Chapter 15 – Nowhere over the Rainbow
“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby.”
– Somewhere over the Rainbow, <1>
The Wizard of Oz.
– ***** –
Six days before breakdown, early night (IGT)
“♫ Hmmhmmm ♩ Hmmhm hm hmmhm ♩ Hm-hmmm hmmm…”
Elric was falling.
Like a tossed lump of metal, the armoured knight was dropping at an insane speed. Violent blasts of wind incessantly struck him, and the dark canopy below seemed to rush up to embrace him in a brutal and deadly hug.
“♩ Hm-hmmm Hmmhm-hm-hm-hm ♪ Hmmhm Hm-hm Hmhmhmmm… ♩ “
Completely unfazed, the mad humming skydiver leisurely reached inside his inventory, took out his recently repaired hang-glider, and unfolded the light wooden frame. The enchanted silk sail instantaneously filled with air, jerking up and almost escaping his grasp.
Sent into a dizzying tailspin, the Reckless Imbecile firmly latched onto the control bar, nimbly twisting his body to tuck his feet inside the reserve stirrups, and could finally attempt to stabilize himself. The harness, unfortunately, was still Dorothy-sized, and therefore unusable.
Something as large as a hang-glider wouldn’t normally fit inside a slot of the adventurers’ immaterial backpack. However, thanks to the Wandering Knight’s high level of [Handicraft], [Woodworking], [Sewing], and [Tailoring], as well as all the enchantments he had reflexively embedded into the aircraft, the latter was much more compact, resistant and efficient than any of its counterparts.
Nevertheless, even as a homemade artefact, the downsized gear didn’t really suffice at stopping a free-falling mass of muscles clad in thick silver plates. Especially when deployed halfway to the ground.
Not that such fact would be outside the expectations of a rashness expert though.
“With my word I bend the sky. Now carry me so I can fly. [Soaring Drift]”
Obeying his command, the roaring gusts abruptly warped and twirled to support and slow him down. However, the treetops were now to close for him to hope regaining complete control of his fall before crashing through the foliage. Rapidly considering his options, he scanned his surroundings, and located a small opening in the cover of leaves.
He immediately pulled the base bar and swooped down on the gap. Grabbing a leather lash, he also reduced his wingspan to fit in-between the branches, dangerously accelerating in the process.
“♫ Hmmhmmm ♩ Hmmhm hm hmmhm ♩ Three… Two… One…”
The breakneck pilot harshly pierced thought the foliage, and was forced into a succession of hazardous aerial manoeuvres to avoid colliding with branches the size of a human torso. His unprotected face – a helmet would have been blasted off by the wind – was repeatedly whipped by thin sharp shoots, and was soon covered in bloody lash marks. A sinister crack echoed, and the intense pain he felt coursing through his left leg made it pretty clear that the tree had been the toughest on this one.
Eventually, he emerged under the crown, and started circling around a trunk so huge five grown men holding hands probably wouldn’t have sufficed to surround. While clinically taking note of the damage his body had suffered and checking the integrity of his artificial wing, Elric once again surveyed his surroundings.
Under the thick canopy, the darkness was so complete one would have thought themselves underground. Moreover, the haphazard dive had lead the Wandering Knight quite far away from the outer wall of the valley, and the rainbow lights were now reduced to a faint glow in the distance, muffled by the dense otherworldly vegetation.
Absurdly tall trees, rivalling those of the Forest People’s enchanted woods, supported the leafy vault like the pillars of an inconceivable organic cathedral, a vegetal monument raised by some megalomaniac elven giants. Overgrown bramble bushes and other unfriendly-looking humongous ferns of sorts covered the ground below, some looking abnormally lively for mere plants.
Eventually, the wounded glider spotted a possible landing place two dozen metres away from his current position, and inclined his wing to drift in that direction, rapidly decreasing his altitude. Now, he had about fifteen seconds to devise a plan to deal with the ten impressive [Spectral Wolf] squatting his runway.
