The beast was angry, it did not like being woken up, it did not like having it's nose plugged and it definitely did not like getting laughed at. It agilely leapt towards Azemo and took a swipe at him with its claws.
Azemo quickly dodged to the side his intuition telling him to avoid being hit at all costs. 'Thank you intuition.' The creature's strike had been so powerful it had sliced through the cave wall like butter. The first swing was not the entirety of the attack as the creature's heavy tail flashed towards Azemo.
Azemo had been over confident and knew he could not dodge in time, his only option was to somehow block the attack. He could not activate his bracelets because he did not have enough control to form the gauntlets and keep the nose plugs. 'Safety or a joke, uhh joke every time.'
Azemo quickly unsheathed his knife and it instantly teleported. It reappeared embedded in the base of the creature's tail. The tail stopped, Azemo had been able to cut one of the major muscles that moved the tail. He had only been able to do this with Zaebos' study technique and the knowledge he gained about pressure points from Cadence's One Million Strikes. Also a good deal of luck was involved because after all this was a creature that Azemo had never seen before.
As the creature writhed in pain Azemo rushed forward and pulled on the handle of the knife, it did not budge. Before panicking Azemo teleported the knife into his other hand and slashed towards the beast's legs. The knife harmlessly bounced off the creature's tough skin. The knife was sharp and unbreakable but Azemo's pitiful strength was not enough to make a dent.
While Azemo was messing around with his knife the creature was not sitting idle, it was healing. As soon as the knife was gone the muscle reformed and the only sign of the attack was the monster's rage. The tail swung again but Azemo was able to leap over it only feeling the fluctuations in the air as the tail whistled by.
The fight continued with the creature wildly striking and rapidly healing. It was not able to touch Azemo who was leaping about nimbly dodging. However, Azemo was not really faring any better; the knife could not mark the creature and he could not teleport it into the creature's vitals. It seemed that the knife could only teleport to something he could see. Earlier he could still see the handle and that was the limit of his teleportation at the moment.
However Azemo had another plan in action while he was ducking and weaving, occasionally using his knife to stop a stray limb, his tome had opened and started floating around him allowing him to use (skill) Degrade. It would take time but Azemo was confident in his mana pool and stamina, training with Zaebos was no joke.
The beast was getting more and more enraged, it was not the smartest of monsters or it might have already finished Azemo off. One well placed hit could easily do massive damage to Azemo but the creature was too angry to find the right opportunity. As it thrashed around missing wildly or feeling searing pain it slowly felt its life force depleting. It needed some plan, in desperation it purposefully missed.
Azemo realizing the strike would miss did not attempt to dodge it and the creature's hand smashed the ground near him. Unfortunately for Azemo the attack had so much force that it had knocked him into the air. While he was soaring towards the caverns ceiling Azemo realized a fatal weakness he could not really dodge in mid air.
The creature saw the panic in Azemo's eyes and prepared it's most powerful attack. It started to heat up as flames gathered in it's nostrils. Then it launched the strongest attack it had in it's arsenal meaning to obliterate the insufferable Azemo. The beast unleashed the attack and promptly exploded from the pressure. The nose plugs had prevented the attack from going off and the flames having nowhere to go had continued to build up inside the beast eventually causing it to explode.
"Dumb lizard my demon intelligence was too much for you to handle." Azemo had originally blocked the creature's nose as a joke and left the plugs there on a wim. Still the attack had been so powerful Azemo had been blasted to the ceiling and the pile of treasure had been decimated.
After hitting the roof Azemo hit the ground and saw the pile of ashes that used to be treasure. He lay on the ground groaning for quite a while before he remembered to heal himself with (skill) Flames of Death. Azemo experienced a pleasant tingling sensation and most of his injuries were healed. However his loss of treasure was not something that could not be healed with a single spell.
Azemo was loath to think of the whole fight as a waste so he sifted through the ashes hoping to find something. He found a couple of coins that quickly went into storage before he found something cool. It was a plain metallic spear, with no markings or engravings but the explosion had done nothing to it. 'Must be something good.'
Azemo attempted to store the spear away but the storage spit it out. "Error storage full, please sort out current items before storing something new." The magical bag had a certain amount of space, apparently. "Curse you world why do you do this to me." He tried to store the spear again but his howling had not changed anything except for maybe the bag's attitude.
"Error storage full, please fix your brain before storing something new." Not only was space limited in a magical bag it also had a nasty attitude. Azemo spent 5 minutes arguing with the bag before emptying the hundreds of rocks he had stored. After this he could store the spear which he would forget about for a good while.
'At least I got something and learned that the bag is an asshole.' Azemo recalled the tome to him and noticed for the first time he had gotten a new skill in his martial paths. Under the combination message was (technique) Puncture, user can locate vital points and exploit them with weaponry.
With this Azemo was satisfied with the fight and left the cave heading back towards the fortress his plans of staying in the forest overnight had vanished replaced with the usual tiredness.
Back in his bed Azemo fell asleep, but he story of that day did not end there like normal. Instead that night Azemo felt incredible pain in his eyes and dreamed of green flames.
The next day he would learn his magycka had evolved for the first time.