“What do you mean they don’t work, what happened?!” Yen asked, more than a little concerned.
“Can’t see. Or use spirit eyes. But Third Eye works.”
“How?”
“Don’t know.” Shin tilted his head, wondering the same thing.
Kamala raised her hand rotating through a few skills before one activated. The black splotch coating Shin’s eyes expanded in an instant, stopping just short of her own face as she cancelled the skill, and slowly receding back to normal.
“A curse… At least legendary tier. But likely higher.”
“What did it? Is it still out here?” Yen glanced around, some of the others following suit.
“Don’t think so.” Shin answered. “Saw it in the world of colors… but it wasn’t here? A demon. Or spirit.”
“Perhaps it targeted you because of your eyes.” Kamala suggested.
“That’d be the best case…” Yen replied.
“You don’t know that. We should leave.” Basem seemed even more tense than before.
“We did just lose our best security system.” Donny somewhat agreed.
“No, now we have even more reason to stay.” Yen objected. “We need more fruit to give him immunity.”
“I wanna fight more~”
“Vote then.” Donny spoke up. “Who wants to stay?”
Yen, Ashley, Karla, and Mujin raised their hands.
“Who wants to leave?”
Basem, Kamala, Jean, and Donny raised theirs. Donny looked over to Dante, one of the two who didn’t pick either side.
“Abstain.” Dante smiled.
“You’re the tie breaker then.” Donny looked at Shin.
“Stay.”
“That’s that then. Let’s move.”
“No!” Basem objected.
“Party voted, mate, no arguing.” Basem grit his teeth at the knight but held his mouth shut.
“Scared~” Ashley leaned over close to his face with a teasing smile.
“Shut up!” Basem flushed red as he flickered over next to Jean in a fluster.
The puppeteer took the signal and headed off as the party’s scout once more. They ran through the tall grass and spares cluster of trees lining the outskirts, dealing with plants and monsters as they went. Without Shin to warn them, the burden on the scouts increased higher than ever but they managed, soon finding themselves at the edge of the forest.
Grand trees lay before them, wide as a building and towering above such that the canopy became the sky beneath them. Thick clusters of roots at the base of each, covered in moss and smaller plants, the forest bed a layer of thin grass and dirt. The dormant and untouched majesty of an ancient forest impossible to deny.
They party heading in one by one, carefully, with only the earthy scent of nature to accompany the slight rustling of leaves in the wind and echoing sounds of birds in the distance. Broad space lay between each giant tree but the smaller trees and plants among them gave ample cover for any monsters within and ample reason to remain vigilant.
Mujin lunged forward and skewered a skrat as it pounced towards Jean. Ashley and Mujin darted around as more of the stealthy saber toothed rodents leapt from all directions. Two arrows nailed two of the creatures to a tree and while knives swerved through the party piercing anything the three of them missed.
The rodents died in droves one after the other, but still more appeared, starting to wait amongst the brush and over the sides of trees until hundreds surrounded them, slowly crawling and swaying their tails, eyes focused on the prey of the pack with glinting sharp fangs.
A cluster of skrats lunged from the ground and the giant maw of a beast snapped them up. A wolf like monster as large as a giant direwolf with a head too large for its body and a long snout. Several more emerged alongside the first in long slow steps and the skrats scampered away in fear. Saliva dripped down the large fangs of the giant headed wolf as the party prepared for a fight, and then it vanished.
A sharp gust of wind followed a blur some of them just barely managed to catch. The wolves looked up first and the party followed. Lazing on a giant branch up high was a monstrous creature, easily 30 feet tall covered in thick fur with long gangly limps, its face a meld between an ape and a sloth.
The wolf monster from before spasmed on the end of one of its unnaturally long arms, impaled by thick claws the length of lances. The creature’s arms reclined as it leisurely brought its hand closer to its face and bit off the giant wolf’s head, an epic tier intermediate monarch now identifiable as a Mawr. The massive sloth finished off its meal in several more bites, the sickening crunch of bone and squelching flesh the only sound among the forest. As it ate the last, blood and entails draining down its claws, the sloth turned its gaze to them, a cold intelligent glint in its eyes giving them chills.
