Please read the author's notes. (Examples and explanation of moves and appearance+ Monster Sources)
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pat.treon: Keanu_Eugene
CHAPTER START---
Standing beside the massive serpent, Welf quickly strikes with his greatsword, his eyes wide and muscles tense from the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
As his blade sinks hilt deep into the beast, surprisingly easy even to him considering how intimidating the monster truly is, even for a level 3 adventurer.
As he changes his grip, placing both hands firmly on his weapon and positioning himself to face toward the head of the creature, Welf pushes himself, running toward the face of the monster while dragging his blade through it, a wide gash forms along the side of the creature for over a third of its length before it fully wakes up from his Will-O-Wisp spell.
"RAAARGH!" The monster shrieks out as it immediately wakes up, instinctively craning its head and body as far off the ground as possible.
"Wowowowowow!" Welf yells out as he is lifted with the monster, his hands still firm on the weapon as it remains in the monster's hide, causing him to be raised into the air with the monster.
The monster furiously shakes, immediately dislodging the blade from itself, sending the young man falling toward the ground, landing harshly on his back.
"Urgh, that... ouch," Welf groans as he rises to his feet once more, lifting his gaze to the monster, the purple lightning which had been building upon the body of the monster suddenly dissipates, only for the wound on the creature to heal, the bright light emanating from where blood and flesh would normally be is once more hidden behind the Kaleidoscope scales as the wound mends itself.
The scales pulse and shake for an instant, before they contract, shrinking the monster a few meters in length, barely reaching 27 meters not.
"Ok, so that's how you work," Welf mutters, looking at the blade of his weapon, the lack of blood and flesh on it confirming his theory.
As the monster descends onto the brave smith, their battle continues.
As thalie looks out into the distance, barely a hundred meters away. Looking over her shoulder, Yang sleeps peacefully behind a boulder, unbothered by the happening around him as the young woman is tightly wound in a runner's crouch.
Down on all course, ready to rush into a sprint, her magic constantly compounding in her body as the ground around her cracks every time her muscles twitch unconsciously.
"You so fucking owe us after this..." She says through gritted, taking another glance at Yang and the soft smile on his face.
As she sees the creature rise up, it lunges forward, she's barely able to see the outline of Welf swinging his greatsword, ducking and weaving around the attacks of the beast.
'It's smaller, something happened,' She assesses while looking at the battle.
As Welf lands a massive slash on the monster, he runs his greatsword along the side of the monster after barely evading a lethal bite. The bright light once more emanates from inside the monster before it begins healing itself, once more shrinking in size.
'That's it...it can't absorb its own magic that's why it was in pain earlier, it can't control it either and it uses it to heal itself but it can only attack or heal, not both at once. It's like Yang without the practice or skills to bolster him, we can outlast it...' She thinks as purple light reaches her eyes.
Holding onto his greatsword, blood dripping from his hand making the hilt of the weapon slick to the touch. Welf hadn't been able to feel his arms for minutes, his joints cry out with every movement.
With every strike that he lands, his body is shocked by the lightning element of the monster before it begins to heal.
With every flash of purple, it flickers the magic on and off as it constantly has to heal.
"C'mon!" Welf yells at the beast, taunting it even more, the creature had shrunk to 20 meters at this point allowing him to better manage the fight.
As he rushes forward, sidestepping to the right at the last moment he avoided the maw of the beast and slashes at the side of its face, the lightning flickers off once more as the gash heals, only to flicker back on the instant the wound is gone.
"That's it!"
He lands on his feet, thrusting his blade into the side of the monster all the way to the hilt.
"Every time!"
Bending his knees, he heaves upward on the blade, creating a large vertical slash as he withdraws the greatsword.
"YOU GET SLOWER!"
He cries out, in delight and partial disbelief, every time the lightning flickers on and off, the serpent becomes slower, unable to handle the involuntary twitches caused by the magic.
Swinging his greatsword vertically downward immediately, he follows up by placing another almost identical slash near the previous wound.