“Hmmhm hm ♪ Hm-hm-hmm Hm Hm... ♫ Pom Pom ♫”
– *** –
“I wear my Lord Sun’s blazing might. I devour shadows and night. [Sunlight Coat]”
The first ghastly predator was swiftly and brutally sent to oblivion, when a knight in literally shining armour slammed down his foot in its head after a fall from ten metres high, squashing the skull of the beast in an explosion of half-immaterial broken fangs, splattered black brain matter and purple gaseous blood.
“Nine.”
Before the surrounding creatures had the time to recover from the sudden onslaught, the Solar Knight spun and crouched in a gory squish, transferring his weight onto his unhurt right leg, and made a low horizontal sweep with a long light-coated set of wooden poles and wrapped cloth. The folded blessed hang-glider struck the lower jaw of the closest wolf, fragmenting it with a combination brute strength and merciless cleansing magic.
“Eight.”
While the mutilated dark monster howled in pain and started to convulse under the maddening suffering inflicted by the Sunlight, Elric brought his improvised weapon back to himself, and swirl it to block the leaping assault of two other ghostly canines. With breath-taking speed, he then stuck his battle aircraft in the ground and grasped both his assailants’ necks, ripping gaping fuming bloody holes in their throats before throwing them aside to slowly agonize with their fellow creature.
“Seven. Six.”
Hearing rustle behind him, the Solar Knight slightly sidestep to the right, dodging the incoming foe by a hair breadth, and, at the same time, abruptly raised his left metal-gloved glowing fist in a devastating uppercut in the stomach of the beast, quickly followed by a downwards elbow strike from his other arm, which snapped its backbone. The corpse was then nonchalantly added to the still twitching pile.
“Five.”
Elric grabbed his unconventional composite staff, and leant it on his shoulder while turning around to face the surviving group of [Spectral Wolf], minding to spare his broken leg. He then glared intensely at the huge monsters, his calculating cold eyes grinding them down to mere clusters of stats.
The shivering creatures briefly hesitated between a joint attack and a strategic retreat, however the impatient predator robbed them from the choice by suddenly launching his “weapon” forwards and catching the nearest one between the two edges of the misused aircraft. A furry grain of rice held with holy chopsticks, yelping pitifully in distress.
Merciless, the Wandering Knight dragged his prey back to him, lifted it in the air, crouched and whirled in the melting remains of his first victim, squatting on his right foot like an ice skater performing a sit spin <2>, and then propelled both his glider and the severely burned, and nauseous, wolf towards the outliving quartet. Unfortunately, for the latter, another amongst them got impaled in the process.
“Four. Three?”
And he smirked menacingly at the last trio.
Hang-gliders... Who knew, right?
Enraged, the roaring creatures carelessly jumped at the now apparently empty-handed murderer of their siblings. However, instead of taking a defensive stance, Elric calmly reached for his back.
A blink of an eye later, two smoking grisly halves of a wolf tumbled back to the ground, neatly severed by the huge glowing Zweihänder the swordsman had finally unsheathed. Without slowing down, the blade drew a vertical U-turn, beheading a second ugly oversized pup. The Knowledgeable then turned his cold gaze towards the last wolf, and pronounced the end of the sentence he had been chanting:
“…or feel my wrath.”
He shoved his hand inside the opened maw, and smirked again.
“Two. One… [Solar Flare]”
The phantom animal exploded in a mass of blinding flames and dissolving darkness, while the sun-coated knight slowly hobbled away from the inferno.
“Zero. ♩ Hmmm-Hm-Hm ♪ Hmmm...”
The battle had lasted nineteen seconds.
– *** –
A slash of a blade, and the last breathing wolf definitely stopped whining. Elric then sheathed his sword.
“Tsh. Messing my count,” he mumbled while putting on his helmet.
