Chapter 206 - Monster Hunter

Sparks glittered through the backlit cavern, the sharp glistening armor scales of the monster’s front legs scraping across Mari’s blocking arm, the force from the friction throwing her off balance and rolling onto the ground.

Before the monster could follow up, a stream of pellets fired by the scouts blanketed its head, causing it to shrill once more, shielding its face with its legs that seemed to double up as an arm as well when necessary.

The pellets were too weak, unable to pierce the armor that the monster had no matter how long the scouts fired. “Focus on the same point!” Mari grunted as she got back up into a fighting stance once more, her spear aimed forward in a deadly charge, locked onto the monster’s head.

With a lunge, the spearhead cut through the dense air forcibly, streaks of compressed air current drifting behind its tip as Mari channeled arcia energy into her arms, doubling her instantaneous strength in that brief moment.

Before the spearhead could even get close to the monster, a sudden blast of air erupted from the monster’s mouth, disrupting Mari’s vision as her visor fogged up with an unknown substance that felt like mud.

Yet despite Mari’s lack of optical vision, the spear still aimed true, piercing the monster’s tendrils on its face and slicing a few off while the monster dodged, spinning around and slamming its rear legs into Mari’s body directly.

The brunt of the kick caused Mari to gag in her helmet; her body sent sprawling towards the clearing where the melting engineer was still in his death throes. Using the spear as a crutch to stop her tumbling, the quick recovery ensured that she stayed away from the edge of the clearing, unwilling to cross over the threshold.

The pellets fired by the scouts continued to prove useless, only serving to distract the monster a bit before being forced to dodge out of the way, with nearly no significant damage being done over time.

“Swap to Spears!” Mari ordered as she wiped off the mud, the scouts instantly complying by unsheathing the spears strapped to their backs, the straps dropping onto the ground.

The battle soon entered a temporary lull, Mari and the two scouts circling the monster like three hunters armed with spears, while the monster’s tendrils twitched violently, eyeing its opposition and potential prey.

Mari racked her brains, having only fought humans or goblins before, never a monstrosity like this with an erratic combat pattern. She felt inadequate, unable to come up with a clear plan to kill the monster instantly. If Kyle was here, he would finish off the monster in one fell swoop. That’s what I’ll do as well!

A sudden clash of metal and wills erupted with the drop of a hat, as though the two parties had agreed upon before. Instead of the monster trying to kill Mari and the two scouts, it immediately rushed headlong, charging right at Ollie and the remaining engineer who were hiding nearby.

“Shit!” Mari cursed, quickly running straight at the monster with abandon, trying to use her spear to fend the monster off. It worked momentarily, but the monster swatted the spear away, its armor strong enough to contest with the sharpness of the spearhead.

“Use light!” Ollie shouted as the monster arrived, desperately waving his tiny lantern and trying to give Mari a hint. The scouts instantly caught on, shining their beam of light at the monster but to no avail other than to temporarily disrupt it’s movement, buying some time as it recoiled slightly.

The light is too weak! Mari immediately gathered what was happening, knowing that a sufficient amount of visible light would blind the monster for long enough to exploit. She patted her body, trying to grab her lantern, only to find out it was too small and dim for the purpose.

The monster continued its bullheaded charge towards Ollie, Mari’s heart pounding as she watched Ollie attempt to push the other engineer away, running ahead to challenge the charge head on. “Ollie, you idiot!”

In a split second, an idea sprouted in her mind, and her body instantly took action before time ran out. With a strenuous grunt, Mari summoned the arcia energy within her body and pushed it outwards towards the hand that now held her tiny lantern.

With a jerk, the arcia energy flow within her body lurched, concentrating into a tight flow and swirling into the small crystal in the middle of the lamp, supercharging it far beyond its mean. Mari could see with her vision the intricate web of energies within the crystals began to deteriorate, the crystal glowing brighter and brighter as more energy was pumped into it.

“GET DOWN!” Mari roared, nocking her arm back over her head before flinging the lantern towards the monster as hard as possible.

The projectile alerted the monster’s instincts, prompting it to turn its head towards it, only to see the burning red hot crystal slowly illuminating the cavern with a blinding flash; the squad members quickly covered their eyes to prevent loss of eyesight.

The monster had no time to react, its optical sensory organs were immediately thrown into chaos, the bright flare imprinted onto its retinas while it shrieked, attempting to use its other senses to continue the battle.

But it was too late – Mari was already in the air, leaping with a spear ready to crush armor with the use of gravity. The spearhead finally found purchase on a joint of the monster, breaking through the weaker gaps in the shell and severing the nerves controlling the joint.

Before she could activate the detonation sequence, Ollie suddenly yelled out: “Capture it! We need it for research!”

Why do these scientists and shit make life so hard?Mari groaned, but she yielded, instead preparing to pull out the spear and continue exploiting the opening presented. “Okay, but I hope you’re fine with no limbs!”

The other two scouts entered the fray as well, jabbing their spears into the obvious weak points as demonstrated by Mari before. But before they could push the advantage, the same deafening roar that they heard before caused them to flinch, attempting to cup their ears as stinging pain erupted through their jaw and towards their brain, the eardrums nearly rupturing.

