《Tentacles, loot boxes and apocalypse [monster evolution story]》🙡 Chapter 4.2 - The meeting 🙣
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🙡 Chapter 4.2 🙣
The meeting
Shepti whipped around, only to see in last moment as dark shadow shot towards her—an, as she heard many times from her dad about his time as an adventurer, in this moment just before the surely deadly blow struck, she saw a memory—a memory of her trembling sisters back, while she protected her from—
BANG!
She collapsed backwards from the impact, pieces of shattered ice cutting her face.
The demonic branch stopped by a protective ice shield, cast by heavy panting Icicle.
*Zap!* *Zap!* a moment later Candle shot back at the assailant with a series of electric sparkles!
But that was not the time for dilly-dallying, she turned towards the exit and rushed forwards trying to get out of range of the hidden monster. Root covered ground trembled below her, making it impossible to keep one's balance without using hands, yet she ran as fast as she could.
But the demon was faster. One of the branches grabbed her ankle, and pulled her deeper into the forest.
“Nooo!” She screamed, before another branch wrapped around her throat. She started trying to pull it away, but she wasn’t strong enough. Once again, Icicle bit her, snakes own blood dripping down its mouth from earlier exertion, with strong “Get a grip!” feeling, which helped her calm down. She tried her best to gather her thoughts and remember combat related spells she learned—which was pretty much none, she was studying to be a healer at a nice town, not a combatant!
“Thinkthinkthink… No this won’t work.. But.. no.. but! Ouch!”
Her captor definitely didn’t care about her comfort. Shepti also couldn’t count on much more help from her familiars, the two oldest snakes were now out of mana, Icicle looking especially bad—the casting of this level of shield drained all her mana and even some blood.
Summer and Snow, the younger twins, were still casting their spell but she stopped them. They needed a lot of time to do so, and they will need quite a long break before the next cast. Instead, she caught the branch around her neck with her hands. The demon treant was trying to make her lose consciousness by suffocating her, but it picked a wrong target for that—she could breathe through her snakes. Just in case, she decided to pretend to be barely conscious.
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“Pleasepleaseplease woooork!” She poured her mana into “organ sense” magic, the basic analysis tool of most healing classes. As expected, the structure of an ancient half plant, half stone demon was mostly incomprehensible to a young mage like her… but for her plan she didn’t need to understand how things worked, she only needed one piece of information to fuel her next two spells. First, she used “Comfortable treatment”, a pain numbing skill, that also took patients' minds away from the magical treatment being administered to it. And, with a level of concentration she never achieved before, she started executing her desperate plan.
Soon, she got dragged close enough to see the silhouette of the treant, dimly glowing with mana. Unfortunately she lost her light-amulet during the initial attack. She tried her best to ignore it, and concentrate on the spellwork, but the panicked thoughts like “teeth!” “death!” “now? now!” shared by the snakes were not helping.
The only reason she stayed calm... well, as calm as one can be expected to be in such a situation, was that she could feel her plan working. All the time she was casting “blood create”, while also artificially lowering creatures blood pressure with “Comfortable treatment”. Never was she as thankful for having to help her mother at the clinic as right now.
As she was getting closer, she was able to see more and more details on the dark stump of the fallen treant. Its dozens of eyes, leering with sinister joy, And the mouth… A gaping hole full of thorns, with small dots around it, those who are eaten entombed inside it for weeks, while the creature feeds on their mana and flesh, even feeding them water and sap in the meantime. She thought it was just an old wive’s tale, a way to scare children, but now she was willing to believe it!
And suddenly, the sneers and hungry glances changed to those of confusion… and soon anger. “NOW!” she screamed in her mind, while stopping the “comfortable treatment”, and doubling down on blood creation! The effect was near immediate. Dozen otherworldly eyeballs started inflating, while the wood let out a deafening scream of creaking agony.
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At the same time, a heat ray burned down the branch holding her throat, while a magical bullet froze the one around her ankle. She shattered it with her other boot, and ran, without looking back. Even when a series of dozens of popping sounds could be heard.
🙚🙘
A few hours had passed and Shepti wanted to cry. Against her best judgement, she really hoped that would be the end, that she could just run away… but that hope only made the reality more painful. Yes, what she did took away the monster's sight, but it could still feel it when she stepped above its roots! Not only that, it was actively searching for her with its wooden arms! Stabbing the ground at a random spot every minute or so.
She just couldn’t take the tension and stress. She lost count of how many times she nearly died, after taking a wrong step, saved mostly by her trusty snakes, but every time she had to retreat closer to the tree—and now she is back to where she was three hours ago. She suspected that her surprise attack also took creatures' hearing, as it didn’t react to her shriek a few minutes ago, when one of the spears shot just between her legs.
Thirsty, hungry, too exhausted to do anything, she just sat there, considering just giving up—no, she couldn’t do it to her snakes—when something hit her belly and pushed her to the side. A Moment later she could hear the “swoosh” of a branch piercing the air where she used to be a moment ago.
