30 Crushed By A Stone Leaf Tortoise?! (1/2)
As soon as Shin Sumi's foot landed on the rocky slope, she already considered herself much safer than she had been previously.
”As strong as that tortoise might be, it can't be nimble with such a huge stone like body!” she logically thought.
Rumbling noises cut off her mental sentence suddenly. The ground had started trembling.
It was a special ability that the Stone Leaf Tortoises developed over the years. When the specimen grew to be an adult, its affinity with rocks and stone elements was so symbiotic that it was able to make the ground tremble and provoque landslides. It was akin to a cultivator's technique or magic and showed how powerful the tortoise was.
Shin Sumi was immediately destabilized, allowing the tortoise to advance towards her with an agility on the moving ground that defied logic.
She jumped again sideways, evading at the last moment a charge that would have a devastating impact on her small body.
The Stone Leaf Tortoise's shell would have impaled her, had she been the slightest bit slower.
Shin Sumi's second jump was more lucky than the first. Because of the unstable ground she had lept sideways unintentionally, giving her a few extra breaths to prepare for what was to come as the tortoise turned to face her.
That fact did not escape Shin Sumi's eyes of course. In order to verify she lept once again to the side, making sure she landed on one of the biggest boulders.
The tortoise's powers didn't seem to affect the giant rock the size of a cabin. Because the beast was preoccupied about Shin Sumi, its powers were spread out all around. Shin Sumi didn't know it they would be enough to make the boulder tremble but didn't intend on staying long enough to find out.
The reason she had chosen this landing spot was in order to secure her next trajectory. If her speculations were correct, the tortoise would need a few seconds to face her before it attacked. If she was wrong, at least she could jump out of the way immediately and hope for a new alternative.
”One, two, thr... Here it comes!”
As it turned out, Stone Leaf Tortoises were as fast in a direct line as they were slow turners. Shin Sumi was still shocked about the beast's speed.
Jumping from boulders to dried branches of sparse vegetation, Shin Sumi kept on evading every attack the tortoise sent her way. Her reflexes were barely able to keep her safe for now. The pressure emanated by the tortoise was slowing her down and slowly sapping at her reserve energy.
”If I don't act, I'm going to run out of juice at some point. This is bad.”
With each turn, Shin Sumi focused eighty percent of her attention of the tortoise. Although it was impressive, the tortoise didn't seem too intelligent and kept attacking in the same way over and over.
The rest of Shin Sumi's attention was observing their surroundings. With a body this big, the tortoise would be a piece of cake to escape from, in the forest.
The barren land that was the side of the mountain, though, was not the most tactical place.
”This is really bad.”
Shin Sumi still had different options, although not many. She made her way in front of the same big boulder as before. She had been evading for close to ten minutes now and her stamina was starting to diminish progressively.
Gathering all of her energy in her legs, Shin Sumi took a deep breath before jumping vertically. The tortoise that had just been about to impale her with the lone horn on its shell was already in full momentum. It was too late to stop.
The Stone Leaf Tortoise rammed into the rock, nearly oblitering it in the process. Even the beast that was stronger than a rock itself was stunned for half a second.
The moment it had made contact though, Shin Sumi was reaching the apex of her trajectory. She could only jump about twice the height of the tortoise, but any height was already progress.
A golden light shone into her hand. The Gold Tyrant Flying Sword swung on her way down. Using all the strength she could muster in such a short lapse of time, her muscles bulged as she slammed the sword onto the tortoise's shell.
ZOOONG !!
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”Bwah!” Shin Sumi spat a mouthful of blood. The blow had landed but the brute strength of the impact had mainly reverberated into her arms.
Shin Sumi could tell her left forearm had been pretty damaged.
”It might even be broken” she thought as she rolled off the shell of the tortoise.
A low grunt escaped the beast's clenched jaws. Its head and the point of its shell were still stuck in the rock.
Forcing herself to ignore her potential injuries for the time being, Shin Sumi ran. After the Black Wind Bees incident, she thought she had found her maximum speed but she surpassed herself once again.
The slope was gentle and she remembered the area. A small plateau was visible a few hundred meters ahead and then she would be able to rejoin the forest.
From there, Shin Sumi estimated her chances of shaking off the tortoise at about eighty percent.
She ran downwards, not even turning around to see what state the tortoise was in.
She had only covered a quarter of the way to the plateau when a loud bang erupted with the complete destruction of the boulder that was keeping the tortoise stuck.
The dark eyes of the Stone Leaf Tortoise picked up another shade or two of darkness. It cried with pain and rage. A greyish light was visible under the tree trunks that were its feet.
The beast was now angrier than it had ever been. Its mind that was already not so bright went completely blank.
Shin Sumi kept running but she was slower than the grey light propagating. Following that magical light, the ground shook with even more strength than before.
Her feet unable to find a stable spot, Shin Sumi rolled on the floor. The tearing of her disciple's robe and the trails of blood that resulted from her fall were the least of her worries.
The tortoise was rapidly approaching, the downwards direction and its huge mass augmenting its velocity greatly.
Shin Sumi took advantage of the beast's momentum and inability to turn to escape to the side. It was a close call as she felt the blast of wind from the huge rocky mass punch her in the face.
In the same swift movement, Shin Sumi flung her arm sideways.
A yellow paper square, tiny in comparison to the huge tortoise, was propulsed towards the beast.
BANG
The paper talisman stuck to the top of the tortoise's hind legs, immediately blowing up.
Shin Sumi had picked up the talismans from the bag of holding of one of Elder Zhu's disciples after the battle in the clearing. Its use was fairly simple, Shin Sumi only had to send a sliver of Shinsoo into it before throwing it away.
She had never forgotten about the paper talismans, but if possible she had wanted to not use them. The Rising Star Tournament was about to start and she would need all resources available.
Shin Sumi was wearing a sly smile on the corner of her lips. The paper talisman had worked perfectly!
The tortoise grunted as it was blasted to the side. A big piece of rock-like armor fell down from the zone of impact, revealing soft pinkish flesh underneath.
The tortoise let out a painful howl, clacking its jaws repeatedly at the same time.
The trembling of the ground was temporarily stopped as the beast recovered. Shin Sumi sent a few more talismans towards the huge creature.
Not getting caught in the same trap twice, the tortoise simply bent its legs, half retracting them inside its shell. The talismans stuck to the shell instead of the softer upper legs.
The blast of the explosion was impressive to Shin Sumi but had virtually no impact on the tortoise's shell.
As soon as the fire died, the tortoise was back on its feet, fixating Shin Sumi with its dark eyes. Now that Shin Sumi had used a different kind of attack and with relative succes, the tortoise had calmed down a little bit.
Even if it couldn't be considered smart, it definitely had some degree of intelligence. The explosion from the first talisman had hurt it badly, but the others had been useless. At least the Stone Leaf Tortoise knew it could be blocked.
Shin Sumi breathed raggedly. The tortoise had stopped its constant attacking for a few seconds. Both were looking at each other, probably pondering their chances of success in this fight.
Shin Sumi was puzzled.
”How in the world did this huge tortoise evade the second salvo of paper talismans?! It is the only way I've found to defeat it, it has to work!”
She wondered if there was anything she could do to make the paper talismans more effective.