Chapter 195

“Um are you ready for this?” I asked Mallory.

“Um, hell no? I’m not sure what we’re doing,” she said. She would have scratched her head except she’s rubbing herself against me and it’s distracting. Still her naked body feels good being wrapped around and is my only comfort.

“This is so awkward,” she muttered. She still tightens my grip on certain bulges on her chest; very healthy bulges I might add. The overhang over her skinny tight abs is abnormally a huge difference because of the vampire DNA.

“We’ve….made our….decision….” one of the creepy phallic worms said to us with this sickly sounding voice that reminds you of something like a mix between a slime monster and someone with emphysema.

“Yes we have…” one of them sounded after. This other guy’s voice sounds like grating sandpaper.

We also can’t bear to look at the creepy almost undead like looking lizard women connected to his phallic ‘spikes’ coming out his back. This fellow has a worm and a giant eye that’s on an eye stalk even that looks at us.

We waited…

“You…will face…trial by….combat…by our youngest, Junior!” he said. He waved the tentacle arm over to another fellow that we hadn’t met before.

“You didn’t use my title damn it! You’re supposed to address me as the intestinal slinger!” Junior protested in a tantrum.

“Dude, that’s a lame nickname,” one of the phallic wyrms screeched.

“You’re just jealous of my power! I am the slinger of instestines! I will win! I am the champion of intestine slinging and slaying!” Junior said while heating up.

“That’s screwed up bad,” Mallory whispered while Junior is still arguing with his allies over proper use of his title.

“How old is young? If you guys are already old?” I wondered aloud.

“Don’t worry; he’s not as strong as us. He’s only a few thousand years…hehk…so you have a chanccssssss yeah,” wheezed the emphysema sounding phallic wyrm. That guy gives you the creeps just from staring at you. So we didn’t probe him further verbally.

This one continued to worm his way towards us.

This guy was more mutated than the others. Being a snake like phallic worm he’d somehow not only had two attached women that had mutated to lizard women, but their heads had slowly changed and transformed into something resembling a giant eye in place of their heads.

Damn these fuckers are ugly. Even the least mutated of all of them looks like half slug, half slimy creepy stuff from the nightmares of someone from a drugs gone bad episode.

“What the fuck is that?!” Mallory exclaimed while she’s hoisting my legs tightly around her. It means also that she’s getting ready to move. Somehow her fear as made her clench my legs more tightly around her. She’s nervous.

“Steady…” I tried to calm her.

“Hold on!” she barked, but she’s saying it more to herself.

“Begin the duellllzzzz,” the emphysemic phallic worm finally squeaked out. Instantly all hell broke loose. No sooner had we dodged then the creepy phallic wyrm had attacked. Its brethren had formed a huge circle around us giving us plenty of room.

It snarled at us and suddenly the two eye…head things of its appendage women are lunging with its worm to us, even separately from its main body. It’s a bizarre legion of a mixture of moving parts, that seem to fight much like a super coordinated team of villains, yet somehow with a connected body, which makes everything about them confusing. Then the eye head stalk things like snarled each while dripping huge gouts of saliva so thick it was like slime and tried to bite us with mouths growing open as part of the eye mess while Mallory dodged at speed so fast it jerked my neck. The mess makes a sickly sweet acidic vapor as it spills onto the ground that smells both sweet and putrid at the same time but gives off a stench of danger.

“Careful!” I coached.

This is scary. We remain tense as we try to buy time. I have to rely on Mallory. And she has to rely on me, but it’s clear right now she has more strength than I do.

The eye stalk heads moved surprisingly strange. It makes us unsure how to move because the enemy is unpredictable and fast. It’s analyzing us. I can feel its evil twisted eyes trying to figure out what we are or know.

It lunges with its tail, and then tried to swipe us from behind at me on Mallory’s unprotected back. Then it did the same thing while somehow changing the shape of its tail to grow sword like needle appendages that almost looked like real swords as it tried to us open.

“Watch out!” I cried out to warn her. I pointed at the huge amount of secretions this creature has been dumping on the ground like slime. We can hear a steady amount of steam like vapor coming up where all the huge amount of liquid is pooling around us as it leaks from that creatures body. The acrid smell stings our nostrils even though we’re far away. It makes my eyes water too, but we avoided it still.

“Acid,” Mallory confirmed. “Its whole body is covered with it; so even a small cut or nick from it could melt your face off.”

I gulped. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Acid attacks are freaking nasty. And Mallory has unprotected skin.

