The Tailed Shrieker shot out its tongues once before. I can’t face it head on and neither can I catch, but there’re still a few things that I can try!

Quin sidestepped from its intertwined tongues in the last moment and then slapped it hard, making it swing away from him. Next, he punched at the middle of its chest, which made a similar sound when two iron weapons collide.

Even though it was a strong clear hit, the Shrieker managed to maintain its position as it had dug its sharp tail into the ground behind him and thus stabilized itself. It did not matter that Quin’s strike caused a small crack to appear on its chest, his enemy did not even budge, and instead answered with a counterattack.

The Shrieker bent the last two joints of its three-jointed leg and made its knee look extremely sharp.

Quin saw from the corner of his eyes that the Shriekers were not too keen on fighting one on one with him anymore, and a couple of adult Shriekers’ tongues were already moving toward him.

What to do now? In front of me is the Tailed Shrieker who’s just about to attack and I’m surrounded by adult Shriekers. Well, it’s not like there are tens of them attacking me currently, so it’s still manageable, but it just makes things longer and time isn’t something we have much of currently...

In the end, he decided to try and dodge the tongues and sidestep the Tailed Shrieker’s knee as well. He had hoped that a few of those attacks would end up hitting the Tailed Shrieker, but these creatures had an uncanny teamwork.

He continued exchanging blows with it, but it got increasingly difficult as more and more adult Shriekers decided that he was the number one priority. Fortunately, he got some help from the soldiers after some time, so he could go back to concentrating on his main enemy.

Though his fight did not start too long ago, because both of them were actually moving quite fast, they had exchanged numerous blows in just the span of half a minute. The cracks on its chest constantly increased and that at least made him a bit more reassured.

Damn!

Quin saw that an adult Shrieker was about to pierce one of the soldiers, and as he was too far from him as well as in the middle of his strike, he did not have enough time to do anything about saving him.

Whoosh!

He heard a strange sound that he could not link or compare to anything he had previously experienced. The soldier he had been worried about disappeared, and Quin could only see a lingering tint of dark red in the area the soldier had occupied.

What the heck was that? He scanned the area right away, but had no idea what had happened. I don’t think that something killed him as there’s no trace of him, so maybe he was taken away? It’s nothing like the Shriekers, and it was just before he would have been killed, but does that mean we’ve got a stronger ally? Damn, how strong could they be? I wasn’t even able to catch a single glimpse of them! It’s definitely on the level of the Spirit Forming stage! I really hope that they are on our side or else... We’re screwed.

His fight went on and although he tried to be careful, he clearly knew that if they turned out to be an enemy, none of his efforts would be of any use.

However, as time went on he grew even more sure that it was not the case, because a few other soldiers disappeared just like before and just before the moment of their death. When he finally spotted a few soldiers -- a couple of those being the ones whom he had seen vanish -- lying on the ground at the town center, he became a lot calmer. He could see that, though they were unconscious, they were still breathing.

Damn, if they are this strong then why aren’t they fighting the Shriekers as well? Quin was rather confused. It’s good that they are rescuing those soldiers, but with a strength like that it wouldn’t take too much effort to help us out!

He was confused and shocked during the whole time, and he could not help, but let the stranger occupy a great part of his mind. This meant that he was more or less fighting on instinct against his enemy, and despite trading blows, he was clearly still in the winning position. He had no fancy attacks or techniques only his pure strength and incredible regeneration.

Relying only on his punches and kicks made fighting against an enemy like the Tailed Shrieker somewhat difficult, and Quin was not too happy about the fact that he had completely forgotten about his spear when he left for Faiyi’s house. Even though it was made out of a material he could easily crush with his bare hands, it had various advantages.

The first one being the extra reach it granted, which would have given him a lot more opportunities during his fight. Dark gold was weaker than the Tailed Shrieker’s armored skin, but not all of its body surface was as hard, and just like there weren’t any creatures that had no weak spots on them, this Shrieker was no different. Its skin appeared to be not so tough on a few jointed areas, not to speak about its huge mouth, and thus he would have only needed a couple of precise attacks against those points. Naturally, he could not be sure about these things, but this was what he had assumed from his observations.

Yet, he had no weapon around him, and he could not just shoot out lightning bolts from his hand anymore. This left him with a slow and long fight against the enemy.

Boom!

The creature’s chest could not bear his punches anymore and it finally burst open, spraying its disgusting purple blood like a fountain. It would have been fairly easy to land a few more punches, but Quin had a feeling that its blood was something that he would better avoid, at the very least in a quantity like that. Thus he simply jumped sideways and tried to position himself for another attack after it would be safe enough again.

The Tailed Shrieker let out an ear-piercing shriek that even made Quin feel light-headed for a moment and he noticed that the egg inside his mind trembled violently a couple of times as well. It made him think of a few various things, but it was not the time to ponder on them.

The creature became silent after a few seconds and its blood did not spray that much anymore, so Quin moved in for another attack. His target was its opened up chest, as that would probably be the easiest target. Now that most of the blood had gushed out, he was sure that his body would be able to handle the smaller amount trickling out now.

He noticed something strange before his punch connected: there was something white that moved about beneath the creature’s skin. They are like... Arms! His fist smashed into them and they seemed rather tough despite being weaker than its armored skin.

I’ve wondered why they didn’t have any arms, but they are just hidden beneath their skin.... But why would it be like that? He really had no idea about how their anatomy worked.

The Shrieker was in quite a bad state, and could not really resist his attacks anymore. Quin’s fists were drenched in purple blood, which made him glad about his previous decision to avoid the blood flow, as it had a very strong acidic property to it that even his regeneration found difficult to keep up with. Damn, I can feel how much wild energy is flowing to my hands... It’s not that I can’t keep up, but this makes me expend so much energy!

Fortunately, the creature was finished after a few more hits, and fell lifelessly to the ground. I guess that I found a weak point... he thought with half a smirk.

Quin only stopped for a moment, and then quickly cleaned his hands from the disgusting acidic liquid.

Damn!

Just as he turned his head around to see how the battle was going, the Tailed Shrieker’s body trembled and its tail shot out lightning fast, like a spear after separating from its body. There was no way he was expecting something like this to happen and was totally flabbergasted. It would not matter that much if he only had felt surprised, and in spite of being slow to react he would probably be able to do something to counter it, but its tail was as fast as lightning, so much so that he could only see it as a blur.

It was halfway to the center of the town where the ones who were not able to fight stayed before he could even start to move.