Chapter 55: The First Battle

Elias felt a chill in his heart, not from fear, but from the acknowledgement that whatever was out there, cloaked in darkness, was aware and was not a Beast. He felt his Title, the Good Hunter, activate, and he could subtly feel a shifting in the claws sticking out of his hands, and he knew they had suddenly become more dangerous.

Whatever was in the darkness was deemed worthy prey. Elias had learned to fight from the Order, but he knew he still lacked advanced techniques due to his weak mortal physique; everything he had learnt would have to serve at this moment.

He had already braced himself for what would reveal itself from the darkness, but as they came forward, Elias knew he could never have readied himself for what he was seeing.

The first thing he heard was a wet dragging noise, as if something was being pulled across the rough stony ground, and then he saw them… they were babies, but that was the only benign description he could give them. They came from the darkness, slow and heavy, and their tortured breathing sent ripples of rot and sickness that almost made him gag.

If they were standing, they would be at least twenty feet tall, instead they crawled, and their massive pale head that was as white as a fish belly scraped the ground, causing deep injuries that were slowly destroying their lower jaw. Their heads were too large for their bodies, occupying almost half their total body length.

Their bodies did not have the strength to carry their heads off the ground, and so they had to crawl and slowly scrape away their faces on the ground. Elias could see several of these babies whose heads had been disfigured so badly that their entire lower jaws were gone, and only their massive black tongue, free from its housing, was sliding across the ground.

Massive white eyes that appeared to be blind peered into the darkness, but something else was directing these creatures, as they moved with purpose. He could see a long umbilical cord snaking from under them that led into the darkness. The cord twitched in rhythm to their movements as if these things were puppets under the string of a master, but Elias could feel the enormous vitality flowing through the bodies of every one of them, and he had counted twenty so far emerging from the darkness.

He felt a strain in his mind that he was beginning to associate with the onset of madness, and he forcefully pushed down the crazy feeling in his head that made him want to burst into laughter.

Elias shook his head. If he lost his focus, he would die; it was that simple, and he had not endured everything up to this point just to die to what was most likely the first of an infinite number of monsters he would be seeing throughout his lifetime.

The nearest one, the biggest, and the least damaged, and from the mucus covering its body, it seemed as if it had not been long since it was born. The creature lifted its massive head just enough for Elias to see the black tongue curl like a worm, and it tasted the air, then lashed toward him without any warning.

Elias sidestepped, feeling the air compress ahead of the tongue as it snapped past his face, close enough to feel the wet heat and the smell of rot from it. His body reacted just as fast as he could think, and he slashed down with his right claws. The purple blades bit into the tongue mid-lash, digging deep into it as black fluid sprayed. The creature shrieked with a high, gurgling sound that echoed off the walls like a baby crying underwater.

That feeling of madness threatened to rise up again as Elias wanted to laugh and cry along with the creature, but he suppressed it, and with a grunt of effort, he pushed his bladed hand further downward, and the tongue tore free.

Immediately, he could sense several things happening inside of him. A flood of Lumina entered his body as the tongue that he cut free disintegrated into ash. What was thrilling was that he could sense that this Lumina was entering through the bladed hand he used in cutting this creature’s tongue.

The creature thrashed in pain, head slamming the ground hard enough to crack stone and bouncing up, revealing its throat. Elias’s eyes shone bright like green stars; that was an opening that he would not forgive.

He stepped in close and drove both sets of claws into the soft underside of its throat. The flesh parted easily, almost too easily. No muscle, no bone resistance. Just a wet give that poured a disgusting amount of black blood all over Elias, but he was not distracted by this. He bent his knees a bit, creating tension from his feet all the way up to his core, and then Elias ripped upward with a roar, pulling out every single shred of strength his body was capable of outputting.

Elias felt his shoulder twist out of his sockets from the sheer force he used, and his muscles had certainly torn a bit under the unreasonable strain he had placed them, but he had succeeded, and that was all that mattered.

The head of the shrieking creature split open like overripe fruit. Black fluid and red light poured out, as its vitality flooded into Elias’s body even without him making any Incantations to collect them.

He could see that the nine spots of light on his chest glowed, and they became vortexes that drew the Vitality from the body of the creature, which convulsed once, then sagged.

This creature should have been able to still fight for a short while despite its head being cut in two, but the unreasonable suction from Elias’s body and claws that drained its vitality killed every spark of life inside it, but Elias had barely consumed ten percent of the vitality he was sensing inside this creature before the umbilical cord below it snapped taut, and it was yanked backward into the dark.

Elias wanted to curse in anger, but he knew that this would be a mistake; he was already being surrounded, and any of his attention not devoted to the battle was only leaving space for his opponents to take advantage.

Two came straight at him, heads low, tongues whipping, a third flanked left, using its bulk to try and push him towards the concoming danger, but thankfullly, due to their size, not more than three could attack him at the same time and so the rest stayed back, shrieking in the weird babyish voice that clawed into Elias’s mind, threatening to drag madness out of it.

Elias met the first two head-on; he was already aware of one of their weakness after the first kill, and a strategy was forming in his mind. Sensing as well as hearing his shoulder pop back into place, Elias ducked the tongue coming from the left, but he was not quick enough as he felt it graze his shoulder, causing a sting of pain as the skin and part of his muscles were scrapped of.

This wound did not make him flinch as he pushed forward towards the attacking creature and stabbed upward with his left claws, catching the underside of the jaw. The creature reared, trying to crush him under its head, and Elias twisted as he drove his right claws into its eye socket and pushed as deeply as he could while moving his bladed fingers inside to shred everything it could reach. The white orb burst like a water balloon, causing bright red light to flare as the creature screamed and collapsed forward, dragging Elias down with it as he could not quickly remove his hand from the dying creature’s skull.

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