Chapter 226 - Tussle in the grass (2/2)

With the spells of the two elementalists the beast was focused on them. Balthazar left the shadow doppelganger on that side as he quickly moved towards the other side of the beast. This time he managed to successfully put a dagger into one eye of the beast, but still the beast retaliated almost instinctively. Even with his high speed, the swipe of the tiger was fast that he realized that he couldn't jump back in time.

Luckily, he already had the shadow doppelganger skill enabled and he quickly used the shadow swap to replace his clone. The clone took the swipe on its chest and was thrown away due to the force of the swipe shocking the others and they instinctively took a couple of steps away from the beast. Shadow was also shocked as the hit took about 30% of the clone's health, which would be 15% of his actual health.

The same hit would knock off close to 50% of the health of any other elementalist. ”Stay away from the beast, it would take 3 hits to kill you,” shouted Shadow but he was glad that the clone was hit as it would be present only for 30 seconds and it helped him realize the damage that could be caused by the beast.

”You all right?” asked Agua looking at his partner who was thrown a few metres away by the hit.

”Not an issue. It was just my clone. I swapped before I was hit,” said Shadow surprising them. ”Run that way and keep attacking it from its blind side. It won't be able to attack properly if keep to that direction.”

”It will heal we need to have some strong way to attack it. We should have brought the others,” said Agua. ”Even if they didn't have the quest it would have been a good precaution.”

”In hindsight, a lot of things seem to be a good suggestion. Anyway, keep attacking from the blind side. I already have poison on my weapon and if you check it is poisoned and stabbed in the head. It will die or run away after that,” said Shadow as he had his doppelganger attack along with him.

It was then that the others noticed that a poisoned attribute came up on the beast and it was losing small amount of health every second.

”I will try to blind it from the other side,” he continued as he began to attack it along with his clone. With both his clone and himself, he was confident to keep at busy for at least another 15 seconds till the clone disappeared.

During these 15 seconds the two elementalists managed to get on its blind side and with a fae elementalist it was not hard to keep away from it. He only had to fly for short durations and the tiger was mainly focused on Shadow as he had already managed to blind one of its two eyes.

Though it focused mostly on Shadow, he was able to avoid it quite frequently due to it being blind and wasn't able to attack him properly. He used that to its advantage and though the beast managed to get close to hit him a few times, he managed to block it with his weapons reducing the impact.

Agua and other were stunned to see that Shadow didn't lose much health while blocking the beast's attacks as it implied that he had both high speed and strong defence. They were sure that he had some great equipment to be able to do that repeatedly in a battle.

This continued for a 5 minutes and Shadow managed to stab the other eye during this time permanently blinding it on one side. When the health went down to 30% of its total HP, it suddenly stopped and started to look around. This was the time that Balthazar was most worried about as the beast could go berserk and it could even go at Barnabus again.

”I think it is going to go berserk,” said Shadow. ”Is Barnabus healed yet?”

”The f.u.c.k am I supposed to answer, the crippled effect continues to persist. I think he needs higher level healing,” said the priest in the team chat.

As they were getting ready to fight bitterly, the beast turned around and started to run away.

”What was that?” asked Agua looking at it. ”Did something frighten it?”

”Don't calm down yet, the grassland tigers are known to be ferocious and they fight to the death,” said Barnabus. His words immediately put the rest on alert, but Balthazar knew better. Any beast however ferocious will run away if it believes its enemy can overpower it. This was the downside to blinding beasts, they could still run away before the go completely blind. The tiger which lost one eye and had its blood leaking into another was clearly one of those.

”I doubt it would come back, but we need to make some changes. Barnabus, can you ride a horse?” asked Balthazar. They had already collected the required materials to complete the quest and they only needed to return safely. None of the players had a pet mounting learned so they couldn't use pets to ride without a carriage or cart, but he had been hoping that Barnabus might know as he was an NPC who was the son of a town head.

”Of course, I know,” said Barnabus. ”Do you even know who I am?”

”Good. That simplifies things, Barnabus goes on the horse,” said Shadow as he pulled out the Clydesdale horse from his pet bag.

”What about the others?” asked Barnabus. ”There is a high chance that it will come back and attack. We are still in danger.”

”Is that concern for us?” asked Shadow.

”No, I just don't want my missions to have casualties. It will affect my rating at the guards,” replied Barnabus.

”So, you are willing to think of us at the very least due to the mission. Similarly, you are the mission for us. We need to get you back to the town safely,” said Shadow. ”So, get on the horse,” he said pulling the horse near him. The guardian player who was near Barnabus pulled him up and helped him up the horse while the others kept a lookout.

”Ok. Now we quickly retreat back,” said Shadow. The guardian and the priest stayed by the horse along with Barnabus. Shadow led them back towards the town while the other two kept a lookout for the grassland tiger. Balthazar didn't care for the tiger as he doubted it will come back to attack them.