I had expected there to be a full-blown panic. Yet, while there was some anxious yelling, people were getting somewhat organized. Many grabbed weapons from nearby and began to gather by the entrance while those who would not be in combat gathered medical supplies and set up a triage center towards the back where they would be safe.

Any potential hiccups were alleviated by Frank shouting orders before approaching the officer. Asha, Eliara, and I were soon following suit. Rodriguez's eyes lit up with relief as spotted us, "You're back? Thank God, we might not be so fucked after all."

"Kelsie, what's wrong? Is it more monsters?" Frank asked.

She shook her head, "Just one, but it's a big fucker." She flicked her eyes to me, "Remember those big bugs that attacked us on C-day?"

"C-day?" I asked, puzzled.

"Convergence Day, when the worlds fused. Not important. The bugs, the mantis things? Well, were being chased by one that decided it wanted to grow up to be a kaiju. It's not crazy fast, but it's only about a block away."

Eliara furrowed her brow, "What exactly did it look like?"

"About as tall as a telephone pole, covered in green chitin, bulbous eyes, and a long proboscis instead of a normal mantis mouth." she listed off.

"What about its pincers? Did they resemble snake fangs?" Eliara prodded. When Rodriguez nodded, not bothering to ask who Eliara was, she cursed. "That's a viper mantis. A very dangerous beast. It moves slowly but strikes blindingly quick. Its two claws inject a very corrosive venom that paralyzes and digests its prey which it then drinks using its straw-like mouth. It is very durable. It will be a very tough fight."

"Will it be more dangerous than that nursemaid monster?" I asked.

"Depends on your point of view. That thing was nowhere near as durable or as physically powerful since it relied on illusion and preyed on the weak. The viper mantis is a very potent predator. Thankfully, it isn't a monster, so it won't be too difficult to kill." she replied.

"Semantics can wait, miss, I dunno who ya are, but if ya can fight, then come on." I noticed in passing that Rodriguez's accent comes out when she's freaked out. I didn't recall her having such a strong accent when we first met.

We sprinted out the door and the three of us leapt onto the shipping containers as easily as hopping onto a sidewalk while the mortals hurried to climb some ladders that were bolted to the walls. I was about to ask where to look when a hulking figure rounded the corner to our right. It was just as the officer described, though she did not do the freaky thing justice. It had long clawed legs that supported its spiked exoskeleton. It was a heavy bastard as it stepped on a car, crushing it.

A pair of long thin antennae curled back from the top of its head in between its two bulging eyes. They were pupiled like a mantis's as it scanned the area before locking onto its prey, us. Replacing the scissor like mouth parts of a normal mantis, it instead wielded a long sharp proboscis straight from an assassin bug. It brought up one of its two claws that indeed looked like the fangs on a building sized viper. Where claw met its forearm, were thick, brush like hairs that it used to clean its antennae while it lumbered slowly towards us. We had maybe two or three minutes before it was on us.

image [https://i.imgur.com/rX2unxk.jpeg]

"We absolutely cannot let it get here. It'll smash through these shipping containers no problem, assuming it doesn't simply walk over them." I stated.

Rodriguez replied, "I agree. Plus, nothing we have even scratched the bastard. It killed over half of us before we realized that. We couldn't even pierce its eyes with our arrows, though it did piss the bastard off." She grimaced, "Ugh, probably why it followed all the way here, shit."

I waved away her guilt, "It would have come across us at some point, too tempting a target if it got too hungry. I'm just glad it popped up while we were here."

Frank nodded, "A blessing from God."

Eliara looked slightly interested, "Which one? Maybe Telhara? He likes a good fight and isn't a fan of the weak getting slaughtered."

"Theology lessons can wait until there isn't a Toho reject knocking at our gates. You two have any advice? Weaknesses?" I asked.

Eliara, with a chastised grin, replied, "It doesn't like fire, aim for its joints, and when scared, it will fly."

"Of course it can fly," I sighed, "Alright, I'll grab its attention while Eliara darts in and try to take out its legs. Focus on one side first. Asha, since your fire isn't the strongest, use what you have to burn away its antennae. Hopefully that will disorient it enough that it can't aim straight. Once you get that done, focus on disrupting its movements and if it tries to fly, focus on its wings. Don't let it flee, we can't have this thing ambushing HQ in the middle of the night."

Frank asked, "What about us?"

I thought for a moment before answering, the ground vibrating slightly as it got closer, "If it manages to get past us, run inside and have all the mages focus fire on its face and if they are capable, I mean that literally. Wrap arrow heads with something flammable and if we have the supplies make a couple of Molotov cocktails. If you're lucky, it will run away from the flames."

