Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 87: Abomination

Elijah resisted the impulse to recoil.

It wasn’t easy. The creature descending upon them was like the abyssal giants he’d seen, though wholly different as well. And not in a good way. Everything about it was wrong, and when he looked upon the thing, he struggled not to vomit. Seven wings sprouted from its back, all of differing sizes and bearing black-and-purple tentacles that twitched and waved in every direction. Its body made even less sense, with parts looking bulbous, fat, and moist, with other pieces looking as if they were covered in a sleek exoskeleton.

But the head was the most disturbing part. Nine gaping maws, each filled with jagged teeth of various sizes and sharpness. Multiple tongues sprouted from each open mouth. Some waved in the air, spraying sizzling drool all around. Others were short and fat, while still others reminded Elijah of sea anemones. Between those mouths of madness were the thing’s eyes. Hundreds of them. Perhaps even thousands, arranged in a starburst pattern whose geometric shape looked entirely out of place on such an incongruous monster.

It slammed into Lamar, eliciting a flash of light and sending a powerful shockwave across the battlefield. Those nearest to the former linebacker were sent flying away from the point of impact, but it didn’t end there. A wave of force tore across the area, throwing tons of dirt and debris aside. Elijah fought against the current, already shifting into his blight dragon form.

The abomination was obviously mighty. Probably more so than anything he’d yet fought. However, it wasn’t like the abyssal giants, who all felt like they were on an entirely different tier of development. Regardless, for all its power, the Shape of Thorn wasn’t meant for that kind of battle. If he fought the thing Strength-to-Strength, he would lose.

In truth, the Shape of Venom wasn’t great for that, either. It was much better suited for stealth and assassination, and his venom, as powerful as it was, usually took an incredible amount of time to work on truly strong opponents – without the multiplier of Predator Strike, at least. But it was the best option he had at the moment.

A second later, he’d adopted the shape and, before the abomination recovered from its dive, he used Flicker Step, teleporting onto the thing’s back.

He regretted it immediately.

It was one thing to see from afar how unnatural the thing was, but it was something else altogether to feel it. To touch its wet, clammy hide. To experience the wave of wrongness that came with such close proximity.

If a blight dragon was capable of vomiting, he would have, then and there. Fortunately, the shape had no such mechanism to distract him from his purpose, and before he could second-guess his course of action, Elijah opened his mouth and bit the creature.

Once again, he immediately regretted that action.

Fiery pain tore through the delicate tissue of his mouth as the very flesh melted beneath a combination of heat and acidity. Oddly, somewhere beneath all the pain, he thought of the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, though instead of just being caustic, the blood was boiling as well.

Still, he managed to inject his venom before pulling away.

Fortunately, Ron hit him with a heal only a second later, and the damage crawled to a halt. His mouth still felt like a slurry of melted and half-dissolved flesh, but over the next couple of seconds, it didn’t get any worse. Then, the damage began to reverse.

In the meantime, the rest of the party responded to the abomination’s sudden arrival. Sadie charged it, sword held aloft as she hit it with one Blade of the Avenger after another. Elijah knew it had an escalating cost with each instance of the spell, but Sadie had clearly rejected the idea of holding back against this creature. She went all out, all at once.

So did Kurik and Dat, both of whom peppered the creature from afar. Dat fired a steady stream of glowing bolts from his crossbow, while Kurik yanked some pre-constructed traps from the storage space associated with the Key of Twisted Ethera. The dwarf threw them with unerring accuracy, and when they hit, they exploded with a wide variety of effects. Some were meant to restrain the monster, but others were all about doing as much damage as possible.

At the same time, the other groups responded as well, but in very different ways. The war elf’s group maintained their distance, and to Elijah, they seemed like they were hedging their bets. They still threw attacks out, but from so far away, they weren’t terribly effective. It was just enough that they could say they were doing something while being far enough away that they could conceivably flee if the battle proved unwinnable.

