Chapter 52: Snakeskin

The monster barrels towards us, the distance rapidly shrinking. It’s still far away but in less than a minute it’ll be on top of us.

“Don’t interfere. I have a grudge to settle,” I say to Cobalt. She hesitantly nods and steps out of the way.

“if you cannot handle it-”

“Yes,” I flex my claws, ignoring the bruises on them. “But only interfere when it looks like I’m about to die.”

In the spare moments I have, I throw five of my free points into Agility and another five into Strength. The rest I’ll keep in the tank for now.

HP: 189/265

SP: 243/315

It should be enough for this. I already defeated it once. A second time shouldn’t be much more difficult.

I let the monster speed towards me, evading a few globs of acid that it shoots as an opening volley. One of them, a radioactive green, lands near my feet and happily sizzles away as it eats into the ground.

With only a hundred metres between us, I sprint towards the monster, claws outstretched to cut its head off like I should’ve done the first time. The Snake leaps into the air and turns, flinging its tail towards me like a whip. I throw myself to the ground, dodging the tail that cuts the air apart above my head. It hits a few of the leaves in my crown, tearing them right off.

The system warns me of the damage and gives me a 1% reduction to all of my stats. I roll over on the ground, my stomach flopping over in my body as the pain travels down my spine.

The snake lets out a victorious screech as it descends, one of its legs outstretched to hit me in the head. I blink against the light of the sun. Those talons are dangerous. One hit will squish me.

I roll over once more evading the blow. Bile rises in my throat. Stamina flows into my claws as I push myself onto my knees. The snake looks down at me, murder in its eyes. A long, forked tongue peeks out of its mouth.

I lunge for the beast, claws outstretched-

The monster slams its tail into my stomach. The force pushes me away, my feet sliding over the slick ground.

Oh, now it’s going down.

I stand up, stretching my arms as the monster continues to observe me. The snake’s second set of eyes flick to Cobalt, assessing her as a threat, though, not one to be acted upon.

My toes wriggle into the ground, bindweed spreading out of them for a split second before I hurl myself towards the monster. It spits another glob of acid at me from point blank. The green goo hits my shoulder and begins to eat into my bindweed, the vines sizzling as they are broken down.

I reach the beast as it jumps away from me, bouncing up in the air. Its long tail drags over the ground, following in the snake’s wake. The monster’s talons stretch apart as it prepares for a dropkick that will squish my head.

My hands grab onto its smooth tail that almost flows out of my grip like water. With some quick uses of Stamina, my palms grow rough enough for me to hold onto it. I pull down on the tail and the monster is yanked back to the ground, disorientated before I reel it in.

It hisses at me, mouth opening to fire a barrage of acid at my face.

I’m forced to let go of it and it takes off not a second later. The snake’s legs almost blur with the speed it’s moving, circling around me and building up more speed.

I’m content to let it act first. The vines of bindweed are already spreading outwards under the ground for me to use later on. The snake opens its mouth, ready to snipe another shot at me. However, acid doesn’t pour out. A hissing laugh fills the air, warbling and twisting the world.

Like Mandrake Scream it has an effect on every monster that hears it. The world tilts and my balance fades away. My legs grow wobbly as if the ground is rising in waves of mud.

It leaps forward, talons outstretched for a second time. I can’t get out of this. My body doesn’t respond, having lost all direction. My limbs flail around me in panic, claws cutting the air, spending precious points of Stamina.

The bindweed I was saving for later bursts out of the ground between us. It grows into a wall, shielding me from the monster. I try to dodge to the left but what happens is that I topple over backwards right as the snake’s kick bursts through the vines, tearing them apart.

Its foot lands between my legs and I gulp. I almost lost everything under my hip.

I pull out all of my cards, letting my scream combat the Snake’s low rumbling hiss.

Air pulled out of my lungs, reeled through my throat, fights with the monster’s own sound skill.