With out any further words, I nodded to the girls, and we shot off. Eliara leapt and landed in a roll, her arm switching into a blade as she emerged from the roll. Asha landed gracefully, as if gravity hardly affected her, and I leapt off with all my strength, warping the metal beneath my feet slightly. As my momentum started to fail, I turned into bloody mist and flew towards the beast.

I'd have to ask what the difference between a beast and a monster was, because to my untrained eye, this fucker was definitely a monster straight from a B-movie. Had I a mouth at the moment, I would have grinned at my pun. A bee is an insect, close enough.

It started to focus on Eliara as she was the fastest of us. I coalesced from my blood-step and as I fell, I pulled a page from Asha's book and summoned a trio of lances formed from crystalized blood that were then fired at the mantis. It impacted its chest and shattered, much to my shock. Though there were hairline cracks at the impact site.

A reverberating hiss echoed in its abdomen as its narrowed pupils focused on me. I waved a rude gesture at it. It ignored Eliara and stomped towards me, swinging its two claws towards me. I blood-stepped to the side in the nick of time. Had my reflexes been the tiniest shred lacking, I would have been skewered. A scent like rancid vinegar filled my nostrils as the asphalt bubbled and hissed. Caustic venom indeed.

I summoned my scythe and swung with all my might. I felt like I swung an ax into petrified wood. The vibrations of the impact nearly shook the blade out of my hands. Inspecting the damage, I caused before leaping away, I saw it was barely lodged in its right claw. I wasn't even sure if it went all the way through the chitin. My frown turned upside down as I had a brilliant idea. Nearly as soon as I let go, I shifted the scythe into thick chains, expending more of my power to add to its size and length, and bound the two claws together.

This gave an opening for Eliara to dodge around the beast and leap onto its left front leg. She would have gone to the back leg had the claws been free. She soared towards what might have counted as its knee and sliced at the joint. She didn't have much more luck than I had seeing the look on her face along with the fact that the mantis was more concerned with getting its claws freed than the pest jabbing at its leg.

There was still no blood, therefore I couldn't take advantage of Blood Burst. And after a couple of wasted Sanguine Slices that barely scratched its chitin I growled wondering what could get through this bastard's thick armor. It strained at the chains, a couple of the weakest links popping open. "That won't do," I muttered as I summoned a spellform that formed a beach ball sized sphere of fire that collided with its head, igniting the thin sensory organs atop its skull. This got it going, it thrashed wildly, shattering the chains fully and knocking Eliara off. The antennae burned away in seconds. The mantis, in response, swung wildly at me. The first strike I had narrowly dodged had pinpoint accuracy. This was mindless thrashing.

I dodged, ducked, dipped, dived, and dodged one swipe after another while Eliara struggled with how to pop off its legs. She must have had an epiphany as she repeated her previous attempt, though this time she had a glowing arrow in her hand. It was like the summoned bolt she normally used in her crossbow configuration, except this one was red orange compared to the yellowish white it normally was, and the head was glowing a bit. Using her demonic hand, she plunged the bolt into the joint and it stuck. She leapt off and quickly got out of the way. This was proven wise as a decent sized explosion went of moments later.

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The bulky, spiked bottom half of the back left leg fell with a crash, and the angry hissing changed pitch into a pained screech. It stumbled, adjusting its balance to its remaining legs before slowly attempting to turn, determined to destroy whatever harmed it.

"Nope," I stated, and threw my scythe at it. An ever-extending tendril of blood connected me to the scythe. As the scythe swung around the thorax of the mantis, where the shoulders and neck would be on a vertebrate, I shifted the tendril into a spiked chain. Four thick tendrils of crimson shot from my back and into the ground, binding me to the floor as I made a mighty heave.

Already off-balance and mid step, its remaining leg on the left side in the air, the mantis tumbled to its side. My muscles burned as if I had just pulled down a house. I absorbed the tendrils that braced me and summoned a spear. Running towards its head before it could right itself, I plunged the weapon into its right eye. There was a strong resistance before it gave way to the spear. I only managed to get half of the head in before I found out the hard way that its claw joints are very flexible.

I felt a burning pain in my stomach as I looked down to see a green needle protruding from my guts. The wound fizzled and his and the burning sensation increased. I was lucky, despite how it looked, that it was strong enough to pierce my armor, albeit with nearly as much difficulty as I had with it. Venom was dribbling from the tip of the claw, just barely missing my wound.

