by Ivan Kal
Another lammergeier tried to take advantage and go for the throat, but the behemoth opened its maw wide and bit into the bird-lizard’s head, taking a chunk of it off. Then, as the one on its back tried to claw its face, it grabbed it and pulled it around far enough that it could turn its head and look at the bird-lizard. The behemoth opened its mouth, and a yellowish plume left its throat. The lammergeier’s head caught fire and burned in seconds, and the behemoth pulled the corpse from its back. The remaining lammergeiers attacked again, drawing the behemoth’s blood, but it was strong. It killed another two, and then the rest realized that they had lost and turned to flee, disappearing into the side alleys. The behemoth roared in defiance, even though it was clearly tired and covered in its own blood.
After a few moments, it shuffled to one of the corpses and pulled it to a corner, where it sat down and started to eat.
Morgan blinked, but seeing the sight of the monster decided that he could take a small risk. It’s basically free exp. Morgan pulled back from the edge and then changed his hand to his bow form. He picked up one of his enchanted arrows, a simple one that was just very sharp and sturdy. And then he nocked it, put a bit of mass from his bracelet in it, but he had no need to put even half of what he had available. He took a deep breath, then got back to the edge, carefully as to not to disturb the feeding monster, he took aim.
Piercing Shot. The arrow flew, a soft glow around its tip as it whizzed through the air toward its target. A moment later it stabbed through the monster’s head, right between its eyes and punched through. The monster didn’t even have a chance to react. It blinked once, and then collapsed to the ground. Morgan grinned and jumped down as he got a notification with his exp gain, and then he headed over to the corpse. It was a beast type, so it didn’t disappear, as he could harvest it.
He looked it over, seeing the impressive claws that it had. They were black, and almost seeming like they were made out of some sort of metal. He had Klyn consume one of its hands and then recreate the claw. To test it out he tried to stab into the behemoth’s skin, and found that it punched through the tough hide easily. It was sharp, and so tough that he couldn’t break it no matter what he tried.
He consumed the rest of the behemoth, deciding that remembering its composition was more important than harvesting it. His hand became more dense as it took in its mass, and soon enough he couldn’t even hold his hand up. He had to expel the extra mass, which wasn’t a pretty sight. As soon as Klyn separated a part of itself, it turned into an amorphous mass of matter. At a glance Morgan couldn’t even tell if it was even flesh—it looked like a cross between stone, iron and dead wood.
Finally he was finished, his hand returning back to its normal mass, and he turned toward the other monster bodies. He decided to at least take some of their meat. He had supplies, but he liked to be prepared, and the bird-lizards’ flesh looked a lot more appealing than that of the behemoth. Morgan started cutting things up, using his skills to do it quickly and efficiently while he kept a part of his mind focused on his Nature Seismic Sense to monitor his surroundings. There seemed to be enough plants around for him to be able to have a pretty solid alert system.
He was just about done with the second of the monster bodies when he detected a vibration in the stone, and something large heading his way. Quickly, he dropped everything and ran at a wall, then walked a few steps up it before he jumped to the wall nearby and then pushed off the side to grab the edge of the roof and pull himself up. His Acrobatics skill made him somewhat proficient in climbing. He got low on the roof, and waited as he started hearing the footfalls of something very large. Before long, he could see it as it rounded a corner around one of the taller buildings.
Morgan looked at the text above it and then felt his heart start to beat faster.
Mature Demi Behemoth LVL 65
This new behemoth looked vaguely like the other one, but this monster was almost five meters tall, double the size of the one that Morgan had killed. Too, its skin wasn’t bare, but instead covered in plates of black chitin-like substance that looked suspiciously like the thing that the smaller one’s claws were made out of.
The newly arrived monster came into the street where the fight took place, then looked around the ground at the dead lammergeiers. Morgan got up slowly and started backing up. This behemoth was tall enough that its head was above the buildings; if it turned its head, it would see him. Its nostrils twitched as it smelled its surroundings, then looked in the direction of where Morgan had killed the other behemoth. Leaning down, it sniffed at the blood on the ground.
