There was nothing he could do. He quickly grabbed the handle of his sword as tight as he could, but didn’t think he could do anything with it.
And to the breathless Jin, the disfigured creature tilted his eyeless body. Hearing it from its mouth, bathing in its roar, fueling his fears.
Before Jin could do anything, the man beside him charged towards the beast.
"You’ll pay for what you did!"
Wasting no time, Faust attacked the abnormally large beast. No armor protecting his chest—no helmet hiding his rage.
His emotions were exposed to the world, for all gods to see. It seemed to Jin that on that battlefield, Faust had already come to terms with his imminent fate.
And then, attacking fiercely with his big fists, he gained space.
"Haaaaaaaaah"
Delivering multiple attacks on the bottom of the beast, Faust gathered all the accumulated anger and hatred to strengthen his own fists.
Suppressed by the force of the impact, the demonic beast's numerous legs were unable to reach it to defend itself, and it could only receive each attack in its open position.
"Too big, too slow!"
That moment was key.
Jin, having witnessed such courage and might in combat, gathered courage and moved forward. Taking advantage of the punches that Faust threw at the front of the beast, Jin came running in the parallel direction.
Swinging his sword with all the bravery he had gathered within; he slid the steel blade at the bottom of the creature. Cutting through the underside, a dark liquid started pouring out, relentlessly leaking into the ground.
“We can win this!”
Jin, convinced that victory was in sight, cried out.
The scorpion-like entity being wounded on all sides started to look clumsy, not defending itself intelligently. Its skeletal structure did not allow its legs to be used for anything other than movement, and even so for its size, agility was not one of its strongest points. The human arms of the upper part on its torso also did not seem to be able to participate actively in the battle due to the reach, or lack thereof.
The fearful appearance of the beast had put fear in Jin's heart when he first saw it. But now that he has seen that the monster was bleeding, he knew that there was no reason to be in a state of despair.
His father's wise saying — Alaric — is repeated in his own head, a reminder that he should cling onto hope. And not let it go.
As he used to say…
"If it bleeds, we can kill it."
Confident that their opponent had been rendered helpless, Faust’s eyes found Jin’s — widened in terror — and then cold washed over him as his hairs stood up.
"- -"
The upper part of the creature fully fixed and turned in the direction of Faust, its behavior was exactly what it had been at the beginning, unchanged, not at all shaken.
"Huh?"
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
It was then that Faust realized.
The demon beast’s delayed counterattack.
The beast's tail attacked Faust, a blind spot in his view. Judging by Jin's reaction, it was too late to react and defend the oncoming attack.
A sudden shock went through his entire body, originating from his spine. Its center of gravity, lost. His legs made immobile in a simple attack.
From Faust's back to his navel, they ran the tail of the demonic beast, piercing his entire chest from one side to another.
For Faust—now starting to lose himself into his own thoughts—such a feeling reminded him of his childhood, when he hoped to one day be able to have wings and defy gravity, to fly.
And he was.
Coughing up blood, his body no longer responded as he wished. His entire body being lifted into the air, being carried by the very tail that had pierced him. It had pounced on a moment of misdirection, he did not see it coming. Long were gone the days when he considered himself a proud foot soldier of the Kingdom of Elba. Now he was nothing more like than a drunkard, a pathetic man washing his sorrows at the inn whenever he had enough to spare.
And in his opinion, it showed.
His legs didn't seem to belong to him, his sense of touch was gone in a matter of seconds. All his five senses were starting to lie to him, sending alerts that weren’t there. The effect was starting to take hold. Everything that was left was a tingling sensation that grabbed his legs tightly and slowly went up, his entire body feeling like a burden. A hundred times heavier, a hassle to move an inch. Taking control of each member of his body, slowly but surely fading it all away. His eyes were making him feel uncomfortable, as if it was a hassle to keep his eyelids open for a single second. Every moment he wanted to make took twice as long for his body to obey.
It rarely did.
It was impossible to know whether the sudden loss of movement was because of where the sharp tail had been pierced in his column, or because of the beast's natural properties.
Natural was not the correct word, in fact there was nothing natural about it.
To Faust's knowledge, demonic creatures were generally the fusion of at least two types of beings. Desperately trying to emulate life as we knew, yet failing terribly.
Demon Beasts tried to be many things at once, yet accomplished none. And judging by the structure and body of this one they were facing, the details made it clear that its anatomy resembled a scorpion, at least concerning the lower body.
Judging by this, it would not be an exaggeration to conclude that the sharp tip of the tail, which had hit him hard, was venomous.
He had previously heard that the small scorpions tails that are found in the wild, were full of poison in their sting. And that when these animals stung humans, it took them about two to three hours to start feeling the effects of the venom on their body.
However, he had never met a creature of this size to make an accurate judgment, the largest scorpion he had encountered was at least a hundred times smaller than the one standing before him.
The tail continued to swing relentlessly. Each sudden movement causing the width of the hole in the middle of him to stretch wider at every second. But this time the tail was not moving idly as if preparing for another attack, no. It had achieved what it wanted.
The beast’s stance in battle had changed.
This time the beast was wagging its tail and slowly shrinking it back to its owner. As a subordinate member of the beast's entire structure, it brought its prey back to the predator.
It was just natural.
And so Faust did not fall in despair when the beast's tail lowered him close to the chest of the grotesque beast, the center of its torso— a hole full of teeth — was eager to devour human flesh.
Jin couldn't believe what he was seeing, after catching sight of Faust being hit by the beast's pounce attack he backed away. As further as he could get, enough for him to be able to dodge any incoming charges. Gaining distance to think and assess the situation, but it was difficult to think with such a scene in front of him.
Faust had been thrown like a small doll into the hole in the beast's torso. The two muscular arms that had tapped some sense of compassion in Jin not long ago, now made one last effort to try to stay in this world. His fingers clinging relentlessly to the edges of the toothy hole — which like a barbed fence ripped through everything that touched it. Piercing soft human skin like it was nothing.
But those hands didn't let go, they just didn't let go. Impatient, the fierce demonic creature brought the two human-looking arms together and pushed towards itself. As if trying to help its mouth to swallow the food that refused to let itself get eaten, wiggling and holding as much as he could. But it was not enough, and they both knew it. In seconds that felt like hours it finally happened. Faust's face being cruelly pushed into the abyss of darkness. Suddenly there were no more tears, no more resistance.
All that was left were the ripples coming from the central part of the beast, salivating in delightfulness and a noise that made Jin's blood boil.
A noise so grotesque, so disgusting that it would forever be marked as one of the most terrifying things Jin had ever witnessed.
"—Crunch, Crunch, Crunch ..."