It began to stand, raising me in the air. I heard Asha and Eliara shout my name as I made a bloody toothed grin at the monster. It seems that both the ladies were quite the inspiration. I snapped my fingers, finding that Thanos was a dramatic bitch as the gauntlets made snapping impossible, and the spear exploded. Though more like a steam explosion than Eliara's more fiery approach. The rapid expansion of bloody vapor caused the impaled eye to burst. I then cast Blood Burst and a secondary and much more liquid burst of blood increased the damage further.

The mantis took exception to that as it swung its arm and flung me away. I crashed through the window of a nearby apartment building and landed on a bed. "Ugh, at least the landing was soft." I winced and touched my stomach, "Oh, that's a deep pain." I drained my core even more by healing my wound. The wound must have been quite severe because the amount of mana spent on that single action was equivalent to everything I did to this point, but better to use my normal regeneration than spending my precious blood reserves.

A couple of stories below, Asha picked up the slack. She cast arrows of blackish blood that encouraged the grievous wound on its head to bleed, a sort of powerful anticoagulant. All the while, casting illusionary mirror images of Eliara to decrease her chance of being hit. Without me to distract it, the mantis didn't have any openings to exploit long enough for Eliara to remove another leg. The good news is that it wasn't approaching the store.

I stood, judging my wound to be healed enough. I studied my core, seeing that it was almost halfway empty. This wasn't looking good. While Eliara could back off to regain some mana, Asha and I needed blood. Upon farther questioning, it appears, Asha simplified her explanation a little too much. I had teased her, and she pouted saying she never said she was a good teacher. She had said that Vampires needed blood to heal and regain mana while common Vampires and below needed blood to live as well. The truth is that Royal Vampires to Elder Vampires can regain mana just like normal cultivators its just so heavily impacted by the divine and light mana in the environment it's not even worth noting. They can speed this up extremely by sleeping in unhallowed ground which is rich with life mana and death mana while completely blocking out any holy or light mana which are the biggest contributors to slowing our mana regen.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to slowly absorb mana, let alone have a dirt nap. I had to finish this quickly, but how? Eliara, by detonating some magical version of a flashbang inches from the creature's remaining eye, blinded it long enough for her to blow off the final leg on one side. It was at this point the mantis decided it was done for the day.

The mantis spread its elytra and unfurled its transparent wings, veins pumping green hemolymph webbed through it. A chopper like hum filled the air as debris was tossed up. Asha tried to raise her hand and fire off a fireball, but she was too weakened from the draining illusions needed to protect Eliara. Only a weak sphere appeared that was quickly quenched by the powerful winds coming from the blurring wings.

The mantis, despite its bulk began to rise. "Hell no!" I shouted and leapt out the window, my own wings bursting from my back and lifting me in the air. I summoned my scythe and raced towards the fleeing beast. Eliara attempted to leap onto its remaining legs, focused on completing her objective only to be batted away by the sharp leg. She hit the wall with an unhealthy sounding thud and slid ten feet to the concrete.

I swore and put on a burst of speed. I rolled to the side in the air, dodging a swipe at me and used the torque to toss a Sanguine Slice down at one of the delicate wings, slicing through it like paper. Without equilibrium that was already shaky due to the missing legs, the monster once again toppled over and crashed to the ground. It fell badly on its remaining legs, one of them letting out a sickening crack as it bent the wrong way at the joint.

Taking advantage of the dazed mantis as it reared up, I dove like a peregrine falcon from roughly fifty feet. I readied my scythe, aiming where its head met its neck. Unfortunately, the stun didn't last long as its head whipped towards me as I whistled through the air. It raised one of its envenomed claws towards me, ready to strike. I couldn't duck out, I had to finish this. Gritting my teeth, I committed to the dive and sliced as I made contact with the beast.

In a cloud of dust from the pulverized road, I crashed to the ground. It was my turn to be dazed. As my blurry and quadrupled vision focused into my normal binocular gaze, I stared right into the damned mantis's eye as it glared at me. I glared right back, ready to accept the coming strike and I pulled back my right arm in order to plunge it into the bastard's blown socket and rip out its brain. Except, I couldn't.

I risked a glance to my right side only to see the arm had been ripped off. It appears that the claw pierced my shoulder and the force combined with the girth of the claw was enough to sever my arm. Oversized bugs and my arm getting ripped off. It's day one all over again. I was ripped out of my bleary contemplation with a shock. Why hadn't it struck?

I shot my gaze back to the mantis's head, getting dizzy with the rapid movement, I was losing a lot of blood. Though I was coherent enough to realize, the mantis head I was looking at was next to me on the ground, no longer attached to the still body. We won. I let out an exhausted laugh. "We won!" I shouted.

