70 Order (1/2)
Bloodbull reached me, lashing out with a wild strike with his right arm. I stepped forward, ducking under the strike. As he charged me, I bashed a blow into his stomach with my right arm. The empowered force of the blow slowed his charge as I spun on my heels once more. Spinning like a top, I drilled my left hand into Bloodbull’s side.
I used the recoil to drag me out from in front of him. He passed by me, undeterred and smiling. The eldritch mask on his face grinned,
“Is that all you have?”
I dashed forwards, jabbing towards his face with my right hand. He leaned far backwards, like he was trying to do the limbo. Back when I boxed, some people would dodge punches this way. There was an easy counter to it.
I stepped forward and pulled my left hand back. The momentum traveled up my feet as I arched my right hand over my head. Like swinging a club downwards, the inertia in my fist built before slamming down into his solar plexus. Just like in boxing, Bloodbull couldn’t hold himself upright because of the destabilizing strike.
He fell onto his back, the sea of hands held him up. As he crawled away, I followed him with measured, balanced steps. With each step, I shot out vicious leg kicks into the hands on his back. Each kick that landed snapped the bones in the arms. Bloodbull groaned, trying to escape. I didn’t let him.
This continued for the length of a football field. A third of the arms on his back were broken, some of them were even amputated. This threw him off balance. As he slowed down and hobbled away, I put more and more weight into each kick. The carnage continued until we reached the forest.
He reached a tree and crawled up it. With his front facing me now, he kicked towards me. I ducked under the kick and whipped a condensed tendril of oppression through the tree. The tree’s core rotted, forcing it to fall over to the left.
Bloodbull stayed attached to the tree, not understanding why he was falling. I shifted the tendril of oppression onto him. As he fell to his left side, I stomped towards my left. I bent towards my left and pressed through my heel. As I spun, my hand tucked towards my side. Ascendant mana roared up my left arm, and the telekinetic fields gave me the grip I needed.
With enough power to snap a tree, my uppercut collided with Bloodbull’s jaw. His head whipped sideways, snapping his upper body upwards. Before he tumbled out of my range, I clasped my right hand and spun on my heels once more. I shot my right hand out, letting my arm stretch out wide. The centripetal force built before I tucked the arm in before my fist landed, compacting the amassed strength of the strike.
Kinetic energy whipped into the head of Bloodbull, even greater than the last. The sound of metal clapping against bone echoed through the empty camp. The sound rippled across the barren earth, a testament to the death my aura left behind. Bloodbull’s body bolted towards the ground before impacting the earth beneath him. Cracks fissured around him, webbing outwards.
A crater formed beneath him like driving a giant nail into the ground. After landing, he grasped out with his right hand towards my foot. I stepped back, just outside the reach of his grasp. As he pulled his hand back in, I dashed forward and torqued a kick into his face. He grabbed for my leg again, but I stepped just shy of his grip once more.
He turned onto his belly, his head facing me. He lunged out with his right hand, trying to claw at my leg. I stepped forward, meeting his lunge with my right fist. A shockwave shot out from the concussive collision. Bloodbull fumbled upward, swiping again with his left hand, I sidestepped him and slammed a left hook against his jaw.
He stumbled towards his left, catching himself with his left hand. I followed him, maintaining a distance just close enough to attack, but just far enough so that I could dodge. As his left hand touched the ground, I sliced a whipping kick into the arm.
The joint caved in, bending his elbow backward. Bloodbull roared in agony, falling onto the ground. As he howled, I stepped forward and lifted a heel. Aiming at the center of his mouth, I stomped downward. Yellow teeth snapped, and his jaw bone fractured as my foot mangled his face. He covered his face, but I just lifted my heel and slammed it down onto him.
It’s an interesting conundrum in street fighting. People don’t understand how dangerous being grounded is. Unlike in sanctioned fights, normal people wear shoes or boots. This means stomping towards the head, which isn’t allowed in normal fights, is brutally effective. In fact, there isn’t a counter towards it.
Bloodbull was finding this out the hard way. Even if you block with your arms, a well-placed heel stomp would slam their hands into their face. A few more stomps, and the bones in the hand and arm could be fractured and broken. Then the hands would fall down, opening the head and neck to damage. Either of those places were deadly if struck with a hard heel.
I watched the familiar scenario play out with Bloodbull. Several of the arms from his back blocked the first few strikes. His normal arms followed. Then his head absorbed the trauma. I kept stomping, more and more blood spraying up with each kinetic impact. Over a minute, I trampled his face into mush.
He didn’t die, however. The mask kept him alive, even though his body just wanted to die. Leaves rustled behind me. I stepped away from Bloodbull and turned around. Three of the Enigmatta were pulled back to life. On their faces, the hands I tore off Bloodbull’s back clasped tightly. He hadn’t been escaping and losing arms. He had sowed seeds for backup later.
