The reborn Chosen twitched as time progressed. The shitty little Chosen of the Primordial Serpent refused to begin the battle and remained just beyond the point that would have allowed him to move and attack at his own volition, and so he was forced to stare her down and try to use words to lure her in.

He felt a tingle in one of his limbs for a bit, only lasting a few seconds, and while the tingle eventually faded and was replaced with a light, semi-localized numbness that also lasted only a short moment, she waved his arm about to end it faster. The tingle eventually popped up again, along with the following short-lived numbness, but these would manifest sporadically and in random patches across his body.

He thought nothing of it until it began to escalate in speed and number, and as he wondered if his transformation and rebirth were in some way flawed he came to the startling realization as to the cause of his current issues. He snarled, then roared, then entered into a tirade of slurs, insults, ranting ravings, and then a slew of train-of-thought ramblings.

While he was in this, though, he failed to notice that Lyrhea had moved deeper in, and now was drawing towards him with the intent to kill.

…

If she was to be brutally honest, she had no idea what kind of effect her venom actually had. In some cases it seemed to function as a paralytic, in others it seemed to act as a narcotic, and in a few rare cases, it seemed to function as a hemotoxin.

In this case, it appeared to her as though her toxin, delivered via oral means, had no real effect. Either that or the body of her target was simply too powerful and resilient for her venom to take effect.

She had half expected that to be the case, but her disappointment was shattered when her foe began to move around a bit. Previously it remained static and stationary, glaring endlessly at her like some kind of living statue.

Now, though, it was engaging in actions that Lyrhea figured were an attempt to remove a sort of lethargy from its body. She was overjoyed – her venom worked. It was shortly after this was done that her foe began to show signs that the venom did more than simply impose numbness and tiredness into its target, though, as the beast began to go from insulting her in a coherent manner to gradually being nothing more than a ranting, rambling mess that slurred words together while salivating heavily.

It seemed that while the lethargy it imposed was minor, at best, the damage it was doing to the cognitive functions of the Boss Monster were far more intense. She did not know how long that mental degradation would last, however, as once the symptoms got as bad as they were now they began to slowly swivel back and forth between their current extreme and slight improvements.

Thus, time was of the essence, and so she bolted forward, using some of her reserves to make a mad dash to try and deal as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible. If she could capitalize on her foe’s weakened mental state, she may end up doing enough damage to slow the healing of its mind as the process would prioritize the body over it, thus allowing her venom to do even worse things in the process.

That was the optimal outcome, anyway, though she worried that it would be far from the one that she would get. She reached her foe in record time and jabbed her knives into the beast’s kidney, only to find that she could barely penetrate beyond the skin. She jabbed more and more, each time cutting only a bit in, and then she switched to slashing, which did equally little damage.

“Built like a tank! She exclaimed, and then she ducked as a wide, sweeping strike from the massive sword-length claws of the monster raked the air above her head. She slipped between the beast’s legs and delivered yet more pointless strikes that achieved next to nothing before slithering away into the corner of the room and scaling one of the vine-covered walls.

“Y-yu… Yuuuurrrrr… Like tha…. That.. masky guy….”

the beast slurred out as it stumbled and lashed out at where Lyrhea had been a few seconds ago.

“’Masky Guy’? Lyrhea asked. Had someone tried to kill him before her?

“Yesh…. Frumm thatttt gaym… wiff the guy… who goes… ‘hadocannun’…..”

Lyrhea almost facepalmed.

“Vega?” she asked, naming the character’s Western Name. “Or Balrog?” she added, using the Japanese Name. “Maybe just ‘Claw’?” she further added, using the Tournament Name.

“Yeeeeesssshhhhh… datz duh gai….. Urrr pretty…”

“Thanks.” Lyrhea said as she dropped down from the ceiling and drew one of her knives across the monster’s face. It did next to nothing, but at least it broke the skin a bit and slightly slowed down the bastard’s regeneration. “But I don’t find you attractive.”

“Buhttt…. Ahmmm a naish gai….”

She clambered up to the monster’s face and shoved her knives into its eyes, then pulled them out a rolled away as the pain began to catch up with the addled beast.

“And yet you’re trying to kill me.”

“AHM NAISH GAI!” the monster roared as the pain hit it. The Reborn Chosen reached up and swatted at the place Lyrhea had formerly been, and while her own attacks had done negligible damage, the Chosen’s own self-inflicted wounds were far more severe.

Unlike the previous instances where the pain had come slowly, this time the pain hit the monster hard and fast, causing it to lash out in every direction it could with random swipes and slashes. Lyrhea, of course, was nowhere nearby during this time, having wisely retreated to a safe distance and begun scaling one of the bundles of vines that hung down from the ceiling, having jumped up and grabbed it beforehand.

“This place was not built for someone like me, was it?” she asked to no one in particular, though somewhat expecting her Patron and the gawking audience to chime in. They did not, and Lyrhea jumped from her handhold to another as the beast below ripped a section of the floor up from its moorings and tossed it like a multi-ton discus in the vague direction that she had been in.

The mass of stone and plant matter missed her by miles, but she did not wish to occupy the same space as had been roughly targeted and give the Chosen below her another chance to one-shot her with a bit of Dungeon Masonry. As she landed on her new handhold and looked down at the raging beast, she shook her head.

She was barely doing any damage herself, needing to rely on the wild attacks of her foe to inflict damage upon itself. This would not be a winning strategy, and so she needed a new one. She thought back to how the fight had begun, and a smile crossed her face.

“Worth a shot.” she muttered before changing her position in the upper areas again as she saw the beast rip up another bit of the ground.