46 – Many headed trudger

AUTHOR NOTE: I will be launching the first tier of Patreon, with one whole chapter available ahead of schedule, in the next few days. It’s going to cost only 1€, bang for the buck! More tiers will also be added in the future

The rules of the universe were vastly different under the System’s hegemonic rule from what they were before its arrival, and Julian was discovering more and with each passing day, realizing just how much the world had changed. Even a simple activity such as running was different. He had drunk a Stamina Regeneration potion in hopes to counterbalance his expenditure of stamina and keep running indefinitely, or at least until the effect of the potion ran out. But it didn’t work like that, he found out. His stamina, in fact, didn’t start regenerating until he stopped running, at which point the bar filled up with greater speed than it would normally do, thanks to the potion.

And so, it turned out that he could only run for a minute before he had to stop for a few seconds in order to keep going, or his HP bar would slowly start to deplete once his Stamina was all gone. It was just one of the many things not to take for granted in the wide multiverse, a lesson that taught how even the most logical of assumptions can actually turn out to be very wrong.

After he figured out how to optimize his running pattern, Julian made good time across the desolate landscape swept by the rain. His Anti-Cold potion was doing its job protecting him from the pelting icy rain and from the snapping cold wind. In this desolate landscape even during the hottest hours of the day it was cold enough to freeze to death, and the sun was blotted out by thick rainclouds that plunged the hills into a gloomy darkness, wet and depressing. There were no monsters in the little valleys and in the hills around them, no trace of animal life either, the only living things being small critters that crawled the earth and the ever present dark green grass that swayed in the wind like a carpet of living grey-tinted fur. The small critters, mostly insects and burrowing animals, gave little to no runes when killed, and didn’t allow for extraction of any crystals either. They were classified by the System as animals and, like Cal had explained when Julian had shot the parrot back on the asteroid one level of the tower below where he was now, animals did not have magic enough to have cores or give any meaningful number of runes.

Shit, I miss him.

And so, Julian wandered closer and closer to the marsh, the wet swamps where he had collapsed and was saved by Methias, who was on his way back to the City of Light returning victor from his expedition against Evil. The Grey Barrow marshland was still as cold and wet as Julian remembered, and just as deadly. However, with the aid of the potions he had, he was no longer a victim of the terrible environment, rather he was wading the knee-deep water as if taking a stroll in the pleasant outdoors. The only dissatisfaction he felt the need to express was that he was wet, and that despite not feeling cold, the wetness was uncomfortable. But there were no anti-water potions in his loot room, and thus he had to make do.

Julian also wondered, while he was lazily walking through the shallow parts of the swamp in search of any trace of monster nearby, about what had become of the City of Light. He left it a year ago in a state of brewing revolution, having given a noble a weapon capable of tipping the scales of power in the city, and then proceeding to utterly annihilate said scales just moments after, killing the king and most of his guards, and not one but two great treasures of the castle that no doubt served to keep order in the city when needed.

His train of thought was stopped when he saw ripples in the distance, unnatural with how they didn’t match the rest of the wind induced waves on the surface of the water. He flexed his arms.

It’s been a while since I fought anything. Let’s see if I still know how to do it. Let’s open with a Homing Magic Missile.

His hands danced. Julian performed the incredibly complex hand movements required to cast Sorceries, never letting the center of the rippling waves leave his vision. A small projectile, white and ethereal, rose from behind his back where it had formed, describing a wide parabola in the air, and then diving into the water with an almost vertical trajectory. It disappeared, the missile vanishing without even leaving a trail behind.

Julian frowned and decided to approach, but suddenly the water bubbled and rose, until the surface was broken by the surfacing of what looked like a great scaled creature, rising slowly on its legs to reveal its huge body. It was round and fat, covered in sleek wet scales from heads to toe, green like the waters of the lake and impossibly tall. The water must have been deep for such a creature to have fit below the surface without showing itself or upsetting the currents. On top of its large body, three tall necks sported two reptilian heads each, covered in feathers that shone in the weary light of the fading day with strange blues and oranges like an alien sunset. Four stubby legs, barely mobile, were stably planted in the slimy dirt.

Unless those legs are impossibly long… the water must be shallow. I was wrong in thinking it would be deep. Better this way: more mobility for me and less for the creature.

The six heads looked around in search of the challenger who had dared disturb them. They snapped at the air, licking it with long, mobile tongues that were split at the end, like those of a snake. Dripping teeth, filled with ooze, sampled the cold air. Even though the body was mostly immobile, the heads were surprisingly agile, looking around like sentinels until they all suddenly focused on Julian, regarding him with their deep black eyes. They roared in anger and challenge, and Julian felt his ears pop from the sudden change in pressure and the water around him foam. He smirked and cracked his knuckles, and Irradiated Star appeared from his storage rings into his hands.

Well, it’s showtime. Appraisal.

A small amount of mana and Stamina disappeared, and new information flooded to his brain. A small HP bar also appeared above the creature’s heads, completely red save for a small black section at the end.

F+ creature, so if I kill it, it’s a guaranteed Core. That was pretty much all the system said about the monster, other than the fact that it was called Many-headed Trudger and some other useless flavor text. Finally, after a moment of apparent calm during which the two opponents regarded each other with wary caution, Julian decided that it was finally time to act.