It whined, and then something exploded out of it, like some sort of shockwave that didn’t affect anything. It passed over Morgan, and the monster immediately turned around and its eyes locked on his.
I guess this is a boss monster, then. The mature behemoth roared and leapt forward, crushing the building between it as its clawed hand fell down toward Morgan, whose eyes went wide.
And this is the point where I run.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Morgan threw himself to the side at the wall of a two story building and used Phase Dash. Darkness enveloped him, and when the ability ran out he landed in the middle of a room. He didn’t pause, but instead ran for the window on the far wall. He jumped through and activated Iron Skin just as the wall behind him exploded, an arm punching through followed by a roar. Debris hit him midflight and he grimaced as he tumbled out of the building and fell on the roof behind it, debris showering him. The top of the building behind him was completely blown away, and Morgan saw the head of the mature behemoth, its eyes glaring at him. It jumped forward, climbing on top of the building and crushing it beneath its feet.
Morgan didn’t pause. He rolled over the roof and then got to his feet at its edge as the debris still fell around him, some even hitting him and making him lose balance. He tumbled between two buildings as the monster smashed into the edge above him and overshot. It fell into the other building, breaking through the wall by virtue of its sheer mass.
His Phase Dash came back from cooldown but he didn’t use it just yet. He turned and ran down the street as he heard the monster push itself out of the building behind him. As soon as he got a chance, he rounded a corner to the left and then jumped to the right straight into a wall as he used Phase Dash. He entered the building and ran through it, jumping over rubble before exiting on the other side. He could hear devastation behind him, but the monster seemed to have taken a wrong turn. He continued running in the opposite direction, his speed faster than the fastest person on Earth could’ve even dreamed about.
And then something passed over him again, and Morgan heard another roar.
A detection ability? Morgan cursed as he heard the monster heading in his direction again.
He glanced back, and saw the monster cracking roofs as it headed straight for him. It pushed its clawed hand into a taller building and the swiped, sending debris flying at Morgan. His eyes widened at the size of some of the stone chunks and he jumped to the side and used Phase Dash again. Once inside the building, he tried to think about what he could do, and then he got an idea. He ran through the rooms as he pulled out his dice. He grabbed one in his left hand and focused, morphing it into a bulging mass of muscles. The monster crashed into the building behind him as he ran out. He pulled his hand back and threw the dice forward at an angle. It curved through the air, but he didn’t stop running. He grabbed his launcher and then turned while running. The behemoth destroyed the building and, as it saw him, Morgan fired. The canister hit and the dark smoke exploded around its face. The monster roared in rage and Morgan grabbed the other die and used it.
A moment later, he felt like his entire world twisted and he appeared in the air just above the rooftops, his momentum from running somehow conserved as he was flying next to the die. Damn, I threw it too hard! He had miscalculated a bit, but he had to be far enough from the monster now to lose it. He grabbed the other die from the air as he started accelerating toward
the roof, but before he could pick up any more speed he focused on his phasing skill and used it manually. Everything went dark. Unphasing when he thought he’d be near the ground, he immediately felt a pushing sensation and he was thrown out of some matter that he had tried to unphase into.
Thrown upward at an exact opposite angle of his insertion into the matter, he blinked as the world came back—just as he smashed into a wall. He cracked it, but thankfully his body didn’t break. His Iron Skin was still active, and he had nowhere near the same speed as he had when he fell from the tower. The fact that he’d survived hitting the wall wasn’t all good either, since he had no place to grab hold of. He pealed of the wall and started falling two stories to the ground. While that wasn’t a fall that would hurt too much, he unfortunately didn’t turn in time. Instead of landing on his legs, he smashed into the ground with his shoulder.
