Chapter LXIII: Battle Against Demonic Beasts IV

Demonic Wildlands

Month of the Tortoise 33, 172 ,328 DE

As the Demonic Ape's fist pummels my shoulder, the bone spurs sticking out from its joints slip through my fur and dig into my flesh. With its single-minded focus on hurting me, the Beast leaves itself vulnerable and I bite its opposites arm. My teeth find purchase on its forearm just below the elbow, and I bite down hard. Chaos corrupted blood fills my mouth, making me gag, but I continue to close my jaws. My razor sharp teeth tear through chitinous plates, flesh and bone.

With a wrench or my head, I tear off the Demonic Ape's left forearm and jump back. As I spit out its corrupted flesh and blood, the Demonic Ape stares at its truncated limb, and the stench of fear overpowers the rage in its scent. It clamps its hand over the stump of its torn off arm, but the flow of blood from the wound already appears to be slowing. The blood coating its hand turns black and clotted almost the instant it comes into contact with the air.

While Vorn continues to play tag with the Demonic Bull, the other two of the Demonic Ape's minions fall to my swords, and a Demonic Scorpion sneaks up behind it. With its attention focused on me, the Demonic Ape seems completely unaware of the Demonic Scorpion, but it is no more than a meter in length compared to the Demonic Ape's five meters of height.

"Graarrrr!"

As the stinger on the Demonic Scorpion's tail penetrates the Demonic Ape's calf, it roars and kicks out behind itself. Looking like it expected the kick, the Demonic Scorpion skitters out of the way. While it previously appeared to be moving in slow motion, its movement speed explodes, and as the Demonic Ape spins to look behind itself, it circles around to stay behind the wounded Beast and stabs it again.

Seeing the Demonic Scorpion toying with the Demonic Ape, The remaining Demonic Beasts back away, but my swords streak in among them.

Leaping over the Demonic Scorpion, I slam into the Demonic Ape's back. As it falls, I leap away, just avoiding a strike from the Demonic Scorpion's tail. Missing me, it stabs the Demonic Ape a third time.

Whether it is Demonic or not, a scorpion is a scorpion. It is one of the most aggressive species of insect alive. If it is angered, it will attack. If it is afraid, it will attack. If it breaths, it will attack. It will attack anything that comes near it. While insects give away little in their scents, fear is easy enough to smell, and this scorpion reeks of fear, but it seems far more cunning than any animal or Ferocious Beast breed of scorpion I have seen. While, it hung back with the rest of the Demonic Beasts and only attacked once the Demonic Ape was half-crippled.

"Graarrrr!"

While the Demonic Ape roars and thrashed in pain, the Demonic Scorpion scrambles around it and races toward me. As it strikes at me with its stinger, I hop to the side.

I have strong resistance to poison, but the drop of poison on the stinger's tip has the polychromatic sheen of Chaos corruption to it. In just the few seconds since it was stung, the Demonic Ape's legs have already turned mostly black, and multiple chitinous plates have fallen off, leaving raw, blackened flesh exposed.

Ignoring the dying Demonic Ape, I circle around the Demonic Scorpion playing tag with it. I let it get closer to me with each strike, until I have the range I want. As soon as the Demonic Scorpion makes its next strike, I step back just enough to avoid being hit and sink my teeth into its armored tail far enough behind the stinger to avoid the poison glands.

Crunch!

"Skreeee!"

As I rip of the last fifty centimeters of the Demonic Scorpion's tail, it screeches and latches onto my foreleg with its pincers. It squeezes, but with my metal-like fur and dense flesh, it does little more than bruise me. I sink my teeth into one of the pincer arms and tear it from the Demonic Scorpion's body. While it screeches louder, I tear off the other pincer arm and stomp on it until its shell turns into a crushed mess, leaking Chaos corrupted fluids.

Unconsciously, I wrinkle my nose at the foul odor of the Demonic Scorpion's internals. Like all insects, it internals give off a foul acidic stench far worse than the oily stench of it shell. Old Man Jones says that scorpions and spiders are not insects, but that is supposedly a distinction made on his original world, which he refuses to give me any details about. Whether it is a scorpion or a spider, it have odors in common with other insects. If it smells like an insect, walks like an insect, and looks like an insect, it is an insect.

