Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 66
As the train of legs rushed past, Nic lifted his axe up and took an experimental swing. The blade hacked down but barely managed to cut through her thick carapace, leaving only a shallow wound—in fact, Nic had to hurriedly pull the hatchet’s blade free before it was ripped from his hand by her relentless forward momentum.
If he was going to get in multiple strikes and cleave through her thick armor, he’d need to slow her down, but that single attack, crippling a leg, had gotten her attention.
The head roared in anger, and she began to turn about, hauling herself through the tight twists and hairpin corners of the underground labyrinth with her dozens of arms. She slithered across the walls, body twisting through the passages as she aimed herself like a missile at Nic…and began to speed up.
The stampede of a thousand footfalls became an overwhelming, drumbeat sound, the entire tunnel shaking violently and dislodging great veils of dust from the ceiling above.
Nic ran. Drawing his bow from his mystic bag, he nocked an arrow, turned, and fired over his shoulder, barely missing a beat as he sent an arrow spiraling through the air. With all his cultivation in his feet to speed his running, it lacked the strength to bite through her armor, clattering off the thick carapace.
But the next shot found its mark, sinking into the gooey, bleeding gaps between the fused bodies of the sand devils that made up her hideous torso. Yellow blood spurted outwards as the enchanted bow did its work, beginning a slow waterfall of blood-drain.
As he ran, head swiveling left and right, marking the passages he found, Nic summoned spikes of hardened sand from below using the Sandrider Blade on his back. They erupted forth at a crooked angle, letting the sand devil’s monarch crash against them and impale herself as she continued relentlessly forward. Impact after impact cracked against her armor, broke her arms, and split her many screaming heads like ugly, pulp-filled melons.
Even so, it barely slowed her down. Even losing her heads only made the banshee shrieking—like a train’s demented whistle—increase in volume, filling the tunnels.
Finally, Nic caught sight of what he was looking for. A series of three connected left turns.
Dropping his bow back into his bag, he grasped a pair of grenades and darted down the left-hand path. She was gaining now, catching up, every second building speed under her countless feet. It was a race Nic couldn’t hope to win. She was simply too large, gathering too much momentum.
But she wasn’t exactly very smart.
As Nic took another left turn, he flung the first grenade down a side passage, timing the fuse with a rough guess and a desperate hope.
One more turn…
He ran straight into the wall of the sand queen’s long body, still filling up the tunnel he’d left with the original turn. He had come full circle, tying her into a knot as he did, and now the queen’s own enormous bulk cut off his escape. He was closed in.
She clawed her way around the turn, and her dozens of eyes settled onto him with dark, insect-dumb malice. As she screamed and rushed forward, the fuse was ticking, ticking, ticking.
At the last moment, Nic dropped his second grenade and braced for a brutal impact.
But the first grenade detonated before that could happen. In a flash of electric energy, Nic was teleported, snapping back to the location where he’d thrown the featherflight grenade and out of the queen’s path. He was safely in a side passage, listening to her scream of rage.
The detonation of the flashbang grenade went off with a brilliant flash of light and a piercing, high-pitched roar, filling her eyes and ears with fury as she rushed at the space where he’d been and collided with her own body.
He saw the impact shake through the long trail of legs that flooded the tunnel in front of him. With a brutal, earth-quaking crush, the queen slammed into her own side and was tangled up, the collision lifting her legs off the ground and twisting her body into a knot. Even then, the few legs that remained in contact with the earth were simply too stupid to stop running—the signals from her head could only slowly reach down the length of her body, and so she was trapped, her hind legs trying to force her forward with no room, no space, brutally crushing herself.
Nic grinned.
The Sandrider Blade and his mystic bag dropped to the ground beside him.
Without hesitation, he rotated his cultivation base and unleashed the bright, powerful spark of his Bloodline Sea from within. The transformation felt like shedding his entire body, his old skin peeling away like a scab. He expanded upwards, head flattening out into a cobra’s hood, his already strong body growing more powerful with the addition of thick-hewed muscle as he rose towards the ceiling. His arms split twice, new muscles swelling into place to house each new set of arms, until he had six arms in all, the skin around each powerful limb turning into hardened scale as his legs fused and elonged into a sweeping tail. His armor was pulled into his naga body, becoming a patterning among his scales.
