Luke, his senses overwhelmed by the grotesque spectacle before him, gazed upon the creature with a mix of fascination and horror. The dim, gray aura cast by the ambient light highlighted the repulsive details of the supposed slug, engulfing the surroundings in an eerie atmosphere.

Bent over, the creature loomed larger than himself. Its massive, throbbing appendage, pulsating with veins, extended from its body, a sight that made Luke's stomach churn. The grayish-yellow flesh was coated in a thick, oozing slime that dripped and pooled around the creature, leaving a trail of slick residue wherever it moved.

But it was the crystalline shell adorning its back that truly captivated Luke's attention. Spiraling patterns adorned with sharp studs and branching extensions formed a mesmerizing display of shining thorns. The aura in the air shimmered with heat, causing the moisture to steam up and distort, heightening the surreal atmosphere.

The shell continued onto the creature's head, transforming into stag-like horns that spread out majestically. Their intricate and interwoven pattern held a twisted allure, drawing Luke's gaze like a moth to a flame. The beauty of their design was hypnotizing.

Beneath the formidable horns, the creature's true nature was revealed. Tens of long, dread-like tentacles writhed and twisted, engrossed in their grotesque task. They tirelessly shoveled piles of garbage and carcasses, scavenged from the dump, into the creature's sickly gray maw. Within that unholy orifice, hundreds, if not thousands, of little chainsaw-like teeth, gnashed and ground the macabre feast. The constant screeching noise they produced was a cacophony of impending doom, a sound that resonated deep within Luke's ears.

Luke's revulsion mixed with fascination as he observed the creature's grisly feeding ritual. The sight was a testament to the dark and twisted wonders that lay hidden within the depths of existence. It was a reminder that beauty and horror often danced hand in hand, bound by an intricate tapestry of the extraordinary.

Suddenly the thing stopped its feast, and shivers ran through Luke. Instinctively he knew, it noticed him.

Straining his left eye to filter out the brightest of aura around it, through his wincing and pain clouding his vision, he saw a pair of eyes. Hidden behind the branches of its crystal antlers, they wiggled and pushed through in the mess of light giving protection to it.

It moved, slowly, without unsticking from the floor, the thing’s body contracted with a squelching noise, and a small waterfall of slime dripped off it. Its body stilled more with every second as it retreated under its shell and closer to the ground.

Seeing the lack of hostility and the familiar behavior pattern, Luke calmed down.

*It’s a slug, just a big slug with horns. Don’t shit yourself, Dżingoraj as Grandpa used to call them, now, slowly, I’ll just move closer and crack a bit of its antlers*

Barely having time to react, his subconscious flared when while he was walking closer, mid-step, he heard a sound compared to a thunderclap. As soon as he registered it, his body ignited and forced all the energies forward to block the only known source of danger. His legs kicked back to create distance and his arms barely made their way up when it happened.

A canon ball of light rammed into him, with force enough to break through castle gates in one swing, the Evening Light Snail crushed into Luke’s stomach and thighs with enough force to squeeze the air out of him instantly, the small thorns and bigger branches forcing their way under his skin and between his muscle fibers, ramming against the bones in his elbows and scrapping them.

With a second of delay, the heat came. The crystalline foreign objects carried a heat with them, the kind of a dying ember in a campfire, or a cooling down metal rod in a blacksmith’s forge. Fleeting and dimming yes still deadly and intense. A deceptive flame for fools to get tricked by.

Luke felt instantly as superheated material cauterized his flesh, charcoal muscle fibers screamed into the nerves like an empty tunnel yearning for relief. Before any respite could be given, Physics took control over Lukas’s fate. The snail must have weighed over 550kg, with the speed it shot off from its foot calling it a cannonball wasn’t inaccurate.

Once that cannonball hit against his body that had no way to root itself down, even with the subconscious inner coating of energy to dampen the power and use of telekinesis as a cushion it wasn’t enough.

It was as if a baseball batter scored a home run with his body. He skipped over water as if he was a skipping stone. With a grand finish of indenting his body centimeters thick into a stone wall cracking it and actually staying in it. With his first breath, all he threw up was blood, eyes watery, and ears ringing from the damage. Pushed into a wall in the crucifix pose only his hands and head hung down while he tried to process what just happened.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The lights were switching and his vision was constantly moving and rolling over itself, the static ringing in his ear got pierced by a little yell from right under his ear and a series of slaps made him focus on it.

“MOVE! MOVE! IT’S COILING AGAIN! MOVE YOU DUMB BITCH!”

His pupils dilated once his brain processed what was said. With a mighty push, his fingers slapped against the wall they stuck out from, forming a concussive blast between himself and the wall he bounced away from it with the grace of a trash bag being tossed in the wind.