With a grace and speed that only a cybernetic body could have ever achieved in his old world, but now accessible to all thanks to Stat points, Julian jumped towards the creature with his trusty mace in hand. Bullets were going to be ineffective, but his mace was not. He jumped in the air and tried to land a solid hit on the gargantuan body of the beast, counting on his stats to do all the work and expecting a quick kill. However, he had underestimated the speed of the heads because they all focused and converged on him, coming from various directions and angles to try and intercept him before he could land his hit. He rotated midair and swatted one of the twin heads away with the mace. It recoiled in pain, its momentum all but stopped, and Julian repositioned his weapon to continue on his path.

Okay, this tells me that the heads don’t hit too hard.

He batted away two other heads that were trying to deflect him and prepared for impact. However, at the last second and completely unseen, the third pair of heads appeared from behind. Their neck was bent in a U-shape, going up and then down until they were right behind him. Instead of trying to deflect him, these two heads instead slammed into him with force, adding to his momentum, and tried to bite him. Julian felt the jaws about to snap closed around him and could see the sharp teeth dripping with sick green ooze.

Poison.

There was a decision that needed to be made. Avoid a disastrous impact with the body of the beast or avoid getting bitten and having to deal with the poison. Julian made a split-second decision, one that he was sure the monster had not taken into account when it came up with its strategy. One that instead did consider the fact that in order to take down a monster the size of a freight train with thick scales and skin, Julian needed to get into melee range and use his mace.

Deciding to ignore the sharp teeth about to snap closed around him, Julian put his entire weight behind Irradiated Star. The few seconds that had been stretched into an eternity by the adrenaline, and the cold calculative sadism of a hunter that didn’t mind the pain if he got to kill his prey, were about to come to an end. The twin jaws closed shut, leaving only the spiked tip of the mace poking out of the many rows of teeth that were crushing Julian in their venomous embrace. He yelled in pain as the poison got into his system and felt like acid burning through his veins, but he kept a close eye on his HP bar and stayed focused. By now, he was used to pain like this, and it served to give him a refreshing moment of clarity. Not that he would inflict pain on himself just to feel the rush.

A moment after, he felt the sudden jolt of impact as the mace hit the hide of the creature with a wet squelch, and he knew that he had pierced the hide. Flesh sizzled against the radioactive metal of the mace, but the monster was only helpless with Julian still inside one of its mouths and the weapon lodged into its side. The other heads flailed aimlessly in pain, while Julian waited, drinking HP potions and antidotes for the poison from his rings.

Two gunshots finally pierced the air, and just as many blue streaks pierced the skull of the head that was trapping him inside it. Its teeth exploded outwards, and its mouth was pried open with great force. Leaving his mace still in the side of the creature to slowly kill it, Julian targeted the other heads. First was the twin, sibling of the one he shot and that was now limply dangling from its neck while the other screamed and recoiled away. Before its neck could pull it away with jerky, uncoordinated movements it too was dead, and the two fell together with their limp neck into the swamp in a tidal wave of water and mud. Then he aimed at the others.

He stopped. He was feeling cold again, wasn’t he? The Frostbite meter was back. Julian was about to drink a Cold potion when one of the heads attacked him while he was distracted, and he barely managed to roll away to safety. The potion wasn’t as lucky, exploding into glass shards as the head smashed against the main body of the creature, passing through Julian while he was protected by the i-frames of his skill.

The pain and radiation poisoning were making the beast delirious. The heads tried to snap at Julian, flying at him in kamikaze attacks that only succeeded in hurting the beast further as they were all swiftly dodge-rolled, leaving the sharp poisoned teeth to hit the armored hide of the body. They mostly bounced away, chipped and damaged, but sometimes they penetrated between the large, armored scales and injected their poison right in the body of the beast they were a part of. Julian took his time to pick the heads off one by one with his gun, waiting until they were stunned by the hits of their failed attempts at biting him. Then, with all heads and necks floating limp on the surface of the water, polluting the swamp with large patches of toxic green, Julian turned towards where he had left his mace to sizzle.

Still no runes, eh? Tough one, you are.

He shrugged and lifted the mace. Then he slammed it back in the hole, again and again, each time digging deeper into the decaying and liquefying flesh of the creature. He didn’t stop until he saw his runes tick up.

+3380 Runes.

Julian hopped off the back of the now deceased monster, plunging into the contaminated water of the swamp. Standing in the poison, he saw his Poison meter begin to tick up, and he drank another antidote to clear it. Then, moving fast as not to have to waste yet another antidote, he plunged his hand into the side of the creature. The whole thing shuddered like it was hit by an electric shock, and Julian searched for the core inside without asking too many questions as to how he was even supposed to find it with his bare arm when there were at least a dozen meters of monster meat to go through. He was about to doubt himself, wondering if he was using the skill the right way, when he felt the telltale cold smoothness of the Crystal Core. He pulled it out in a shower of guts and irradiated meat, but no blood because there were no Bleed conditions applied to the creature, and in a matter of moments the monster was no more. It evaporated in a mist of white particles carried by the wind.

Speaking of blood… I should have used Seppuku! Wait… Seppuku on the guns and make the monster Bleed by shooting at it from afar? I wonder if that even works?

Moving on from the wet swamp, Julian felt the cold return to haunt his body, his Frostbite meter on the verge of being full, but decided to keep hunting. He simply took out another Cold potion and looked around, and his eyes focused on a small figure. A shadow against the dark horizon, barely visible, and that would have gone completely unseen if not for his Eye of the Beholder skill that basically made his eyes into small binoculars, if he just spent some SP when he looked around. He took out his gun, Tammy Jr. the widow – now that Timmy Jr. was no more – and aimed it at the man in the distance.

“If you move, I shoot!” he yelled as soon as he was close enough, seeing how the man looked like he was about to flee.

He also shot the ground for good measure, to make sure the guy got the message.