More than half of the remaining Demonic Beast lie dead on the ground. The Od-wrapped blades of my swords are lethal for Beasts lacking weapons to parry them with. Whether it the Light Od or the Dark Od, the Power destroys flesh, bone, and chitin as easily as paper. The surviving Beasts appear to be moving in slow motion compared with my swords, and I turn my attention to Vorn's battle with the Demonic Cow.

The Demonic Cow has a couple dozen more bloody furrow torn into its hide, and as it moves, it limps on its bloody left foreleg. Vorn has holes in his right forearm and left shoulder, but other than that he seems to be intact.

After about fifteen seconds, my swords kill the last of the weaker Demonic Beasts, a corrupted Steel Fang Hyena. As its corpse falls to the ground, Vorn circles around the back of the Demonic Cow and sees me watching him.

"If you're done spanking the monkey, how about helping?" Vorn's mangle use of the Beast Language is barely understandable. The structure of the Beast Language is not suited for conveying conditional statements or questions.

"You look like you are having fun. I would kill your cow too fast. I would ruin your fun."

With rapid, mincing steps, the Demonic Cow moves so that it has both Vorn and myself in its line of sight.

"MOOOOOO!"

The Demonic Cow's angry lowing, once more, shakes the rubble. Underlying its Chaos corruption, it gives off an affinity for Metal. It feels too diffuse to be a true Elemental Metal Affinity. An actual affinity with an Element is truly rare, whether the holder is a Cultivator, a Ferocious Beast, or a Coalescent. Even if the affinity is Amalgamate in nature, it is a waste of potential. If the Cow had not been corrupted, I could force it to submit as a Soul-bound familiar. A Great Wolf with a Ferocious Cow for a familiar. That would be hilarious.

My mouth hangs open in an amused, if wolfish, grin at the thought of a cow for a familiar, but seeing my grin, the Demonic Cow does not understand the humor and shivers. Even if it is corrupted by Chaos, it still cannot rid itself of its innate fear of me. In the end, a stupid cow is a stupid cow, and this cow started out as a common Ferocious Beast. It was not even a Lord class Ferocious Beast. If not for what the Chaos energies have done to it, it would be pathetically weak.

Putting on a show of bravado, the Demonic Cow rhythmically stamps its hooves on the ground, causing tremors to pass through the stone in the area. The stupid out-masses me by quite a bit.

"Grrrr!"

Giving voice to a low growl, I charge at the posturing Demonic Cow. With a huffing release of its breath, the Demonic Cow lowers it head and charges at me. The just over a hundred meters between us disappears in barely a second. The Demonic Cow twists its head to gore me with its right horn, but I spring forward at the last instant.

Clack!

With a loud report, my teeth clamp down on the Demonic Cows horn. I dig in my claw-like nails, and with a downward twist of my neck, I drive the point of the horn into the ground. The Demonic Cow's momentum slams its own face into the hard stone, and its massive body flips into the air. Pushing off the ground with my forelegs, I add to the speed and momentum of the Demonic Cow's flight, sending it hurtling in the direction I came from.

Boom! Crackle!

The Demonic Cow's ass slams into the corner of a still partially standing building. The stone shatters, but the Demonic Cow flips over. As its horns embed in the stone ground, its body swings like a pendulum, and its own weight twists and snaps the bones in its neck. After hitting the ground, the Demonic Cow lies still, but it still appears to be alive. After a few seconds, it struggles in an attempt to pull its horns from the ground.

Vorn rips his sword and axe from the corpse of the Demonic Cat. Coming to my side, he stares at the struggling Demonic Cow. As he appears to concentrates, his bear-like face scrunches up.

"Neck is not broken?" Vorn's question in the Beast Language comes out clearer than his usual spear.

"It's broken. Cows are too stupid to know when they're dead."

Tia! Tama! Sever its head!

Streaking over to the Demonic Cow, my sword pierce its neck on either side of its spine. Slicing through the spine, the continue to burn or disintegrate the Beast's neck. Despite the excessive length of their blades, neither sword can through the entire neck alone, but as the two meet at the throat, the Demonic Cow's head rolls away from its body.

Lifting my head, I test the air and pick up the scent of the corpse of two Demonic Cat. The one, which had its lungs burned by Tia has died.

I feel more corrupted Beasts to the west and underground. With its customary coldness, Tia's slips into my mind with the gentleness of a falling snowflake.

I know. I feel them.

"We continue the hunt." After speaking the words in the Beast Language, I silently follow the trails of the dead Demonic Beasts back to their origin.