Fuck me sideways. He got to his feet, and shook his head to clear it as he turned off his Iron Skin. It was a constant drain on his energy, but with two breakthroughs that had improved his core, he had plenty of energy these days. He walked over to the edge of the building he fell behind and looked back in the direction he came from. He could hear roars and buildings being destroyed in the distance, but he thought, or hoped, that he was out of the range of its detection ability, considering he was a good two hundred or meters away from it. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances—he had no desire to fight a boss monster all alone, especially one that seemed armored as all hell. Morgan had powerful attacks, but he was not built for direct confrontations. He reloaded his launcher with another smoke canister and started walking.
The problem was that he had somehow gotten turned around and was now farther away from the tower he had been heading for. He sighed. If the monster kept to the area it was in, he would need to go around it, which sucked. But he didn’t want to fight it, so he had no choice. Or… No, not going to risk it! he thought firmly.
He started moving, trying to get as far away as possible from the monster while still heading in the general direction of the tower. He didn’t climb to the roof, as he didn’t want to make himself visible to it. And then, just as he was about to check his surroundings with his skill, he started hearing clicking sounds. Before he could even jump into cover, three sand spiders rounded the corner and saw him.
Fuuuuckkk! WHY IS IT ALWAYS SPIDERS? He raged against the unseen thing that decided these things.
Immediately, the spiders leapt at him. Morgan did the same thing and jumped at them, then used Phase Dash. While in the dash he triggered his sword form, the ability ended and he landed on the ground, the spiders now behind him. He turned around and jumped at the spiders that were in the process of turning around. Mid-air, he activated Mind Space, and time slowed down. He took in the situation in front of him, saw the spiders’ positions and estimated how long it would take each of them to turn and attack, then took in the state of the street—the walls, the rubble, how much room he had to move in. He formed a plan, and then turned off his ability.
Time returned and Morgan acted. He triggered Iron Skin as his hand went for his launcher and pulled it out. His right aimed at the spider on his far right, and he fired. He activated his Life Sense and opened his night-vision eye. The spiders blazed with life as well as heat that his eye could see. The smoke exploded and the spider he hit and the one just next to it was left confused. The last, the one off to the far left, was about to turn the entire way around, but Morgan was on it.
Morgan triggered Moderate Strength and then stabbed. The Sword of Dawning Form, the brilliant star-metal longsword, slipped in between the spider’s chitin, just between its head and body. The sword’s passive effect triggered and the wound began to sizzle as it inflicted scorching damage. With the increase to his strength, Morgan easily parted the monster’s head from its body. The spider shuddered and its body started thrashing as it died, but he was already moving on to the next monster. He entered the smoke and stopped breathing, his eyes open and seeing only smoke and a vague shape shining with life and heat. The spider was disoriented and Morgan stabbed his sword at where he thought its head was. The spider somehow detected him, even as it was enveloped in the smoke and moved. Morgan’s sword hit something and he felt resistance. He pushed and his sword cut into something soft, but the spider snapped forward with its legs.
Morgan just barely managed to evade, and then he swung his sword from below, cutting into the soft flesh again. The spider chittered and wrenched itself off. The last spider joined it and Morgan cursed as he jumped into the air and used Phase Dash. His momentum carried him up, and when the ability ended he was above the rooftops, looking down onto the smoke and the glowing shapes moving inside. He pulled out an arrow from his quiver, one of his explosive arrows, and changed his hand’s form. In the blink of an eye, he had the arrow pulled back and flying down as he started falling.
The arrow hit one of the spiders and exploded, sending the monster into the ground and the one next to it flying into a wall nearby. The shockwave of the explosion hit Morgan and slowed his descent. He switched back to his sword form and started pulling in mass into it from his bracelet as he used Gravikinesis to aim himself. He couldn’t do much but nudge himself slightly, but it was enough. He pointed his sword down and landed on the injured spider, his sword hand now holding the same mass as Morgan himself had previously as he emptied his bracelet. The sword hit the already cracked chitin of its back and pushed through, pinning the spider to the ground.
