Pain stabbed into his back, that matched the degree he felt in his side. Holding on dearly for his sword, he realized his mistake pretty quickly and remembered that the mud was very slippery. This stupid mud had caused him too much pain at this point, and realizing one of the hints, Lucras decided to make himself a new platform to stand on.
Getting up, he found the tiger looking at him again, but instead of looking scared of trying to find the best way to dodge, Lucras stared dead into the tiger's eyes. Staring deeply and trying his best to intimidate the tiger with his eyes, he began to move the mud below his feet. Shifting it out of the way as he stared aggressively. His hate, his pain, his fear, he stared into the eyes of this stupid tiger as he let loose of everything. While doing this, using his feet, he shoveled out a small platform of solid ground in the mushy surroundings.
Ignoring any pain he felt as he dug, the pure expression and stare he sent to the tiger seemed to freeze it for a moment. The tiger itself felt surprised by this shift in emotions and decided to atleast take a moment to reassess its prey. Even though it looked weak, it might have been hiding its true power, as you never know in this forest.
But after a few seconds of just shoveling dirt the tiger forgot about checking out Lucras and decided to just jump at him. Using its claws to hit solid ground and run, it ran and jumped forward at Lucras trying to scratch out those annoying eyes. It was a stupid prey to even consider looking at it with those eyes, it even made it reassess its situation for a moment. It ended to be taught a lesson before dying.
Seeing the tiger come forward again, Lucras decided that his platform would just have to work as it was, as he for the first time, successfully jumped to the side to dodge this angry cat. Seeing that his original style worked, as he landed Lucras tried to make as much of a jumping platform as possible. Anger and excitement filled him as he watched the tiger spin around as it landed, and gave him another few precious seconds to make a new platform.
As he was making this platform, Lucras thought about the final tip he had, with the mud being eyes are bad. After a moment, he remembered the lizard and how he beat it. It was another enemy that couldn't be slashed, so he just flung some mud in its eyes. Taking a look at the landing spots of the tiger, he started to see how to stab at the tiger with a mud ball.
As he was thinking and moving mud around with his rapidly injured feet, the tiger finally finished stopping and spinning around to face him again. Anger raged into its eyes as lowered itself slightly, and Lucras instantly knew that it was about to do something crazy. Its anger was almost visible, but it was definitely felt by Lucras as that weird eye skill the tiger had was transmitting pure disgust and rage towards him.
Its claws seemed to extend further into the ground then ever as it began to run, but not directly at him. But in a weird circular motion which seemed to be its attempt to gain greater speed. As he watched it get closer he felt his heart pound before quickly grabbing a quick lump of mud below his feet. Then taking his sword in his left hand, he angled himself to try and land on his original platform. His was definitely going to hurt as his body tried and stop him from doing this, warning of the consequences. But he grabbed that fear and locked it inside a box because right now, he needed to win this.
Then as the tiger got closer he raised his sword to block it, knowing it would be foolish in the long run. And in a matter of moments, it had reached him. With its large claws extended it took a swip at him with great speed. Raising his sword he pushed back on the claws while trying to jump back. His everything hurt as the claws meet the sword, but with his heart pounding in his ears and his wild chaotic emotions raging, he flew back.
From this collision that lasted mere moments, Lucras was flung backwards as his back and side rages in protest. Realizing that he was slightly off from his goal, he tried to push off with his right foot to get him closer to his platform. And in return he received an angry injury in his ankle while finally flying in the correct direction.
Sliding and landing in his preferred area, relief pulled though him as his excitement and fear mixed together. Then looking toward the tiger, he found it had slipped in the mud. Apparently when it pulled up its claws to swip him, it became unbalanced and in turn landed in a bad manner.
With his chance in sight, Lucras took a quick breath before committing. His rage mixed with his excitement as he flung his mud ball toward the exposed tiger. When it landed, it had apparently over spinned and was now on had its side facing him with its right eye staring toward the newly flung mudball.
Then jumping off his platform with excitement in his being, he became the predator. He became the one who had an advantage, and was taking his turn to jump at his prey. It felt good to feel this, the advantages of being the predator in a fight against a defenseless victim.
Before the mudball hit the tiger's gray eyes, he could see fear reek through it, but in the face to that, he justified himself by thinking, 'survival of the fittest'. Then the tiger got hit by the mudball, before it could stabilize itself to avoid it. One might think that the tiger could easily just swat the ball away, but before this tigers eyes, it had never meet another monster that didn't either leave it alone or die before it. The larger monsters would always just ignore it because it wasn't a threat to it, and the weaker ones just got eaten. Even the ones with a strength close to it usually avoided it because of its weird eye.
But again, right before its eyes, a weaker enemy had actually gave it such a feeling of fear when it looked into its eyes. This weaker being had some sort of intense… something that made it feel fear to its bones. Only thinking about getting out of the way, but before it could even stabilize itself or extend its claws again to move in the mud, it became blind to Lucras as the mudball spread across its face and right eye.
Moving closer to the tiger, Lucras raised his sword in his right hand and decided to push as much mana in as possible. He couldn't fail right now, as if this push failed, he felt his health stat would run out before he could push again. The wounds on his back and side had made him feel both lightheaded and in incredible pain.
So pushing all his feeling into his sword and yelling out, he stabbed toward the eyes of the tiger.
Except that he missed.
As he watched his stab forward deviate from its original path, as the creature moved its head to look towards him. And while it raised its head towards him with its mouth slightly opened, the sword tip shifted from hitting the right eye, to inside of the mouth.
The blade slipped cleanly into the mouth of the creature, and as Lucras was feeling defeated because he believed that his sword stab out just cut the mouth, the blade sunk deeper. Before the horrified eyes of both of them, the sword hit the outer skin of the Silvfu Tiger, and deflected the sword deeper into its throat.
His mana filled swords cleanly started to cut up the inside of the tiger. The slick blade causing massive internal injures from all the sliced inside. And as Lucras continues to feel the movements, He felt his sword hit something hard, and stop for a moment before moving through it.
At that moment, the tiger seemed to loose all sense of moment, as it just stopped moving in general. It was like he had paralyzed the poor creature as all of its muscles relaxed and all of its progress in standing up came to an end.
Then Lucras finally landed on the ground, as he slide on the bloody mud once again, layering himself in the red mud. As he slide, his sword left the tigers body bringing a warm current towards him. Rolling and turning over repeatedly, covering himself in mud, he felt himself become loose.
Everything became blurry again, and he felt like he was dying again. His mind thought about everything that had happened in this new world before everything became black once again.