Chapter 40 - Between a Rock

Rosalia scrambled to get out of the water at my urgent warning, as I hopped through the shallows on my way onto the shore as well. The spiny, webbed sail continued to grow larger as the monster approached land, and I grabbed Rosalia by the wrist and started to run, looking back occasionally to check its progress.

Forget about everything I knew about games and levels, the sheer instinctual fear that set in when the long snouted gargantuan dinosaur with a jaw like the world’s largest crocodile stepped out of the water almost paralyzed me. The monster stepped out of the water and sniffed the air, poking its head near the makeshift spear that Rosalia just dropped. It then raised its head and looked straight towards us, only a few meters away.

[Spinosaurus] was displayed over the monster’s head. The dinosaur examined us from a distance, then let out a roar as it began to advance. It was hunting us for meat. Rosalia and I ran across the shoreline, towards all the armored corpses of soldiers and dwarves that fell to their deaths from the mountain above that marred an otherwise visually appealing shore.

My feet sank into the sand as I tried to run faster, but my shoes were not adapted for sand running.

“Ah!” Rosalia exclaimed, tripping over her sandals and landing in the sand dunes.

The spinosaurus lumbered forward unperturbed, unhinging its massive jaw as it bit down at Rosalia, who was still on the ground.

“Nooooo!” Rosalia cried in panic.

“Love whip, restrain!” I shouted. The black whip tried to wrap itself around the spinosaurus’s jaw unsuccessfully, as the whip was neither long nor strong enough to coil itself around fully and the monster easily shook it off. Shaking its head at the strange disturbance, the creature stepped forward again.

“Restrain!”

This time, I aimed the restraint at Rosalia herself. The black ropes coiled around her body in a compromising fashion, as she levitated in the air. I directed her away from the spinosaurus, which now turned its attention onto me.

The spinosaurus lunged at me with a biting motion. Right as its jaws were about to fatally close down on me, I activated shadow, for the first time in actual combat.

“Shadow!”

Fwoosh.

The spinosaurus bit down, expecting flesh but instead only hitting a dark cloud that zoomed out of the way unharmed. In this gaseous state, I could still see my surroundings, although my vision was slightly foggy.

I shuddered, seeing the inside of its jagged mouth that still had bits of fish in it from its largely fish diet. The creature attacked with an inhuman viciousness that gave me goosebumps all over my body.

Sniffing the air around where I entered gas form, drool spilled from the spinosaurus’s mouth. It locked eyes on Rosalia, who was floating in the air while bound by a black rope a safe distance away from the monster. Although there seemed to be a fixed vertical distance that I could levitate her, I could move her horizontally just fine. Worst case scenario, I could keep her over the water to slow the dinosaur’s tracking.

However, the spinosaurus seemed to have lost interest in her the moment she began flying. It was possible that this kind of species was not specialized in catching flying life forms.

I reappeared about a tennis court and a half worth of distance away from the spinosaurus, which instantly snapped its head towards me the moment I reappeared and began to chase while letting out a deep, guttural roar.

“Summon cat!”

Meat Shield appeared for a nanosecond near the spinosaurus’s head, letting out a puff of flame breath before instantly disappearing back into a portal. The spinosaurus appeared disoriented for a second, snapping at the air in front of it. An animal the size of this could easily shrug off shotgun shells, and pistol rounds would only cause minor scratches. A little puff of fire was not going to do anything to it.

“Thunderbolt!”

The magic circle roared to completion, letting loose a much larger bolt of lightning than I was used to seeing.

Boom.

The flank of the spinosaurus’s leg was hit by the impact, creating a slight char wound on the impact that the animal shook off. I ran as fast as I could, heading for the rock wall up ahead. Between the sporadic corpses lying on the beach was an arm length width orb that had to be one of the golem’s cores, judging by the crumbled rock debris of varying size sitting next to it.

Letting loose a spine chilling foghorn-like roar, the spinosaurus looked more aggravated than ever as it rampaged towards me with its jaw hinged open. I dove towards the golem core nestled in the sand.

“Please work…” I mumbled.

I touched the golem core with my palm.

[You have retrieved Siege Golem’s core]

[Would you like to reconstruct Siege Golem?]

Confirm!

[Reconstruction is in progress, 0.04%]

Rock debris and bent metal to the sides of the core began to coalesce around the glowing orb.

[Reconstruction is in progress, 0.07%]

“Come on… come on!!! HURRY!”

[Reconstruction is in progress, 0.12%]

The spinosaurus was right above me, kicking up sand as its hungry jaws bent down to puncture my body. Caught unaware by the animal’s hidden burst of speed, its teeth sank into my shoulder.

“Shado–gahhh!!”

Blood leaked from my cloud as I entered gaseous form, right before it could cleanly bite down and take a chunk out of my shoulder. I desperately headed towards the rock wall, where there were a few gaps between the rocks I could squeeze in. I sent Rosalia through one of the openings, then dove for a gap right as I left gas form. A clear blood trail ran across the shore leading to our hiding spot, and the spinosaurus pushed its snout to the sand and followed the trail of blood.

[You have left the effective range for reconstruction.]