Immediately Morgan canceled his Mass Exchange and the mass snapped back into the spatial dimension of his bracelet. He pulled the sword out just in time to block the last spider trying to bite his head off. He grimaced and activated the barrier from his ring set, which he had recharged after falling down to the city. The spider moved back and then leapt forward again, its legs snapping forward to hit Morgan’s shoulder, sending him flying. The barrier exploded as he hit the wall, and he cursed as the spider kept coming. He crouched, getting below the spider as it jumped at him, and then stabbed up. The sword punched through the spider’s head, and then its body fell on top of him.
“Fucking shit,” Morgan cursed as he pushed the corpse of himself. He disabled his passive effects—Iron Skin and Moderate Strength—before sighing. The energy drain of those effects weren’t high, but he had almost depleted himself with this fight on top of him running away from the boss monster.
Before he could relax however, he heard the sound of clicking on stone.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” More spiders seemed to be coming. He turned away from the direction they were coming from and ran straight through the wall of a building.
Fucking spiders, man!
CHAPTER TWELVE
It took him nearly a full hour to lose the spiders, but then he ran into another pack of lammergeiers, and spent another two hours running from them. In the end, when he finally found a collapsed building and phased inside of it, he was completely spent. He settled in on the ground and read through the notifications that gave him experience. In his running away he had collapsed a few buildings with explosives on his pursuers, so he had gained some exp. He wasn’t close to leveling just yet, but he had been gaining a lot of exp from the monsters, probably because he was the only participant in their deaths.
He had tried to run in the direction of the tower, but had managed to get only a bit closer to it. He had ran in an arc around the area where the big behemoth. He resigned himself to not being able to reach the tower today, and decided that the best thing he could do was rest. But before that, he needed to do something. His night-vision eye was a great help in the shadowy city, but having to keep one eye closed while it was active was annoying. He had originally decided on changing only one eye because he worried about something going wrong. Now he knew that there weren’t really any issues with his new eye. So, he decided to change his other eye as well. He felt at his energy supplies and figured that he had enough to do it—ever since his class changed and he’d gain
ed the Legacy of the Heart of the Mountain trait, his energy had been replenishing faster than anyone else he knew, which was an incredible bonus to an ascended.
He took a deep breath, and then started the process. The pain of consuming his flesh was the worst, but once he got to the eye it got better. In a couple of minutes, his regular eye was consumed and his new one, looking the same as the old one, was in place. He had to overwrite his forms, so he did that first. He saved both of his ordinary human eyes as the Basic Eye Form, and then changed both of them to the eyes of the Midnight Fire Owl, and saved that as Night Eye Form.
After he was finished, he felt exhaustion nearly overwhelm him, and he quickly pulled out his bedding and went to sleep.
***
The next morning, Morgan took the time to make a small fire and try out the lammergeier meat. It didn’t taste too bad, but the smoke from the fire caused a few issues in the collapsed building. By the time Morgan was done, the room was filled with smoke, so he just phased to another room before he spent the entire morning planning for the day. He changed the layout of his satchel, put in a couple of explosive canisters and poison cloud canisters, as well as ones filled with smoke and acid. He didn’t think that he would need his plant canisters, since there was plenty of flora around if he needed to use it, but as an afterthought he added one of them. He placed a couple of simple explosive orbs and smoke bombs on his belt, then fastened his quiver to his hip. He started putting in arrows, placing them in the slots that were designed to hold them tight enough that they wouldn’t spill when he jumped and rolled.
He put in his dark-iron arrows, as well as a couple blinding arrows. Lastly, he put in four of his specially made arrows with seeds in their core. It had taken him quite a lot of energy to create them, but they were easier to manipulate with his Phytokinesis. He switched back to his raiment, since he really missed his spatial spaces in combat. Figuring that the risk of being smelled was worth it. In his two spatial pockets he put the exploding arrows in his right pocket, and put ordinary wooden arrows in the left.
