What the fuck? This… Thing is… What the fuck? It's some mismatched creature, a strange fusion of a bunch of different things. Horse, human, slug, snake, etc, etc. It's this weird patchwork monster… Wait. Patchwork?
Looking at it more closely with the help of [Arcana Perception], Eodum could see magic. Magic surrounding the body of the creature, trying its best to stitch together the unhealable chunks of monster. The eyes radiated with magic, an almost bridge-like connection being shattered and collapsed. The body itself even seemed to radiate magic—specifically around the seams of the different parts. The whole thing was wrong and disgusting and very, very familiar.
It resembled the patchwork undead beast that Eodum had to fight back in the inn. The thing is, however, why is it here? Why were the necromancers' creation roaming around in the Forest of Kraude? That brings up the next question: who were they? There have been two incidents with necromancers now; one at Seelf and the other now in Eman. Now, with this ew relation between the strange Frankenstein monsters, something was clearly amiss.
Eodum processed its thoughts, but it jumped back before it knew what it was doing, taking Kali with it. Leaping onto the trunk of a tree ten meters away, Eodum watched as mana started gathering in the corpse. Within a single second, mana rapidly filled the puddle of rot, and suddenly, a purple-black explosion detonated. A wave of magic rippled through the air, crashing into things without dealing damage. Without the time to react, the mana washed over both Eodum and Kali, sending a shiver down their spines.
The wave continued, racing off into the distance and disturbing the flora and fauna. A moment of silence held the forest, not a single being making a peep, afraid of what would happen if this tense moment was disturbed. Then, with a mighty roar, like a hot knife cutting through butter, screeches, shrieks, and roars boomed all over Kraude. Trees fell, monsters battled, and the silence fell away to a mighty brawl of massive proportions. Eodum then noticed something about each battle; they were coming closer.
At a rapid pace, most of the clashes zoomed in on Eodum and Kali's position. From the treeline, one of these battles arrived.
A mismatched monster—much like the one Eodum had just hunted down, albeit considerably simpler—ran from the trees. With the size of an elephant but the body of a horse, it sped through the many trees. A head of eye stocks surrounding a lipless human mouth trapped in a permanent grin looked around. The eyes flicked about, searching through the trees, and then, a purplish film erupted from the edges of the eyes, surrounding the entire eye. Suddenly, its search was complete, and all of its eyes were suddenly locked onto the rat and Kali.
It ran straight at them, its tentacle-like tail lengthening suddenly, but then the creature it was clashing with burst through the trees.
Oh how fate can be a cruel bitch. It was the worm.
In an attack that brought on a sense of awful nostalgia, the worm launched out a globular of clear, hissing acid. The orb of liquid impacted the horse-monster's flank, a loud popping and fizzing noise. The acid's noise was cut though by a shrill shriek from the beast. Even with its crying however, its eyes kept locked on Eodum and Kali, unblinking and completely focused.
Eodum couldn't help but notice the acid's rapid progression through the monster's body. It appeared that even with acidic blood, the monster wasn't acid immune. In addition, it wasn't healing over—the wound stayed cauterized and damaged. Then, Eodum's train of thought was broken, as the creature's damaged and worn tenta-tail shot out.
Extending farther than it had any right to, the tail lashed out towards Kali. On instinct, Kali's hand moved to intercept the attack. It would've worked, but she was trying to use her left arm—the damaged one. With an immense amount of pain, instead of catching the smooth tail, she stabbed it, her spike-like bone piercing the soft flesh with ease.
She let loose a cry and whimpered, soon followed by her surprise at the sudden strong force pulling at her arm. She braced herself against the force, but in doing so, moved muscles that only ended in pain. Biting down on her lip to focus her mind, she grabbed the tail while it was still impaled and pulled. She wasn't an ex-pure silver adventurer for nothing.
With her high strength stat, strength boosting skills, and her exercise from a mix of self-improvement and time on the farm, she launched the horse-monster up into the trees with her.
The main body of the beast raced towards Eodum and Kali, and with a complete lack of panic, she leapt at the body, unimpaled its tail, and did a spinning kick to knock it back into the ground.
The creature raced towards the earth with a mix of gravity and force, and with a sickening crash, crack, and squish, the body exploded on the rough, dirt ground. The worm held still the entire, only now reacting to the tremors it felt. When it tried to run away, however, the next couple groups of monsters arrived.
A pack of cat-wolves, a mighty lizard with magma drool, and an assortment of other beasts and monsters arrived. Another moment of silence came, and with every single monster here, the battle began.
Roars, hisses, shrieks and all other noises came from the beasts, and they all raced into an ugly brawl of monsters. Kali tried to jump away, going back to Eodum like a puppy dog, but she was stricken by a flock of water-infused birds. Eodum was about to leave all this faff behind, not wanting to be in this fight, but a bamboo troll was thrown into the tree Eodum stood on, dropping the rat into the middle of the clash.
More and more monsters joined the brawl. The First Kraude War has begun.