The world ripples and Cobalt takes a few steps back, the skills even affecting her to some extent. My skill sputters out when all the air is pulled out of my lungs. I slam an imaginary hand into the skill construct keeping it on, pushing it beyond the limit.

My head grows light, screaming for oxygen. Air that wasn’t in my lungs is pulled out of me, leaving hazy, grey spots in my vision. A dull, stabbing headache pounds at the back of my mind, screaming that I need to breathe. That I need to end the skill.

The snake steps over the wall, body jerking and jolting as it pushes through my skill.

Mandrake Scream grows louder. It deafens the snake’s hiss and my sense of direction returns enough for me to stand up.

The monster tries to claw me apart with its damned bird feet. I slash at its throat, my claws connecting with the monster’s skin but not cutting through. The snake’s throat is forced close for a fraction of a second. The skill cuts off and my own ends a moment later. Air floods into my compressed lungs. Coughs push themselves out of my throat bringing the sickly, sweet taste of my blood to my mouth.

Each breath hurts as if something has been torn apart in my lungs. I step away from the snake, giving myself the distance I need as the monster watches me on in rage. One set of eyes glares at me while the other keeps track of Cobalt who took a single step towards us when it looked like I was about to pass out.

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With less than a third of my Stamina remaining, I pull on the stocks of Stamina that I built up with Solar Storage ever since I got it. I rarely took away from it in the past weeks, only a few points here and there when I needed some extra juice to keep the walls healthy. And now all that energy, dozens of hours of photosynthesising, trickle into my body.

It flows out from my heart, pulsing through me in almost painful waves. My Stamina pool rockets up, filling by the second.

I gulp in the air as it pushes past the cap of the pool. The fervent energy in my body grows hostile and incandescent. It burns me from the inside as the points continue to tick past the limit. The bindweed I consist of glows like neon tubes wrapped around each other.

I- I need to finish this before I burn up.

The faint headache serves as a reminder that the system has already warned me that I’m pushing skills too far beyond their limits.

For a second I’m somewhere else; in a burning forest, smoke in my lungs, fire eating through my body. It’s the same. It’s exactly the same.

I howl back at the system as the headache blooms, blood leaking out of my body. I don’t care. I will never feel like that. This badly stitched monster is going down today. No more loose ends, no more battles not fought.

Skills flick on and the Stamina surges into them faster than when I build the walls. I stretch my fingers apart, bindweed shooting out of them.

I’m not fast enough to fight it. I’m not strong enough to rip that damned snake apart. I need it in a place I control.

My toes grow like roots beneath the ground, pushing through the soft ground, spreading out all around me. The monster cocks its head in confusion, watching my body morph, coil around each other as if I’m a liquid.

Vines burst out beneath it, flying up in the air like a trap. It squawks like a bird, jumping away just in time. Hissing, it glares at me with two sets of eyes, sprinting towards me building up speed.

My toes root me in place as they spread out, forming a network of thick vines that pulse with untapped potential. I can see why I got all those evolutions that would make me stationary now. This, this is power.

The snake enters my domain and vines burst out of the ground all around it, pelting it from all sides. It steps over them, rushing past and heading straight towards me.

Air is pulled into my lungs, every shred of energy taken out from it. Sunlight is quickly snatched away, converted into Stamina and sent down into the network. Compared to my entire resource pool, it’s barely a trickle, but I will need to spend the very last point if I want to win this.

The bindweed vines trail behind the Snake like heat-seeking missiles as more rises from the ground all around it. It shouldn’t have stepped into my domain. It should have stayed away.

The monster is forced into another direction, curving around me as all its paths are cut off.

It keeps evading, tearing through the vines when it can’t find a gap in the formation. In response, I thicken the vines, and throw five stat points into Constitution and Endurance, knowing that they also apply to the bindweed vines to a certain extent.

The foolish snake uses its sound attack again, tilting the world around me. It takes a bit of adjusting the vines but beyond that, it doesn’t do much. Rooted in place, I continue to stand.