Upon leaving his hand, the hang glider had lost the [Sunlight Coat]. Therefore, the impaled [Spectral Wolf] hadn’t in fact received a deadly wound, and was still trying to escape when the Wandering Knight came to retrieve his aircraft.
Well, miscalculations happen.
Storing the bloodied framework back in his inventory, Elric cancelled his magical aura. The blessed coating was overly useful against both Darkness and Light, but shining like an oversized firefly right in the middle of obscure woods filled with unknown monsters wasn’t exactly the best way to stay out of trouble.
Bluerose Castle was still quite far, and he didn’t want to fight more than necessary. After all, his mana wasn’t inexhaustible, and his class spells, for all devastating they could be, were also quite consuming. And easy to spot in the dark. In fact, he’d better get away from his latest gory “son et lumière”, and fast.
Without a glance for the slowly evaporating carcasses, he started to walk in the direction opposite to the wall, but a stabbing pain suddenly reminded him of the state of his body.
“Tsh. Right. Broken was it?”
Frankly annoyed, he still forced himself to relax, and took a deep inspiration.
“I call forth the power of Nature. Save my broken self from the pain I endure. [Bone Mend]”
His level of Nature Affinity might be relatively low, but treating broken bones was within any newbie's reach. Illnesses, poisoning, and curses, on the other hand, were quite a hassle to deal with, except with specific sub-affinities.
The catch was that healing magic as a whole usually required more concentration than offensive magic, making it near impossible to use in the heat of battle. And so, most parties included a designed healer who stayed on the side-lines, and solely focused on maintaining his allies alive.
As a solo player, that option was unfortunately unavailable to Elric, who could only hope for a breather once in a while to tend to his wounds. Moreover, if the Solar Knight had a stronger offence that most paladins, his class healing spells were comparatively rather lacking... except when dealing with frostbites.
While he was at it, Elric also fixed his slashed face.
“I ask for the love of Nature Mother. For with flesh wounds, none knows better. [Mother’s Care]”
Sighing in relief, the Wandering Knight gulped down a mana potion and finally started running.
“I am the rock. I am the tree. None in the wild is my enemy. [Nature Aura]. I am a ghost under your bed, when you see me, it is too late. [Shadow Cloak]. I once was there, but this is past. I am the air. None is as fast. [Air Steps]. Each of your steps and heartbeats too, I am the Earth and I see you. [Earth Eye]”
A faint glow covered his body, reducing any wariness most monsters would feel towards him. Next, the revealing glow was cloaked by a veil of darkness, hiding both Elric’s physical and spiritual presence. With the following spell, he accelerated tenfold and turned into a dim silvery blur, his feet barely touching the ground. The world around him then became a vibrant mesh where even the slightest movement in a radius of a hundred metres stood out like a mini-earthquake, granting the Wandering Knight with a sensory field devoid of blind spots.
In truth, Solar Knight wasn't especially a magic-focused class. It had excellent physical passives, and gave access to devastating spells, but, without a god to pray to, it didn't do much in terms of boosting Elric's magical abilities. Therefore his mana capacity, regeneration rate and affinities levels were comparatively low, and he was mostly restricted to beginner spells.
However, it should be known a typical mage would usually be proficient in only one single prime affinity, potentially completed by a unique sub-affinity. A mage wielding two elements would be considered a genius. As for one blessed with three, he was from early on promised to greatness. A more than trial-element magus had yet to make himself known on the Pandore Continent.
One affinity? Two? Three?
Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Nature, Void, Light, Darkness, Lightning, Poison, Runes, and Soul. Eight primes and four subs. Even at low levels, the mere thought of a combination of spells from such a wide range of afinities was enough to make battle-mages go white in terror, and scholars tear their hair out in search of pertinent defences. But that was exactly what the Wandering knight was capable of.
And average spells weren't his sole weapons.
Runes.
“[Runic Armour]. Activation. [Gravity Field]. Activation.”
