Chapter 2-56: Chained Results (1/2)

Sama was all in tight black; tights, t-shirt, bare feet, fingerless gloves, Masspack molded to her back. She watched the way the black chain with its mismatched pattern was moving in a serpentine manner in the clawed hands of the werewolf.

Abyssal Dire Weapon. Double Exotic Weapon. +I Agile, probably. Easily changes between reach and close weapon. The spikes are avoiding her hands as she spins it, and it’s whipping into tautness too quickly to be natural.

It’s not a weapon meant for fighting other werewolf-level enemies alone, although it can probably reap normal people, and in a pack fight, she could wrap a limb to give her packmates openings.

But I’m not a werewolf, and my Maneuver Defense is now an extra +8 against Grapple and Trips, because wolves.

The spiked chain slithered out at her, rather more like a striking serpent then a length of oddly-shaped links that rattled each other oddly... Yeah, those are spinal disks of bone of some kind, not metal...

Leaping would put her in the air if she continued moving absolutely straight. Instead, she cut down and across, and hurdled sideways without breaking stride, smoothly enough to give a track star conniptions.

The spikes went by beneath her this time, hit the glowing golden length of her Sword, began to bite and wrap, and the werewolf pulled on it instantly, trying to jerk Tremble out of her hands.

The golden blade vanished, and the chain whipped back so abruptly the werewolf overbalanced at the complete lack of resistance.

+1000 Karma before Renewal was enough to buy Morphing, which let her transform Tremble into any similar-sized or smaller weapon... like a knife.

Still glowing golden, merely six inches of silver-edged steel drove forwards, and as it did, it sprouted another twenty-four inches of golden edge once again.

The chain whipped across to catch and deflect the incoming Blade, the werewolf’s arms moving with inhuman speed and power to turn it aside-

And the golden Blade vanished again, the chain snapped past on nothing, and the werewolf’s bloody black and yellow eyes had just enough time to widen in alarm as the dagger drove in just under her ribs.

Sama looked into her eyes as two notes rang in the air, quavering through the werewolf’s bones.

“Tremble,” she hissed quietly, and it carried over the raging of the fires, the howling of the winds, and the screams of the fleeing workers.

Gold ejected out the werewolf’s back, punching through her heart, and soulfire burst as Sama let loose the Sun Strike to make sure things were finalized.

The backhand was a dying blow, pure instinct and reflex. Sama rolled with it, letting her Soak take the hit as it smashed her back through the air, and instead of tearing off her jaw, it merely left a light bruise and stripped off some Soak.

A sound halfway between howl, growl, and bark smashed into her almost as heavily as the pony-sized wolf that slammed into her from the side, jaws trying to grab her entire head and tear it off.

It ran into the barrier of her forearm, driven across the back of its mouth behind its teeth, gag reflex preventing its jaws from closing for a second as great pressure came down on her arm, and the bone threatened to break.

But it didn’t. Soak was annoying that way.

Lightfoot meant she didn’t fall to the ground; she kept skidding across it, propelled by the oversized wolf. It certainly could have rammed her into the wall... except she swung up underneath it, wrapping her legs up around its chest, between its clawed feet. Gold blossomed around her chewtoy arm, and around Tremble as she drove the knife into its ear and lit it off.

The Soulclaw manifesting inside the Vajra around her arm basically turned it into an axe and spiked club at the same time, biting back into those huge jaws that were shaking her around like a toy, trying to rattle her... and started ripping its own jaw apart as it did so. Versatile IUS was such a joy in grappling combat...

Then Tremble punched in through one ear and out the other side of the skull, and all the frenzied whipping about abruptly faded.

She kicked off before the oversized wolf could collapse on top of her, which might have been annoying to get out of. The fabric of her shirt was ripped all to heck, her shoulder was feeling more than a little strained... but Combat Vigor was pumping through her, washing away the minor trifles of lost Soak.

Her skin wasn’t even broken. Soak was just that wonderful of stuff. Until it was gone, people got to fight at full strength. Base, pure combat magic, a defense against all the bigger, meaner, magical things out there that could rip frail humans apart.

She had taken all the damage her DR could, which had mitigated some of the injury, but she was pretty sure just that backfist and this savaging had done 50+ damage. A normal person would have lost their face and broken their neck just from the backfist. The savaging would have reduced them to bloody pieces.

Werewolves were Health monsters, preferring to advance along their Racial Classes over and above everything else, and had precious little appreciation for the joys and wonders of Soak. As Shapechangers, they could heal themselves remarkably quickly, recovering in hours what would take a normal human days to regain... and if they had enough Racial Levels, potentially in minutes!

Kill them fast, or don’t kill them at all. Soak could do almost the same thing, it just didn’t come with major blood loss, carved flesh, and the like, which Health damage did.

Sama spun in a quick circle, making sure nothing was coming out of the two doors into the courtyard here. All was not still nor quiet, but there was no danger.

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She cut off the heads of everything there, and if they were small enough, threw their bodies with the heads into the bonfire they had built.

She didn’t burn all the human flesh. She figured it would be a nice thing to be found by the firefighters and police who were doubtless already on their way.