In Lara's palm, Elo saw William and his men following Lara on foot. All their faces showed grim expressions, and their eyes were focused on the shadow in front of them.
Now that they were near, they could already hear the noise of trees breaking.
At the thought of the enemyes size, Elo felt his stomach cramping together. For him, ordinary people already looked like giants, how bad would it be when he meat whatever caused those trees to fall?
As he was about to get lost in his thought, everything became dark all of a sudden. It felt like somebody had just extinguished the sun, and the light had vanished forever.
But while the others shuddered in fear, all of Elo's senses suddenly heightened, and he was able to make out something big, that was slowly approaching.
To get Lara's attention, he punched her a few times with his small wooden fists. When Lara looked down to him, he pointed towards the direction the beast was coming from.
When she looked in the same direction, her eyes suddenly widened.
"It's approaching, get in fighting stance!"
Lara pointed towards the monster, while a big stick appeared in her other hand.
Without hesitation, the others also revealed their weapons and lined up beside Lara.
At this moment, a big snout emerged out of the darkness, and soon followed a pair of small black eyes and two cute little ears.
This was the head of a hippo, but its size was at least double that of a normal one. For Elo, who was already small, the animal seemed to have the hight of a mountain.
Even its tiny eyes were almost double the size of his entire body.
In his mind, Elo didn't know if he should laugh or cry.
-"Vour people with sticks and one wooden puppet are fighting against a nightmare hippo... that's what this has become..."
That's when he realised that this thing in front of him was by no means an ordinary hippo. Its grey leathery skin was corrupted by a black mucus, that formed bubbles on its surface.
Every time one of the bubbles popped, dark smoke was released.
But when the hippo took one more step, Elo had no time to think about this stuff anymore. The monster was already right in front of him.
The humans bashed forewards, hitting the hippo's sturdy foreleg. However, the hippo didn't seem to care. It was already raising his other foot to smash the little humans in front of him.
Elo knew he had to help his endangered companions, but he didn't really know how. There had been no time to test out his shadow magic, so the only thing he could do was to hope everything would go right.
When he activated his skill "shadow marionette", Elo could feel a steady stream of energy flowing out of his little pupped body. As it reached the air, it transformed into a gust of darkness and gathered in a small point in front of him.
Only after the energy flow stopped, Elo directed the singularity towards the hippo.
He didn't really have to aim, the monster was near, big and slow, so there was no way of missing it.
Slowly the ball hovered towards the big animal as if there was no problem at all in this world.
When Elo realised the slow attack speed, his body started sweating profusely back on the clearing. If someone had seen him, he would have thought that Elo was enjoying the warm sun. There was no way to know that he was fighting a battle of life and death just a few hundred meters away.
Luckily, the hippo didn't even think about moving away. It lazily stomped at the humans in front of him.
When the small shadow singularity finally reached the enemy, the humans and the hippo were equally shocked.
Big black tentacles emerged from the hippos back and head, and slowly wiggled towards Lara.
At the same time, the monstrous animal stated to cry in a high pitched voice.
The noise was so loud that the humans had to cover their ears.
Elo, which had no way to cover his ears, almost fainted. While the beast cried on, the black tentacles steadily got closer and closer to Lara.
Elo could hear Lara's puls increasingly loud, and he was sure that she had long stated running if the cry of the hippo would not stun her.
When the tentacles were about one meter (3'3") away from Lara, they suddenly merged into one thick stream, that was rushing towards her.
She closed her eyes, in fear of the incoming impact. She was sure that whatever this attack of the hippo was, it would surely kill her.
But after a few second of waiting, she still wasn't dead. Instead, the hippo's cry even intensified. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the stram wasn't directed at her, but rather onto the small pupped in her hand.
As soon as the flow had engulfed Elo, he could feel the hippo's life energy rushing out of its body, towards him.
Ander the stream of energy, his expression softened and warmth slowly spread inside of his body.
After a few seconds, the stream disappeared, and the hippo's scream died away.
"Ding"
"Cured hippo (very hard) has been defeated.
The resources are being transferred to the leader of the team."
"You resaved:
-11 hippo meat
-2 soul gem (rare)
-5 shadow essence (rare)"
When Elo was about to rejoice, another screen appeared.
"Ding"
"You have killed the Bringer of corruption. The tribs of darkness will attack your lands as soon as they learn of its death. Be ready to defend your realms and retaliate the monsters attack.
Time until the attack: 24h:00min:00s"
When Elo had thought the fight was over, the real battle had not even begun. A violent force suddenly pulled his consciousness back onto his real body.
Before he even opened his eyes, he could taste the sour taste of vomit in his mouth.
While he emptied his stomach into the grass, the timer started to count down.
23h:59min:59s
23h:59min:58s
23h:59min:57s
...