The fall was long. The reptile went limp so he could absorb the impact to die as quickly and as painlessly as possible. But his death wouldn’t come to him, not yet at least. Air escaped his lungs as his back crashed against the top of a hill made of meat. While he tumbled and rolled down, tendrils moved and slivered away from the reptile as he touched them.
The reptile coughed and gasped for air as he struggled to lift himself up. He spat out blue blood while he pulled off red slime that stuck to his body. His heart raced while he tried to calm his mind. He needed to compose himself, especially when he was stuck in a realm he was unfamiliar with.
The world around him was of meat and tendrils. Moving and contorting like it was a living factory where every individual part moved independently to manufacture horrors beyond his understanding. He could tell he was standing on top of the very thing birthing new horrors, the reptile could smell it. It would be hard to forget the smell of magical flesh and cells forged by unholy contraptions and methods.
The hill he landed on shifted, meat and tentacles swaying erratically as the hill turned to Jackson’s direction. Before the reptile could react, a tendril wrapped around his right leg, picked him up and slammed him into the ground before dragging him to the moving hill. Thinking quickly, Jackson used the talons of his left foot to tear at the tentacle, forcing it to release him.
The hill let out a pained roar as the reptile readied himself for another fight. Activating his buckler and pulling out a Charge-Spike. It had no eyes; its teeth were just miniature tendrils that gripped onto flesh and tore them apart from inside its massive mouth. Tentacles of various sizes and shapes waved around its body as it made its war cry, challenging or trying to frighten the intruder.
Jackson charged at the hill, knowing well that killing it could mean halting the production of new horrors for a time or ending it entirely. He had to kill it. It had to die!
The reptile dodged multiple attacks, ducking and weaving around or smacking the tendrils away with his buckler with a powerful crack of magical energies.
As one of its large tendrils crashed down, Jackson jumped out of the way before he dug the Charge-Spike into it. As it thrashed its tendril away because of the sharp pain. It screamed as a large section of its arm exploded into a cafetite of gore.
The reptile charged again, pulling out another Charge-Spike. However, a tentacle wrapped around his tail from behind and chucked the reptile miles away from the fight. As Jackson got back up to fight as soon as he landed, tendril crashed against his chest, sending him tumbling out a few more feet away and making him lose his second Charge-Spike into the pit of meat.
He groaned in pain, but he couldn’t let a broken rib slow him down. Not when so much was at stake. He forced himself back up and ran at the creature again. He slid under the monster as it thrusted a tentacle at him, and used his tail to jump up so he could land on top of the second tendril that swiped at him. Using his claws to dig into the flesh, holding on as it tried to throw him off. However, the reptile used its momentum to fling himself off in the direction of the monster. He ripped the grenade belt from his vest and pulled one of the pins. But before he could throw the grenades into the mouth of the monster, a tendril slapped his hands sending the explosives flying in the opposite direction before grabbing the reptile by the foot. Slamming him multiple times onto the ground with a loud thud. Dislocating his left arm and forcing the air out of his lungs.
It lifted him into the air, having a tendril wrapped around his right arm, his tail and both of his legs. It seemed aware that the reptile had his left arm injured beyond use and only left it alone as a sense of irony or a way to play with the reptile as it began to pull on his limbs above itself. Its mouth was wide open as it waited to feast on his blood.
Jackson let out a pained cry as he tried to stop the monster from tearing his limbs off from him. The flesh from his tail ripped from his back, his spine and his tail severing making him winced in pain. He could feel his right arm and legs about to suffer the same fate, how their tendons slowly began to fail on him no matter how strong he was. His arm had it worse as the skin from his elbow torn and strained from the monster's strength.
Though that won’t stop the reptile. He swung his left arm into his mouth, his teeth dug into his own flesh, and with a yank, he popped it back into place. He activated his buckler and punched his right arm clean off causing him to fall in front of the monster’s face where a pool of blood and meat poured from its face as the magical device contacted its head.
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Dazed and hurt, it threw the reptile and his right arm away as it tried to shake away the pain. The reptile winced as he crashed against the soft ground, gritting his teeth while he formulated a plan to kill the monster. He knew he was limited to his shield and one more charge spike. He was injured, he needed to kill the monster now!
As the monster recovered, the reptile took off the glove and carefully placed the retractable buckler on top of the data slate. While the reptile reached for his veins from his severed arm, pulling them out so he could use it to tie the buckler and data slate together. The monster slowly turned to face the injured and exhausted reptile, determined to finish him off after causing so much trouble.
Just like the buckler, the data slate had the same enchantment. Making it able to repeal any and all kinetic energy back into what hit it. He knew that the two magical items contacting together was a recipe for disaster. If they were to continuously bounce off each other eventually the enchantments of both items would fail and force the kinetic energy to dispense out. Essentially, turning the buckler and the data slate into a bomb.
Feeling ready, Jackson punched down on the buckler, beginning the chain reaction as the two devices bounced off kinetic energy back into each other. He charged into the monster once more, holding the device close to his chest so he wouldn't drop it. Feeling the magical energies beating rapidly against his chest as the two devices became unstable.
The reptile again dodged the monster’s attacks effortlessly, understanding how the monster’s attack patterns as he got closer to the creature’s mouth. However, after getting in an unfortunate position, a tendril rushed to his face in the aim to knock the reptile’s head clean off. To avoid death, he would have to fall to the ground. However, doing so would cause the unstable bomb to go off prematurely. The only acceptable option was injury. The reptile raised his head slightly with his mouth slightly ajar so the monster could slap his lower jaw from out of his face.
In retaliation, the reptile slammed his upper teeth down on the tendril and grinded his fangs into its flesh to rip chunks of it off as he rushed closer to the monster. Getting close enough, the reptile threw the makeshift bomb into its mouth before being knocked away.
Before the monster could do anything, the entirety of its body erupted into a magical explosion and purple flames. The explosive blast smacked against the reptile, knocking himself further away. The land of meat of tendrils, once moving like a well-oiled machine suddenly crashed out and stopped like the central command center had deactivated everything.
The reptile struggled to force himself up. He wheezed as blood gushed from his mouth and right arm. His tongue wagged erratically as it subconsciously tried to find his lower jaw which he knew wasn’t there anymore. Jackson knew he had to administer his medication, something to accelerate his healing.
He took off his coat and vest to expose his bruise chest as he reached for a thick steel needle with a blue liquid inside. On it was a V taped onto it. It was a cocktail of his regenerative cells mixed with a variety of drugs. All it would do is force his body to heal like his body used to heal when he was in his youth, where he could grow back entire limbs in seconds or minutes instead of an entire week. The risk, however, was he would put a lot of stress into his heart and possibly kill him in the process. He would also face other complications if he overly relied on it, further weakening his healing capabilities even further and possibly force his body to rupture from the inside as it became unable to hold itself together.
But the reptile preferred a chance of survival over certain death. Without hesitation he rammed the needle through his sternum and into his heart to inject the contents. As he pulled the needle out from him, he seized onto the ground. Foam formed around his mouth as he as his mind screamed in unbearable agony while bone and muscle grew back in seconds.
Yet despite his reliance, everyone has their limits. In an act to preserve his body from going into shock, his mind forced Jackson to pass out as it slowly healed or destroy itself from the inside in an attempt to put him back together.