As the war came to an end, or so the others thought. The group was exhausted and above all their energy was beyond low, giving them only enough to stand there and breathe. There was no way that even one of them could kill a mosquito now for all a beast of something beyond their will.
Perciveus was calm as usual but inside he too had taken a toll by pouring his energy out and using his attribute powers. Though he was satisfied as he had gained another attribute from killing and absorbing the Chimera. Smoke attribute was plenty helpful in defense and disguise or even for escape. And now having attained it Perciveus was feeling pleased.
But this calm did not last too long as a single figure was standing there atleast a hundred meters away from the group smiling creepily ear to ear. It was an Oni.
…..
Onis were usually depicted as the evil incarnate or the thunder gods, not because they were some saintly gods or spirits rather because of their ability to control lightning in almost godly ways. They were worst of monsters as their reason to exist was to feed. Either on souls of their prey or their flesh, but they hated blood to their core. They were cannibalistic creatures whose hunger grew the more they feed, or one could say their hunger never died. They were masters of creating illusion some so deadly that if they even spared there life, the prey would be traumatized for the rest of their lives and then Onis would kill them for their pleasure but make their prey feel as they granted them their wish for death as an act of kindness.
They were true evil and there appearance deemed the same. They were least a ten feet tall, red skinned with black veins bulging. They had white hair on back half of their skull and two black horns stuck out at the front. They had sunken, red glowing three eyes with one of it vertically opening at the centre of their forehead. They had two sharp white tusks and they bared their teeth that were an inch in size, well mostly yellow. They had an iron club half their own size as a weapon and had an enormous amount of energy.
…..
The Oni smiling at the group suddenly sprinted with his heavy club and as soon as he was ten meters away from the group, it lifted its club in the air and bashed it in the groud sending a strong shock wave while the club remained stuck at the groud. The group was no more moving as the energy from the bang had caused them to pass out beacause of the sheer force that the shockwave had.
Perciveus seeing this had drawn his blades and held it in cross formation to block the wave well in time. But this was not the time to rest as the only possible help had been made to sleep peacefully.
Knowing that defence was not gonna stop the powerful attacks, he charged his blades with energy to give his own attack. He sprung at the Oni and struck its head with his two blades. The force behind the attack was so enormous that a gigantic crater had been formed on the ground where the two stood, but there was not a single scratch on the Oni.
The Oni then took a fighting stance and paraded with puches and kicks towards Perciveus, not giving a single moment for him to move or avoid. And he had been taking the hit after hit trying to find any opening to escape the brutal beating of this monster.
As the perfect moment arrived and the Oni went to grab its club and bring it down with great force at him, Perciveus had used all his strength to move to the Oni's back and was able to avoid the blow.
Perciveus was now out of breath and he knew that now a single attack of this monster and he would be dead or to be exact, he would be back into his slumber. But he could not go back into his slumber for two reasons.
First, it was horribly painful and the slumber itself was something that equalled death so the pain in his slumber would be excruciating and there would be no need to even ask of how long this slumber would be.
Second if he were to go down that path there was no surety that he would come back to his body as the monster standing infront of him would love to make fretters of his body and grill the others for a nice apetizing dinner.
"Ughhh, how can you even eat a body whole, don't you even avoid some critical body parts." Perciveus said mockingly spitting blood from his mouth.
The Oni seemed confused with his comment but anyway gave a reply," I will kill you and your brethren and then cook you into a nice stew". Visibly drooling over the thought of this 'Perciveus stew'.
This was all that Perciveus wanted, a distraction. While the Oni was eating its delicios 'Perciveus stew' in its dream, he got enought time to gather all his strength into his blades and then he joined them both making them into a single long sword. He cast smoke, a very dense one and then commented,
"Did you add the herbs? It will taste better with it".
"Ohh yeah, I almost forgot". The Oni said in his deep voice going back into his dream to add some.
'How dumb is he and they call themselves intelligent', Perciveus thought.
While moving in the smoke and changing his directions to confuse the Oni more he again commented,
"Why don't you cook a different dish from all the others. You know we all taste different."
"Should I?" Deeply lost in his thoughts the Oni muttered.
"Yeah, I mean you know I'm so sweet not really suitable for stew."
This comment of him being sweet had brought the Oni out of his dilemma and now frantically turning left and right he was trying to find Perciveus in the dense smoke.
'Shit! I should have said I'm salty, I think he really likes stew', Perciveus was inwardly cursing on him.
"You.,. You cannot hide forever", the Oni grunted.
"I don't plan to. I just want you to taste some blood . Ahhh yum". Perciveus said with the intention to annoy the other.
The Oni bared its teeth and roared in pure rage, " Arghhhhh".
Suddenly a sword had came flying in his direction and impaled his heart. The the blade was thrusted with such force that it had gone from one side and the tip of the blade emerged from its back.
The Oni's eyes were becoming dull by every passing second as he fell to the ground on his knees, hardly breathing.
"I think the heart tastes the best", Perciveus said licking his lips.