🙚🙘
I know it’s not exactly “on brand” for world-ending monsters to say, but seeing a crying kid always made me want to cheer them up and ask what’s wrong. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure hugging a kid in this body would land me in prison. Actually, any human contact might. Damn.
Yeah, that’s why I was not going to intervene. As I decided before, people mean society, society means trouble, and conflict with monsters, like me!
At the same time, this girl was my ticket out of this prison! So I hid and observed the situation. She seemed to be a surprisingly human looking medusa! A real bona fide monster girl! Her snakes were looking at her, worried.. And one of them seems to have even noticed me, glancing at me from time to time.
Interestingly, she was t he second highest source of points I’ve seen in this world—though unlike the previous ones, this one was green. The only other object that had visible green points was the buried obelisk. Even more interestingly- the brightness of the marker was increasing with every passing second.
Thank gods—literally in this situation—I was looking at the markers at that moment, as its the only reason I immediately saw the big red marker above the ground appearing just next to her legs.
I sympathize with you, my tree monster brother, but this girl is my ticket out of here!
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Serpent's Herald
We begin with Arn, a young Ossarian man about to embark upon his first mission with an all-powerful government organization - The Inspectorate. A mission that should have been a matter of formality, a simple initiation, sets off an avalanche which no one escapes. Some Illustrations and Crafts For the Book: Map of Nedreal - the land where the story takes place Leather Travel Charm - this is a real life recreation of the travel charm from the book
8 161Seclusion
I look at the mountain of paperwork before me. I'm overworked. Slowly, my eyes fall shut. I'm so tired of this... A loud 'bang' caused by dropping off another pile of paperwork made me bolt upright. My maid stands before, scorn in her eyes. Annoyed, I wave her away—this is not the first time that that has happened. And she is not the only one who does that. 'Hated by my own people,' I sigh internally and rub my temples. This is not what my 'freedom' was supposed to look like. My eyes hover over the ring on my finger. I tried, you know? Right now, I only want everything to stop. Maybe read some books, eat something delicious, and nap as often as I want to. Wait...I am the matriarch! Hell, I can do whatever I want! Books? I can pocket whole libraries in my domain. Food? Also, in my domain. Naps? Well, there are many cuddly nooks in there. Sooo...my domain has everything I need—dunno why I never thought of this before. All that's left is to relocate its entrance to another totally secret place. How about that hidden forest temple? Yes, let's go with this! Goodbye obligations, goodbye people who always want to take over, goodbye enemies, and at last, good riddance to the council that tries to marry me off to one of these fat ugly narcissistic nobles. Uhh, I just hope nothing will go wrong during my long-term absence. Nahhh, nothing will happen at all; I am totally sure of it...probably. ______ This is the rewrite of the old story: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/273362/seclusion-old-version--dropped/ Alternate Titel: I lived so long in seclusion that everybody forgot about me
8 202The Arcane Fanatic
"A strange thing Drives us all..." An unknown voice echoes out through seemingly darkness. "The will to live." "But what is it to truly live? It is different for everyone but for me it is magic." "To feel the power at my fingertips and see mysteries unfold. To create and manipulate magic in a way that has never been done before. To be a pioneer of magic... that is what I live for. --- In the world known as Arcane, we follow a young gentleman that goes by the name of Max Blacklock. The strange thing about Maxwell is that the soul that is currently inhabiting his body isn't the original! A stranger with no recollection of his memory or thoughts takes place in a near-dead Max and takes to the world like a fish in water. Mysteries lay in the world of arcane in spades and Max will be the one to find them with his thirst for knowledge. But will Max find the mysteries that lay in his mind, body, and soul? This book is just for fun and to practice my writing skills. My previous book met me with frustration after sitting for hours in a day trying to get words to come out. It became something that just wasn't fun to me anymore. So here I'm going to try and just have fun writing a story I would have loved to read. If you want to read what I write then be my guest. I love to critique and hope that I can get better through writing this story but I don't know if I will be able to keep a stable upload schedule until I get into the flow of things again.
8 83Flesh and Metal
Death. Death is the end of all living things but while it may be the end it also the beginning. For death is merely the closing of a door as a new one appears in front of you. The possibilities are endless but only if you open the door. Would you open the door and explore the Universe with me?
8 156NHL imagines
imagines about nhl boys because have you seen them?! 🥴❤️requests are closed rn💛⚠️NO SMUT⚠️
8 191Broken Reality (BNHA / Undertale Crossover)
A Classic Sans X Bad Sanses!Classic has spent his time locked away in his Au, occasionally escaping to visit Nightmare's group. His relationship was a secret, but one event leads to more problems. One day while visiting the castle, he falls through a portal into a new world entirely. The coding is completely different. He believes he is all alone in this new world, but he isn't aware of the five willing to follow after him. Will he ever find Nightmare and the rest, or will Ink find a way to tear everything apart as he has before?
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