“Stay on evasive mode until we can figure out a pattern to its movements,” I coached to Mallory.

“Confirmed master. You are right, as always,” she noted with confidence and humility at the same time. the edge in her voice suggests she’s trying to keep nerves of steel despite facing such a weird creature. I also am helping her know when the enemy moves, which helps her react in time. She moved so precisely she’s almost like a high speed dancer that can flick and wit about almost like she’s doing it by magic.

Vampires sure are an interesting and beautiful species, though hard to control I’ll admit. If it were anyone but her we’d be dead by now huh?

I think Mallory is accepting me as her leader. She called me master again; and not only that but she’s in total subservience right now. She’s having me tug on her hair rear ponytails to signal whether to dodge right or left while she carries me too. It somehow works, when I can see something before she can and lets me contribute, though it’s hard to manage since I’m still in the magic blocking handcuff system from the dwarves. Each time I hear her acknowledge me as her master it’s also like hearing a level up sound because it means my mental control over her is becoming more stable. And with each threat she’s subconsciously looking to me more than before to guide her and tell her what to do even if she doesn’t notice it.

“Um…if its body is secreting acid how are we going to kill it?” I asked Mallory.

“We’ll have to figure out how it works first,” she said.

But somehow I was afraid she’d say that. It meant we’d have to play with it while not dying. Being clearly different from other creatures it could be more resilient to injury and death.

She bit her lip as she’s racing with me on her back out of death’s clutches. First a dodge to the left with a narrow miss, then a dodge to the right. I feel the air rushing past us from the closeness of its near hits that would probably instant kill us. The phallic wyrm battle arena being huge has helped us because both us and the enemy are moving so fast that there’s no way a human could run this speed. Somehow she’s probably close to 40 miles an hour, and that thing is gaining on us.

It roars and swipes at us again with its tail structure that this time is shaped like a sword blade the size of a small car. That was unexpected. I’d previously almost thought the tail mechanism was useless but I managed to call it out for Mallory in time. It whooshes over us, just as Mallory was able to jump over it. The feel of the wind as it rushed past was amazingly harsh and almost blinded me.

“Good call Shun,” she gasped.

Only vampire strength could do this. Even with Fox or Asakura we’d probably have died I noted.

“I got this!” Mallory yelled and threw a boulder at it. The boulder was a foot in diameter and she’d somehow scooped it up and threw it without dropping me or letting me touch the ground in piggy back mode.

I’m impressed.

Maybe I should just get more vampire harem girls?

Nah it’s hard enough controlling Mallory. It sounds seductive but too much work.

The boulder shot collided with the phallic wyrm’s body. But the consequence is that the wound is secreting a huge amount of acid even more than before. The creature wailed in agony like a hundred screaming centipedes.

“Dodge! Here comes the counter strike,” I called out.

Mallory ran behind a stone pillar just in time. A huge amount of liquid spatter hits the stone pillar and it began melting after we heard the sound of something like that creature throwing up. Then the pillar collapsed into a mess of dust and wet acid pool.

“That’s nasty!” I said.

Mallory nods and then threw two more boulders in quick succession at that thing.

One missed.

The other is a direct hit, and hit the torso of one of its lizard like women appendages.

“ARRRKKKKKKKKKKKGH!” the eye ball head cried out while its arms thrashed around.

“Dodge again!” I cried out.

We’re lucky there are lots of stone pillars.

“Use the pillars for cover,” I said.

“Got it,” she said.

As we ducked behind this one it shattered from a death ray. It definitely would be bad to be hit by that energy beam. It was like violet and green sickly energy concentrated that it had somehow shot at us.

Is it magic, or some other method?

“Holy crap!” Mallory cried out.

“Is that a freaking death ray?!” I said in time for Mallory to take the hint. At the same time I tugged at one of Mallory’s hair ponytails to signal the safe spot to dodge too.

“Thanks,” she said.

“It appears….so…” Mallory kept running and dodging while trying to return fire.

It then shot out another energy death ray at us, as we ducked behind another pillar just in time.

Death rays AND acid…

Gulp…

“I confirmed it. The giant eye heads of its mutated women are what shot the death ray,” I said with obvious stress in my tone.

“I’ve never heard of such a strange creature. It’s like it’s an amalgam of many different creatures together in one hybrid form,” Mallory said as we kept dodging and returning fire.

Mallory increased her speed.

