Duskbound

Chapter 14

Some hunters had a sort of psychological block, where they were afraid to use a powerful and irreplicable potion because there might be a better opportunity to use it later. Velik could understand that, up to a point. He certainly wasn't going to use his trump card on the first tough fight he found himself in.

That having been said, it was a champion elite. If ever there was a time to pull out all the stops, this was that time. There were three potions in the pouch. Two were for healing, rated to restore life-threatening injuries immediately and patch him up to the point where he could function over the next few minutes. The third was something else.

It was a dark golden color and thin like water, except it didn't move at all when he held the potion up. It wasn't until he flicked the cork off with his thumb and tilted it back that the liquid all rushed out at once, like it had taken until just that exact moment to become unstuck in time.

There was just a bit under two hundred feet from wall to wall, and the champion elite had appeared right in the center. That left maybe seventy or eighty feet between him and Balzarith, a trivial amount of space that he was sure either of them could cross in less than a second. It even lurched forward, no doubt starting its run with whatever strange form of movement its tentacle-like limbs used.

The golden liquid touched his tongue, and the world seemed to freeze. Velik swallowed, fully imbibing the potion, and then turned his head to watch the suddenly ponderous monster surge forward, its body undulating strangely to push against the ground. He could see the tentacles flexing in slow-motion, and easily tracked the movements.

Completely worth five thousand decarmas, he thought with a wolfish grin.

Then he leveled his spear and charged, his own body moving at its normal speed. To his eyes, Balzarith just stood there, waiting to take a spear to the chest. Or is it the face? Eh, who cares. I've only got thirty seconds to demolish this thing if I want to survive.

The potion didn't increase his strength, only his speed and perception. Fortunately, Velik had spent the last week figuring out how to punch through the armored fur and skin of all sorts of monsters, and while he hadn't encountered one made of living dirt and fire before, he was confident he could crack its shell, too. That glass looked fragile, but he was betting it was the strongest part of the champion's body.

They impacted, spear to chest, and that was the moment Velik learned that Balzarith wasn't just big, it was heavy. Its chest repelled the spear, sending it skittering off to the side as Velik arrested his momentum on his leading foot. A spiderweb of thin cracks appeared, giving him some hope that he could break through with enough effort, but that assumed he had enough time.

Let's see how well those limbs do.

He backed off when Balzarith started kicking at him, apparently having given up the idea of regaining its feet. Its limbs were spindly, barely more than the vein net with almost no mass held inside it, but the monster was still fast enough to make those whip-thin attacks draw blood if Velik wasn't careful.

He kept his distance, deflecting the flailing tentacles with his spear while he tried to figure out what to do. Some sort of long hammer was probably the ideal weapon, but the [Shape Shifting] enchantment couldn't alter his spear's shape that far from baseline. He could make the spearhead wider or flatter, pointed or broad, everything from a needle tip to something resembling a thin shovel, but he couldn't turn it into a solid block of metal.

Again and again, his eyes were drawn back to the seam. It was less than a quarter inch wide and completely filled with gummy red veins. They were elastic, and he could pull on them, but he couldn't cut through them. He'd proven that with every strike against its tentacle limbs. If I can't cut, but I can push them aside, could a long enough and thin enough spear head slip between them?

It was worth a shot. He shaped his spear to have a two-foot tip that tapered down to a point, then selected Balzarith's left arm as his test target. It was in the worst shape and also the easiest to access. That didn't mean there were no problems, as all four limbs could easily attack him at once, regardless of where they were anchored to the core, but Velik was at the height of his strength and agility.

He twisted, dodged, blocked, and otherwise slipped past the attacking limbs, lined his spear up, and jabbed it straight into the seam. To his delight, his hunch was absolutely correct, and the blade sank a full foot into the champion elite's glass chest, skewering the living fire trapped inside. Nothing he'd done before had gotten a reaction, but that face appeared again, this time screaming in pain.

I've got you now.

The fight had taken about two minutes of total time for Velik to figure out Balzarith's weakness, and he was honestly kicking himself for wasting the haste potion earlier. Then again, crippling the monster's limbs had made it far easier to handle once he was back to moving at normal speeds, so it wasn't like he'd accomplished nothing.

With his spear embedded deep in the monster's main body, Velik heaved upward, holding the creature overhead for just an instant, then brought it down to slam its body against the ground. Clumps of blackened dirt went flying everywhere, and more cracks spread through Balzarith's glass chest.

Velik brought it up again, then slammed it back down. Wisps of fire started leaking out as the cracks went all the way through the glass this time. A third attack was all it took for the chest to fracture completely, and the monster split into pieces as its shell shattered.

Flames roared out in every direction, forcing Velik to leap back a full twenty feet just to avoid getting burnt. Then they started to pull themselves back into the center, and Balzarith rose back up off the ground. It had no discernable shape, but that laughing face mocked him as it surged forward, a wave of living fire intent on engulfing Velik.