He reached down, drawing his newly forged Scarseeker from the bag, admiring the way it gleamed with its own purple-white flame of light.
The queen was locked in place, desperately trying to get her limbs to listen to her and move backward.
Nic advanced without mercy. Held in two hands, Scarseeker swept down in a sudden, quick cross, scoring open the heavy shell in an ‘X’ of thick yellow blood. His other four limbs shot forward and caught the edges of the cut, grasping the carapace and ripping it apart, drawing the wound apart to reveal the ugly insect meat below.
His blade lifted and crashed down, burning the strength of the Internal-Sacrifice Cauldron within his belly. The forbidden technique fed a burning, cascading strength that made steam pour from his arms as the blade hacked down, over and over, cutting deeper into the sand devil queen’s core as she screamed. Each blow brought out enormous quantities of blood, sloshing over Nic’s arms and chests. The physical reality of fighting such an enormous beast was gory beyond belief—there was simply too much meat to hack through for anyone to come out clean.
Blood dripped from his hands as he ripped into the monster’s side with brutal glee.
The queen was still fighting to untangle herself, and Nic was meeting bone with his downward cuts, muscle and organs splitting apart under his blade. As she slid backward, he stabbed down and wedged the long-handled blade deep, pushing his full weight against it to drag a long and bloody cut through her side, using her own motion to rip and tear.
Even as an E-Class, he was struggling. His body was painted in gore, and his muscles ached, his insides filling with blood that came coughing up as he burned through his life with the Internal-Sacrifice Cauldron Technique. He was stronger and faster in his naga-form, but she was simply bigger, and his efforts so far amounted to a single severe wound.
It was then, as the monarch began to unwind, that his danger sense screamed.
Nic ripped Scarseeker free and turned to see an Ascended devil drop down into the caverns. It wasn’t the skull-faced pyromaniac but a smaller, bright-green devil with the head and colors of a grasshopper. Pale brown thorns covered the backs of its legs, and it had long, bent arms that scraped the ground. Wings like a cape of gossamer dripped over its body, covered in crawling multitudes of beetles, centipedes, and ants.
Nic lunged forward, but as he did, the soft earth below erupted. A multitude of bugs poured upwards, covering his skin, flaring with a green light that swelled them from within.
Until the moment of detonation, they didn’t trigger Nic’s danger sense at all.
Then, in the instant before impact, the Eight-Eyed Mantle screamed. Dozens of tiny explosions tore into his flesh at point-blank range, throwing him backward and tearing into his scales. The natural armor kept him alive, but flesh and bone were exposed and caustic, sizzling black acid left clinging to the edges of his wounds. He slumped down against the ground and shot backward with his tail, grasping the Sandrider Blade and sweeping it.
The sand lifted up and shot away from him in a wave, exposing a second volley of bugs squirming beneath. He spat diluted mist across them, shriveling their bodies to dust as he grabbed the wall of the cavern and hauled himself up.
The bugmaster devil was already sprinting away, making good use of its powerful mantis legs to shoot off at top speed. Nic went after, slithering low across the ground and using the farthest down of his six arms to boost himself across the earth. Behind him, the monarch was unraveling, and soon the chase would begin again, the bloodied queen tearing across her domain to hunt him as he tried to keep up with the devil.
And somewhere out there, he knew two more would be waiting, ready to harass and ambush as he attempted to wear down their goliath monarch.
Chapter 100
Chased Down
Nic poured down the tunnel, pursuing his prey like an arrow shot from a peerless bow. He was already strong, but the immense size and massive muscle of the Sarradur Naga allowed him to leverage that strength into pure speed, his long tail pushing off against the ground to propel him like a missile across the ground. Using his lowermost set of arms to push forward and further increase his speed, Nic rotated the massive flow of energy surging through his body and channeled it through the Sandrider Blade.