The party led by the feather-haired woman – Elijah still hadn’t learned her name – took a similar tactic, though they weren’t nearly as blatant about their intentions.

And finally, Lamar’s group responded. The one-armed mage aimed one fireball after another at the enormous creature, while one of their melee fighters sprang into battle with a pair of axes, ready to deal damage.

Elijah took all of that in in the space of a few seconds before he once again bit the monster. The damage was just as debilitating as it had been the first time, but in this instance, Elijah had the benefit of one of Ron’s ongoing heals to keep his mouth from completely dissolving.

It still hurt, though, and quite a bit.

Though Elijah couldn’t allow that to dissuade him. Not with what was at stake. Unlike the war elf’s party, Elijah knew that no one ever won a fight against long odds by hedging their bets. In that kind of fight, there were only two options – go all-in or retreat – and with nothing in between.

But he wasn’t stupid enough that he refused to adjust. Instead, he bit the thing as lightly as possible, barely scraping his fangs against the thing’s rough, moist hide. He still took damage, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade him from continuing.

Fortunately, when Elijah went all out, he could move incredibly fast. Because of that, he managed to bite the thing dozens of times in the space of a couple of seconds, inflicting an instance of Insidious Malady and Envenom with each one. But as the seconds wore on, he knew it couldn’t last.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Fifteen seconds.

That was how long he was free to attack the creature with no retaliation, and in that span, he absolutely flooded it with venom. But with its size – as well as its presumably high Constitution, if such attributes even applied to creatures outside of the system – it was little more than a drop in the bucket.

At the end of those fifteen seconds, the monster finally responded. It was too large to dislodge him by normal means, but the thing’s odd anatomy once again reared its ugly head when a tentacle – bloody and segmented – burst free of its bulbous torso. Before Elijah could react, it wrapped itself around him and ripped him away.

But it didn’t throw him free.

Instead, it retracted, and after seeing what was coming, Elijah had just enough time to initiate a transformation into his new Shape of Thorn before he was dragged into the creature’s body. Pressure enveloped him as the wound through which the tentacle had emerged closed, trapping him inside.

That was the least of his issues, though, because he now found himself completely submerged in the same caustic and boiling blood that had very nearly destroyed his mouth after only one bite. The moment it took for his transformation to complete was one of the most agonizing of Elijah’s life.

And that was saying something, considering that he’d once spent an untold amount of time being digested by a whale. Since then, he’d been battered, ripped in half, melted, and subjected to a wide variety of damage that should have killed him. The inside of the abomination was worse. Much, much worse.

Fortunately, that unmatched agony was short-lived, because after only a moment, he had taken on the form of the thorned sentry. Strength roared through him as hundreds of thorns erupted from his body, piercing the abomination’s insides. At the same time, he activated Unchecked Growth.

Unchecked Growth

Embrace nature, increasing Regeneration by 1000%. Duration based on Constitution attribute. Current: 39.1 Seconds. Cooldown based on stage of Core Cultivation. Current: 26.3 hours. Only usable while under the effects of Shape of Thorn.

At present, his Regeneration was two-fifty, so a thousand percent increase sent it soaring into quadruple digits. At one point, he’d wondered if he had lost ground when Guardian’s Renewal had evolved alongside the upgrade to Shape of Thorn. As the surge of Regeneration swept through him, he no longer had those thoughts.

Immediately, he knew that the increase wasn’t linear. Under the effects of Unchecked Growth, his recovery was far more than ten times more potent. It was qualitatively different, with his body immediately regenerating back to perfect condition. His thoughts cleared, giving him the mental space to come up with a plan.

And he remembered something incredibly interesting about the description of Domain of Vines:

Domain of Vines

Create a domain of snaring roots with venomous thorns. Venom causes lethargy and restricts the flow of Ethera. Potency based on Regeneration attribute. Only usable while under the effects of Shape of Thorn. Duration of domain based on Regeneration attribute. Current: 56 Seconds (while remaining under the effects of Shape of Thorn) or 28 Seconds (if Shape of Thorn is canceled while domain is active).

