As the leader of a prison gang, Boss Raymond had enemies. I joined that group so I could make his enemies my enemies. Not because of his batshit ideas of religion that would make even the dog priest feel sane, but because I just wanted to fight and didn’t want to end up in the showers with my head caved in and my body violated.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t times when groups would call for a truce and temporarily band together when the stars aligned. There were plenty of people that I didn’t fight again after grouping up.
That also meant there were times when groups would band together to get your ass. Boss Raymond fucked up often. It was a result of all the holes in his brain that the meth caused. You could often see how that loss in brain tissue led to erratic behavior. Most of those fuck-ups were meaningless; a faux pas or two that made the other groups look at him like he was a little man with a massive swastika on his chest. If I wasn’t his fists, I would have said the same.
Anyways, a target that people were free to harm without worry, provided they weren’t in the pockets of the guards, were guys that messed with kids. But, a new inmate came in with a thin face and a mouth that didn’t know when to stop talking about who was guilty of all that and much more.
To our surprise, Boss Raymond told all of us that we were meant to watch out for this kid. He was the son of someone who’d pay a lot of money to make sure he wasn’t another pedo death story posted online for internet vigilantes to jerk off to.
We tried to tell him it was a bad idea. Sure the guards were going to back us up because they had a slice of the pie, but it’s a fast way to lose credibility. But Boss Raymond didn’t want to hear any of it. His eyes were full of dollar signs for money that he likely wouldn’t live long enough to see anyways.
To make matters worse, one of this fuck-head’s victims was the niece of one of the Latinos and they wanted a few minutes alone with him. So, when Boss Raymond said no, they decided they were going to make that opportunity by force.
When we knew that a fight was brewing and that we were going to have to take on two to three people per man before the guards would react and bail us out, Boss Raymond sat us down. He told us one piece of advice that would prove to save our asses.
“We’re only going to target one group the entire time. Fuck one of them up so bad that the other groups can’t miss the opportunity to stomp them while they’re down.”
Now, down here, surrounded by a group of demons that shook hands on all the bullshit beforehand, I knew what I needed to do to gain even one more gasp of breathing room. There was no time to size them up; no time to make an informed decision on which trio would collapse first. Instead, I came up with the simplest method.
Obliterate the closest group.
“Yoshitsune! Over here!” I shouted at my only useful comrade as I summoned my tar.
Instead of descending from the ceiling, the black liquid bubbled up from the floor and spewed upwards against the feet of the beetle-demon’s group. I only managed to deal a little damage before they leapt out of the way and I ended the spell.
While one of them was in the air, a familiar bolt of lightning arced through the air and hit them squarely in the chest. As their body tumbled to the ground, I sprinted in their direction. As the beetle and their subordinate prepared themselves for an attack on them, they were left dumbfounded when I sprinted past them and leapt atop their dazed comrade.
As I ripped out the throat of the unlucky victim, a powerful vibration and the sound of cinderblocks breaking knocked me off of my motionless prey and sent me tumbling along the uneven slope of the floor like a fish in a toilet.
Before I had the chance to regain my footing, a bronze-skinned demon with leaf-shaped ears exuded purple energy from their hands and a museum display case worth of arrowheads floated in the miasma. The demon threw her arms down and sent a volley directly at me with a whistling sound.
Like a circus contortionist, I had to twist my body in an uncomfortable angle to dodge much of the damage. A couple of the projectiles dug into my skin and I winced in pain. A wave of nausea and some purple bubbles appearing over my health bar told me that I’d have to try a bit harder to dodge next time.
By now, the other groups had finally woken up enough to spring into action. A wave of thorns and sharp feathers and knives screamed through the air. While I sidestepped much of the damage, a brush of air from behind clued me in just in time to avoid the beetle’s hammer from turning my head into a Gallagher performance. I spit a stream of venom at the beetle, causing their skin to sizzle.
“Yoshitsune! Focus on the one I just attacked!” I commanded as I tried to focus my blurring eyes.
There was no point in hiding the strategy from the enemy. Even if you knew a rabid dog wanted to gnaw on your arm, it didn’t mean there was anything that you could do about it.
Fighting the disorientation and weakness that the poison inflicted upon my organs, I pressed into the beetle with sizzling claws. I took a hammer blow to my back as I ripped through the protected armor and raked against the soft underbelly.
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I separated to avoid the attacks that were bearing down on me, I purposefully dove away from the arrowheads and thorns to land directly into a pillar of flame. Though my abilities went a long way to make this the least of the evils, I still felt my flesh cook under the intense heat and my fingers split like hotdog casings.
I heard a loud thunderclap shake the chamber and a strained groan through the crackling flames. Before more strikes could come the beetle’s way, the sounds of projectiles clattered off the stones on the opposite side of the chamber and sounds of static sounded out Yoshitsune’s movements.
I stumbled out from the fire. Blood trickled from my hand where an ice-cream cone sized thorn pierced my palm to give me my very own stigmata. I wished that I had the time to show my newfound divinity to Herzblatt but I had to press on.