Just in time.

As he was falling he could see a Sun nearing him, almost blinding and its presence cooking the fluids within him.

It missed, barely, even managing to cover him with droplets, of what he later came to realize was high-heat, acidic slime from its body. Once the antlers collided with the wall, the crashing noise it made was deafening. The boom that spread through the air made it vibrate and Luke’s chest rumbled like a bass speaker.

Looking back he saw the devastation the Slug made and couldn’t believe he survived one of those.

The thing’s body was buried in the wall, more than half of it wasn’t visible. Cracks in the wall tiles spread like blooming flower petals meters to the side. Dust thick with moisture from the slime covering the walls plopped onto the thing shell and hissed under the dying heat.

No words could he speak being the witness of such havoc and destruction.

That might.

His instincts carried him before his brain could restart. Tripping over himself, he started crawling to create distance. Within moments his body regained enough strength to stumble back on his feet. He was upright, still shaken but regaining his wits, on the edge of the walkway with water behind him.

He could hear the cracks of the stones falling behind him, even the ringing didn’t mask the small avalanche the Snail caused by ripping itself free.

As their eyes met he jumped up with his full force, not even registering the little guys trying to warn him, blasting concussive force from both his palms without care for rebounding force, Luke flattened the stone under him and disrupted the water as if a basin was dropped into it. He flew meters up as the Dying Light of the Crystal Shell passed under him like a bullet.

Not being lucky enough to dodge all of the thorns and branches on the shell, his legs got caught in the passing, and the steel-plated toes he bought for this trip only lessened the damage. Even just clipping him, the monster sent Luke into a spiraling uncontrol flight on his way up, the world spun and he couldn’t figure out where he was.

He cast a pole of Telekinetic construct as far as he could until it hit something and latched on it, all of the momenta transferred back into his stomach, squeezing his intestines enough for small raptures to form. As he began to drop on all fours onto the stone floor he saw the creature grinding to a halt. It glided over the water, crashed two trash piles into shreds and now just skidded slowly to a halt.

He could see the Aura of the Evening Light got weaker once the slug hit the water, he could see it couldn’t push off the surface of it like it would from stone, it just slowly floated on the magical discharge, steam forming a fog wall around it as it flopped it’s muscly leg to get to the shore.

With his ankles unsteady and the soles of his feet shredded he burst off telekinetic pads formed under them. Using his arms to shoot off the walls and the floor to close the distance.

He couldn’t allow the thing to reach the hard ground, he could feel that his flesh got cauterized when he got impaled, and his organs were bleeding all over. It was a miracle in itself that he wasn’t splattered into shredded ornaments on the stag horns of the thing. The self-torture was worth it.

Like a prowling cougar, he reached the edge of the walkways. With a gentle flow of kinetic energy in his body he landed gracefully into a wrestler’s position, then, with all of his might that his spine and muscles could handle he Pushed, blasting a wave of force forward in the direction of the snail.

It was his first time using so much force, the waters parted meters below and to the sides, and the fog around the snail disappeared in a moment, the thing was too heavy to throw back, but with the lack of water under it it dropped like a stone into a chasm. Disappearing into the frothing waves but still shining strong from under them, slowly rising from the top with bubbling steam rising from the depths.

Not knowing how to proceed he started panicking.

“What now? Fuck! What, what?!” While frozen in panic something small impacted his face, it was The Little Fella performing a flying drop kick to his cheek.

“FOCUS YOU, IDIOT, IT CANT CHARGE YOU RIGHT NOW, DON’T LET IT GET ON THE GROUND AND GRIND THE FUCKING THING TO DUST” it yelled enraged.

That sobered him up, seeing his little buddy trembling with rage and so bloodthirsty.

One calm breath was enough, as the shell and horns the color of dying embers smothered in ash started rising up from the water a plan was forming in his head on how to stomp this bug.

Just as the shell rose above the water level, the slug’s maw opened wide, flashing the hundreds of ceramic-like teeth with the promise of Luke getting turned into minced meat. With a wobble of the flops of its body from under the shell, something rose and passed through its body. From its throat shot out a projectile, a grayish crimson piece of crystalline material that looked like steel heating down, covered in acidic spit.

With barely enough time to reposition himself and his energy, he managed to create a slope around his shoulder, which the projectile smashed into and glided off into the wall, burying into it while hissing, deep enough not to be visible.

The shoulder was instantly ridden of skin, showing visible muscle fibers and white tendons to the world. All that being boiled by droplets of acid that passed the imperfect shield.

Not allowing himself the time to process and suffer he set off into motion, he now knows what he has to do.