As Mari regained her balance, yet another gust of wind, this time much stronger, nearly blew her away. “What the? It has wings?!” Mari couldn’t believe her eyes, the now injured and bleeding monster launching up towards the low ceiling before gliding off into the distance, its yellow blood trickling behind it in a clear trail.

Instead of it retreating further into the cave, it surprisingly retreated towards the path they took, posing a real challenge for the squad now.

“We should chase it now. Pack it up!” Mari ordered, but Ollie did not pack up, instead focusing on light capturing the decaying engineer in the middle of the unknown clearing, trying to get as much footage as possible.

“Damn it, Ollie, we don’t know how fast that monster recovers! If we don’t move now, we’ll have to fight it again, potentially at full strength!” Mari grabbed Ollie.

“Give me two more minutes, I’m almost done! Hey, you got the fight recorded?” Ollie motioned to the other engineer, who gave a thumbs up.

“Fine! You two, track the monster down first. We have the radio repeater setup now, so use comms to relay information. Once you find out where it went or is resting, do not approach; wait for us to arrive.”

“On it, ma’am.”

The scouts took off, while Mari watched Ollie record as much as he possibly could, even collecting some of the bodily fluids of the monster, before stuffing the resulting lightcapture film and evidence into his backpack. “Alright, I’m done!”

The squad moved, Mari and the engineers trailing the scouts from half a kilometer away, while the scouts used their training to check. One of them noticed the yellow blood coating a rock, along with obviously brushed past trees, fungi, and stepped on moss that were still slightly flattened.

Soon, Mari caught up with the scouts, who were crouched behind a large rock outcrop. “Did you see where it is hiding?”

“Not yet, but we’ve been tracing the tracks, over there. It was spread out, but it began to slowdown. Look at the concentration of the tracks.” The scout pointed to the moss, clearly trampled on by something similar in shape to the foot of the monster’s legs.

“Good work. So, it couldn’t have gotten far from this area. No more splitting up – we stick together and hunt it down.” Mari planned.

“Not hunt it – capture it.” Ollie corrected her.

“Whatever. If it’s about to kill any of us, I’ll kill it in a heartbeat.” Mari shrugged it off, taking the lead once more and following the dense track left behind. The track snaked and turned, but it soon led towards the cavern's wall, a tiny little secondary cave with the sound of rushing water currents right under them, coursing through the myriad of tunnels.

Yet soon, the footsteps came to an end, the track going cold. “The track ends here… and there are no tracks in the cave.” Mari pondered. Wait a minute, why are there no tracks in the cave?

A sudden scream erupted from behind as the monster pounced from above them, its shell changing color from the greyish hue of the wall to its original blue, its two front legs already jutting out of a scout’s body before gouging the scout’s chest out with its sheer strength, the ribcage fractured into halves.

“Fuck!” Mari lunged at the monster, immediately parrying the follow-up torrent of front-leg strikes, preventing it from killing any more of the squad. Fuck capturing it!

With an internal battlecry, Mari internalized all of her extra arcia energy, channeling it into the spear before fighting tooth and nail with the monster, in a one-on-one. The other scout attempted to help, but a single leg swipe was enough to send him flying into the wall, unconscious with blood trickling down his mouth.

Mari would’ve cursed again if she even had the breath to do so. Blow after blow rained down on her blocking spear shaft, her arms nearly buckling under the ferocity of the attacks. I need a way out of this. If only I could get a touch on the monster and blast it full of energy!

However, it was impossible to touch the monster without being severely wounded. And even if I do touch the monster, I’ll have to get close enough to the body… close enough to the body? The realization hit her, her grin returning to her face as she fought with even more strength, pushing back the monster.

The monster seemed startled by the sudden pushback, but held its ground, facing Mari’s spear head-on with defiance.

Detonation Spear!

With the activation, the spearhead ignited, a ball of fire instantly erupting and engulfing the sparse oxygen present in the cave, along with the monster’s upper body. The monster shrieked and recoiled from both the high heat and light, but Mari had a plan already in motion, sliding underneath the belly of the monster and charging her two hands with as much residual arcia as she could muster.

Spinning to a halt right under the monster, she slammed her two fists upwards, forcing as much of the raging arcia flow as she could into the monster, and also simultaneously manipulating the arcia energy within its core.

The core destabilized, fluctuations rippling across its initially stagnant position, coupled with the additional energy that had nowhere else to go. The extra arcia energy searched for a way out, which instead began to forcibly push itself through the various capillaries of the monsters, causing it immense pain.

Not enough, I need more!

“Mari!” A yell followed by another Detonation Spear clattering right next to her was her saving grace, the spear thrown by Ollie from the dead scout.

Perfect. With a final roar, Mari grabbed the spear and thrust it deep within the seams of the shell, activating the Detonation Spear once more, except this time it was right in the monster.

With a brilliant burst of meat, innards, and yellowish-goo mixed with god knows what, the monster exploded into pieces, the sharp edges of the shell nearly impaling Ollie as he ducked before they safely lodged into the nearby rocks and trees.

Mari huffed and panted, her armor heavily damaged from the close-range explosion, half of the force impacting her right on. Her body began to twitch while she slowly slumped to the floor, arcia exhaustion hitting her. “Shit… Kyle isn’t going to like this…”