I stood and looked around just in time to see Asha rush to me now that the dust had cleared. "What is it with you and losing your arm?"

I chuckled, swaying a little, "I know, right? If I had a nickel for every time I got my arm torn off after fighting a giant mantis in the same day, I'd have two. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."

She rolled her eyes and asked, "Where's Eliara?"

Snapping back, I inhaled sharply, "Shit, Eliara!" I turned and started to run but stumbled. Asha caught me and I cursed. It took a second, but I willed the bleeding to stop. That would by me time. I half ran/ half wobbled over to Eliara's still form. I grabbed her shoulder and had her face up. I sighed in relief at the rising of her chest. It wasn't great, her breathing was thready and shallow, but she was breathing. She likely had at least one broken rib, she had a nasty gash on her chest from where a spike raked across her, and a nasty, gushing wound on her forehead. Not having the energy or the willpower to stop both our wounds from bleeding, I pulled bandages from my storage space and pulled down her tattered; not giving two shits about modesty compared to her life.

I wasn't an expert, but despite the forehead wound bleeding worse, it was the gash that was the worse wound. It was ragged and deep. I cursed and shoved gauze deep in the wound, it already turning a deep crimson. It doesn't look like any vital arteries or organs were pierced, though some ribs were definitely broken, seeing as I was looking directly at a cracked one from the open wound. I then bound her chest tightly with bandages then her head. I tried to pick her up but couldn't with one arm.

Asha nudged me away and carried her princess style. I was too tired, worried, and in pain to make a joke. I stood and paused. She had lost a lot of blood. I hesitated, wondering about the morality of the situation then said screw it as my head swam. I absorbed the blood on the ground before draining the blood from the mantis. Despite how much it had, it only filled up to half my nearly empty core. It appears my body preferred hemoglobin as opposed to the insect's hemolymph. At least I had enough to start repair my body. Before Asha could outpace me too much, I caught up and emptied my blood reserves to cast Transfusion, but it barely helped her. Cursing again I looked around but I couldn't find my arm, so I abandoned it. Fuck it, Eliara had a cool arm, I could too.

It took longer to return to the base than departing it, battered and tired as we were. They opened the gate and allowed us in. They were eerily silent, and I couldn't muster up the brain power to figure out why. I didn't have the energy to care if they were scared of me again. It seems that once the battle had started going our way, more people came out to watch. Thankfully, despite the silence, they were not unmoving. People acting as medics rushed to our side, Asha handing them Eliara and waving off any help, practically unharmed.

People gasped and whispered at my missing arm and bedraggled figure. I leaned against a shipping container and slid down in a tired lump. "Owww." I moaned.

Frank practically teleported to my side in his rush to tend to me. Or maybe that was me blacking out. Who knows. "Jesus and Lord above, boy! Your arm! I don't know if we have anyone here who can handle a wound like that." I glanced to my arm, deciding it wasn't worth it to shrug, my eyelids slightly drooping.

I blinked and Asha appeared next to me despite only a second ago being five feet away next to Eliara. "No need to worry, he should have replenished his supplies to heal enough that he won't die. It'll take time, but his arm will regenerate."

"What like a lizard?" asked Frank.

I mumbled, "Don't tell Spider-Man."

"What?" Frank repeated.

She sighed, a smile finally touching her lips, "He said, 'Don't tell Spiderman.'"

"You forgot the hyphen. Everyone... forgets the hyphen." I paused, the hamster struggling to keep the wheel going. "Eliara?" I asked.

Frank sighed, "Nasty bump on her head and that cut is bad. Good job on the first aid though. It's gonna need stitches and will definitely scar, but so long as she doesn't get an infection, she should be fine."

I nodded, my head dipping dangerously. Asha announced, "I know a couple of medical spells. One of which will prevent illness and infection from taking hold. I can cast that, but I'll need someone else to learn the healing spell. It isn't strong, but it will be exponentially better than her natural healing. Will even leave less of a scar, if she even cares about that."

"Any... others... injured?" I pressed.

Frank tilted his head side to side, "A couple of Rodriguez's surviving team members took some wounds from the first encounter, but nothing bad. But you can worry about that once you're rested up. Now go to sleep, you've done enough kid."

I looked to Asha, "Keep... keep them safe." I requested.

She nodded and my vision tunneled. She whispered, a million miles away, "Sleep tight, my Lord. I'll hold down the fort." Darkness took me, then, and I knew no pain.