The thin coating of sand along the floor was cut in two and sent out of his path, sweeping away the tiny insects and pestilent bugs the fleeing sand devil had left behind; it had hoped to lure him into a living minefield and cover him in crawling explosives.
No such luck.
The chase was brutal. Nic was able to twist around corners with ease, flowing like a river of strength to overrun his enemy. But the sand devil was no slouch. It had long, bent legs like a cricket, and each time they kicked off, the devil would vanish into a brilliant blur of emerald motion, only reappearing when it landed and had to brace for a split second before leaping again. It was able to hold its lead by fractions of an instant, escaping moments before Nic’s hands crashed down where it had been.
Behind them, the sand devil monarch roared with a fury that made the earth shake. She was fully untangled now, and the ground shivered, dust raining from the ceiling as her thousands of legs dragged her bloated body in a revenge-mad chase for Nic.
It was on. Either he caught the sand devil—stopping it from making stealthy, opportunistic jabs while he tried to fight the queen—or the queen caught him.
And Nic would bet on himself, always.
In one hand he carried his mystic bag, and digging down with another of his six limbs, he grasped a featherflight grenade. He just needed a clear shot—one moment of carelessness—and he’d leap forward to finish the devil.
But his chance wouldn’t come easy.
As they burst into a central cavern, tunnels leading out from the chamber like the spokes of a wheel, Nic’s danger sense screamed, and he caught a glimpse of thousands of glass knives growing from the floor. He flung himself to the ground, shielded his eyes, and the cavern detonated. Each cluster of glass spines exploded outwards, spraying the long, razor-sharp blades in all directions. They struck each other in midair and shattered into smaller blades, tumbling in all directions, the world briefly obscured by the sight of light flashing along a million glass edges, all of them thirsty for blood.
Nic’s back was torn apart, bone-deep wounds lashed against his scales and his muscle. If he’d been a soft-skinned axolotl, this would’ve torn him limb from limb.
Instead, it made him angry.
As he rose back to his full height, he saw the green-shelled devil, the Puppetmaster, crouching near the feet of the tall, hunched devil with the skull-like head—the one who controlled flames. The Pyromaniac. The last of the trio was the Glass Cannon, the one who could speak—who’d taken on elf-like features after feeding on elven flesh.
They stood together, ready to take him on. The Pyromaniac raised its dark hand, and a dark red fire erupted between the trio and Nic and tore across the walls of the chamber, covering all the roads out with a flickering, skin-searing barrier of flames.
They had closed all his exits, and the queen was coming, building speed as she chased him into this dead-end.
The Pyromaniac stepped forward. Fire covered its body like armor, and its mandibles split open to reveal a purple, toothless mouth, hissing in anger as it approached Nic. It wielded a long spear of glass, and its eyes were full of malice.
Nic’s entire body dripped with blood, but he rose to meet the enemy, gripping Scarseeker in two hands and the Sandrider Blade in another. He held the featherflight grenade ready, waiting…
The devil shot towards him, spear striking through the air. Nic twisted his agile body, parried the strike aside with the Sandrider Blade with enough force to make the Pyromaniac stumble, and swung Scarseeker at the beast’s side.
The entire exchange lasted a heartbeat. One motion happened in the time it took the heart to squeeze down—the parry—and the counterstrike followed before the heart could even expand again. A single pulse and Nic swatted aside the enemy and tore into them.
His whole body was lithe and able to twist, to move bonelessly. That serpentine form became an extension of the weapon in his hands as he brought his torso sweeping along the ground to feed strength into the crescent-moon sweep of Scarseeker’s glowing blade.
Almost effortlessly, he cleaved the glass spear—and the right hand holding it—apart. A ringing crystal note filled the cavern as the spear exploded, tearing open the palm of the severed hand. As the glaive continued upwards, following its arc, Nic shifted his grip and reared upwards, bracing to stab the point downwards for a killing stroke.
