste shit. I use all my power to chew what’s in my mouth, but it’s like a toddler biting down on a rubber toy. The meat is too tough, so I give up on the chewing part and try to swallow it.
I also can’t swallow it!
Shit!
I make my monster push the garbage down my throat with its claw. With that method, I swallow everything.
There is just one thing, I don’t know if I will be able to absorb the ether from the organ before I die.
But… Oh… things are dark. Very dark.
I try to move my arm, but it has no force.
Put my left hand on my back.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The monster does so. I coat the hand with my healing skill. I am going to hope that the aura stays active while I fall asleep, and hopefully, it gets powered by the ether in the EPO.
Hope… It must work… It must…
Everything goes black.
**
POV: Jim
I jump to the side as Treecra’s leg, the giant crab made out of trees, pierce through the Shafeline head with ease.
The body drops to the ground and a pool of purple blood leaves its head.
I don’t understand this.
I ask Lo’jul, “Are they just weak clones?”
It isn’t the only one we’ve killed so far. All around us are exact copies of the Shafeline.
Lo’jul responds on top of his three meter tall four legged creature, which has the body of a dog, but gorilla arms and a shark head, “Since when are clones this weak? It’s like we are fighting level 1 monsters.”
“So what’s all this then?”
He hops off his monster and walks over to a corpse. His monster moves to it too, most likely via a mental command.
It eyes glow green and Lo’jul immediately makes an annoyed sound. “It has an active skill over it, but I have no idea what’s it about.”
“I am starting to think this is all just a distraction.”
“Yeah, me too. To make it target those villagers easier.”
“And we fell for it.”
It wants to level up as quickly as possible, but it knows it can’t take us all on. God, I hate monsters.
I hope Jer-kel-thuli-mal is okay. She should be. Yeah, I’m sure she is.
“Let’s head back now.”
**
POV: Bahmos.
Me, Julus, Merkerthy, and Tom lay on the dirt, not making a single sound.
We heard everything that went on, but lucky for us, we were sitting near Dreamy’s burial, far from where the chaos is going on.
The amount of screaming from the villagers has depleted a lot. There’s still some screaming, there and then, but it most likely means that the monsters are running out of easy targets.
We would be next.
I am so anxious it's insane. Breathing is hard, it's on manual now, and I can’t stop myself from trembling.
I wonder about Natasha, I heard some sounds from the carriage, hums maybe, but when the screams began, I heard nothing. But I am sure she didn’t leave the carriage either.
Am I going to die here?
There are suddenly leaves crunching sounds. “Don’t… my… run…”
**
POV: Vernisha
Gasp!
I subconsciously take in a deep breath of air and cough up blood.
I am alive? It worked. It worked!
I want to laugh but I crack a crooked smile instead. I didn’t think about it, but there was a high chance the other monsters could have come after me while I was unconscious.
Lucky me, am I right?
I feel my back, it feels rough, but there is flesh on it. I can move about, although weakly. It seems I am mostly in a good condition.
That EPO I ate must have contained a lot of ether. I wonder if there was a chance my own EPO could have burst.
Well whatever. Now… now what?
I need to get to Natasha so we can get the hell out of here. But running out in the open is asking to get killed.
What even are the chances of her being alive?
No idea. I have to hope it's high.
I move slowly and peek out of a hole through the wall and see Jer-kel still fighting with the shafeline
Her monster is badly hurt, just like her.
There are newborn monster corpses near them. I am wondering if Jer-kel is responsible for it or… if the shafeline killed her kids to power herself up.
If Jer-kel dies, well, I’ll be next.
If I can quickly heal her monster and run…
But if I am spotted, I am dead in an instant. No amount of healing is going to fix a missing head.
I call over my monster who strains to move, then I heal it. Not a significant amount of healing, but enough for it to move like a tired soldier. Better than one near death.
I need to save everything else for Jel-kel’s monster… but I don’t think I have enough for that.
... Never mind, I can get enough.
I fix my grip on my knife and mutter, “Go.”
Mon quickly and silently runs on the battlefield. It moves from one monster corpse to the other, ripping their abdomen open and swallowing their EPOs. Then it runs over to me.