Potency based on Regeneration attribute.

It was a simple line, but if that was the case, then there was a good deal of synergy between Domain of Vines and Unchecked Growth. Eagerly, he embraced the ability, and the vines on his shoulders and arms burst forth, ripping through the inside of the monster with ease. Meanwhile, he could feel via One with Nature that the ground below the creature was alive with thick and thorny roots that snaked up and around it, wrapping it in a cocoon of vegetation.

Of course, the abomination didn’t take that lying down. It ripped free of the first wave, but Elijah’s vines were far too numerous to be denied. Over the next few seconds, the creature lost ground. Panicked, it attempted to fly away, but the vines refused to allow its escape.

In the meantime, Elijah went wild, ripping and slashing as he used his incredible Strength to great effect. At the same time, the others piled on their own damage, and because the creature had been rendered mostly immobile, they did so without the fear of reprisal. Finally, Elijah’s initial flurry of afflictions raged through the abomination, and his venom dissolved more flesh than most of the other attacks combined.

Still, the thing was incredibly durable. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. Elijah began to worry that it wouldn’t be enough.

Then, just before Unchecked Growth ran its course, he took another gamble by switching into his caster form. His Regeneration plummeted, and he was immediately beset by burns, both chemical and mundane. He used Soothe, then Nature’s Bloom, and finally, Healing Rain. That barely managed to halt his dissolution.

He didn’t have much time.

The vines had already loosened their grip, and in the next couple of seconds, they would fall inert. He needed to do something, and quick. So, he cast Swarm. Then, when a horde of burrowing maggots ripped into the monster, he used Nature’s Rebuke.

In retrospect, he should have used it in the very beginning. But as was often the case, his initial reaction to any threat was to use his forms. They were his most powerful abilities – and the focus of his class – so he often leaned on them. But he needed to remember that he had other abilities, too.

Even as he cast one instance of Nature’s Rebuke after another. Due to the creature being entirely unnatural, the spell did triple damage, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. The thing was fading. He could feel that much. But its regeneration was so powerful that even amidst all the afflictions he’d inflicted upon it – as well as everyone else’s attacks – it would be capable of outlasting their attacks.

So, after piling Nature’s Rebuke upon it, he cast another instance of Nature’s Bloom before using Lightning Domain.

Whips of electricity lashed out, and due to how weakened the creature was – after all, every thorn, both from Domain of Vines and Natural Thorns, had slowed and drained its power – those strands of arcing lightning ripped through its flesh with ease. As they spun around him, Elijah could suddenly see daylight.

But he pushed it harder, pouring Ethera into the spell until he dipped well below the halfway mark of his reserves. Still, the creature persisted.

For all of five more seconds.

And then, as suddenly as the thing had arrived, it fell apart.

Elijah tumbled to the ground, still coated in what amounted to viscous, boiling acid, and barely hanging onto consciousness. Fortunately, Healing Rain was still ongoing, and the second he was visible, one of Ron’s most powerful healing spells fell upon him. As Healing Rain washed the caustic goo away, Elijah pushed himself to his feet and looked around.

The first thing he noticed was that Lamar had somehow survived, though not without breaking a few bones. It was a testament to the man’s Constitution that he hadn’t been entirely destroyed by the thing’s initial attack. The second thing he noticed was that Ikan and his party had closed on the creature, but not until the last second. But they had contributed at least.

Suddenly, Sadie was beside him. Her hand found his upper arm, and it was only then that he realized that he was wobbling in place. He could remain standing, and he wasn’t going to lose consciousness, but he definitely wasn’t in the best shape. Sadie helped steady him.

“You’ve always got to be the hero, don’t you?” she muttered with a shake of his head.

“It’s in my nature, I guess” he said, trying to grin. That was ruined by the fact that most of his skin was bright red from the healing chemical burns.