Chapter 142: Its just a Fleshwound (2/2)

‘ding’ ‘Inheritor of Eternal Ash has reached level 215 – Five Stat points awarded.’

‘ding’ ‘Veil of Ash reaches 2nd lvl 16’

‘ding’ ‘Veil of Ash reaches 2nd lvl 17’

‘ding’ ‘Veil of Ash reaches 2nd lvl 18’

‘ding’ ‘ Ash Creation reaches 2nd lvl 11’

‘ding’ ‘ Ash Creation reaches 2nd lvl 12’

‘ding’ ‘Wave of Ember reaches 2nd lvl 8’

‘ding’ ‘ Ash and Ember Manipulation reaches 2nd lvl 14’

‘ding’ ‘ Ashen Wings reaches 2nd lvl 11’

‘ding’ ‘ Ashen Warrior reaches 2nd lvl 12’

The twenty stat points were quickly spent on more Wisdom, Ilea’s new mana capacity now at 4050. With the low cost of her spells and her ability to regain some mana with each punch of reversed Destruction, she would be hard pressed to find herself completely empty. At least in a normal fighting situation. Finding herself in a battle with a couple hundred thousand demons and a giant beast of a whale, perhaps then even she might find herself relying on her Meditation skill as much as some of the long ranged and flashy mages.

Ten minutes later she was as prepared as she was going to get to face a monster capable of breaking through a city wall with its sheer weight. “Let’s see what kind of magic you can do...” she said, lifting her helmet to brush out some of the already dried blood. Luckily her Healing magic had the side effect of creating new blood and tissue, otherwise she’d be fucked by this point. Or half cyborg. Thinking on the possibility of Alchemy and science in this magical land, Ilea blinked outside and flew towards the demon in the sky, the beast feeling much more approachable than Green who had been a little much in terms of speed and strength.

Next time they met, it would be a great fight. Ilea promised herself as she rushed towards her target. Fire rushed towards the whale as spikes of ice flew downwards from above, enhanced by gravity magic it seemed because Ilea had never seen ice magic move that quickly. Could also simply be a higher leveled ice mage, not like she had seen many of the Hand’s members in action. She regretted a little at not becoming a long ranged mage, must be fun to throw around flashy spells that explode in the enemy’s face.

‘A bow is nice as well...’ she thought as she rushed closer. It crossed her mind to talk to Sulivhaan about her implementation in the strategy, seeing him floating in the distance with other people distributed around the sky let her know it was likely him coordinating the attack. Then again he knew her and probably had her eventual joining planned in. So she smiled and rushed towards the ever growing whale. Not literally, no but getting closer and closer let her realize just how big that thing actually was.

Considering it was straight out of another dimension or whatever the fuck on the other end of that portal was, Ilea was a little more cautious at her approach. There was a high chance of random teeth and bone spikes appearing all over that monster.

[?? - ???]

“Well that’s bloody informative isn’t it? Why even have this skill...” Ilea said out loud as she smashed sideways into the beast, all her offensive skills activating as she ripped into the beast’s flesh. A big opening was the result but there was no blood coming out, either her attack was too shallow or the monster’s body was built differently than more normal biological entities.

‘Maybe go for the eyes or just dig in...’ she thought and rushed towards the monster’s front, big spells landing around her, making her dodge under and over them. A massive wave of magic came from the whale’s head before it opened its mouth. Ilea kept going closer when a wave of sound ripped through her body, she braced against it and pushed with all her power as healing magic started repairing the building damage from the attack.

Seeing the landscape in front of the whale made her realize that the attack was mostly focused on a line before it. The snow had parted, simply pushed away towards the mountain nearly a kilometer away. Trees were snapped like twigs and the unfortunate members of the Hand who were caught in the wave were pushed away with it, most of them likely dead seeing their uncontrolled flailing bodies.

