The blight hung in the air as a fog that made it harder to see. Emily was starting to second guess herself when she got to the edge of the brambles, but Ratagast was not deterred in the slightest. He waited at the end of the tunnel into the blighted bog.
"You can stay behind if you want."
Emily shook her head and started crawling through the tunnel of thorns. The air became even heavier on the other side, the fog reducing visibility once again. After tasting the open air and being able to see further, this air brought with it trepidation. Emily felt a bit nauseous, breathing in the suffocating air.
She stomached the foul feeling and walked back into the place she escaped from. Soon enough, her feet dug into thick mud again. Her heart pounded while she watched the distant fluttering of bugs. Though, Ratagast was a calming presence that stilled her heart.
Steady breaths were the ways of special operatives during times of intense stress. Emily almost laughed at the thought of measuring her cortisol levels. Perhaps one day she would tell Ratagast all about the modern world.
She focused her mind back to the present, looking around for any signs of danger.
Ratagast stopped while they were a bit deeper in the mud. He held is hand in the air, and his nose twitched. He sniffed the air, and it didn't take long to see why.
A monster started running towards them from deep within the fog. Its feet shook the ground with each impact. It didn't take long for Emily to see the visage of its body, and it came as quite a surprise.
How the hell had I missed something so big?
Race: [Dilophosaur]Age: 13
Sex: Female
Level: 17
Health: 2,100
Stamina: 411/1,200
Mana: 520
It must have been about 20 feet long. It had a crocodilian, archosaurian head with a large crest at the top of its skull. The color of the thing was a mixture of orange and brown with most of the orange being on the sides of the crest and below the eyes. Its arms were thick and muscular 3-foot long appendages with claws curving inwards towards each other. Most of its body was composed of brown scales, and its mouth hung open with sharp teeth ready to fillet the two alive.
The calming of her heart was quickly disrupted by the large predator. She swallowed and started channeling her mana into her staff on instinct. She could see the ribs of the creature sticking out. It was clear from her thin frame that she was starving.
"Don't worry, little fox," Ratagast said. He pressed his tail into the mud behind him, and a green wave of magic rushed forwards onto the surface of the mud.
Large brown roots shot from the ground. And slammed into the bottom of the theropod. They immediately started wrapping around the dilophosaur and squeezed it. The thing was stopped on a dime by the impact of the magic. It was the most vivid display of magic that Emily had ever seen, and yet it was still not over.
Leaves started blooming from the end of the branches wrapping around the creature. Splinters stabbed inwards all at the same time, decimating the dinosaur's internal organs and killing it before it could roar in protest.
Right after the spell ended, the leaves started withering from the blight, dying like the rest of the trees in the bog. Though, Emily was still in awe about the display of magic power. She looked at the rodent with newfound reverence. I hope that I will be able to do something like that. He just killed that monster in an instant. Maybe then I will...
The rodent looked back at her with a smile. "We should keep moving. I am sensing the blight is becoming thicker now. Otherwise, those leaves would have withered away much slower."
Emily looked between the dead dinosaur and the rodent several times before nodding. She watched as Ratagast pulled out a small vial of blue liquid and uncorked it. He chugged it down in one gulp.
"Mana potion," he said, "I will need to be full for the battle to come."
Though, the further they got, the harder it was to traverse. The sludge eventually became water ahead, and there was no way either of them would try to fight a giant snake in water.
Come to think of it, isn't this the exact area I found that crocodile?
She refused to get close to the water's edge, fearing that one of those big gators would hop out on her. The kitsune's tail waved uncomfortably behind her, and her ears twitched to her surroundings, looking for signs of life. However, the only notable signs were the dragonflies flying above the water's surface. The meganeura were the same as the ones outside of this blighted bog. They didn't even bother with the two of them.
Emily's eyes watched one of them land on the water's surface. Its long mouth dipped below the surface of the water, presumably eating some kind of algae. That was the best guess she had.
Ratagast shared the same weariness of the water as her. His green magic sent a pulse forwards underneath the water, and his rounded ears waved. However, the pulse didn't seem to return anything. "It looks like..."
This tale has been pilfered from NovelPhoenix. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The ground rumbled, and Ratagast rushed towards Emily. His hands slammed into her shoulder, shoving her backwards, and pushing her into the mud.
She fell to the ground in a moment of confusion, but her eyes watched as a giant serpent's head came from the mud. Two rows of sharp teeth grabbed onto her rodent friend.
Blood splattered onto her face along with the mud. Her eye narrowed towards the monster, taking it in.
Race: [Titanaboa Warden of Blight]Age:
Sex: Male
Level: 60
Health: 10,000
Stamina: 10,000
Mana: 5,000
However, that was the least of her worries. She watched as the enormous serpent took Ratagast into the air. Her ears twitched to the sound of his voice.
"Kill it!"