Then it shot another death ray at us. “Ouch! That hurt,” she gasped after a jump lunge that stretched the limits of her agility.

“NO!!!!” I cried out.

Mallory also cried out. Somehow we avoided wading into a huge acid pool trap that the thing called Junior had tried to push us into. We barely missed that one by inches. In fact it was so close that the lock of some of Mallory’s hair was singed by heat in the process. A direct hit would have decapitated her.

She hit the same lizard mutant appendage riding one of its phallus appendages so hard it was knocked off.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” the creature wailed in agony so extreme it felt like it was shaking the entire cavern.

It stopped fighting entirely and then kneeled over picking up the fallen lizard like mutant thing up in its tentacles delicately like a flower. Then it began pacing while we backed off.

“You will pay for this…”

“You will pay for this…!” it said again, this time even more insane than before. It’s so mad it’s not coherently putting its vocabulary together but just cursing and venting rage while smashing stuff all around it.

“If we keep that up, we can make it make mistakes by pushing its anger switch,” I whispered to Mallory.

“Good plan. I like it,” she whispered back.

YOU will PAY for THISSSSSSSSSSSS!” it kept raging over and over. We continued to bait it’s rage.

It kept going back and forth while it tried to revive its pet…? Is it a pet or a part of itself?

Somehow it felt like the pet we’d knocked off was a part of itself.

The other phallic wyrm’s woman appendage was openly crying. We heard something like, “…so mean…”, “…why are they picking on Junior?”, “…those villains…”

“Hmm, I think Junior has lost. He’s in no shape to fight,” one of the other phallic wyrms said.

“So if we won you have to keep your end of the deal and let us go,” I said.

Then the creepy weird phallic wyrms began laughing like the pathetic and sickly vermin they are.

“Do you hear that?”

“He thinks we’re going to let him go? Isn’t that cute?”

The others laughed harshly again. They are laughing so hard at us that it’s clear that they won’t let us go, except in death. And somehow being captured by them would be worse than death. I also pray that they don’t have any revival abilities, but they must since they specialize in merging humanoid bodies onto their phallic spikes.

“Oh so naïve. He doesn’t know us very well. You are doomed to die today. Here. Now. It’s your fate’s turn on the wheel,” one of the other phallic wyrms said. Hmm this one reminds me of a mutated snail in some ways.

Gross…

“But didn’t they think you were like one of them? Why would they…” Mallory started to whisper but then stopped.

“It figures…just like vampires in a way; you turn on each other when it’s convenient,” Mallory said.

The phallic wyrms are circling us now but at about fifty paces away.

The one they called Junior has slunk away while trying to nurse its woman appendage back to health, while he’s bawling to the other phallic wyrms like a tattletale to his dad. “…the human scum are being mean to me…fuckers won’t die on my claws…so unfair,” we heard Junior crying with real tears.

“Shun…please I don’t want to become like those things even if this is the best feeling ever to be in permanent sex positioned master,” Mallory whispered to me.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Right…” I coughed.

That reminded me I’m worried about that too. We’re still stuck together, not too far unlike these phallic wyrms.

Are they one of the evolutionary tree branches that I can explore, if I evolve? It sounds disgusting, and hypnotic at the same time.

Our thoughts were broken by the voice of the leader of the phallic wyrms. “So …which one of us to kill you next. We can’t let you off easy for hurting Junior’s pets. He spent a lot of time cultivating the eye beam ability and the ability to dump acid all over a field like that. We’ve decided to kill you now!”

Suddenly he’s flying towards us in a rage.

Shit…he’s huge. Are we going to die?

He has the most appendages and like Junior he has his own personal mutations that are different even from Junior’s.

“Wait, we need to power-level Junior,” one of the others interrupted the leader.

Eh? They shouldn’t know about an idea like that…unless, they’ve been talking to others summoned from other worlds?

“That’s true. He’ll never learn if we always take over for him. But I’m tempted to kill it to 99% and then have Junior do the last hit. That would still make him strong,” Argued the mutated snail like phallic wyrm.

“I disagree. The gain in abilities and structure is in facing adversity,” another argued.

“Um…that’s not fair. I want a turn!” protested the leader that had been about to crush us.

“It’s Junior’s turn. You already had yours on the last prey we tormented to death,” the previous wyrm said.

“Well Junior’s survival is at stake here,” the other said.