System, what are its skills?
It feels like a weird kind of electricity raced across my mind and for some reason, I have immediate knowledge.
[Flame claws] [Strong charge] [Fire spit]
It’s also level 8.
Mon gets back in the house, through the same huge hole in the wall it made when it tried to kill me. I’m on the other side of the wall to maintain stealth, so it comes over and vomits all the EPOs it ate.
I can’t believe what I’m about to do. I know the gods of this world don’t do prays and all that, but, ‘Gods, please bless my stomach with the will of a rat.’
I hold my breath, pick two EPOs up, and starts eating them like they are meat balls.
It's so bad. The texture, the taste, it’s like I’m eating a rotting dog!
It’s so bad I’m holding in the urge to vomit. My eyes are watering and my hands are trembling.
The shafeline roars loudly and swings its claws down at Jer-kel. The humanoid spider jumps in the way of the attack.
The claws tear deeply into the humanoid spider. Both the spider and Jer-kel grunt in pain.
Shit.
Distract your mother!
Mon dashes forward.
Just as the shafeline is about to breathe fire on Jer-kel, Mon slashes its legs with [flame claws]. Of course, it normally would have only scratched it, but lucky for me, it had wounds all over its legs already.
The shafeline kicks back in response, but since it wasn’t aware of the enemy it assumed the target was bigger, so it missed.
I run out as fast I can while my monster distracts it. I’m guessing it’s confused as to why its child is attacking it and no longer sees Jer-kel as a threat.
It’s kinda right. She is struggling to stand right now.
Why doesn’t she use her fairy monster to heal— Oh right, it ran out of ether when it was healing everyone.
The EPO, ether processing organ only absorbs ether in the air, then processes and stores it for the monster to use.
The air does have ether but it’s low dog shit quality.
Jer-kel sees me, and her expression is clearly: ‘What the hell is she doing here?!’ Then it turns into: ‘Oh my god, this dumb kid is going to get herself killed.’
She is pointing away with aggression, trying to tell me to get out of here.
I plan to, once I am sure you are not going to die.
I reach near her. She grabs my shoulders, maybe to whisper ‘Get out’, but I quickly drop three EPOs. “Use these for the fairy.”
Even at times like this, attempting to heal her Humanoid-spider with her being aware of it wouldn’t end well for me, base on what Natasha has told me.
So no, this isn’t a situation where I can say, 'I have the power to heal monsters! I am here to heal your monster!'
Perhaps I can take the risk, thinking Natasha was exaggerating. But I have no reason to believe she was. If my chance of survival is at 0%, I will say fuck the secrets, but it’s not at 0% yet!
Jer-kel takes the EPOs and nods.
Jer-kel points at her humanoid spider and says, “Bring me to Shtyui, and quickly.”
So that’s the name.
I pull her, moving fast. She seems surprised, “You are unnaturally strong…”
Please be stupid and assume it's a coincidence.
“Thank you. It's from working out a lot. Are your friends coming soon?”
I should have made my monster level us up. Damn it. Fortunately for it, it's able to evade the heavily injured shafeline.
“I assume they are busy fighting its kids. But I am calling them over now.”
She says that, but I don’t notice the pyramid communicator on her. She is just silent. Perhaps its one of those monster skills.
We reach Shtyui. It barely can keep itself standing. Jer-kel approaches it and says, “You did well.”
She taps it with her right foot.
There is a flash of white, and through my monster eyes, I see the Shafeline come to a halt and turn towards us.
Jer-kel sends the fairy out, and immediately it goes from having no signs of harm to bleeding through its nose, and mouth and being in horrible pain.
Yikes.
Jer-kel apologizes to the fairy for the harm it has to take on because of her and gives it the EPOs.
“Harve...st run!” the shafeline runs at us.
Its noise catches Jer-kel attention, giving me time to grab her monster back(away from the shared vision) and heal as much as I can in a second. It’s enough healing to stop the fairy’s nosebleed and have it stand up properly.
“Shit!” Jer-kel panics and turns towards me like a worried mother.
The air makes a whistle sound and I see the shafeline claws suddenly in front of me, directed at my neck.
Oh. I am dead.