A lightning fast whip shredded the other mawrs before they could barely move, faster than most in the party could follow. Karla burst forward and crashed into a tree in the blink of an eye, her bloody body ricocheting as it dented and splintered the trunk as study as metal.
Bastion shrouded Donny’s shield instinctively, blocking the third blow. Mujin and Ashley flanked the arm from the side but it withdrew in an instant before their weapons could find their mark. A dense firebolt soared towards the lazing monster but another lash detonated the explosion before it could reach. A second arm blocked an arrow cutting through the air towards its eyes, bouncing off harmlessly from the iron coating spread across its palm.
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Wood tendrils rose up from the branch it lay on, ensnaring it in an instant. Roots and branches split off from the tree reaching to add to its bindings. Mana surged around Yen as she channelled and a great explosion detonated on the beast, Force enough to turn the ancient branch to smoldering ash.
But Basem turned, the only one who could track a hint of its speed. The giant sloth hung above from a branch behind by one arm, its expression methodical and unbothered. Dante blinked Kamala away as the claws tore through the air she stood and into the orange haired mage, skewering her against a tree. The hand withdrew, leaving two holes, one through her chest and the other her face, Yen’s lifeless body slumping to the ground.
The giant sloth tilted its head away from another snipe from Basem to his frustration. But just on a tree beside, Mujin coiled into a stance and shot forth, spear aiming straight for the creature’s head. And the sloth swung around him, effortlessly. Mujin’s foot stepped on the air but his sixth sense told him he was too slow to move. A cataclysmic shockwave burst him vaulting back from the ground as a purple furred Shin with muscular arms blinked between, meeting the sloth’s lash at the same time with a thunderous quake.
Shin blinked again reaching with Quake towards its skull and caught only air, blinking away again to avoid its retaliating claws. A loud monstrous roar turned the beast’s head but there was nothing behind. Ashley emerged from the shadows of a tree at its blindside and lunged. A flickering flash passed harmlessly through her to the sloth’s shock as she sliced out one of its eyes. Angered for the first time, the beast pierced its claws through the smiling reaper, only for her form to disperse in the air and the puppet left behind violently explode.
The giant sloth pulled back its hand, two of its three claws broken and snapped its gaze to a sprinting Dante. The charlatan smirked and five giant balls of iron fell from above like comets, their sheer weight crashing the beast into the ground.
Wounded and distracted, Basem finally found an opening in his target. A piercing aura swirled around his arrow as he took aim of the killing blow, and a giant mosquito stabbed his arm from behind. Shocked, the hunter swatted it to death but near instantly his arm started to rot, his vision blurred, and he fell from his perch. Kamala caught the boy with her vines and cast a curing spell but her expression was less than reassuring.
The beast flickered to its feet and howled in pure rage as its two arms unleashed a storm of lashes all around. Jean severed in parts, just barely replaced with a puppet of the same fate and Ashley melded into the shadows of the ground but others were less fortunate. A lash broke Mujin’s spear and disemboweled him through draconic scales as he darted away. Dante’s right arm severed clean off. And parts of Shin shaved and ripped away, faster than his regeneration could keep up as he fought off all lashes against the vulnerable hunter and priestess healing him.
A blinding flash and thundering boom from Dante’s Flashbang paused the beast’s rampage for a moment, allowing the two to move to further safety and Donny slammed into the creature, aura surging over his body and eyes blood red. With a barbarous roar the knight burst after the beast relentlessly, a lash cutting deep into his flesh and slamming him back into a tree doing nothing to stop his mad rampage.
As that animalistic battle raged, Yen’s body crumbled to ash where it lay. One by one embers sprouted from the smoldering remains until it bloomed into a blazing inferno, a grand bird of fire. Out of the flames, Yen took form and stepped out reborn with the soulbound gear that remained.
Without hesitation, she ignited in flames and scorched through the air. Greater Hold locked the distracted sloth in place as Donny’s axe cleaved down. The orichalcum blade deflected off the beast’s ironclad skin but that did nothing for the stream of fire Yen unleashed as she circled the howling creature.