The feathered lizard whirled in my direction to take advantage of my single-minded approach towards the beetle. The thorns from the thin looking ent corralled me onto a collision course. I accepted the claws gratefully while I planted my own into their body and boiled their blood. I pinned them onto the ground while I summoned a spray of tar below us. Even the tall gorilla demons that accompanied that flaming cat seemed hesitant to carelessly enter my space.
After microwaving their arm, I pulled their limb off like a fresh brisket. Teeth dug into my forearm as the tenacious beast would not tolerate leaving me unscarred.
I obliged, severing my own to leave to them as a feast while new flesh already began to regrow. A gorilla moved to block my path, but they flinched with uncharacteristic fear in their eyes and let me plant my shoulder into their chest. It seemed that, even though they had the size, they did not have the stats to overcome my new fear ability.
The beetle, unfortunately, did not have that same hesitance. As soon as I stepped away from the flattened gorilla, another hammer strike narrowly missed cracking my head.
“Did I wrong you in our past life?” The beetle hissed as it used its many limbs to unleash many attacks.
“Think hard about it,” I grunted to dig deeper into their mind as I slashed against the armored abdomen again and rent flesh.
Another hammer shot, another stray thorn and dagger, and an axe swing from a mentally recovered gorilla demanded a heavy toll on my health that my improved scales could not completely negate. But, like a runaway train, I could not stop the path that I was on. The beetle, at the very least, needed to die to get through this alive.
Terrible smelling liquids sprayed from the beetle’s body while the pain of devastating attacks was numbed by the poison that kept renewing the timer with each new dagger that buried into my body.
At some point, the beetle had fallen over and I went with it. The attacks from the beetle stopped and their hands dropped motionless to the ground. I never found bones. Just more flesh and more organs all the way through until I felt my claws reach through another layer of chitin and scrabble against the stone floor.
“Portals!” I ordered.
Red eyes spread out over the battlefield. I tried to move only to slump to the ground. I had to drag myself into the portal that was only a few feet away from me. Another heavy axe strike commanded that I leave my left hand behind as payment for my escape. As I tumbled into the portal, I saw Yoshitsune hop effortlessly into the closest one. After an uncomfortable weightless feeling, we both arrived at the same subspace location.
I could not even bother to try to orient myself properly before I went searching through my inventory. I began to chug a red and blue potion simultaneously while Yoshitsune recovered her mana. After a few seconds of labored breathing, I looked up at Yoshitsune.
“Are you alright, Ishmael-san?” Yoshitsune asked with concern as I regrew my hand with great difficulty while my mana bar regenerated. The prospect of not having enough mana to regenerate was not a concern of mine when I lacked mana but one I had to be careful of.
“I’m fine. How long can you maintain this?” I asked in turn.
“About a minute at most if I drink another potion,” Yoshitsune answered. “But it will put me low on potions for the rest of the Dungeon.”
“That’s perfect,” I replied with a smile as I eagerly looked through the portal. “We’re about to watch something interesting.”
Below, the seven surviving demons panted and tried to regain their composure while cautiously looking through the portals that surrounded them. The demons began to regroup into their respective trios while the tanned elf was stranded by themselves.
“How long do you think they can stay there?” The lizard asked while their severed arm slowly began to regenerate; a commonality of our shared reptilian forms.
“Can’t be long,” the elf replied, the lone survivor of their trio. “They even left their comrade behind as easy prey.”
“Why waste energy on prey that won’t fight back anyways?” The cat demon sneered. “We have a more suitable prey in mind.”
The elf quickly noticed that all eyes turned towards them. Another flurry of arrowheads funneled directly at the crippled lizard. They were too slow to move out of the way and were immediately ripped apart by the weapons. What the initial burst of damage didn’t succeed at, the poison quickly followed up with to drop the lizard dead.
To the surprise of all, the elf continued to charge. With each step forwards, the solitary form of the elf split until there were ten perfect copies. Each held their own sword and they charged towards the five remaining demons.
The crippled group the lizard demon represented fell first. Poison rotted the bark of the ent while it was chopped down from multiple angles. Their surviving comrade, an alpaca-headed demon that had failed to accomplish much in the battle, was skewered unceremoniously.
While they had a moment to prepare, the remaining group did not fare much better. The gorillas were too slow to do much against the five elves they each had to manage. Countless slashes took their large health bars down slowly but surely. They had no room to run to and no time to heal. One of them dropped their weapon before a sword finally pierced their thick skull.
The lone survivor, the cat demon, fought valiantly. Three of the clones succumbed to the flames while they were engaged with the gorillas. Unfortunately, it was an inevitability that the clones would reach her. However the ten clones eventually closed in and used their swords to make a feline recreation of the Roman Senate. Blood-soaked blades faded from the flesh as the clones formed back into one, each form looking directly at us through a different portal until there was only one in the center of a bleeding floor that rained upwards.
Yoshitsune gave me a dumbfounded look while I silently watched on. My plan to ambush them while they turned against each other failed instantaneously. Maybe only thirty seconds had passed before that entire room of enemies were reduced to puddles of blood. Though I had succeeded in chopping down the numbers, we had, in reality, gone from nine enemies to ten.
“Well, that didn’t really solve our problem,” Yoshitsune remarked.
“No, it did not,” I replied. “Let’s hope they can’t do it again.”