A tendril blindsided RJ. With a part of her shield engaged in a deadlock and detached from the main shield, she had a limited shield covering a limited area. Converting her lower half into a shield will thin its layers and risk a wider opening.
In the last moment, as the Dandralith took advantage of the rhino’s current opening, her body swayed, then parted, and swirled away, dodging every tendril that meant certain death.
RJ didn’t have time to ponder over her luck or the cause of these improbable movements. You get an opening, thank your luck and take it. Questions come after you survived the ordeal.
Dandralith used more mana. All her attacks lack focus and sense. She realized the human was behind the quater:node’s sudden speed, but it neither chanted nor used direct mana to control the quater:node. The human did gesture with its feeble hands at times. Yet during serious and fast movements, it stayed still as a rock.
RJ concentrated on her ultimate move while stepping closer to her detached shield. She had to regain or use it to gain back the edge. These lucky movements wouldn’t last for long. Or she didn’t want to rely on them for too long.
Tetsu ran on pure adrenaline and lies, begging his body to cooperate for a single minute. “Hang in there… forty seconds more to go.”
Three souls fighting toward three goals, all the while hoping for the same result: victory.
A sudden menacing presence looms over the battlefield, causing everyone to freeze in place. They are overwhelmed by a force of bloodlust that threatens their goals, efforts, and very existence. Although the creature could easily kill them all with a single thought, all they hear is a simple chirp coming from deep within the forest. This is the same place where Tetsu remembered stumbling into the leader of the Dandralith.
The chirping sound was sharp and overlapped with several chirps, making a distinct sound of terror. Only the Dandralith understood the signal or command conveyed by her boss as she retrieved every tendril and floated lower, consuming a light blue liquid from a flask as she planted herself into the soil.
Tetsu cursed his stupidity. “Of fucking course, it has weird stuff to restore the lost resources.” He bit his lower lip and clenched his fist, trying to overcome his anger. Before it clouded his judgment.
The primary approach was to improve its lower-level attack by using the rhino as a punching bag. Why wouldn’t it bring extra resources to stay longer? How did he miss such a simple fact and where in the hell did it hide such a fragile flask? It removes the blue flask from thin air, like magic.
‘A skill?’ Wondered Tetsu. ‘I need one of those...’ He scolded himself and made theories to hack into a storage skill. With one of those, he can travel deeper into the forest and not worry about food or water.
Since the boss chimed in, the Dandralith ignored Tetsu and all of his tricks. Dandralith solely focused on killing RJ and Tetsu could only help RJ dodge, as her movements got even more sluggish than before.
‘Is it the heat?’ Tetsu diverts another tendril away from RJ. ‘Fatigue?’ He sees RJ lose her complexion. Her bright Barbie pink faded away into a light transparent pink. ‘No. No.’ He stutters. With a swish and a flick of his wrists, he manipulates RJ’s gelatinous body to dodge a couple more tendrils. All the while heading closer to her. Finally stepping beside RJ, Tetsu switched to the skill ‘Pave Path’ to help him drag RJ behind the veil.
The Dandralith might break the veil and pursue him further, but Tetsu had no other choice but to flee behind the veil.
For the Dandralith. No, her boss had figured out and conveyed the biggest weakness of Tenco Ten.
Bluff.
Once they catch onto your bluff, you’re done. Only a fool lets their guard down near a master manipulator. There are ways to overcome this setback, but sadly, Tetsu required a strong offensive skill to overcome his current situation and maintain his bluff.
‘It always comes down to power.’ Tetsu cusses his fate and luck.
No matter which bag of tricks he used, the Dandralith didn’t so much as flinch. Boss Dandralith’s presence snatched its phobia of smoke before retreating. Now the Dandralith knew the level one human is weak and all his tricks were just that, tricks.
It tanked every attack Tetsu threw at her, while out maneuvering his fatigued body at every turn. In time, even his body caught up with his lies, making Tetsu trip over a small pebble. Good thing his body wasn’t in control. The right rune activating at the right time and right position flipped him through the air, dodging several fatal injuries. However, RJ didn’t have such luck, while Tetsu’s mind prioritized his body over the rhino.
RJ was flung closer to the tree. A small gash on her side made the entire body gelatinous crumble.
“No, no, no, no...” Tetsu screamed in disbelief.
He headbutts a burning tendril, using its heat to evaporate tears. He couldn’t afford a blurry vision right now. All his movements depended upon activating runes upon sight.