[Reconstruction of golem failed. Try again later.]

There wasn’t much room to move in here. I panted while trying to squeeze further back, as my left arm hung limp from my body.

“Spoon.”

I looked at Rosalia, who was battered and cut from the brusque love whip ride.

“It can smell us,” she whispered. “Show me your shoulder, hurry.”

I turned to face her, and she lifted her pendant with trembling hands and pressed it on my wounded shoulder, and a warm glow emanated from my shoulder.

A long snout poked into the gap at our feet, exhaling a putrid breath.

“Oh my god…” Rosalia whispered, shaking in fear as she continued to heal me.

The snout retreated, then reappeared again, snarling and snapping at our heels. I retrieved the adamantite poleaxe from my inventory and dropped it on its snout. The heavy adamantite spear tip pierced some of the animal’s hide, which was more vulnerable around the snout area. Thrashing and screeching came from the spinosaurus as it tried to bite at our legs and continued to exhale that awful smelling breath.

I opened my inventory and began dropping weapons on it.

Battle axe. Battle axe. Warhammer. Warhammer. Warhammer.

By the seventh weapon, the spinosaurus snout retreated, and I heard the shuffle of sand as the animal walked away.

Rosalia bent down and peeked under the gap, and gasped. “It’s not leaving.”

“What do you mean it’s not leaving?”

I got on all fours and took a look. The spinosaurus was only a few meters away, picking at the corpse of a dead soldier. Its jaws sank into the stomach of the male warrior and tore away, as a gut wrenching string of entrails and bloody meat followed. It then tossed its head up and swallowed whole, and continued to eat.

“Jesus christ…” I murmured. “Let’s wait for it to leave, then we revive my golem and get the hell out of here.”

“Okay,” Rosalia responded.

After blocking off the gap with a row of weapons arranged almost like a jail cell’s bars, we took turns watching the spinosaurus, which was taking its time to poke at all the corpses one by one.

A mind numbing hour passed, and Rosalia motioned me down. “It’s… it’s calling or something.”

The spinosaurus ground its feet against the sand and made a strange, deep yelping noise into the air, twice every minute, which continued for ten minutes until the forest began to rustle, and a larger spinosaurus with two juveniles at its side emerged.

“It’s a whole family…” Rosalia said, swallowing her spit.

“How the hell do we get out of here?” I groaned.

“We just have to wait until they leave, I think,” Rosalia replied.

We continued to watch the two massive adults and the juveniles, which were a meter and a half long from nose to tail, feast on the carcasses of soldiers voraciously. As the sun waxed and waned, one of the adults nestled into the sand with the two juveniles, as the other one ventured off into the water. They weren’t showing any signs of leaving.

“Let’s head to the dimension room and re-strategize,” I offered.

Rosalia nodded. We were both completely exhausted and drenched in dried sweat from the hot sun heating up the rock enclave.

“Dimension room.”

With a thud, we returned to the serene and clean Japanese style tatami room, a far cry from the crap conditions we were in just a moment ago. I stood up, wiping the sweat off my forehead with my wrist.

“I’m gonna take a bath,” I said dispassionately.

“Me too,” Rosalia replied.

Rosalia followed right behind me and entered the luxury bath suite. Wordlessly, I stripped and quickly rinsed off under the waterfall before dipping into the hot bubbling bath. Normally this would feel divine, but my hunger was gnawing at my stomach and the heat was making me feel slightly light headed, although at least the hot water soothed my aching body.

“Hang on,” Rosalia said, pausing right before she entered the water. She held her silvery cross pendant in her hand and leaned down with her naked body, lightly touching the water’s surface with her left hand while holding her pendant in her right. She closed her eyes and began muttering a chant, and her hand and the pendant began to glow.

The bath seemed to resonate with her chant, and I suddenly felt a sense of refreshment coming from the water itself to my body.

“I just blessed the water,” Rosalia said while stepping in. “That should give it some holy properties.”

Water gushed from the male with a spear and female with a vase statues on both ends of the bath, and I closed my eyes, letting the steam hit my face as I slowly inhaled and exhaled. Rosalia ducked her head under the water, reemerging with her straight golden hair clinging together and damp, sticking to her face.

“I think,” I started. “I’ll try to do some fishing. Since the ocean is nearby, I can try to go for a fish and then shadow back. As long as I can make it back to the rocks in one shadow, it should be safe.”

Rosalia nodded, brushing her hair from the front of her face and running her hands down her neck and chest. “That’s a good idea. Actually, I didn’t notice before but I passed my second advancement.”

She tapped the air in front of her, opening her advancement screen.

“It says I now have [Blessing of the Stars], which can regenerate health over time on the target after cast, and I can use it on myself too.”

“We can use that,” I replied.

“Yep… hmm? What’s this?”

I looked at her. She seemed genuinely surprised at something.

“It says that because I invoked a miracle to create a bath worthy of a goddess, I now have unlocked a unique class, [Angel of Luxuria]... and an achievement? [Bath of Luxuria]... oh my god, it gives me so many stats!”

“Plus twenty in all my stats, and five hundred holy power?” Rosalia exclaimed. “Wow~”