“OK, how about this. We put a forget spell on Junior and his …pets and revive them. Then we make him think the fight just barely started with his memory of losing gone. That way we are still power leveling Junior. Eventually our prey will wear down, and we do have the two of them surrounded so they can’t escape. When he gets weak again, then we reset his memory again, heal him, and start over until these other two little freaks die?” said one of the more charismatic wyrms.

Shit. Phallic wyrms are brutal.

“That’s….a terrible idea,” Mallory said but I’m the only one listening as the other phallic wyrms are cackling in malicious glee.

I feel sick. This is a shitty way to die.

Kesshar point of view, before dwarven council

“So what’s your conclusion?” one of the Whitebeards asked me.

Whitebeards are a term for our elders’ council. They are a mix of the wisest of our folk that get together to advice on problems. Rather than having a dwarven king and being subject to the dwarven kingdom, centuries ago when we didn’t have contact with the dwarven king we had to adapt to our own way of surviving. And that meant a thin tightrope of survival to walk on that was so thin and dangerous to eke out a living from that we decided we couldn’t rely on just one person that would sometimes be greedy. Instead we chose the wisest and most powerful elders that had proven themselves often by a life time of good choices. Thus the Whitebeards Council was formed more than six hundred years ago.

But that also means they interrogate people periodically to gather information. I’d been summoned to this meeting of the elders soon after our narrow escape with death. Well not all of us escaped death actually, but saving that many was a miracle considering those idiots were cutting corners on gear, maintenance, and lack of training.

“So how many died?” one of them asked cautiously.

“Seven,” I said while flinching.

“The description of what he faced sounds frightening. It doesn’t match anything we know of,” one said.

“Yeah, in all our history we haven’t encountered such creatures. But then, we never did explore that area very well where it seems to have come from,” another long beard said.

There’s a murmur in the room.

“Quiet. We need this information. No talking while we listen,” one of them said to the others.

Of course they are alarmed. It’s been over fifty years since we lost that many in one patrol. Usually it’s just one or two lost at a time but quite frequently.

“And can you describe the creature that you engaged again?” a matronly dwarf woman with a face so cracked it was like stone itself said.

I described it to them in full detail, even though I was embarrassed to do so.

“What? That doesn’t make sense,” one of the elders said while playing with this snowy white beard.

“I don’t get it either,” Vyrk said. He’s one of the elders with the most common sense. And despite being over five hundred years old, he still has all his teeth. A small miracle by itself if you ask me…

“I’ve never heard of such a creature. I was hoping you could tell me what it was,” I said as they pestered me again to go over its description.

“The truth is…we don’t know. But we do know it’s very old and very intelligent. It’s absolutely a threat and severely malicious on a level of evil that we didn’t know existed,” the chief elder said.

Our notes are as follows;

-Intense strength, speed, and battle prowess

-Grotesque sap eeking snake or caterpillar body

-no head but has…spines inserted into captured women bodies that have…devolved(?) and mutated

-Thrives on mayhem and destruction, but still has cunning intelligence

-Extremely large, bigger than a bear in size but still less than 30 feet in length

“I think this a new form of demon that we’ve not discovered yet,” Vyrk concluded.

The others regard him carefully.

“Demon?” the matron elder asked.

“I’ve never heard of such a demon like this,” one of the elders said.

“I’ve gone through the lore myself hundreds of times cataloging different species. There’s no description of creatures like these,” another elder with spectacles hanging from his long hooked nose says.

“So a new form of demon huh? That’s rough,” I sighed.

“Well an old type rather than a new type. And the older types were always the most dangerous,” the elder countered.

“Kesshar, we need you to go out again and find out more about these things. We need to know how big a threat they are. What their numbers are, and how to fight them,” Vyrk said.

Shit.

I shouldn’t have come. I wanted distance from this thing.

“I can’t,” I said quickly to shut it down.

“Yes, you can,” Vyrk said.

“I won’t.”

Damn him. They try a few other manipulative excuses.

“My schedule is full. I have teaching appointments…and…”

“As of this moment you aren’t teaching. We need the best people on this,” he countered.

“But…”

“More will die if you don’t go. I can only count on you. And you are the most senior living adventurer we have with the best survival rate,” he said.

Oh man…

My survival rate is only good because I know when it’s time to hold back. These guys are idiots.

Also want to ask readers what kinds of things they hope to see in stories? I'm gathering data for stories and chapters. Hope to give readers a chance to listen and post some things they like. It can be requests for sequels, or ideas for some sequels, or some particular genre ideas they'd like to see. 

Thank you. 

Life Wizard Chapter up today.