Even though they had made mistakes though I didn’t have the luxury of being able to take advantage of those weaknesses and whittling them down because another pack of scavengers were rushing over to join in on the battle.

I couldn’t properly focus on them but they seemed to number around fifteen.

I was powerful yes, but I was also alone and I was starting to get dreadfully hungry.

Not to the point where I felt like my strength was being sapped but I still had to end this battle soon.

And rapidly an idea of how to go about it came to life in my mind.

These scavengers were weak, they were baited easily and fell for feints with a naivety that even a newborn like myself didn’t possess.

They were also ridged, they lacked my flexibility. Those sticks inside of them might make them less easy to eat but it also meant that they were limited in how they could react to me.

If I could just take care of their swords then I would be able to butcher them.

And so, in the span of just a few seconds, I had come up with what should hopefully be a good plan.

It would cost me a fair few of my tentacles but if it meant I could rob them of their greatest asset, it would be worth it.

Lunging forwards, I reach out with my tentacles towards them, and the scavengers naturally strike out at my appendages.

A few of my tentacles sadly get severed but most of them remain more or less whole.

And then, I wrap my tentacles around the swords embedded in them and pull back hard.

The scavengers for their part pull back equally hard. While their comrades who still have their swords get ready to cleave through my exposed tentacles.

But I had my opening.

Surging forwards, I quickly latch onto the frontmost scavengers with my tendrils and start delving into their skin with my tendrils, as though they were sand.

The horrific screeches they release as a result help break the focus of the other scavengers and let me utilise the remaining tentacles I had to snark around their ally's bottommost tentacles.

They don’t even notice as they’re to shaken by their friend's screeches.

I pull them off balance with ease and make their chaotic formation even more disorganised.

It did mean that the swords slipped through my grip but that wasn’t important anymore.

Five scavengers were on the ground, three were screaming as I drilled into them, and the remaining four couldn’t properly help the three I was brutalising since their writhing comrades were in the way.

It was a grand and glorious success, but the fight was still far from over.

I had to keep my advantage, I had to make sure their numbers meant nothing. So, just before the four scavengers were able to get into a proper position to attack me, I threw one of the scavengers I was piercing into at them.

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The whole time I make sure I'm wounding the scavengers I pulled down as well. Tearing at their tentacles and rubbing sand all over them to confuse their senses.

Using the time throwing the scavenger bought me, I finish off the other two and drop their desecrated forms to the ground.

This sadly meant that the four scavengers had a more easy path to get to me now though, since their friends weren’t in the way anymore.

It was a shame, if I just was a little bit more conservative I might have been able to kill off the grounded scavengers as well.

But even with all my damaged and amputated appendages, I was doubtful this was a battle I would lose.

The scavengers seemed to feel the same way, as the ones that were facing me slowly started to back away.

In response, I let go of the scavengers on the ground and then charged at them.

None could be allowed to live. That was my creator's order.

This time I don’t shy away from the charge and slam into their swords, disrupting their improvised retreat but also earning myself some deep wounds in the process

Two of them get sent flying by my mass but the other two managed to barely dodge out of my way and are only lightly impacted.

Before the dazed ones can recover, I start lifting them up and tearing into their centres of mass. Splattering their red innards all over the sand. Only one of them even put up any proper defence, the other one was too out of it to do anything but scream.

Their friends didn’t even try to help them, they just scramble up and try to flee again. They don’t even pick up their swords.

They make it only a few dozen feet before I finish up with the other two and run them down.

Then they meet the same fate as their peers.

It was brutal and unsophisticated but this primal attack of mine had worked, the scavengers that had tried to retreat were dead.

Now all that was left was just a mere five scavengers.

Or not.

For as I had hunted down this demoralised group the new pack had arrived.

There were sixteen of them, my original guess wasn’t too far off the mark.

So that meant that there were now twenty one scavengers I had to deal with.

I was going to have to rack my absent brain on how to deal with this situation. My growing hunger didn’t help make thinking easier either.

Three of them were patching up their wounded allies but the rest were gathered in a straight line facing me.

One of them screeches something though and they change their formation into a circle around their wounded comrades.

Now at least I didn’t have a solid wall of flesh and steel staring me down again.

Why had they done that though?

Was it to trap me or something? Did they think I was some dumb brute who was going to charge into their centre where they could butcher me?

Idiots. No, what I was going to do was hurl clumps of sand at them. Then if it worked and they were blinded I would throw a corpse or two at them.

Which would hopefully disrupt their formation and limit their manoeuvrability.

Then, well then I was going to slaughter them.

Actually what if I used the corpses as weapons? The main difficulty I was having was how their swords would slice through my tentacles and tendrils if I got too close.

Wouldn’t swinging around a scavenger corpse solve this? I was a genius!

I started looping my limbs around the tentacles of the duo but it was proving more energy intensive to lift and swing them around than I had expected.

If only I wasn’t so hungry.

it was fine though, I might not be able to swing around two but one was still manageable.

Carefully, I grasp the more intact corpse around its locomotive tentacles and then I start to head towards the pack.

I was going to purge each and every last one of them.

Or die trying.