Yet the tears didn’t listen to his pleas or his conviction. They felt the heart squeeze and bleed from an invisible cut, and they wailed sharing its pain.
RJ twists her mold upward to form a smile, stunning Tetsu to halt for the very first time.
‘How? How could they smile?’ Tetsu questioned their resolve, blamed his incompetence, and gave in to fate, still unable to smile.
BOOM!
Before the explosion bloomed into a flower, time slowed, and Tetsu leaped to action.
A tendril swung from his right. He didn’t even have to turn his gaze to spot the incoming attack.
RJ is weak and now he can separate it from the mold and run…
SLASH! KABOOM.!
The tendril passes by and the entire battlefield goes up in flames. Tetsu channels and forces mana from his upper body, creating a thin barrier between him and the explosion.
The spores were already downwind and the explosion was far enough for him to survive the aftermath.
Tetsu wanted to use the smoke from the explosion, but Dandralith planned one move ahead, already stationing her tendrils to drive off the smoke.
Four tendrils, armed with strong wind currents, blew the smoke up and away from the battlefield.
Tetsu spots the initial tendril swinging backward for a second strike. He fixated his eyes on RJ and he didn’t see the initial attack so much as grace RJ. She was pale, but neither the tendril slash nor the explosion affected her.
“It missed.” He told himself. “Move.” He demanded his legs to follow instructions. ‘Just a few steps.’ Pleaded Tetsu.
Two steps to reach RJ and two more to cross through the veil. Tetsu willed more mana into the runes, yet his legs wouldn’t budge. None of the runes on RJ would activate either.
Was it fatigue or lack of mana? He didn’t understand nor had a calm mind to analyze.
This is the difference between an intellectual fight. Your tricks never work twice, which also meant his revenge shall never come to pass.
If his legs won’t listen... Tetsu balls his hands in frustration. Even his fingers wouldn’t part, denying him access to grasp the floor and crawl ahead.
Tetsu grits his teeth tight enough for them to bleed. He falls forward and uses his arms to military crawl ahead. “Just two feet. Two more steps…”
SPLAT!
A massive drill penetrates through RJ’s shield, breaking and splattering everything in and around RJ to bits.
“No!” Tetsu still denied the truth. He forced and commanded the surrounding mana to heed his call, yet couldn’t pull his body any closer.
The drill kept assaulting each broken part, turning it to dust.
Tetsu didn’t understand how and didn’t care why, but it realized... and this time, it was here to finish the job.
Finish his friend.
Tetsu struggled to speak as he coughed up blood while pleading with Dandralith to stop.
“Please. Stop. You won. Blah!” He vomits blood yet keeps going. “Please let us be. We will do... Anything.” Tetsu raised his palms in defeat and begged the Dandralith to stop, but all he heard in response was a sly laugh.
A laugh. A mock. The final victory chime kept resonating in his ear.
In rage, Tetsu raises his fist and tendril grabs hold of it before he plots his next move.
The tendril slowly wraps itself around Tetsu’s hand, crushing it bit by bit, and increasing the pressure every time Tetsu relaxes from a bone-crushing pain.
The Dandralith took her revenge slow and steady. Every second she filled Tetsu’s vision with its friend’s dust being spilled around. Its ears rang with her cynical laughter, and a single sense was left as the human’s parting gift.
The sense of pain.
She unraveled the tendrils only once Tetsu stopped responding to the pain.
Tetsu’s hand was left mangled, with bones protruding from different locations. It broke each bone into several pieces before allowing the bone to rupture Tetsu’s skin. Yet he still wanted to fight. Even without his body’s cooperation, Tetsu wanted to land one final blow.
To show his resolve. Quench his anger.
This unfamiliar emotion might be the influence of his Crimsonfae tooth, but if it can help him get his revenge, snap him out of this miserable state, and maybe, just maybe, reduce his guilt, he shall gladly give his soul.
The Dandralith might have had its first two wishes, but Tetsu wouldn’t let it have the last. He would not die by giving it the satisfaction of an overwhelming victory.
Tetsu commands his legs to move. With no response, he peers down to find the floor beneath his torso. His entire lower half was missing, and he stood on his torso.
Following the blood trail before him, Tetsu spots his legs ten feet away. ‘That is why you defied my orders.’ He peered at them with a dead expression.
