The anger-filled scream from the monster was strong enough to rock the stone around it, and it sent shivers and tremors shaking down the rest of the passage it had carved out. The blood claws covering Kay’s fingers got vibrated out of the rock, and he had to scramble to keep his grip. He glanced up with a glare at the thing, which was now pounding on a wall in front of it.

“What now?” He demanded as he went back to climbing. He’d been following the creature for about an hour, climbing up after it once he’d recovered enough to follow. When he’d started, it had quite the lead on him, but it’d started to carve a completely new passage out of the rock once it had reached the top of the former altar room, and that had slowed it down enough for Kay to almost catch up. The voids left when it had ripped apart existing rooms and passages gave him some trouble and let it keep just enough of a lead that Kay couldn’t get in position to attack the creature.

With its terrible claws and biting tentacles, the fusion of giant Rittian and Eldritch Being had easily torn through the inside of the plateau, ripping and eating the stone away, but now it was stopped. No matter how much it gouged and tore with its mouths, the wall in front of it didn’t budge. Kay couldn’t see the entirety of the wall, the monster was between him and it, but it looked like the same kind of walls the few rooms they’d found on the way down, almost exactly the same as the rest of the rock around them, but slightly smoother and just the tiniest variation in color. They hadn’t tried to damage anything, so he hadn’t known until now, but those walls were damn durable.

The monster eventually lost patience with the unbroken barrier and started clawing its way to the side. The pause had let Kay shorten the lead a bit, but not too much, since the pounding and shaking had made it harder for him to climb.

I just need some solid footing, and I can start hitting it with ranged attacks and get its attention on me! He was in range to start hitting it from a distance already, but literally hanging from a crumbly wall by his fingers and toes was not a position he wanted to start a fight from, even if said fingers and toes were covered in bloody spikes that made climbing easier.

Kay’s armored form looked a lot different after the sudden jump in levels. Originally his blood armor had just been a copy of his actual armor, with a layer of hardened blood covering the leather. Now it was more like a suit of plate mail combined with some kind of superhero suit, but much more light weight and way more flexible than it would have been if it were metal. His newly heightened Shape Blood level let him make even more complicated shapes, and the durability was higher as well. His face was completely covered in a helmet, with only a thin gap open for him to see through. He wanted to make some kind of super-thing-yet-tough visor section, like some kind of diamond screen that wouldn’t break, but apparently, he wasn’t high enough level for that, so a small opening was his best bet. The rest of his body was also hidden from view, with dark red armor above everything. He had a chest plate, greaves, gauntlets, even sabatons, all tightly molded to his body and much stronger than solid blood had any right to be without magic being involved.

He kept climbing up after the monster, which had made its way around the unbreakable stone and kept going upwards. Kay climbed by literally slamming the claws he’d formed on his hands and feet into the rock face and dragging himself upwards, which sadly was just a little bit slower than the creature’s weird squirming way of climbing with its tentacles. Thankfully he didn’t have to actually dig through the stone, so their average speeds were just about even.

Kay stopped and looked up as the monster froze in place. The many mouths started closing until you could barely see any of them in the tiny amount of light coming from the glowstone peeking out of Kay’s armor. All of them opened at once and breathed in a single time in unison. Then, with more speed, they inhaled several times in quick succession.

Is it sniffing? What could it be smelling?

Kay froze in place as something that had been dancing in the back of his head finally made its way to the forefront of his thoughts. With his Skills from Novice Cartographer, he could figure out their rough relative position on the inside of the plateau; he just hadn’t been paying attention to those senses as he’d been climbing. Now he realized it. They were barely a hundred feet underneath the top. And they were right by the settlement!

The monster let out a ringing scream, one filled with joy and expectation even as it felt like it was going to drive Kay insane listening to it. With a renewed vigor, it started digging upward again.

“Dammit!” Kay held his right hand out and formed a sword, focusing on his new Meld Blood Skill as he did so, and he melded Purify Blood into the sword. The mana drain was intense, and he felt his body start to flag a little as the energy was taken from him, although it was mostly counteracted by Blood Boost, making him stronger and faster. Once the sword was complete and shining slightly with a strange light that Kay couldn’t quite describe, he made his move.

Kay bent his legs and threw himself upwards at the monster in a giant leap, his left gauntlet becoming a kind of combination grappling hook spike thing that he slammed into the creature’s shoulder and started dragging himself in with, sword raised in his right hand to plunge it into the monster’s neck.

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Eleniah hauled herself up the side of the plateau, muscles straining as she threw herself from grip to grip, traveling dozens of feet upward at a time to get to the top of the plateau, Meten only a little ways behind her.

