Risen World

Chapter 306: The Monkey's Last Stand

While the others were busy taking down the second monkey Joshua wasn't exactly idle against the first one. Without having both monkeys gang up on him he was able to actually go on the offensive against one singular enemy. Whenever it used its scorpion tail to try to get in a sneak attack it would end up turning its body to give itself a little bit more momentum in its strike. This made it so that whenever Joshua would end up dodging one of these attacks, he would get a small opening to strike at the monkey before it could try to reposition itself.

Joshua would use these openings whenever he was given the chance. He would leave large gashes across the monkey's body each time, but when he realized the gashes were healing at too fast of a pace for his liking he would then turn to focus on cutting off its arms. Although the monkey had high regeneration it still would take a bit of time to regenerate an entire limb. After a little while of dodging around the agile creature he was finally given a clean opportunity to go for one of its arms as it reached over his head trying to grab him.

Joshua used his will to empower his aura at the moment his blade was preparing to strike the arm. His scale blade cut clean into the arm with hardly any resistance with the improved sharpness from his aura. By the time his swing had finished the arm was just barely holding together, but an echo strike was able to quickly fix that problem. The arm went flying off spraying purple blood into the air. Joshua backed away just in time as the scorpion tail came flying in from the side trying to take him out as the monkey wailed in pain. The grimace on its face turned into an angry glare as it looked towards Joshua once more, but another pained shout quickly grabbed its attention.

The monkey turned to look in the direction of its partner only to find out that the last scream it had heard came from its partner's dying moments. The anger that it had felt towards Joshua suddenly sky rocketed as its aura changed. Joshua was preparing to go in for another quick confrontation to try to cut off another arm quickly before the monkey could start healing, but its sudden change in demeanor caught him off guard. The monkey let out a loud roar which seemed to energize the haze in the area. It created some kind of wave of pressure that pushed Joshua back along with any of the other close range fighters that had changed their target from the dead monkey to the enraged one.

After everyone was pushed back a rather unique scene started to take place in front of them. The body of the dead monkey started to crumble apart only leaving behind its core. The rest of its body broke down into dust that all flew towards the other monkey. The living monkey seemed to absorb the dust as it went straight through its skin. The moment it started to absorb all of the dust its body started to change and heal at a frightening pace. All of its burnt fur started growing back, its arm started to reform right before everyone's eyes, and all of its wounds closed up.

Healing wasn't the only change that seemed to take place with the monkey. Its body started to grow in size to the point where it was just over three stories tall. Its muscles became more defined which showed its increase in strength. Its fur started to change to a purple color as it grew thicker around its body for added protection. All in all it became a far more ferocious looking creature that was glaring directly towards Joshua. It let out a deafening roar before slamming its fist on the ground in anger while preparing to launch itself towards Joshua.

The entire time this was taking place Joshua noticed the fact that a large amount of killing intent started pouring out of the monkey in waves. It was as if its power had more than doubled after absorbing the remains of its partner. Its eyes were blood shot as it raced over towards Joshua and right away everyone could tell that the creature was much faster than it had previously been. It used its extra pair of arms to get more speed in its stride as it rushed directly towards Joshua who prepared to block its upcoming strike.

The monkey started off by hammering one of its fist down towards Joshua's head, but he dodged out of the way since he wasn't certain how powerful the blow would be while the monkey was in its new state. When the fist crashed into the pavement the entire area shook as a small crater formed in the location. The massive growth in strength would have been a major problem on its own in everybody's opinion, but the fact that another fist was already trying to grab Joshua before he was even able to land after jumping out of the way, was the real issue.

The monkey was much faster which put Joshua in a horrible situation. Its flurry of blows were hard to keep track of as it used its new speed and size advantage to keep Joshua on the defensive. Its fist would always seem to come from the side, so that Joshua would have trouble keeping track of them. It was using Joshua's vision range against him since the haze would blur some of the large creature's body from view. Its tail also used this fact to its advantage by swooping in from outside of Joshua's vision. Luckily Jayce was the one focused on holding off the tail as he made sure it couldn't stab Joshua from behind.

While the battle was raging on, and Joshua was trying to figure out the best way to handle the new capabilities of the monkeys, the rest of the group decided to get involved as well. Laura was the first one to try something out as she fired a rather strong fire ball towards the monkeys shoulder trying to stun it in place for a brief moment. Unfortunately its new enraged state seemed to give it even more perks than any of them were expecting. When the ball of fire slammed into the creatures shoulder it did burn the creature badly, but it didn't flinch for a moment. Instead it continued to rage as its mind was still set on killing Joshua at all cost.