The first tendril was meant for him. Focusing solely on RJ, wanting to protect her, he let his guard down and the Dandralith took advantage of the opening.
It sliced him in two and he didn’t even notice his missing legs until now.
A certain threshold was crossed and while this wasn’t the first time it happened, the timing and absurdity of the threshold still amused Tetsu. An overload of the pain receptors caused them to shut down.
Tetsu should be glad, but how does one be glad over a failure? The only function it carried and had to carry, it couldn’t anymore.
Isn’t that the definition of failure?
Like him.
Even when the odds are stacked in his favor, he failed. Without the Crimsonfae tooth, Tetsu wondered if he would even have the guts to fight or demand revenge.
He deemed revenge a petty emotion, but now when he looks back at those days, maybe he didn’t have the power to carry such a strong emotion.
Kile’s words made sense now. “If you could... would you?”
While Tetsu was unable to muster a smile, he did laugh hysterically on the inside. Come to think of it, his body never left his side. His legs would not listen to him as they literally did not receive the signal to move. They were already severed, and the thought of crawling ten feet without legs made him snicker.
Even Tetsu’s eye stopped leaking after he commanded. The heatwaves played a major role, but they stopped, like his pain receptors.
With two functionaries down, he once again got the upper hand over that fucking flower. His lack of pain and tears dampened the Dandralith’s mood and Tetsu fucking loved every single second as he guessed its ugly frown behind all that pollen.
Now, if only he can smile. He would be crowned the victor.
After what felt like hours of trying and with a second mingled arm, Tetsu threw a dead smile at the Dandralith.
The corners of his lips curled up in the slightest while his face and eyes stayed dead in a neutral position. This smile resembled one short and simple sentence. ‘Fuck you, I won.’
Mother nature congratulated Tetsu with a warm breeze, soothing him from the inside out. After a while, she turned cold, soothing him from the outside and calming his insides.
Tiny fairies joined in on the celebration, dancing to the tunes of the wind, swaying right and left, and back and forth, never missing a beat and never crossing the line.
New plants took life to form the most luxurious bed, which smelt like peonies under the winter solstice and when the time came, the fairies shone brighter, claiming everything in their path to enter eternal slumber.
═─┈─{═E═}─┈─═
A tendril blindsided RJ. With a part of her shield engaged in a deadlock and detached from the main shield, she had a limited shield covering a limited area. Converting her lower half into a shield will thin its layers and risk a wider opening.
In the last moment, as the Dandralith took advantage of the rhino’s current opening, her body swayed, then parted, and swirled away, dodging every tendril that meant certain death.
RJ didn’t have time to ponder over her luck or the cause of these improbable movements. You get an opening, thank your luck and take it. Questions come after you survived the ordeal.
Dandralith used more mana. All her attacks lack focus and sense. She realized the human was behind the quater:node’s sudden speed, but it neither chanted nor used direct mana to control the quater:node. The human did gesture with its feeble hands at times. Yet during serious and fast movements, it stayed still as a rock.
RJ concentrated on her ultimate move while stepping closer to her detached shield. She had to regain or use it to gain back the edge. These lucky movements wouldn’t last for long. Or she didn’t want to rely on them for too long.
Tetsu ran on pure adrenaline and lies, begging his body to cooperate for a single minute. “Hang in there… forty seconds more to go.”
Three souls fighting toward three goals, all the while hoping for the same result: victory.
A sudden menacing presence looms over the battlefield, causing everyone to freeze in place. They are overwhelmed by a force of bloodlust that threatens their goals, efforts, and very existence. Although the creature could easily kill them all with a single thought, all they hear is a simple chirp coming from deep within the forest. This is the same place where Tetsu remembered stumbling into the leader of the Dandralith.
The chirping sound was sharp and overlapped with several chirps, making a distinct sound of terror. Only the Dandralith understood the signal or command conveyed by her boss as she retrieved every tendril and floated lower, consuming a light blue liquid from a flask as she planted herself into the soil.
Tetsu cursed his stupidity. “Of fucking course, it has weird stuff to restore the lost resources.” He bit his lower lip and clenched his fist, trying to overcome his anger. Before it clouded his judgment.
The primary approach was to improve its lower-level attack by using the rhino as a punching bag. Why wouldn’t it bring extra resources to stay longer? How did he miss such a simple fact and where in the hell did it hide such a fragile flask? It removes the blue flask from thin air, like magic.