The Pyromaniac’s wings flickered, and it managed to hop aside, Scarseeker spearing the earth where it had been. Nic ripped his weapon free with one hand as he flourished the Sandrider Blade in another, conjuring a long whip of sand to lash for the Pyromaniac devil’s legs.
It caught, tripping his foe, and Nic tried to surge forward.
The Puppetmaster kicked off and intervened, flinging itself into Nic’s path and throwing a high kick with its powerful leg towards his shoulder. Nic twisted, rolling with the blow and managing to absorb the force rather than be knocked off balance; his empty hand shot forward and swatted the devil aside like the insect it was, sending the emerald-coated beast rolling across the ground.
Nic’s glaive swung down, and an arch of glass intercepted. The Pyromaniac was back on its feet, blood oozing from its stump, and as the Glass Cannon shielded her allies, the fire-devil slammed his hand into the ground and sent a long, billowing road of fire shooting towards Nic.
Nic flung the featherflight grenade in the instant before the flames hit him, searing into his injured body and cauterizing the numerous cuts that trailed blood down his skin. That blood was seared away, turning to steam as the fire slammed into him with such fury that it carried physical force, and his scales began to crack under the blazing heat.
The featherflight grenade hit the ground.
Instantly, Nic was elsewhere, escaping the blaze in a flash of lightning-white energy.
The fire itself obscured the fact he had vanished for a fatal instant. The Pyromaniac never had a chance to turn before Nic’s glaive was sweeping down, cutting a scar of white light in the air as it dropped like a guillotine for the back of the devil’s throat.
Once more, the Puppetmaster intervened. It shot forward, and this time there was no kick, no attempt to sweep Nic off balance. The insects clinging to its wings glowed brightly as it gave them all the aura it had until their little bodies glowed, overloaded with energy and ready to explode.
It threw itself into the descending sword-stroke and burst apart in a shower of acid and a roar of dying power.
Nic was flung backward, shielding his face. Acid raindrops pattered across his scales and bit through the fire-weakened surface to open dozens of shallow, cratered wounds. Smoke and greasy, lingering chemical sourness filled the air.
One of his arms was gone.
Scarseeker lay on the floor, bits of his acid-eaten fingertips clinging to the handle. The arm had been torn apart down to the joint, and numerous fingers and bits of muscle were missing from the others.
The kamikaze bomb had worked. Nic was wounded—badly—and the Pyromaniac had survived, its eyes glowing with reflected firelight. It swung its remaining hand and opened up a wall of flames between it and Nic, leaping back, playing for distance.
Nic was too badly hurt to follow.
The one saving grace was that the Glass Cannon was clearly running dry of strength—she’d fought Nic twice now, and she’d spent the greater part of her power to turn the chamber into a death trap. Now she had barely anything left.
If he could reach her, Nic could kill her in a heartbeat.
The Pyromaniac seemed to realize that. It had shifted between them, its wounded arm held to its chest as it took up a defensive stance. Fire burned along its black carapace.
Nic braced to break through. With his enemy down a limb, and him having four more to spare, it wouldn’t be hard. Blood and acid dripped down his skin, and the wounds on his back were tremendous, but none of it was able to slow down the massive naga-form. He’d fight until the last breath was gone.
And then, with a roar, the Monarch arrived. She poured through the barrier of fire with a triumphant scream, her thousands of legs making the cavern shake until chunks of stone rained from the ceiling. Dozens of arms clawed at the entranceway as she poured through. She was massive, ugly, a living wave of flesh with a dozen heads merged together by sticky threads of mutant flesh.
Nic knew he couldn’t run now. Couldn’t escape in the relatively tiny confines of the chamber.
So he braced instead, lifting Scarseeker to drive into the queen’s bulk as she slammed into him. Hands grabbed at him from all directions, seizing his arms, his head, his tail. He fought desperately, cleaving down on the grasping limbs with the Sandrider Blade.
All the breath left him as she carried him into the wall and slammed him against hard, unforgiving stone. His eyes flashed white as the impact briefly carried him unconscious, and as his grip went slack, Scarseeker was ripped from his hand and thrown aside.