The Affinity for Runes was an ancient art that had yet to be rediscovered by the general public. In the ruins of the Lost Library of Butv'Erisit, amongst the crumbling parchments and worn out books, Elric had discovered a few fragments of texts concerning the subject, and decided to experiment a bit before disclosing his discovery on the forums. True to himself, he had later completely forgotten to talk about it to anyone.
Written magic wasn’t uncommon though. Magical circles, skill books, enchanted weapons and the likes were relatively easy to come across. However, those were in fact imperfectly trying to emulate Runic relics found in ancient keeps and dungeons. Enchanted pieces of equipment, especially, were flawed products.
Despite the efficient reduction of the energy cost provided by magic items, it was a fact most materials simply weren’t cut to endure the flow of mana, and would thus ultimately break when used as catalyst for a spell. Since magical enhancements were permanent attributes, active regardless of the user’s wish, they slowly but ineluctably wore down the item they were embedded in. This also forbade access to a whole palette of powerful enchantments without resorting to overly rare, and therefore expensive, highly mana-resistant materials.
Runic artefacts, however, almost completely bypassed that restriction. Active only when their owner decided to pour mana into it, they exceeded the durability of conventional magical equipment by at least a hundredfold, while making possible the use of higher tiers spells.
Overdoing it would of course lead to the artefact breaking down. But would one care about their hammer shattering if they could raze a castle in two strikes before it did? The only downside to Runes was that the chance of failure when creating an artefact was much much higher than with conventional enchanting, with also more risks of destroying the item in the process, since the spell would be carved directly into the material, and not magically imprinted onto it.
The Wandering Knight's [Gravity Field], carved in his silver breastplate, actually was an incomplete experimental product. Its purpose was to triple the weight of anything within its range. Which it did. Perfectly. There was just one problem though… Unfortunately, Elric too was in said range, and that pretty much cancelled out any benefit. Therefore, he created the [Runic Armour].
Based on the model of his [Sunlight Coat], the invisible layer indiscriminately negated any Runic magic inside it, like an anti-radiation suit. Any Runic magic, which, unfortunately again, also included any healing Runes he’d like to add to his arsenal. Not ideal, however, as mentioned before, this stuff was still on the experimental level. Disposing of two functional true Runic artefacts was already a more than impressive feat.
“[Time Warp]. Activation. [Magic Mirror]. Activation. [Projectile Deflector]. Activation.”
With this abusive display, everything around Elric suddenly slowed down, making him appear even faster. The Wandering Knight then crunched an energy pill, which quadrupled his health and mana regeneration for four days, and blinked out of existence, stealthily dashing through the ancient woods, too fast for the eye to catch, without a sound other than the faint crackling of rocks, unable to endure their own increased weight as he passed by.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
– *** –
The [Vampire Tarantula] was a breed of giant spiders feared throughout the continent.
Although having nothing to do with actual vampires, those humongous octopods had the disturbing habit of sucking their prey dry of all bodily fluids, not only blood, before devouring them alive, hence their name. However, their eating habits weren’t what made them so frightening. After all, being eaten alive would always be as painful as… being eaten freaking alive, whatever the specifics. There were actually many monsters with more colourful and gruesome table manners.
No. The reason why they were such dreaded opponents was a deadly combination composed of their overly developed ability to sense magic and to cancel the use of it in a vast area, as well as of the tens of thousands of minuscule poisonous spider minions accompanying every cluster of [Vampire Tarantula]. The huge arthropods being virtually immune to all toxins didn’t help either.
Indeed, even without magic of his own, a competent swordsman could hold his ground against monsters several times his size. On the other hand, any decent mage had various ways of instantaneously dealing with an army of thumbnail-sized arachnids. But what could a simple sword do against innumerable small bugs? What could achieve a wizard unable to cast a single spell?
