Touch of Fate

Chapter 226: Holding the Line

Chapter 226: Holding the Line

"Incoming!" One of the soldiers yelled while Brenden was still occupied with the creature in front of him. He severed a muscular tentacle with his sword, before diving to his right, mostly on instinct.

Another flesh blob slammed into the parapets where he had been standing only seconds ago, and crushed an unfortunate soldier under its bulk. Brenden could hear the man's muffled screams as the monster began to devour him, gaining strength in the process.

Growling a curse, he strode forward and swept his sword through the still forming mass, causing a torrent of blood to gush across his lower body, and soaking his clothes with gore. Despite subjecting him to a messy aftermath, this was exactly what he intended to do.

As much as these creatures were capable of regeneration, he found that slowly bleeding them of their vital fluids was one of the only ways to get them to stop moving. They could restore damaged flesh relatively easily, although they needed to absorb other living things to provide the biomass. It was apparently more difficult for them to replace blood, and so he began to intentionally seek exsanguination.

Brenden was forced to dodge back again, as the new arrival lashed out with its crudely formed limbs, shattering the stones of the parapet when it missed. By this point, the injury he'd inflicted had largely stopped bleeding, and was well on its way to healing completely. Judging from the sudden silence from the man buried under the creature, it was also nearly finished digesting its victim.

To make matters worse, his original opponent was still advancing on him, which led to the two flesh blobs cornering him against the edge of the wall. If he didn't act quickly, he would soon be trapped. However, this also gave him an opportunity.

He delivered a few quick strokes which scored superficial lines on the creatures, provoking them into attacking. As he'd noticed in the last few minutes of furious fighting, the flesh things weren't smart, and appeared to be functioning almost entirely off some primitive instinct. So, they very naturally responded to his attacks by throwing their bulk forward in an attempt to pull him down and engulf him.

Brenden waited until the last second, and kicked off from the wall, and throwing himself into the air and over the creatures who had trouble changing directions once in motion. They slammed into the parapet, which then became a fulcrum for their large and heavy bodies. He landed on the other side, just as the flesh blobs were sliding off the wall, towards the ground below.

Unfortunately, a fall from that height wasn't enough to kill the things, and he could already see several other of the creatures working their way back up. Many of them had failed to reach the top initially, slamming into the wall before falling back down to the ground below, but they soon develop climbing limbs that allowed them to scale the obstacle.

He tried to catch his breath as he took stock of the battle. For all that they represented the elite of the city's forces, the higher tier soldiers around him were having a hard time of it. Each of the flesh blobs was at least a Tier 2 monster in its own right, but had the propensity for gaining size and strength by consuming the men and women they fought. If they didn't take care of the monsters quickly, they could grow to dangerous sizes and become nearly unstoppable.

Thankfully, members of the Royal Guard arrived with the first batch of reinforcements, and the general put them to work eliminating the enemies that had gotten too big for the regular soldiers to handle. So far, they'd been able to avoid heavy casualties, but it looked like it was only a matter of time at this point.

He glanced over at the source of the monsters, the titanic creature seemingly made out of a mountain of flesh, and gritted his teeth as he saw another of the blobs being launched towards the walls.

The Marshal had succeeded in occupying it for nearly an hour while simultaneously preventing it from absorbing too much of the surrounding trees. By the time he'd been forced to retreat and regain his strength, it had lost a lot of its former size. Not that it seemed bothered by that fact.

After its initial attempt to scale the walls was rebuffed by several volleys of cannon fire, it retreated back to its former location and began launching smaller versions of itself at the walls. Initially, its accuracy was all over the place, with the blobs landing far short of their intended targets. However, it slowly, but surely, became more skilled at placing its minions where it wanted them.

"We got one coming over!" A soldier yelled from nearby, as a fleshy tentacle ending in a sharp point of keratinized tissue reached over the parapet and stabbed into the stone of the wall. Soon afterwards, the bulk of the creature could be seen struggling to rise over the crenelations.

Brenden launched into action, darting forward and sweeping his sword through the tentacle in a shower of blood. He swiftly followed up with an overhead chop which pushed the rest of the creature free of the wall with the sheer force of the blow. He watched as it fell back to the ground, squirmed for a few moments, and then began working its way back up once more.

"We got another one! Shit! There's too many!" An officer was yelling from somewhere behind Brenden, although he could hear the cries of other soldiers nearby. At this rate, they would be quickly overwhelmed.

A blob slammed into the wall a few meters away, and began unfolding itself to attack. Unlike previous versions, this one immediately sprouted several disturbingly flexible, spider-like legs, and began laying about with them. Its sheer ferocity forced the solders around it to retreat, and the swirling mass of limbs prevented them from counterattacking.

