Gympie emerged from the trees to find the locals of this world fighting off a creature many times their size. A thing so massive that the largest of their tribe only came a quarter of the way up its leg. Gympie tucked his host behind some brush and rushed in to help as best he could. It wasn’t long until his people noticed and parted ways to allow him to get in.
The creature didn’t have the sharp claws and teeth that most of the other truly threatening creatures of this world had, but for some reason the dull molars he did see made Gympie shiver more than anything else. The lack of sharp weaponry on the beast did nothing to stem just how dangerous the thing was though. Gympie could see the scattered remains of set up tents that were clearly stomped upon and broken with little effort.
His new people were fighting with all they had to try to drive the beast away, but it seemed like it was an uphill battle for them. Despite the numerous stab wounds that were littering the giant’s legs he could also see many of the villages warriors either having injuries treated off to the side or laying injured or unmoving in the mud by the riverbanks.
He drew his knife and pushed forward, trying to send a debilitating amount of electricity through the creature. He barely made a scratch on the thing; its hide was just too thick. But the jolt of electricity had succeeded in drawing its attention.
From the outside the thing had seemed slower, but that was probably because he had been taking in its entire mass when thinking about its movement. But when its tree trunk sized tail came whipping through the air towards Gympie, he could barely even bring his arms up to defend.
He was immediately knocked off his feet and rolled onto the ground. It felt like something in one of his arms had broken, and the way it hung at his side limply wasn’t very hopeful. Luckily it had been his nondominant arm and he hadn’t lost his knife, so he was still good to go on.
If he could actually communicate, he would have asked the warriors what the plan was. Although even if he could ask, he had the distinct impression that they didn’t actually have a plan past either scaring it off or killing it before it could kill them. But he didn’t know maybe someone in the village was a master strategist and he was severely underestimating them.
As stabbing the thing didn’t work, he tried magic. Whipping out a familiar water spear that he had used to drive away Twigs time and time again, he slashed at the beast with a whip of water. But what worked against the twigs did next to nothing to this thing. It just took it to the flank with hardly a stumble and bellowed in annoyance. It looked around for the source of the attack but seemingly did not realize it had come from Gympie.
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Instead, it redoubled its efforts to stomp the lizards stabbing at its legs. Luckily the magic seemed to have at least distracted it causing it to wildly miss its target and crush a fallen log instead.
This development made Gympie redouble his effort in spellcasting, aiming to make it stumble and confuse it as much as possible. But Gympie was quickly running out of his internal reserve of mana to draw from and had to stop or else risk mana exhaustion. Mana exhaustion was especially detrimental for Dryads as it risked the collapse of their corporeal form while they recovered, and Gympie didn’t want that to happen in the middle of a fight.
The beast’s energy was waning but so were the warriors. He still had energy to spare though with the sun being so high up in the sky. He tried taking some of the load off of the warriors by getting in there with his knife. This time he managed to slip his knife into one of the gouges made by the warriors’ spears making the enchantments on the knife light up and crackle with the light of an overhead storm.
The beast bellowed in pain as Gympie could see its legs spasm from the electricity running through it. Gympie could vaguely smell cooked meat and see smoke sizzle up from the wounds. The beast stumbled and fell for just a moment before rising again, putting more weight on its less injured legs.
But now Gympie was emboldened. He tried again only to be rewarded with a tail to the face. Luckily, he was near its front and so the tail couldn’t do nearly as much damage as before, only serving to stun him for a bit.
The fight continued but Gympie soon realized that they were clearly on the losing end. He would need to do something drastic if he wanted his side to win. So, something drastic he did. The creature’s energy was waning, and it would only really take one big blow to turn the battle in their favor, but he had not seen a single other person even try to cast a spell his entire stay and he was starting to think they just couldn’t use magic despite there being so much of it in the air.
He geared up for a big spell, calling upon every piece of mana he could in his body and pushed. A huge gout of pressurized water smashed into the monster’s side. It hadn’t had nearly as much effect as he had hoped it would, he hoped to pierce its hide and deal life threatening damage but as it was all he managed to do was knock the already unsteady beast off its feet with the massive water pressure.
As he was fading from mana exhaustion, he saw that he was at least right in his previous assessments. They would do fine against the thing from here on out, after all, it was them who taught him how to aim for things necks. All that deep red pouring over his allies was a wonderful sight before he faded.
He hoped they knew he would be back once he got back his mana, but he had no idea how their species handled their physical form disappearing and he couldn’t really process much information as his host was helping him recover. It could have been hours; it could have been days but eventually he got his physical form back enough to part from his host.
It couldn’t have been too long as the corpse of the beast that was brought down hadn’t been eaten yet. However, his new people had already left, seemingly only taking a bit of the meat with them from the kill and leaving in a hurry. But apparently not enough of a hurry to leave his knife behind.