The creature's jaws clamped down on his abdomen, but green magic trailed down his body. His fur, dripping with fresh blood, mixed with the green color. The hue spread until it eventually touched the ground.
Roots shot upwards from the thick sludge and wrapped around the constrictor snake.
Emily's tail twitched as she shot to her feet. She was torn between wanting to save the rat or kill the snake, and that split second of indecisiveness allowed the end of the obsidian creature's tail to slam against her left arm.
First, she felt pain in her abdomen, and then she slammed into a tree. Her new wooden arm lay at a distance shattered from the impact of its body. Her eyes widened as her head wrung. Flashes of white appeared in her vision before she came back to reality.
Emily searched for the rodent and found him wrestling inside of the creature's jaws. More of his green magic channeled, and his thorns started to stab into its body. Though, the titanaboa wouldn't just roll over and die.
It thrashed around and broke the root holding its head. It slammed its own jaw into the ground, causing its teeth to sink deeper into Ratagast's side. He winced in pain and looked towards Emily.
She couldn't make out what he said, but his lips gave her the hint she needed. Run.
He wanted her to leave him behind and make an exit. More of his green mana channeled, and more roots shot from the ground. However, a black miasma coated the serpent in a strange aura.
Anytime his roots tried to sprout leaves, they were denied. They rotted away each time, instantly turning into useless brown decay. They withered and fell to the ground as if it was autumn, but they didn't even have the decency to make it to the mud in one piece. They turned into speckles of brown ashes.
The serpent hissed and strained against the new trees holding it down. Mana started channeling down its own body to Emily's horror.
I can't let that thing use its magic! I have to save him.
She reached for her lantern staff, only to find that it had also shattered on her impact with the tree. Come on!
The kitsune desperately channeled magic into her fingertips as she clutched a piece of the broken staff. Nanobots swirled between each of the broken bits and started to stitch it together. When it was made whole again, she focused back on the snake.
It had completed its spell. The black miasma turned brown and rushed into the soil. The earth hardened beneath the trees around it, turning the landscape in its vicinity into cracked desolation. The trees started to wither away like their leaves. And a piece of earth started forming into a sharp point beneath the creature's jaw.
The titanaboa had seen Ratagast's magic and decided that it was enough. The serpent dropped the mangled Ratagast from his mouth.
Emily rushed forwards with her staff in hand. She couldn't tell if it was more cybernetic or bug lantern at this point, but neither of those things mattered. Her nanobots rushed forwards and formed a platform that stopped the falling rat from being impaled.
She waited for him to move, and she was greeted by a grisly sight.
He stood up on the platform, but much of his body was missing. His entire arm had been severed clean from his shoulder, and blood squirted from his abdomen on the same side. Even the top half of his leg had fallen victim to the snake's jaws.
Ratagast channeled his green magic and turned to Emily for one second to smile.
The titanaboa had already reared back up and stuck again. In one bite, he swallowed Ratagast.
Green light eminated from the creature's jaws, and massive brambles shot from the inside of its body to the outside. One was so big, it exited the creature's lower jaw and slammed all the way into the ground with the pointed end.
More of the same sharp spikes exited other parts of the snake and exposed its internal organs.
Emily could even see the beating of its heart where one of the spikes had narrowly missed. Incredibly, even after all of that carnage, the creature was still alive. While large amounts of blood leaked from its body, black miasma centered over the heart, and the skin started repairing itself.
"No!" The kitsune shouted and rushed forwards, positioning herself with a perfect sight to the beating organ.
She pushed her staff forwards and channeled half of her magic power into a large projectile of nanobots. It looked much like one of the tank shells she'd seen several times in her life as a soldier. With the remnants of her magic power, she propelled it forwards in an explosion of force.
The shockwave was enough to send her flying in the opposite direction. She tumbled backwards, flipping onto her stomach as her shell collided with the beating heart.
It was an explosion of blood and internal organs as well as a small fireball that separated the top half of the creature from the lower half. Its head fell to the ground with no care for the captive in its mouth.
The monster's lower body spasmed and wiggled a few times before a notification popped up in her vision.
[Congratulations!]
[You have gained 5 levels. For killing a creature more than double your level, you have gained the title [Giant Slayer]!]
She quickly dismissed it and rose to her feet, pushing beyond her nausea induced from overusing her magic. She bulled out a blue berry and swallowed it in a hurry before reaching the creature's jaws.
Emily pushed her staff inside of the creature's mouth and struggled to lift it. She heaved with all of her might but only managed to get it up a few inches. She took a deep breath and swallowed another berry and then another, fighting against the vomit climbing up her throat.
She channeled her magic again, and her nanobots answered her call. They started lifting the creature's mouth, and she grabbed Ratagast with her only arm, pulling him free of the snake's jaws.
They both fell onto the ground, Emily's arm getting cut slightly by the snake's teeth.
She rushed over to her fallen friend, lying on his back, but he lay their breathless.
His eyes that had once been full of life stared blankly into the clearing sky.