The answer was: not much. Perhaps dying with style in the wizard’s case…
– *** –
That night, the tarantula matriarch woke up, alerted by an unusual moisture in the air. Slowly wiggling its legs around to taste the atmosphere <3>, she found it somewhat oily. A bit perplexed, the creature was about to call out to the patrolling cluster when she caught a discreet murmur.
“…lit the candle. [Spark]”
The matriarch jerked up to raise the alarm, but too late. The oil mist spread throughout the nest violently combusted, instantaneously roasting all the minions to death and severely scorching many of the [Vampire Tarantula].
Before the stunned and blinded arthropods had the time to get themselves back together, and to cast their feared anti-magic field, an unbelievable pressure struck them and slammed them on the ground, their legs failing to support them. Some amongst the weakest invertebrates even got gorily squashed under their own weight. A buzzing silvery shadow then leapt through the burning webs, moving so fast it could barely be glimpsed, severing limbs, smashing heads, slashing eyes, mowing down several giant spiders every second, leaving but destruction and death in its wake.
Eventually, the matriarch got out of her daze, and, with a mere thought, negated all mana-shaping in a radius of more than a kilometre. However, by then, nearly two thirds of the colony had already been slain.
Abruptly slowing down, the silver blur took the appearance of a man wearing a full body armour covered in bumps, lacerations and burn marks, and splattered all over with gore, the most visible being the still fresh greenish blood of the [Vampire Tarentula].
Despite being deprived of his magic, the armoured typhoon didn’t stop his rampage. Free from the threat posed by the microscopic henchmen… henchspiders, he ran from one huge beast to another, evading their poisoned leg thrusts with expert footwork and swinging around a lethal broken longsword.
“♫ Hmmhmmm ♩ Hmmhm hm hmmhm ♩ Hm-hmmm hmmm…”
– *** –
It had been three days since Elric entered the valley of Nowhere. Three days in almost total darkness, wondering how plants even grew in there. Three days of deadly survival orienteering. Three days during which, despite all his efforts to reach the castle of Bluerose as unnoticed as possible, he had been forced to face monster after monster.
At first, most had been easily dealt with, but the noise of the fight and the smell of blood inevitably attracted others. And since only a stronger creature would dare enter the turf of another one, the Wandering Knight’s situation had steadily gotten from bad to worse. [Sombre Bat], [Slasher Fern], [Seer Three-Eyed Crow], [Bicephalous Fork Snake], [Acid Slime], [Chameleon Tiger], [Hungry Moss], [Fire Toad], [Venus Mantrap], [Swamp Mole], [Ancient Treant Colossus]… Even a freaking T-Rex! Elric actually didn’t bother remembering the name of that one. A giant biped reptile with atrophied arms and too many teeth to count was called a T-Rex. No discussion allowed. <4>
After centuries of infightings inside their little hellish ecosystem, the monsters in the sealed Nowhere were far too much for even your average level 150 to handle. Thankfully, the Wandering Knight, initially without any decent knowledge of swordsmanship, had developed his own style over the nearly two years he spent trekking the Wild.
It was a style entirely shaped for the purpose of defeating creatures far stronger than himself. In good synergy with his Solar Knight class, it focused solely on devastating attacks and precise evasion while casting away all defence, which would have been utterly useless anyway against foes capable of blasting him into smithereens with a single hit, regardless if he managed to block or not.
Elric sometimes wondered if he wasn’t supposed to be some sort of magical berserker rather than a paladin. But, if his master claimed a Solar Knight was a paladin, so he was. Even the Reckless Imbecile wasn’t enough of a jackass to go against the quiet old man, who once showed him how to split a mountain in two… with a broom.
After days of incessant fighting, the Wandering Knight had finally almost reached the fortress, or at least he was sufficiently sure he was kind of likely to be in the general vicinity of it… probably. Progressing stealthily inside a deep and wide trench, where he had discovered traces of an ancient paved pathway, he had suddenly stumbled across the [Vampire Tarantula] nest. The huge heap of silky webs had been completely blocking the way, leaving him no way of bypassing it without making a day long detour, with all the unpleasant encounters it implied.