‘A skill?’ Wondered Tetsu. ‘I need one of those...’ He scolded himself and made theories to hack into a storage skill. With one of those, he can travel deeper into the forest and not worry about food or water.
Since the boss chimed in, the Dandralith ignored Tetsu and all of his tricks. Dandralith solely focused on killing RJ and Tetsu could only help RJ dodge, as her movements got even more sluggish than before.
‘Is it the heat?’ Tetsu diverts another tendril away from RJ. ‘Fatigue?’ He sees RJ lose her complexion. Her bright Barbie pink faded away into a light transparent pink. ‘No. No.’ He stutters. With a swish and a flick of his wrists, he manipulates RJ’s gelatinous body to dodge a couple more tendrils. All the while heading closer to her. Finally stepping beside RJ, Tetsu switched to the skill ‘Pave Path’ to help him drag RJ behind the veil.
The Dandralith might break the veil and pursue him further, but Tetsu had no other choice but to flee behind the veil.
For the Dandralith. No, her boss had figured out and conveyed the biggest weakness of Tenco Ten.
Bluff.
Once they catch onto your bluff, you’re done. Only a fool lets their guard down near a master manipulator. There are ways to overcome this setback, but sadly, Tetsu required a strong offensive skill to overcome his current situation and maintain his bluff.
‘It always comes down to power.’ Tetsu cusses his fate and luck.
No matter which bag of tricks he used, the Dandralith didn’t so much as flinch. Boss Dandralith’s presence snatched its phobia of smoke before retreating. Now the Dandralith knew the level one human is weak and all his tricks were just that, tricks.
It tanked every attack Tetsu threw at her, while out maneuvering his fatigued body at every turn. In time, even his body caught up with his lies, making Tetsu trip over a small pebble. Good thing his body wasn’t in control. The right rune activating at the right time and right position flipped him through the air, dodging several fatal injuries. However, RJ didn’t have such luck, while Tetsu’s mind prioritized his body over the rhino.
RJ was flung closer to the tree. A small gash on her side made the entire body gelatinous crumble.
“No, no, no, no...” Tetsu screamed in disbelief.
He headbutts a burning tendril, using its heat to evaporate tears. He couldn’t afford a blurry vision right now. All his movements depended upon activating runes upon sight.
Yet the tears didn’t listen to his pleas or his conviction. They felt the heart squeeze and bleed from an invisible cut, and they wailed sharing its pain.
RJ twists her mold upward to form a smile, stunning Tetsu to halt for the very first time.
‘How? How could they smile?’ Tetsu questioned their resolve, blamed his incompetence, and gave in to fate, still unable to smile.
BOOM!
Before the explosion bloomed into a flower, time slowed, and Tetsu leaped to action.
A tendril swung from his right. He didn’t even have to turn his gaze to spot the incoming attack.
RJ is weak and now he can separate it from the mold and run…
SLASH! KABOOM.!
The tendril passes by and the entire battlefield goes up in flames. Tetsu channels and forces mana from his upper body, creating a thin barrier between him and the explosion.
The spores were already downwind and the explosion was far enough for him to survive the aftermath.
Tetsu wanted to use the smoke from the explosion, but Dandralith planned one move ahead, already stationing her tendrils to drive off the smoke.
Four tendrils, armed with strong wind currents, blew the smoke up and away from the battlefield.
Tetsu spots the initial tendril swinging backward for a second strike. He fixated his eyes on RJ and he didn’t see the initial attack so much as grace RJ. She was pale, but neither the tendril slash nor the explosion affected her.
“It missed.” He told himself. “Move.” He demanded his legs to follow instructions. ‘Just a few steps.’ Pleaded Tetsu.
Two steps to reach RJ and two more to cross through the veil. Tetsu willed more mana into the runes, yet his legs wouldn’t budge. None of the runes on RJ would activate either.
Was it fatigue or lack of mana? He didn’t understand nor had a calm mind to analyze.
This is the difference between an intellectual fight. Your tricks never work twice, which also meant his revenge shall never come to pass.
If his legs won’t listen... Tetsu balls his hands in frustration. Even his fingers wouldn’t part, denying him access to grasp the floor and crawl ahead.
Tetsu grits his teeth tight enough for them to bleed. He falls forward and uses his arms to military crawl ahead. “Just two feet. Two more steps…”
SPLAT!
A massive drill penetrates through RJ’s shield, breaking and splattering everything in and around RJ to bits.