Ilea grit her teeth and pushed forward until she came up on one of the monster’s eyes. It moved and looked at her as its attack came to an end, the mouth closing slowly before Ilea used her bladed gauntlets to slash into its eye. That definitely got a reaction as its mouth opened again in a wail. The monster’s eyelid closed shut, pushing Ilea’s blades downwards, an enormous weight hitting her arms as the blades came to a stop at the bottom of the eye. Her arms held as she ripped out the blades, the beast still in pain from the precise attack.

‘Might as well...’ she thought and rushed towards the mouth. The mages had done some damage but it would take quite a while to whittle down the monster’s health against the though hide. And what was a tough hide against a downright suicidal bladed warrior with a high defense?

Ilea blinked inside the mouth before it closed, hopefully no magical sound attack would be unleashed in the next ten seconds. She rushed further in, seeing through her Sphere while looking for any weak spots or organs. The good thing was that she found what she was looking for. The bad news on the other hand was that there were simply too many things that could constitute as a weak spot.

‘To work then...’ she thought as she decided on her blades to do the job. Causing internal bleeding was likely better with such a big monster compared to the blunt trauma she could inflict with her heavy gauntlets or the magical damage with her fists and spells. Blades on hands, Ilea started to slash away at the whale’s flesh inside of its mouth. Being a butcher wasn’t on Ilea’s list of things to do in life to begin with but her current predicament pushed the profession even further down on it.

The wall of flesh was tough, even with her high strength and high quality blades. She had to cut into it bit by bit to get to the organ placed further in. Luckily there was an opening running behind the two meters of flesh she was working on that would lead right to her target as soon as she managed to break through.

And break through she did, blood rushing out at such a high speed and with such heat that her defensive Veil of Ash nearly broke down. Her sense of smell reduced to its utmost minimum she hoped that Aki would stay as mentally absent from this ordeal as he had been all day. ‘The fucker probably likes this...’ she thought and smiled before she pushed into the torrent of near boiling blood, her blades cutting into the flesh to stabilize herself as she pushed onward.

At least air wasn’t much of a problem as the blood only reached to her knees after a couple seconds. The boiling was more of a problem as her Veil slowly broke down. Good thing she had her old friend, a lack of pain perception.

The organ was massive, at least two meters high and wide. Then again she had heard a blue whale’s heart was as big as a car. That internet fact didn’t really help her in the moment as she slashed into the piece of important looking biological infrastructure to cause as much damage as possible. After twenty slashes, the thing exploded in a shower of blood and yellow mucus, causing Ilea to puke into her helmet. An experience generally reserved for soldiers and apparently adventurers.

Ilea stumbled backwards and out of the opening again as she made her helmet vanish to puke again, this time not back into her mouth and nose. “God FUCK!” she shouted when a magical surge ran through the whale as it opened its mouth, the light of the sun illuminating just how disgusting her current environment was.

Helmet back on, to her displeasure, Ilea rammed her blades into the ground of flesh before another sound wave came from deep within the being’s body, ripping through her as Hunter’s Recovery worked overtime to keep her brain and organs alive. Her health was down fifty percent after that attack. Standing in the middle of it might actually kill her immediately.

At least there weren’t smaller mouths and bones trying to kill her inside this massive scrotum. Ilea healed herself as she continued further in. This time she made sure to brace herself for the next organ’s explosion which incidentally didn’t come. At least waiting for the next sound attack was worth it as she could hide in the crevice where the organ had been, not sustaining much damage from the attack.

‘Doesn’t seem like this is doing much...’ she thought and considering there had been three attacks from the whale already she didn’t know how the Hand’s forces were looking out on the field. Hopefully they had distributed enough to cause only few casualties. She steadied herself as the whale moved around in the air before continuing, this time ignoring the organs she saw through her Sphere and simply going further in.

At least she could try to find and destroy whatever enabled the monster to use those sound waves. ‘Wait, can I...’ she thought and used her healing skill to check on the monster. As expected she could determine a little about the beast’s condition, being in direct contact with it. The damage inflicted by her was potent but with the size of the animal still minor. The mages outside were apparently working overtime as the hide was pierced in several dozen places and the monster was bleeding profoundly, its eyes both already blinded, one of them by her.