By this point, despite the extremely rare and potent pill he had taken, Elric was almost out of mana, his life was hitting rock bottom, and his prided Zweihänder had been almost eaten by a [Rust Golem] that just happened to stroll by while the Wandering Knight had been battling a bed of [Carnivorous Petunia]. The rest of his equipment had barely survived the encounter unscathed. He still kept using the sword though, since it was still by far his best weapon, even when reduced to half its size, which wasn’t that small anyway. Besides, size wasn’t all that mattered.
Nevertheless, he had to deal with the troublesome arachnids, one way or another. Therefore, hoping no other threat would appear while he executed his dangerously slow but necessarily low-cost plan, he had spent two hours hidden inside an uncooperative bush he had beaten into submission, all the while successively casting the Nature spell [Oil Refill], the Water [Vaporizing], and the Air [Pleasant Breeze]. The first was intended to fill lamps, the second was almost costless since it depended on the quantity of liquid at hand, and the last one was merely for convenience during hot summers. An extremely cheap combo, true enough, but sufficient to turn the whole nest into a gas explosion waiting to happen.
An instantaneous and short blaze, exactly what he needed when his protective spells could be cancelled any moment, leaving him to burn if the fire was to last for too long. He wasn’t about to roast himself so close to his goal. He always felt stupid when it happened.
Then all he had needed was a little [Spark] – and a hastily casted [Earth Wall] to shield him from the initial deflagration – and he had jumped into action, optimising the short interval during which the spiders were stunned to finish off as many as he could, first targeting the most heavily charred monsters.
People often thought going for the strongest first was a good plan, but the weaklings were always the ones that took one’s attention off the boss right at the worst moment, often when the latter was precisely casting a gigantic [Necroblast].
– *** –
Now, both Elric’s surprise effect and Runic fields had lived, but he had achieved his objective, and only less than twenty [Vampire Tarantula] were left.
“♫ Hmmhmmm ♩ Hmmhm hm hmmhm ♩ Hmhmhmm…”
He ran up to an enraged spider, caught glimpse an incoming blur, slightly tilted his head and felt a fast, probably poison-coated, leg brush past his helmet. Nimbly dodging another strike, he leapt under the thorax of the beast and continued to run towards its abdomen, performing an overhead strike that split the creature open and spilled its guts behind him.
“Hmm ♫ Hm-Hmmm…”
The dying beast collapsing above him, Elric threw himself on the ground, rolled away, and, without getting up, grabbed the leg of another, brutally snapped it, and used the resulting pain jerk to propel himself upwards. After flipping in the air, he landed on the back of the spider, immediately kneeling and thrusting his stump of a sword between its eight eyes, before twisting the blade inside the deadly wound.
“♪ Hmmmm ♩ Pom-pommm ♩ “
As the arachnid reared up in agony, the rampaging knight launched himself onto the nearest monster to do the same. He repeated the action five more times before falling short of prey within jumping range.
“♫ HmmmHm-Hm ♩ ♪ Hmmm...”
Sliding across the ramp that was the back of his latest victim, he stylishly got back on the ground, and, accompanied by the sound of the charred corpses of the minions crunching under his steps, he charged at the next tarantula, which staggered backwards as if in the presence of a dangerous predator.
“♫ Hmhmmhm-hm ♫ Hmm Hm-hm ♪”
Exuding an oppressive merciless aura that made the hunoungous arthropod feel like a bug under the foot of a giant, Elric closed the distance and ended the life of his current target in a single slash before setting his sight on the next.
“ ♩ Hmmhmhmhmm ♫ Hmm Hm hm Hmm ♩ ”
And the massacre merrily continued.
“ ♩ Hmmhmhmhmm ♫ Hmm Hm hm Hmm ♩ ”
– *** –
*ting*
You have levelled up!
