Tom ignored the weak attempt to psych him out, and concentrated on understanding what he had to fight. He had honestly never fought anything like it, and it looked powerful. Given the way the coloured balls were orbiting, and the traces of magic that followed their perpetual motion, he suspected he would face magic-based attacks. However, he knew that it was only rank four, and, once you had a class, getting the early levels was not difficult. It being so ranked lowly meant it must have a serious flaw in its makeup. That did not gel with it having magic-based attacks, because ranged magic attacks supported safe levelling. Something was wrong with it.
“Will it hurt when I cut... When I cut… um… what is it called again? Will it hurt when I cut your hair?”
He ignored its deranged prattling.
There was no way to tell what it could do before engaging. Hopefully, it still being rank four suggested a lack of ability issue rather than age. Though, if it was weak because it was young that spoke of a minimal experience, which he could exploit.
Tom licked his lips. Delay and information-gathering could only help him. While a bipedal form was not common, carbon-based biological ones were. Functionally, it already knew most of his limitations, and the reverse did not apply. He needed to try to get more information before engaging, and from how it was carrying on, it might actually be dumb enough for such an attempt to work. He cleared his throat. “Sir, Mister. I think there’s been a mistake. You’re too powerful to fight me.”
The thing laughed.
“You’re way, way too powerful. Please, spare me. Give me a chance.”
“And how would I do that, little flesh bag? Give me a leg to play with and we’ll talk. The way tendons and bones work has always been fascinating.”
By telling me your weaknesses, Tom thought, but he couldn’t give away the reason he was delaying. “I don’t know. Maybe by not using your magic, that will equalise things.”
It chuckled. “That wouldn’t help you, because I already don’t do magic - well, at least not offensive magic.”
Tom pretended to open his eyes wide in wonder. He doubted it had a skill to help interpret body language, but it was worth trying. “Wow. That’s amazing. If that’s the case, then how do you kill things?”
As he watched, one of the golf sized glowing balls came out of close in rotations and then slammed into the ground about three metres from its centre of mass. It smashed into nothing and then reformed back inside the creature. Tom knew that it was the same one, because he was tracking the unique colours and had already counted all forty-six spheres that made it up. It had only taken a second for the ball to reform. If they had a ten-minute countdown before being recreated, or even a one minute one, he could have baited all the balls out and then killed it, but that, unfortunately, wasn’t happening now.
“I’m awesome, right. Look at how strong I am.”
Before doing anything more, he mentally analysed the collision. There had been a loud thump, so the attack packed some force, but from what he could see, the blocks were not cracked, which told Tom that it was, relatively speaking, a weak blow. The stone pavers might look imposing, but they were surprisingly fragile. From experience, individuals who were only a few ranks higher than what faced him could do significant damage to the stonework.
“You’re so strong. To make it fair, I think you should only do one of them at a time.
“I’m not going to handicap myself, because if I do so, I might injure you more than I want. Which, long term, threatens the amount of fun I can have. Your tendons don’t stretch themselves and I understand they die if your liquidy stuff can’t reach them.”
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Tom tried to look scared. If he understood the enemy right, fighting the creature would be a lot like having stones thrown at you. Individual blows from those balls would not kill him. Defensively, it almost certainly had shields protecting it, but his special Power Strike ability should get through them easily. The fight was going to be a long one. Unless he was greatly mistaken, he was probably going to have to crack a significant number of the odd balls of light that made up its structure to disable and kill it.
With a frown, he strode forward, spear in hand.
It focused on him, and time immediately slowed significantly. Two balls left its orbit and were coming at him from opposing directions. The decelerated time from his trait allowed him to easily track them and, even with his now barely responsive body, he was able to sidestep one of them before he deliberately allowed the other to smash into his thigh. He did it because he had to know how hard they hit in preparation for when the fight escalated in response to the other person realising its own life was in danger. Tom was certain it could use more than two balls at a time. He just hoped that the number was less than ten. For this first encounter, he even slid the leather armour aside to better measure the force of the impact. That was a decision he immediately regretted.
The blow hurt a lot but not enough to demand immediately healing. Just like when it had hit the ground the ball of light broke and then reformed near the main body. The one that missed him rotated around and restarted the orbit close to its primary structure.
“Are you really that slow? I wasn’t even trying, and I hit you. Meat bags are useless”
Tom ignored it as his brain calculated how many of these blows he could suffer before he would have to start healing them. He probably couldn’t tank any to the head, but anywhere else he was probably safe. Direct strikes to bones would hurt and might cause stress fractures, but those could be easily patched.
Another two came for him. He allowed one to strike his back to buy him time to intercept the other with a Power Strike-infused blow. It shattered instantly, and he grunted as the other slammed between his shoulder blades. The hit was almost hard enough to lift his feet off the ground, but the armour did its job by spreading the force, so he wasn’t hurt badly.
An idea to manipulate its stupidity occurred to him, so he squealed in pain and pretended to be far more hurt than he was.
He watched as, two seconds later, close to its main body, both the one he had speared and the one that had struck him reformed.
Tom frowned in annoyance at that outcome. It was what he had expected, but it was still annoying. Breaking the ball with his spear had slowed the reformation, but not sufficiently enough to matter. He was going to have to charge the creature and attack the main body. Potentially, the only way to kill it was to break the bigger spheres.
“Too slow, you can’t beat me. Can’t even get close. What evil did you do to be here? I butchered these meat bags with big eyes and lots of fluffy fur.”
From that description, Tom could imagine what had happened. The psycho, even if it didn’t realise it, had experimented, or more precisely tortured babies, it was no wonder he had been sentenced to death. “I cut up my siblings. You need to hear this. It was amazing.”
“Are you serious? Are you trying to monologue mid-battle like you’re strong?”
Tom shrugged. “I’m proud of my work. I was able to stretch the skin of one for over ten metres.”
“Really? That’s so much more than I could do with the little ones I borrowed.”
“Yes. You have to pay attention to biology.” With a deep breath, he then launched into a speech, using his extensive medical knowledge to explain the process in excruciating detail. He made a point of talking about how his head was nearly indestructible and the care he took around the chest area so he didn’t accidently kill them while making his flesh sculptures. The dumb creature didn’t even question why this random person had the same hobby that it did.
What he was saying was being replayed to the crowd and, from what he could interpret from their reactions, half of them loved what they were hearing. They were almost as deranged as his opponent, who was hopelessly enthralled by his story. It must have also thought he was an idiot for giving away the roadmap of how to kill one of his kind to his opponent in a death match.
“That’s so amazing. You said you stretched the living body over ten metres. I wonder if I can do that with you? So, when doing surgery, I start with the what you flesh bags call feet.”
Tom didn’t answer. It was clear he had distracted it for as long as he was going to get away with. He had successfully wasted almost ten minutes, and was that much closer to getting another point of fate to use.