As he makes to slash forward once more, the purple scales shift back to Kalidiscope and immediately become a deep blue.
"No!" Welf cries out in surprise, leaping backward to distance himself from the imminent heat, only for a powerful torrent of water to fire out from every scale on the monster.
"ACH!" He yells out as the current sweeps him back a few feet, sending him tumbling under the sudden torrents of water.
As he spits out a mouthful of water, rising to his feet in the knee-high rushing water still pouring off the monster. Frantically looking around himself, his weapon is nowhere in sight...
"No, DAMN IT!" As the serpent lunges forward.
As he tries to evade, the new unusual terrain trips him up, taking the full brunt of the monster's head bash to his torso, the beast pins him under the rushing waves.
"Argh agh agh ugh!" He struggles as water rushes into his lungs, the force of the impact emptying his lungs before the beast tries to crush him beneath the waves.
As his numb hands wail furiously on the creature, desperate to survive, he's suddenly sent tumbling as the beast's head jerks backward and the rushing water stops.
Immediate lifting out the water, the liquid still retreating from the point of impact, as if it were running away from Thalie herself, standing in the middle of the shockwave as Welf throws up all the water he ingested, blood leaking out of her half plated boots as she kneels where Welf was drowning moments ago.
Her face still sporting obvious burns as her left hand is also clearly bleeding, judging from the red flowing through the plates of her gauntlet.
"WELF! I CAN'T MOVE YET, GET YOUR ASS UP!" She yells at the top of her lungs, her hands furiously reaching to the back of her boots, unbuckling each strap before tightening them much much more than normal.
Taking her instructions to heart, with water still pouring out of his mouth, welf draws the shortsword at the back of his belt and rushes toward the monster.
Through his blurry eyes, he can see the damage the woman had done, the entire lower jaw of the beast is missing, he can visibly see it shrining, now barely 15 meters long as the jaw slowly reforms, the creature sways back and forth, confused and dizzy from the impact itself.
Spitting out the last of the water from his lungs, he rushes quickly runs along the side of the beast, carving a massive swath from its flesh once more before reaching the tip of its tail and quickly removing that appendage.
"Argh!" He groans, feeling the bones in his hands struggling to keep their rigid hold on his blade.
Leaping onto the back of the creature, he immediately begins to cut from tail to head of the beast following where the spine should be, a long gash echoing his wake across the beast as he approaches its craned head, with a massive leap he mounts onto the head of the creature.
With its shrunken form, barely 4ft wide now, he drops to his knees and embeds his shortsword into the skull of the creature. Raising back to his full height, he slams his foot down on the creature, forcing the blade through the forehead and out the bottom of the mouth of the monster.
As the monster drops down onto the floor, Welf loses his balance and is shaken off the monster, landing hard on his left shoulder from a few feet off the ground.
"Did we...kill it..." Thalie asks, breathing harshly as she tightens more straps on her boots.
"No, stupid thing, needs to shrink, to find the crystal..." He replies, barely catching his breath after nearly drowning.
As he rises to his feet, looking toward the shrinking monster, the Kaleidoscope scales return to their regular white as it shrinks down to a plain-looking foot-long white snake, two black eyes in its head being the only colored feature on the monster.
As he walks up to the monster, lifting his boot to end the battle, he can't help but crack a smile.
"Heh, this little thing almost wiped us out..."
"Little piece of shit, just step on it already," Thalie says as she walks up beside him.
*CRACK*
The crystal in the monster's head shatters as he drops his heel onto the beast.
"Where's Yang?"
"Sleeping, fucking sleeping, I hate him so much right now..." Thalie mutters out.
"I feel like shit, I don't think I wanna swim for a while..."
"Ha... Yeah, I saw that... hey, think anyone else ran into one of these things?"
"Most people don't have any mage much less THE Elementalist, less magic, less danger," Welf comments
"Hey, can you do me a favor..." Thalie says, turning back toward Yang as Welf grabs the broken crystal.
END CHAPTER---