With resignation in his heart, Brenden prepared to move. He was going to have to fight seriously against this one, and make use of some of his more tiring abilities to do so. Concentrating on steadying his breathing, he reached deep into himself and drew forth the primal power that resonated in his blood. After a few moments, he felt the tell-tale tingling on his skin as it swiftly began to grow a thick coat of fur.

While his face was elongating he broke into a run, his sword held out, and away from his body. A howl spilled forth from his changed jaws as he smashed his way through the flailing limbs, clawed his way up the side of the creature, threw himself into the air, and delivered a mighty overhead chop with his full strength.

Ordinarily, such a blow would be weak, since fighters in the air lacked the same kind of leverage they enjoyed with their feet planted on the ground. However, Brenden's enhancement skills were a product of the System, and therefore worked by directly affecting the nature of reality. This was never so noticeable as when the beastman made use of his full strength.

His Basic Power Enhancement skill augmented his strike to the point that, even in such unfavorable circumstances, it cleaved cleanly through the flesh blob, separating the creature into two halves. His sword continued afterwards, and ended up embedded in the stones of the wall, something that would have surely broken it, if not for its indestructibility.

He knew that such an injury wouldn't stop the creature for long, and so he freed his weapon quickly. As the fleshy pieces began to wiggle towards one another in an attempt to reunite, he whirled and started chopping and dicing in a frenzy. It took nearly a minute for him to cut it down to bits that were too small to effectively regenerate.

While he was catching his breath after that sudden burst of exertion, two more of the creatures slammed into the wall nearby, scattering soldiers in their wake.

[Can't keep this up much longer.] He thought as he readied his sword once more, only to have his enemies disappear in a sudden wash of fire that left them as charred and twitching corpses.

He glanced up at the dragon flying overhead with mixed emotions. While his friend's presence was reassuring, he hadn't quite gotten over the issues that had led him to leave the group in the first place.

[Whatever, I'll forget about it for today. After all, he's our best hope of taking down the big one. I suppose I need to start carrying my own weight.]

He started moving towards another of the flesh creatures that was in the middle of dragging a soldier into its core. So focused was he on his renewed efforts, he barely noticed that his despair had fled, to be replaced by a small but growing sense of hope. Suddenly, things didn't quite seem so bad.

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[What in the hell?]

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Agony

Age: Varies

Race: Abomination

Class: Abomination

Title: The All-Consuming

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Mike was having a hard time figuring out how such a large...thing, for lack of a better term, was moving, let alone attacking a city. In fact, it shouldn't be alive at all based on his understanding of how biological creatures functioned.

[I know I'm in a fantasy world, but this is ridiculous. Next thing you know I'll be fighting a gigantic, radioactivity-power lizard that shoots energy beams from its mouth. Really, how do I keep getting into these kinds of messes?]

They were in the process of circling the battlefield, surveying the situation. It became quite clear after the massive flesh creature launched a few miniature copies of itself at the wall, that they needed to take it down first.

"Do you know anything else about this thing?" He yelled back at Sera over the roaring of the wind.

She shook her head, "Not really, although I think there might be something like a core that serves as its heart. I saw a vague image of you striking towards the center of its body and doing damage as a result."

[Hmm. I don't really want to go fight it blindly, but I can't really leave it alone at the moment...]

He issued a few mental commands to Red, and the dragon descended to the wall, hovering in place until his four passengers could disembark.

[Try to keep it occupied for a bit while I look into the situation more, but be careful. I don't want you getting too close until we know what its capable of.]

His scaly mount gave him a disdainful look before flying out to the monster. Using his superior mobility, Red started performing flyby attacks that elicited agonized moaning from his target. The creature attempted to swat him out of the sky with a pair of flailing tentacles, but the measure was clumsy, and failed to hit anything other than itself.

Monster successfully distracted, he now needed to focus on information gathering. He needed to know what had happened up to this point to develop an effective strategy. For that he needed someone who'd been here since the beginning.

Looking around, Mike spotted Emmanuel sitting near the door to one of the defensive towers built into the wall. The older man's eyes were close and he looked like he was asleep. Mike figured this must be what using the Meditation skill must appear like when viewed from outside.

[Should I interrupt?] He asked himself, and was just about to call out to his teacher, when he spotted another familiar face.

"Captain Henry!" He called, waving at the city watchman who was in the process of directing a series of soldiers armed with rifles. At the sound of Mike's voice, the man stiffened, blood draining from his face. He didn't turn, almost as if he wanted to pretend that he hadn't heard the call.

Unfortunately for the young captain, he couldn't escape that easily, and it didn't take long until Mike was standing in front of him, looking serious. "I'm so glad I found you. I have a favor to ask."