With no retreat, it panics. Globs of acid are blocked by bindweed vines I use as a shield. Strikes from talons only tear the bindweed vines apart. It doesn’t hurt. It only forces me to expend more Stamina.

A lucky bindweed strand wraps around the monster's tail. I push energy down that particular vine, swelling it in size, hooked thorns growing on it in seconds.

It slows the snake enough for more vines to latch on, wrapping around it, and pinning it down. I disconnect from the network of bindweed, letting the last dozen points in my body flow towards my right hand for the final strike.

I look down at it, its legs pushing against the ground, struggling to get free. It is pitiful. It escaped last time. It even gained legs, and yet it ended back up in the same place: Dead in front of me.

The monster’s mouth opens, aiming a glob of acid at my face but vines coil around it, tying it shut.

With my remaining Stamina, I can’t cut through its skin, though, as always the eyes are a weak point.

*Congratulations. You have slain [Chimera’s vestiges] lvl 1/40 (F). 72,19 Event points awarded.

*Congratulations. You have gained a level. You are now level 19.

+10 HP +15 SP +2 Strength +2 Agility +1 Perception +2 Constitution +2 Endurance +2 Mind +4 Unallocated stat points.

There isn’t a second notification, though, I’m close.

With almost not even the stocks of Stamina I built up to keep me standing, I sag to the ground, utterly exhausted.

My entire body is soggy, the vines hanging around my limbs like loose skin. Each breath brings a new world of pain to me. As if glass shards brush up against my throat and grind against each other deep in my lungs.

Cobalt claps her hands together, applauding me. “Well done, Mandrake Green. It is quite frightening how strong you are for your level.”

I look at her, too tired to move. “I used up everything I had. You don’t know how much Stamina that cost. Hundreds of points I stored to protect the walls or for emergencies…gone. Just gone,” I rasp, now realising that it might not have been the smartest move to pull off.

Cobalt lowers her mandibles in a frown, “That much?”

She leaves me alone to recover for a few minutes, peeling back the already dying vines to stare at the snake up close. She shoots me a few questions about the stitching around the monster's legs which I answer with few words, my throat starting to hurt the more I talk.

I check the event timer and realise that the entire fight didn’t even last ten minutes. I only had that domain active for over two minutes, and yet, somehow, I expended almost five hundred points of Stamina.

The headache isn’t helping either. First that stunt with Mandrake Scream drawing out the sound to match the snake’s. Then using Bindweed of Nature, Bindweed Conjuration, and Bindweed Manipulation in conjunction with other passives active.

Simply said, my head hurts in ways I’ve never experienced. I really, really pushed it too far. Likely far enough to sprain skill constructs or even my soul.

Cobalt takes care of one or two Cave crawlers that have come to inspect while I close my eyes for a few minutes. I count down the seconds along with the times, groaning as I stand up after five minutes.

“We need to go back,” I croak. “Can you take the corpse with you? Hopefully, it will mollify Sairal to some extent.”

We make our way to the fortress, finding a very irate dryad glaring down at us from the walls.

“I saw that,” he growls. Sulli stands behind his leg, peering at us while Aeru copies him, his arms wrapped around his stomach as he tries to glare at us with his beady eyes.

“Saw what?” I say, sounding innocent.

“That.” He points to the Snake’s corpse that Cobalt drops between unceremoniously.

It catches Sairal’s attention just like we hoped. He leans in closer, inspecting the stitching on the snake’s legs. “Soul magic,” he hisses.

Sairal pulls out a vial with a glowing white liquid, and pours the contents on the dead body of the Snake.

In seconds the monster starts to evaporate, first skin, then flesh and finally the bones. What doesn’t get dissolved he pulls into his pocket space for later disposal.

He turns back to us two, “I’m not done with you two yet!” He raises his fist in the air as I drop down from the wall, and move towards his tree to recover.