Before they reached me, I tripled the speed of my stomping. I growled, burning through my health bar to increase the power and speed of my savagery. I grit my teeth and mauled Bloodbull with my entire heel turning him to slush. As the revived Enigmatta closed in, Bloodbull’s experience notification appeared.
Turning around, I found the Enigmatta reaching towards me. The hands leaked purple mana, keeping the haggard flesh sacks alive. The first of the trio stumbled up to me, a head shorter than me. The purple mana acted as an elastic coating, grafting the destroyed corpse together. It enhanced the strength of the guard by two hundred levels as well, leaving it around 950.
With elongated, whipping arms, the Enigmatta lashed a deformed arm at me. The astounding quickness caught me off guard. The tendril smacked the side of my face. I staggered sideways before grounding myself. Another hand lashed, but I raised my shoulder and deflected the whipping strike. Sparks flew before I charged towards it.
Oppression condensed over the creature, freezing it in pain for a moment. Abusing that single second, I tackled it to the ground before raising my right fist. Several slams of my fist later, and the hand mushed. I kept hitting even after the notification sounded. I didn’t want to fight it again.
A clubbing arm slammed across my jaw. I fell sideways, dazed and confused. My vision stabilized before I glanced up. An Enigmatta lifted an enlarged arm above its head, ready to pound my skull into the dirt. Without hesitating, I kicked with my legs, pushing into a telekinetic field. The field absorbed the momentum of the kick, firing a telekinetic bullet. The bullet of force shot into the monster, hitting it in the face.
I tumbled across the dirt before rolling back to my feet. Another Enigmatta reached me, its body more intact when compared with the others. Two bony tendrils jutted from its shoulders, giving it four limbs to attack with. The deformed Enigmatta sliced downwards with its tendrils while flailing towards me with its arms.
I ducked, parried, and deflected strikes. Handling this monster took far more focus than the others. The awkward angles, bizarre tempo, and odd timing of its attacks only made fighting it even harder. The Enigmatta with the enlarged arm reached us, adding even more chaos to the encounter.
Pushing my limits, I stretched as my armor had to shift with the movements of my body. Otherwise, I couldn’t keep up. Defending the strikes took my entire being, like looking at the world through a tunnel. Only this mattered. Only my survival mattered.
The two Enigmatta turned into a monster more devastating than Bloodbull. They complemented one another to perfection. One of them would suppress me with a percussive symphony of strikes. The other would act as a deterrent for retaliation. After dealing with them for several minutes, I turned and sprinted away. I needed my health capped back out so that I could function at full force.
As I sprinted away, a siphoning sound echoed in the distance. I turned, seeing the dead body of Bloodbull. The hands across his back, both the broken and the fine, had left him. All across the encampment, revived lumps of flesh came together. The stumbled back towards the mask atop Bloodbull’s corpse.
As my health regenerated, the flesh and bones and skin surrounding the mask fused into a massive structure. The purple mana bubbled, turning the monster into a single piece. It molded into one. I frowned before shifting oppression over the monster. It slowed the amalgamation, but the process continued at a steady pace.
A chill ran down my spine. If that thing finished, I was fucked. I couldn’t beat these two Enigmatta unless I was at full strength, let alone this fucking monstrous abomination. Fear crawled across my skin and desperation burned through my blood. A bead of cold sweat dripped down my forehead, underneath my armor.
I might die.
The cautious approach I was taking died right then and there. This was all or nothing, life or death. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream with each beat of my heart, the frenzy of battle coming over me. I charged towards the shifting flesh sack. Before I reached it, a long tendril wrapped around my foot and pulled me to the ground.
I turned back, and the whipping Enigmatta had been brought back to life once more. Missing its head, another hand had grasped against its heart, pouring the purple miasma into it. I pushed myself up before jerking it towards me. The monster fell to the ground before the others reached me. Surging my ascendant mana despite the damage, I charged towards the Enigmatta with the huge arm. A plan formed in my head.
I ducked underneath the large arm’s first strike before slamming a fist into its stomach. The flesh held together, the purple miasma acting as a shock absorbent. The four-armed Enigmatta stabbed a bony tendril into my back. I ignored it. The clubbing Enigmatta needed to die if my plan was going to work. Besides that, I invested into health for this one reason. When I needed to soak damage, I could.
And so, I did. I weaved between the strikes of the clubbing zombie, each strike able to chunk my health. The four armed monster couldn’t dish out damage like it could, so I ignored it while bombarding the larger armed zombie. Four punches later, and mister large arm barely stood. My back bled torrents of blood, but I grinned as I grabbed the hand on the face of the large arm as it died.