Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands
Vrax held his hand back, signaling for Torvald to be still as the monster rose from the muck of the island ahead of them with a sick squelching sound and began scooping the scattered remains of the deer towards itself. Vrax didn’t have any fucking clue what he was looking at. It had a roughly serpentine shape with bulging back muscles and what almost looked like fins going down its sides and overtly long whiskers all across its head feeling at everything on the island around it. The lopsided bulbous frame ended with a grossly quivering tail that seemed to push the mud away without touching it. And the head was a flat, smushed-looking mouth that almost caved inward; there were no eyes that Vrax could see. Vrax flashed identify at it, still unsure how it had even killed the deer. [Ungoth Stalker Tier-1] (lvl 26)
“Well, fuck, it’s level twenty-six, and I don’t have a damn clue what its talents or skills are,” Vrax whispered in a barely audible hushed tone to Torvald. The Ungoth instantly whipped its eyeless head towards them, floating slightly above the island as its fins flapped in a gentle pattern, the entrails of the deer hanging loosely from its mouth.
“Well, super hearing and flight are two of my guesses,” Torvald whispered back with grim humor, bracing himself to charge.
There was an awful sucking sound as the Ungoth slurped down the deer remains like it was eating noodles, and then it sped towards them, the mud below it depressing as its magic held it aloft. Torvald bellowed and charged explosively, nearly knocking Vrax over as the mud on their island exploded outward and teeth rained from the tree above. Torvald swung down with both hands, attempting to knock the Ungoth into the muck below it. The ungoth barely paused as another awful slurping sound sucked Torvald Sideways midair, interrupting his swing and changing his course straight towards its open maw. Torvald moored himself in the air with his second skill, stopping just short of feeding himself to the beast.
The Ungoth calmly dived down into and then through the mud, barely leaving a hole in the muck, its magic apparently letting it swim through the swampy terrain.
Torvald dropped with a thud and splash into the shallow waters. “Uhh, Vrax?”
“Yep, get into a fucking tree! Not the tooth one though! Or the purple one!” Vrax yelled as he himself ran past Torvald to the island the deer remains were on and climbed up a scraggly tree with twisting branches and no leaves. On the way he pulsed his stigmata, depositing sunshine into the center of a brook where it immediately began indiscriminately devouring fish.
Torvald hoisted himself into the tree behind Vrax. “That thing was a big one! Long as two carts and nearly as thick as one! How much essence do you think it will give us?”
“Uhh, probably a lot, man. Focus. It’s probably going to go after Sunshine here in a second. When it’s busy, I’ll try and plop the retrievers right on top of it so it can’t just swim the hell away.” Vrax shimmied out to the edge of the longest tree branch so he was looking down at Sunshine’s rampage.
His prediction was accurate. The Ungoth rose from the stream directly below Sunshine, brutally sucking in water, stones, and Sunshine, who folded in half with a noise like the snap of a branch as it disappeared into the Ungoth's mouth.
Vrax flinched as yellow petals with red false eyes fluttered around where Sunshine once was, but without hesitating he leapt from the tree, summoning his garden while he was in the air. Four lurkers circled the ungoth, tearing free handfuls of its whiskers immediately as they rose from the blackened moss. The Hive bloomed roughly, directly under the Ungoth, actually pushing it up some. Immediately the retrievers leapt upward, sailing in the light breeze for a moment before trailing down onto the massive monster. They skittered across it, some wrapping around, creating a tangled morass of razor-sharp ropes around it.
Torvald fell from the tree he had been ready to leap from as it melted under his feet. Aww shit, sorry, man; didn’t think that one through. Vrax mused as he rolled into the shallow waters by the Ungoth's tail and began fast, short stabs lightly empowered by smites to punch rotten holes into the fins along its sides.
The Ungoth heaved downward once, snapping one of the umbilicals; it tore deeply into its side before breaking. The lurker in front of it caught it straight across the eyeless face, melting part of the mouth away and hooking its thorns in, actually yanking it forward a stride until it pulled taut against the slicing lines holding it in place. The Ungoth made another slurping noise, but this time the Lurker holding its face simply exploded into shreds of plant matter and acid as an unseen force thrust against it.
Torvald waded in beside Vrax, each of his blows rocking the massive beast in the air, a particularly savage upward swing on the end of the tail slamming its mouth end down into the ground as the umbilicals holding it caused it to teeter with the force of Torvald's blow. It went wild, swinging its head towards another lurker and shredding it in an instant. The whiskers across its face reached back and began batting at Torvald and Vrax. Vrax caught three in quick succession across his arms and chest; it felt like being hit with a bat wielded by a giant. His armor cracked across the chest and arm, and Vrax could feel the deep bruising numbing his arm especially.
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Vrax focused on a wound midway up its serpentine body, the especially deep gash left when it tore through an umbilical. He stuffed his spear tip inside and channeled a smite in the shape of a piercing lance, rotting a fist-sized hole nearly through its body. Torvald pivoted around a flurry of whisker blows, simply ignoring the pain of the few that caught him, to bring a spinning two-handed blow onto the wound Vrax had deepened, then again and again mana flashing as he used his skill over and over to deliver full-force blows with only inches of windup, ignoring the limits of his body as he proved his skill's dominance over physics.