As he stepped over the dead body of the matriarch, which hadn’t been comparatively that strong, while wiping the poison off his armour with shreds of flaming web, the Wandering Knight distractedly dismissed the window and distributed his stat points at random.
He had in total gained three levels since entering the valley of Nowhere. As a player past the hundred, given he hadn’t encountered any unique or named monster, much less a boss, the fact he had gained a level per day said quite a lot about the dangerousness of the place.
Emerging from the devastated nest, Elric stepped back on the paved pathway, which was much more well-preserved on this side of the spider dwelling. Abnormally so even, opening a long straight gap in the dense vegetation, in spite of being covered in thick moss and tangled crawling ivy.
Kneeling down, he put a hand on the ground.
“We had our fun, painful and hot. But you’re wife’s here, untie those knots. [End of Bondage]”
Some of the spells the Knowledgeable had gathered over time had somewhat dubious origins.
Under the immoral incantation, the vines unravelled, and Elric brushed the remaining moss away, revealing rectangular stones covered in now familiar slowly moving glyphs.
No mist. A different pattern. Safe to say the spell isn’t to be the same. It shouldn’t be too dangerous. And the power seem low. Either it was drained over the years, or it wasn’t that powerful to begin with. Probably a bit of both. There’s no other path anyway.
Satisfied, he stood up and started walking again.
After a relatively uneventful half-hour, during which the flora steadily grew less impenetrable and aggressive while the surrounding trees rapidly shrunk, a crumbled stone wall finally came into view in the distance, merely a few hundred metres down the path.
Elric smirked.
“Not a moment too soon… Now let’s go meet with this prin-”
“RRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAARRRGGGLE!!!!”
Spinning around, the irritated knight glared behind him towards the source of the shout, decided to swiftly end the life of the untimely pest… before turning slightly pale.
Tottering unexplainably fast on the road, a colossal monstrosity was rapidly drawing closer. The ugly giant freak of nature looked like a headless pink, azure and light-green ant-centaur with tentacles instead of arms and legs, shrivelled translucent bat wings coming out of its insectoid back, a huge red eye in the middle of its human-like torso, four nipples, rabbit ears growing on its shoulders, glowing heart tattoos, and a gaping mouth opening where its neck should have been, filled with disproportioned fangs, and alternating at regular interval between breathing out purple fire and explosive rainbow bubbles.
As if he had seen nothing, Elric calmly showed his back to the absurd being… and started running at full speed towards the castle.
“Nope.”
– ***** –
<1> Here’s a little rainbow for you.
<2> If anyone is interested in what sit spin looks like, just click.
<3> Yes, it appears spiders have their taste buds on their legs… Hope they don’t step in excrements too often.
<4> Because a motherfucking T-Rex is nothing but a Motherfucking T-Rex.
----------------------------------------
Eeeeet, voici donc la première… Oh. Sorry. It’s late here.
Aaaaand, here’s the first fight scene… scenes. THROW THE EPIC MUSIC!!... *cough*
Spoiler :
I never paid attention to what she’s actually singing beside the title… Shame on me…
Anyway… Hope you liked it… The song I mean. And the chapter potentially, but I personally prefer the song.
Jests aside… I don’t know if it’s what you expected. I fear I relapsed a bit in my background mechanics fetish. Maybe you would have liked some more random and fantasist ways of fighting? Well, it will probably come (sometimes in the future… I have something about a Cocoon Boss… and a Spartan Chicken further down the line if I read my notes correctly… Why would I have written that down? O_o’ ).
But I wanted to have a “serious”, hopefully vaguely epic, series of fight. And there’s still quite a handful of monsters inside the castle.
On a side note, Tales of the Blood Princess recently got its 100th follower! (Now 101 as I type those words) Yeeepie! Yeeecake too. Thanks for your support everyone. As a reward, here’s a beautiful and poetic AMV (I like AMVS):
Spoiler :
As usual, thank you, and see you next chapter for the reversed dungeon break.
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