“No!” Tetsu still denied the truth. He forced and commanded the surrounding mana to heed his call, yet couldn’t pull his body any closer.
The drill kept assaulting each broken part, turning it to dust.
Tetsu didn’t understand how and didn’t care why, but it realized... and this time, it was here to finish the job.
Finish his friend.
Tetsu struggled to speak as he coughed up blood while pleading with Dandralith to stop.
“Please. Stop. You won. Blah!” He vomits blood yet keeps going. “Please let us be. We will do... Anything.” Tetsu raised his palms in defeat and begged the Dandralith to stop, but all he heard in response was a sly laugh.
A laugh. A mock. The final victory chime kept resonating in his ear.
In rage, Tetsu raises his fist and tendril grabs hold of it before he plots his next move.
The tendril slowly wraps itself around Tetsu’s hand, crushing it bit by bit, and increasing the pressure every time Tetsu relaxes from a bone-crushing pain.
The Dandralith took her revenge slow and steady. Every second she filled Tetsu’s vision with its friend’s dust being spilled around. Its ears rang with her cynical laughter, and a single sense was left as the human’s parting gift.
The sense of pain.
She unraveled the tendrils only once Tetsu stopped responding to the pain.
Tetsu’s hand was left mangled, with bones protruding from different locations. It broke each bone into several pieces before allowing the bone to rupture Tetsu’s skin. Yet he still wanted to fight. Even without his body’s cooperation, Tetsu wanted to land one final blow.
To show his resolve. Quench his anger.
This unfamiliar emotion might be the influence of his Crimsonfae tooth, but if it can help him get his revenge, snap him out of this miserable state, and maybe, just maybe, reduce his guilt, he shall gladly give his soul.
The Dandralith might have had its first two wishes, but Tetsu wouldn’t let it have the last. He would not die by giving it the satisfaction of an overwhelming victory.
Tetsu commands his legs to move. With no response, he peers down to find the floor beneath his torso. His entire lower half was missing, and he stood on his torso.
Following the blood trail before him, Tetsu spots his legs ten feet away. ‘That is why you defied my orders.’ He peered at them with a dead expression.
The first tendril was meant for him. Focusing solely on RJ, wanting to protect her, he let his guard down and the Dandralith took advantage of the opening.
It sliced him in two and he didn’t even notice his missing legs until now.
A certain threshold was crossed and while this wasn’t the first time it happened, the timing and absurdity of the threshold still amused Tetsu. An overload of the pain receptors caused them to shut down.
Tetsu should be glad, but how does one be glad over a failure? The only function it carried and had to carry, it couldn’t anymore.
Isn’t that the definition of failure?
Like him.
Even when the odds are stacked in his favor, he failed. Without the Crimsonfae tooth, Tetsu wondered if he would even have the guts to fight or demand revenge.
He deemed revenge a petty emotion, but now when he looks back at those days, maybe he didn’t have the power to carry such a strong emotion.
Kile’s words made sense now. “If you could... would you?”
While Tetsu was unable to muster a smile, he did laugh hysterically on the inside. Come to think of it, his body never left his side. His legs would not listen to him as they literally did not receive the signal to move. They were already severed, and the thought of crawling ten feet without legs made him snicker.
Even Tetsu’s eye stopped leaking after he commanded. The heatwaves played a major role, but they stopped, like his pain receptors.
With two functionaries down, he once again got the upper hand over that fucking flower. His lack of pain and tears dampened the Dandralith’s mood and Tetsu fucking loved every single second as he guessed its ugly frown behind all that pollen.
Now, if only he can smile. He would be crowned the victor.
After what felt like hours of trying and with a second mingled arm, Tetsu threw a dead smile at the Dandralith.
The corners of his lips curled up in the slightest while his face and eyes stayed dead in a neutral position. This smile resembled one short and simple sentence. ‘Fuck you, I won.’
Mother nature congratulated Tetsu with a warm breeze, soothing him from the inside out. After a while, she turned cold, soothing him from the outside and calming his insides.
Tiny fairies joined in on the celebration, dancing to the tunes of the wind, swaying right and left, and back and forth, never missing a beat and never crossing the line.
New plants took life to form the most luxurious bed, which smelt like peonies under the winter solstice and when the time came, the fairies shone brighter, claiming everything in their path to enter eternal slumber.
═─┈─{═E═}─┈─═