With a roar of desperation, the giant sloth broke free of Hold through sheer strength and lashed at the mage. Its claws passed through her Greater Fire Mimicry inflicting damage only on itself as its paws burned red, but several more forced Yen to retreat, each lash consuming a chunk of her mana to replenish the flames.
Donny cleaved his axe again, rend drawing a wave of blood that flowed straight into his veins, fueling his rage further. A calculated lash sending Donny soaring away deeper into the forest but Shin took center stage ready to act fully, the circumstances he’d been waiting on finally arrived.
Mara and Kong appeared in all their splendor and brutality as Shin took kitsune form, buffing them by half with his armbands and overshadowing himself. A screeching Mindfray assaulted the sloth’s mind as Kong blinked behind, heavy palm of thundering impact missing as the beast flickered away.
The two spirits repeated the strategy again but the beast was wise to the ploy, lashing towards Shin as he sprint through the air, a concentrated Quake pulsing in his palm. Shin reached his hand out and let the beast’s claws sever through his shoulder as he Glared directly into its eyes as Mara assaulted its mind once more.
Karla shot down from above, too fast for the beast to react in time with the burden on its mind. She spun a kick down, Sunder cracking away the iron colored coating and a second slamming a wrecking kick down with all her might, cratering the beast into the ground. Hazy and injured, but not yet dead, the sloth for the first time in its fight decided to flee, but a white masked boy met its eyes just before its face, and Shin planted the enhanced Quake deep into its skull, shattering everything within. The giant sloth twitched on the ground but soon feel still and its status laid bare.
[Mylorang (legendary) - Intermediate Monarch]
Strength - 2646
Agility - 3470
Constitution - 2006
Vitality - 2102
Dexterity - 2820
Perception - 2350
Force - 1240
Spirit - 2476
Control - 1432
Willpower - 1678
Skills:
Greater Lash, Greater Ironclad, Body Flicker, Haste, Stealth,
Traits:
Unnoticeable (mythic), Rapid Reflexes (legendary), Greater Poison Resistance (legendary), Greater Disease Resistance (legendary), Greater Curse Resistance (legendary), Elastic Arms (epic), Nightvision (epic),
Shin harvested its soul with the limited mana he had left but before the party could fully regroup, Donny charged back in a mad craze, blinded and impaired by the Greater Rage he relied on. With the beast he imprinted his hostility on now dead, he lunged at Shin nearest in his sights but a force locked him in place.
“Bind him till he runs out!” Yen yelled with some urgency.
Roots shot out of the ground and hardened around the raging knight and more added. Donny thrashed and stomped, the plants ripping and tearing but Ashley appeared in front with a sweet smile and enthralling eyes.
“Wake up~”
Soon the knight’s movements turned sluggish and the empowering aura around him vanished. His head nodded and jolted as he slipped in and out of consciousness but in short time regained his senses fully, seeing the reaper’s face first.
“Thanks… Everyone still alive?” He asked immediately.
“Yeah.”
“Basem is not doing well.” Kamala informed them, doing everything she could but the young hunter wreathed in pain on the ground as disease racked his body. “A curse. Exorcism is too slow. He needs greater resistance.”
Dante flickered in front of the party now fully gathered, holding a plant bearing three blood fruit. He fused them into a medium fruit and tossed it over to Kamala who fed it to Basem at once.
“Improve your Curse Resistance.”
Basem didn’t respond but he swallowed it whole and soon the rot began the subside from his body, slowly but surely.
“All this for three fruit…” Donny rubbed his still aching head. He looked around at the party, damaged and worn. Dante’s arm only just starting to regrow and Mujin’s severed torso not fully healed. “Time to call it a day, yeah. We’re not ready for this area yet.”
“Yeah…” Yen couldn’t deny that at all, not after this fight.
“Alright. We’re heading back to the beach soon as everyone’s fixed up.” Blood wreathed from the giant sloth into the grand knight. “Time for some training.”