190 Darkbeast Ambush (2/2)

Li did not feel it coming with his life sense, but he could hear it with his superior physical senses.

”Darkbeast incoming,” said Li. ”Four legged, judging from the cadence of its footsteps, and heavy. Impact comparable to, hm, a [Brutal Charge] from a warrior. Brace yourself, Launcelot.”

Launcelot took a wide stance, his shield poised in front of him. He cast [Indestructible] upon himself, a metallic sheen covering his body as he solidified his resistances.

Faye began floating in the air, flames wreathing her entire body, her hair becoming one flowing blaze as rings of heat welled up in her palms. Ava followed her sister's cue, but instead of fire being her element, it was green-tinted wind.

Celeste stayed on the ground, but her hands began to glow with a blinding white light as her large blue eyes darted from side to side nervously.

The Darkbeast tore through the forest thicket, crashing through trees as it unleashed a rattling roar. It looked like a patchwork of several different creatures all mashed together.

It had the body of a lion, the tail of a dolphin, insectoid wings ending in claws, long, protruding slug-like eyes, and an elongated, razor-bladed mouth that looked like it would have belonged to a leech.

Launcelot slammed his shield into the beast and with a grunt, powered it up overhead, making it fly a meter in the air.

Li cast [Root of the Devouring One], his left hand turning into a gray, bark-coated tendril, and he jumped in the air, piercing the creature with it.

The creature first broke apart every which way, its bones splintering and twisting in unnatural angles, jutting out from its skin as black blood spurted from every broken part of it before Li's tendril absorbed it, sucking it into its gravitational singularity.

The process occurred so quickly that before Li had even landed on his feet again, the creature had been disassembled and absorbed.

The heroes looked at him in shock. Li simply said, ”You've seen this spell before, haven't you? Any threat that comes near us, I can deal with, so don't worry about me. Cover your own backs.”

Li stepped in front of Launcelot, hearing now several creatures moving in his direction. A large, skittering one, one that leaped from treetop to treetop, and another that burrowed underground.

”Annoyances,” muttered Li as he walked forwards with his hands behind his back, his eyes flashing intensely green. He cast [Blood Root].

From his chest, two crimson spiked roots burst forth like targeted missiles extending in the dark of the forest with bullet-like speed.

One of them went upwards, into a treetop where it skewered a large ape with a writhing mass of tentacles for a face.

The other sailed into the forest and crashed into the carapace of a horse-sized scorpion with two canine heads and tendril infested pincers.

Finally, Li stomped his foot, a blood root emerging from his foot and sinking into the ground, piercing right through an overgrown worm with the faces of many different mammalian creatures riddled around its writhing body, all of their mouths open and ready to feast.

The blood roots drained the beasts entirely of their life essence, leaving them useless and dead husks of shriveled, cracking flesh. Unlike the eldritch creatures the demons became, these Darkbeasts had far less eldritch power latent within them, and so Li could easily dispatch them with regular druidry.

It felt more like fighting heroes with how Li could not sense their levels and know their abilities but still had a general sense of their power. As far as he could tell, his prior assessment of about level fifty for these Darkbeasts was accurate.

The three blood roots withdrew into Li's body, and he continued walking forwards.

It was then that something long and unpleasantly slimy wrapped around his arm.

Li focused his physical senses even more, and he could garner from the quietest of vibrations and the slightest of light refractions that this was an oversized, tendril like tongue coming from another Darkbeast that could camouflage and lower its metabolic functions such that it was effectively silent and also odorless.

The tongue pulled Li with considerable force that would have not only crushed the average's man's bones, but also have sent them hurtling into the darkness of the forest as if dragged by invisible power.

But Li's form was like a mighty oak, rooted and immovable.

Instead, Li pulled the tongue, sending the Darkbeast flying towards him. He opened his palm and caught the creature by its lower jaw.

The Darkbeast unstealthed, revealing itself to be a massive centipede as wide as a fully grown man. Its head was that of a chameleon's, its teeth a mass of spiny curves that looked at home in the mouth of a shark.

The Darkbeast bit down hard on the hand that grabbed it by its mouth, and it sounded like it had bit into solid steel, its teeth shattering on contact with Li's skin.

”My daughter can do better than this,” said Li as he gripped the mouth much harder, his fingers breaking the teeth apart and digging them painfully into the flesh of the gums. His thumb cracked the creature's jaw, and the grip of its tongue began to loosen.

The Darkbeast writhed grotesquely, its black and red carapaced body lashing out and coiling around Li's torso, the many bladed legs aiming to claw into him.

Li heard the heroes shuffling behind him, Ava readying a billowing orb of wind ready to blow the Darkbeast away from Li.

”Hm.” Li used his other free hand to firmly grasp the middle of the centipede Darkbeast's body.

Like tearing apart tissue paper, Li ripped the Dark beast into two still writhing, still struggling parts. Black blood poured from its torn halves like water flowing from broken faucets.

”Unpleasant,” commented Li, not because the sight of a giant centipede spurting blood was revolting, but because this creature had a higher concentration of unnatural energy swirling in its distorted veins.

Li cracked his neck and threw the Darkbeast halves into the distance. They sailed forwards, the wind whistling around them as they rapidly picked up velocity, before they slammed into another Darkbeast, turning them both into an explosion of black blood and raining miscellaneous body parts.

”I'm sorry to be stealing the show here,” said Li to the heroes behind him as he shook his hands, flicking black blood off of them. ”But I made a promise to be back home by the end of the day, and I fully intend to keep it.”