The disgusting-sounding screams from inside the rock hadn’t gotten any louder at first, so only the two of them had been able to hear them, but then whatever was making them started getting closer to the cliff face, and they’d gotten ready to fight it. When it had started moving upward again, they’d relaxed just a bit. That was until the second scream had rung out. As loud as it had been, everyone had heard it, and they’d rushed everyone out of the area, pre-filled packs of supplies ready to go in case this very thing happened.

Kay and the party hadn’t managed to kill whatever it was that had lurked underneath them, and now it was coming.

Eleniah wasn’t sure if the two of them could defeat whatever it was, even if they were both tier five. She was used to being the strongest person or being around most of the time since anything of the same power level or higher than her was a rare encounter, but this was a complete unknown that had had a Quest generated to destroy it. It could be more than a match for two combat-focused tier fives.

Her negative emotions shunted and stuffed down deep inside her; the only things Eleniah let herself feel were the same anticipation she felt before every fight and a slight amount of gratitude that the thing was heading for the top of the plateau. The flat surface would make a good area to fight, and the distance would let everyone get farther away from the thing while she and Meten did their best to kill it.

She grabbed onto the lip and flipped herself up the last few feet, landing on her feet and spinning to face the rumbling noise coming from further in. Meten landed next to her a moment later, and they stood there, waiting. Eleniah preferred to take the fight to the enemy, but she didn’t have much to get through the rock in between her and the oncoming threat. That, and it was probably smarter to at least get eyes on the thing before she threw herself at it.

The ground buckled outward and started to crack as whatever was coming broke its way free. It reared up out of the hole it hand made and dragged itself onto the surface, letting Eleniah get a good look at it. It was a grotesque thing, with the form of a massive Rittian twisted and perverted into something new, with a cluster of tentacles growing out of its back, and numerous mouths covering every inch of it, including a weirdly shaped mouth growing out of where the top of its head should have been. In the center of its chest was another mouth, with an eye growing out of the middle. Eleniah used Inspect on it, hoping to get some information before she attacked.

[————————————————————]

Avatar of çצ¿ñ↓ªu▒, Lesser Eldritch Hunger - Tier ??? Equivalent

- ???

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Eleniah cursed under her breath. She’d fought something eldritch before, on her journeys with her cousin, and no one had managed to get any good information about that thing with Skills either. She’d gone on to study what information she could find about eldritch things after that, and knowing what she did now, she wasn’t happy to be fighting this thing. At least it was only an avatar of a “lesser” being. The regular ones with no descriptors, the Eldritch Whatevers, were way beyond two tier fives, let alone the Greater Eldritch Beings that sometimes tried to punch into Torotia. With her and Meten holding the thing off, everyone else had a good chance to escape.

Eleniah was about to throw herself into the fray when the avatar started to claw at itself, and its tentacles began to slam into its own body. It whirled in place, and Eleniah’s dark feelings dissipated as she saw a figure riding on the monster’s back, covered in dark red armor, one arm dug into the thing and the other wielding a red sword that they drove into the creature over and over, leaving wounds that sizzled and seemed to melt the flesh of the monster.

“Fucking die, you Cthulhuoid mother fucker! You’re not a Great Old One; you’re tiny! Lovecraft was a racist loser too!” Kay shouted as he stabbed the eldritch avatar repeatedly.

Eleniah glanced over when she heard Meten start to laugh. “I’m not really sure what he’s saying, but it sounds like he needs some practice taunting his enemies.”

She smiled and started to respond when the monster managed to loop a tentacle around Kay and toss him off of it. He hit the ground and rolled back upright as the creature bellowed its rage and charged him.

“Should we help?”

Eleniah shrugged. “Eh. He seems like he’s got it. We’ll step in if he actually needs help.” Today wasn’t going to be as bad a day as she thought!

“Are the two of you just standing there!?” Kay screamed as he dodged a swipe from the monster’s claws. “Seriously!?”

Some of the tentacles started to writhe, and they fell off the avatar onto the ground. They began to grow protuberances that resembled limbs, and they started to drag themselves toward Eleniah and Meten.

“Well, we can’t let anything go after everyone else, so let’s get involved.”

Meten shook his head at her and drew his glaive. “You are a strange person.”

“What? Everyone should fight a giant enemy that’s more powerful than you solo at least once. It’s a learning experience!”

“I could really use some help here!” Kay screamed as the avatar managed to grab him again and slammed him into the rocky floor, shattering pieces of it.

“Alright, fine.” Eleniah sighed, “We’ll find something else for him to get that experience from.”