The burn did seem to damage the monkey much although a large area of purple fur was burnt off. The only issue was the fact that the burn was healing at such a fast rate. They could all see the haze around the monkey rush towards the injured spot and try to heal the creature at a rather fast pace. Luckily Julia jumped on the opportunity of hampering the creature as much as possible. She started to control the remaining flames that were left over by the fire ball that Laura had used. The haze was trying to put them out and heal the injury, but Julia kept pouring power into the flames to keep them latched onto the creature.

The close range fighters rushed in once they noticed this situation. It was a chance for them to cause as much damage to the creature as possible. Adrian was the most effective in the current predicament since his blades were easily able to cut through the maddened creature's fur leaving marks all along its body. He used his shadow steps to move even faster as he avoided its extra set of arms that were busy trying to knock any of the closer ranged fighters away from the beast. Each time he sliced a portion of the beast open the bleeding effect of his weapon would linger. This forced the haze to focus on healing the beast more and more which was exactly what the group wanted in the situation.

With the combination of Julia and Adrian working together to prolong the damage on the enraged sub-boss the rest of the group was able to deal some real damage. Amy continuously rampaged around the creature's chest area making sure to go for any of the creature's organs with her piercing blows. Adam and Allen went back to hacking away at the creature's legs, but it was healing too fast for them to be as successful as they had been with the last monkey.

Madalyn was doing everything she could to poison the creature repeatedly. With its high regeneration the poison would get absorbed quickly, but at the same time it would pass through its body faster than she would have liked. That's why Madalyn focused on poisoning areas such as the creature's arms, so that it wouldn't be able to use them in such a relentless fashion.

The combination of attacks by all of the members of the group was starting to work in Joshua's favor. The haze in the area was starting to clear out since the monkey was absorbing so much of it to continue to heal itself. On the other hand the poison was making its movements slightly slower. Joshua was able to keep up with its movements better as the fight went on and was eventually able to take the monkey by surprise. He twisted around one of its attempts to grab him and used his will to empower his counter. The force of the slash cut clean through the creatures arm causing loads of blood to gush as it tried to back away.

Even though the creature tried to back out to get some space from all of the close ranged fighters it wasn't able to get away from any of the ranged ones. A bombardment of fireballs, stone spears, and other magical projectiles smashed against the creature's chest. Natalie wasn't one to stand by and do nothing either as an arrow twisted in the air as the monkey tried to bat it aside, before slamming into one of its eyes. The arrow then surprisingly exploded as something seemed to have been attached to it. The explosion took out the monkey's eye completely until it could regenerate.

Aito followed up by shooting a couple of piercing rounds that went straight through the creature's throat causing its screaming to go quiet for a moment. Joshua knew this was the opportunity that he needed to put the thing down quickly before it was able to heal. Its attention seemed to switch over to the ranged fighters as it jumped towards the building they were all on and started to pull itself onto the roof with two of its good hands, while the other one was busy cradling its damaged arm. Joshua took this as an opportunity to go on the attack while its attention was turned away.

Joshua used aura to leap towards the creature. It seemed to notice as its tail tried to stab him through the chest, but Joshua started to twist his body with his scale blade angled for a heavy swing. Just as the tail was about to pierce him he blinked forward directly next to the creature's neck higher up on the building and cut its head straight off. All of the injuries to its neck made it easy for Joshua to cut through it with a bit of will added to his swing.

The body of the monkey seemed to freeze up with the loss of its head before a large pair of fireballs came from the roof and blasted it off the building sending it crashing into the street below. Joshua then dived down quickly and slammed his scale blade straight through the exposed core in its chest. All of the flames had burnt away most of the flesh in the area which made the job much easier for Joshua. The moment the core was pierced it started to shatter into a bunch of little pieces that Joshua quickly put away into his inventory. The large body started to crumble apart before shattering into a pile of dust on to the street below.

'Well that's one thing taken care of.' Henry said with a smile. They could all hear the continuous explosions in the distance which was a sign that the support group was still busy being a distraction.

'It's only the first group. We need to hurry towards the orangutan and take it out before it joins up with the boss. I'm sure all of the commotion we've made here has most likely gotten its attention by now.' Joshua responded.

The entire group agreed with his sentiment. They only had so much time to take out the next sub-boss or else it could have the boss of the haze on them before they could finish their plan. They started racing towards the school building to take out the next threat.josei