Watching and waiting proved to be harder for Mike than actually fighting, but if he was going to follow along with the plan, he needed to wait for the right moment to make use of the spell he'd hastily developed. Although he understood the reasoning behind the decision, it was still hard to stand by and do nothing as the monster tried to kill two of his friends.
Lily had joined in the fight recently, jumping in when it looked like Brenden would be overwhelmed. So far, the pair of them had been able to hold their own against the creature, but there had already been several close calls. It didn't take a tactician to tell him that they could not keep this up forever.
For what felt like the hundredth time in the last minute, he glanced over at Sera and willed her to give him the signal to begin. However, just like every other time, she simply shook her head without looking away from the monster. She'd been watching it intensely since the fight started.
"I know this is tough for you, but you will have to be patient. Tal still needs more time to fully prepare. If we move too quickly, her ability could fail to take effect and allow the creature to develop some kind of resistance or countermeasure. Then, we'd be in a truly dire situation."
He grimaced. "I get that, but what if one of them gets injured before that time comes? What if one of them is killed while I'm just standing here, watching? How am I supposed to live with myself then?"
Mike knew he was being petulant, but he honestly didn't care at this point. The mental stress of nearly dying, combined with the long period of near constant battle had left him touchy and irritated. He only wanted to be done with this whole situation, and only his sense of duty and concern for his friends in the city, kept him from simply leaving.
Sera momentarily turned to look at him, exasperated. "Then find some way to deal with it. If we want to have any chance of beating this thing, we need you to be ready to act the moment it shows an opening."
"I know, I know." Mike muttered.
He resumed the process of mentally refining his chant for the new spell. The intended effect wasn't particularly difficult to create, but he wanted to make sure their weren't any grammatical mistakes that could lead to problems during its casting. He'd quickly learned that proper word choice and sentence structure was paramount when attempting to direct mana in an unusual way. Unfortunately, he was having a hard time concentrating.
After a few more moments of trying to not watch the fight, Mike spoke up again, unable to keep his silence under in the current circumstances. "...So, what exactly are we waiting for?"
Sighing, Sera answered back with more than a little irritation in her voice. "The moment where it fully commits to an attack, and no longer pays any attention to its defense. When it will be vulnerable to Tal's ability."
Mike blinked, "Is it paying any attention to its defense in the first place? It looks like its just ignoring all the damage and relying on its regeneration to fix any problems that arise."
"Look, its hard to explain, but one of my new skills allows me to evaluate an enemy through what is essentially intuition. While it doesn't give me any specific information, I can get a general idea of what its capable of, and this skill is telling me that this creature is still being cautious."
"That's pretty handy." He muttered while examining the monster, who was currently in the process of stabbing at Brenden with several tentacles ending in barbed points of hardened tissue. It was missing, but only because the transformed beastman was devoting himself entirely to evasion. Mike thought he detected a note of blind panic in his lupine face. "So, what else is it capable of? Do you know anything specific?"
The creature's barrage of attacks were interrupted by a terrific impact as Lily delivered a devastating flying kick to its torso. It stumbled and nearly fell over, which finally gave Brenden the chance to counter attack. With a leap, he buried his sword in the creature's chest. The blade sunk nearly till the hilt, before he twisted it and ripped it out horizontally with a powerful sweep of his arms. He neatly dodged backwards to avoid both the wash of blood that accompanied the injury, in addition to the monster's retributive strike.
"It doesn't really work that way. I can tell that it's capable of continuous evolution, and will likely become much stronger if we leave it alone, but I don't know anything concrete..." She trailed off and squinted her eyes in concentration. "I think...yes, its coming. Get ready!"
Mike switched his gaze back towards the fight, and saw that the creature had changed shape once more, although it wasn't as dramatic of a change as before. While maintaining the same general shape, it had gotten shorter, and was now standing roughly 2.5 m tall. In contrast, its limbs had elongated and thickened, before splitting into dozens of ropy tentacles covered in strangely shaped spines, whose purpose was revealed as the creature moved to attack Brenden.
As the multitude of tentacles filled the air, the spines leaked a thick, oily substance, which promptly burst into flame, creating trails of fire every time a tentacle waved. A blizzard of burning droplets accompanied every movement of these exaggerated limbs.
[I wonder how it learned to do that...] Mike thought to himself as he started his chant. "Oh twining wind, free of all that binds you, grant this humble request. Bring forth my sound and share it with all. Make the heavens quake in awe. [Amplification]"
He felt a metaphysical snap as the spell took shape, and began directing its area of effect towards the monster. As soon as he felt comfortable with the targeting, he sucked in a deep breath and then simply yelled, "HEY!"