Gore shot out the other side of the beast as Torvalds hammer liquefied something important and pushed it out the other side of the hole Vrax had made. The Ungoth slumped for a moment, settling onto the top of the Retriever hive; it was crisscrossed with deep cuts, and its mouth and sides were half melted from the lurkers. Then it bent in on itself, gathering mana before it uncurled in an explosion of force. Vrax cartwheeled through the water. Torvald used the last dregs of his mana to hold his position as he was battered by rocks and wooden shards traveling dangerous speeds. The garden shattered; only one lurker remained, and it was a half-uprooted wreck, its tendril limply slithering next to it. The retriever hive had survived the blast, but all of the retrievers were either a fine pink mist or limply hanging from a nearby tree.
Vrax stood up; it had hurt like the hells, and his mobility was hampered, but nothing was broken, his improved defense already helping. Torvald had lost his hammer and was deflecting blows from the whiskers barehanded. The Ungoth reared back above him, mana flaring again, preparing to shred Torvald below him.
“Charge away!” Vrax screamed at Torvald.
“No mana left, buddy!” Torvald shouted back in resignation, ripping one of the last whiskers free with his bare hand after it brutally bounced off his shoulder.
The Ungoth's mana gathered around its mouth once again, far more this time than it had used even against the first lurker it had shredded. Right as it reached the peak of its skill, it froze still, reared up, and the mana pulsed like the skill was stuck in its throat for a moment. Then a wild, thorned tendril with a gnawing mouth on the end shot from the Ungoth's mouth and latched onto its face, followed by another and then another, as the broken form of Sunshine pulled its way free from the creature's mouth, ripping and tearing with all its tendrils and mouths as it came.
“Holy shit!” Vrax said happily.
“Goddammit! Do I owe the fucking daisy one now!?” Torvald shouted as he dove away from the very distracted beast towards his hammer.
The Ungoth was dripping buckets of blood as the daisy crawled from its mouth, trying to eat the creature easily ten times its size. The Ungoth had slowed some, but it was still fighting. A moment passed before it launched Sunshine away from it in another explosion of plant matter and petals. Sunshine angrily crashed through the purple tree on the second island; its broken, mangled form was already starting to crawl back even though its body was twisted all the way around and pulped nearly beyond recognition, inching through the swampy waters with halting, jerky movements carried by the roots, then roughly hauled forward by its tendrils, like a marionette controlled by a dying puppeteer. Gods above, what is Sunshine going to be like at the second tier…..
Torvald jogged next to Vrax’s unsteady form, taking position next to him. He was bleeding from dozens of small welts and looked like he was half bruise at this point. “Got a plan?” Torvald asked and spat a mouthful of blood into the brook tracing around his feet.
“Ehhh... I got a couple jars of smelter moss. If I can get one into its mouth without us fucking going along with it, that might? Be enough, but I kind of doubt it. That, or if I can hammer enough smites into its face, eventually it has to die from blood loss. Damn, this thing is tough.” Vrax quickly rattled off while pulling a blessedly well-padded jar from his side.
The ungoth didn’t wait for them to finish their deliberations, refocusing on them and undulating just above the brook; it roughly glided towards them. It was about ten strides away and picking up speed when a shadow rose from hiding within the waters of an especially deep stream like a corpse leaping from the grave. The dreadfeast struck blindingly fast, launching at the wound Torvald and Vrax had carved through the beast. It sunk all six claws into the circular rotting injury and then pulled slithering inside the Ungoth's wound with a vile squelch.
Everything stopped. Vrax and Torvald stared in disbelief as the Ungoth twirled in place looking for what was attacking it. They could see the Dreadfeast crawling along inside of it, its bladed tail occasionally tearing free from inside as it inched towards the beast's head from the inside, pressed against the dull red skin bulging grotesquely. It kept climbing.
The Ungoth, truly giving into panic now, began blasting holes into the ground around itself randomly, utterly leveling the islands nearby. Vrax and Torvald edged away as the bulge beneath its skin reached the top of the head.
The Dreadfeast unzipped the skin where the creature's forehead would be in a dribbling shower of sticky blood. It bent backwards, stretching its now free head back, tongues extended in ecstasy and maws open. “Hahahahahah! Yes, Darling, yesss!!” The deranged noblewoman's voice cried out from the horror's maw as it simply dived back beneath the skin and began digging and digging with its claws and tail, gouts of blood showering into the streams to mix with the black ichor of the stigmata garden, forever tainting the pristine waters. It was only a handful of heartbeats before the Ungoth heavily fell to the ground.
“Whoooooo!!! We fucking did it!!!” Torvald shouted, raising his arms high with a flinch, then noticeably bracing for the wave of essence.
“Holy shit, I would have myself assassinated if I saw this shit. Torvald, we are going to be holy fucking terrors if we keep…” Vrax was interrupted as the essence hit him, washing through him and then continuing in waves more even than the dungeon avatar had granted. The last thing he saw as his vision swam was the Dreadfeast claws raised in celebration, holding what looked like a monster mana core.