A visible distortion in the air itself suddenly surrounded the creature, and a muffled echo of Mike's voice could be heard. It didn't seem particularly intense to most observers, but the spell's caster knew that things were very much different inside the area of effect, where the monster was being bombarded by an amplified version of his shout.
Although he didn't know it, the intensity of the sound was comparable to standing next to a jet engine during take-off.
Needless to say, the creature, which had never experience anything along those lines, was stunned and began writhing in agony. This was precisely the moment that Tal was waiting for, and as soon as the monster had collapsed onto the ground, she was casting her own spell. Mike didn't hear the words to this one, his own ears were still ringing with the sound of his shout, but he did notice it when a ghostly presence emerged from her body.
It was a dark and gloomy figure, cloaked in a tattered, black robe.
[The wraith? What is it supposed-]
The apparition surged forward, leaving a trail of dark smoke in its wake. It slammed into the monster, and was quickly absorbed by it. For a few moments, it seemed like nothing had happened, then the creature went still.
[Never mind. I take it back...]
Its flesh started to melt away, sloughing off into a puddle of vile smelling goo. Slowly, but surely it began to shrink, until it was roughly human sized.
Tal staggered. Although she looked like she was on the verge of passing out, she nevertheless flashed a quick thumbs up to indicate the successful completion of her task.
"She did it! We just need to deliver the final blow!" Sera exclaimed while pointing to the prone figure still lying motionless in the coagulating pool of muck. "One stab through the heart should put an end to it."
Mike looked over at Lily and Brenden, noting that they were covered in nasty looking burns that would need his attention before long. While one of them could probably finish it off, he felt like it might be asking a lot of them when he was perfectly capable of doing so.
He walked over to the monster, taking care to use the most solid portions of the puddle. Unfortunately, he still ended up with his boots full of the squishy and disturbingly warm substance. Wanting to get this over with, he swiftly lined up for a thrust, and was prepared to drive his spear home, when he noticed that the monster had changed once more.
While it was still a hairless bundle of flesh roughly approximating a humanoid form, it now had discernible facial features, and to his horror, Mike realized that he recognized that face. Not wanting to believe his eyes, he used Appraise on it once more.
-------------------------------------
Anton Barthelemus Unther
Age: 47
Race: Abomination
Class: Abomination
Title: Traitor to Humanity
-------------------------------------
A wave of nausea surged through him as he read the name of the Branch Manager of the Mayde Adventurer's Guild.
"What the hell...? He muttered as he stared down at the man's sightless eyes.
"What are you waiting for?! Kill it before Tal's spell wears off! You don't have much longer!" Sera yelled from her vantage.
He opened his mouth to give an explanation, but stopped, uncertain of what he should do. [Do I try to heal him? Can I even fix this? Judging by that title, he is at least partly responsible for what happened to him. So, does he even deserve to be spared?]
While he was deliberating, the flesh of Anton's body twitched, and then began to writhe and swell. At the same time, the Branch Manager's face twisted into a rictus of agony, mouth wrenched open in a silent scream. Whatever was happening was clearly torturous.
Sera yelled again, an edge of panic in her voice. "Its breaking free! Kill it now!"
[Screw it.]
With a roar, Mike slammed his spear through the Anton's chest, punching through the area where a heart should be, and pinning him to the ground. The man locked eyes with him, a look of dawning comprehension on his face. He gave a relieved sigh, mouth curving into a smile, before falling lifelessly back to the ground. After a few seconds, what remained of his body started to disintegrate, quickly joining the rest of the decaying sludge.
Mike was still staring down a the pool when the soldiers on the wall broke out into cheering.
----------------------------------------------------
"It looks like we're a bit late." The creature known as Grim commented as the experimental subject was finally put down. It was standing openly on a hillock a few dozen meters away from the site of the battle, but didn't fear being spotted. On the contrary, it would have given it an excellent excuse to prey upon the tired group which had dispatched its creation.
Alas, its passive stealth skills proved to effective, and it was left to watch from afar as Agony was killed.
"Still, what a surprise? To think that we'd find her here, in the company of the false Dragonknight." It muttered excitedly as its inhuman gaze fastened on the Oracle. "The ultimate research material..."
"Do...not...forget...the...others..." A voice hissed from Grim's robes, near what would have been a waist on a human figure.
"Yes, yes." The creature replied while gently patting its robes in a soothing manner. "She's surrounded herself with quite the selection of promising subjects. We're especially looking forward to dissecting the one with giant blood. Such straightforward enhancement of one's abilities would be a great help when designing different abominations. Perhaps they'd lack the same kind of adaptability our current generation has, but they will make up for it in potency."
"Need...Oracle...soon..."
Grim issued a surprisingly human sigh and looked down at himself. "We know...we know. Fear not, the preparations for her seizure are already underway."