-A couple hours ago-
Azi stood up and got into a battle stance as he readied his fist in front of him. Shizu did the same but with her umbrella and katana drawn as she got a foreboding feeling in her stomach.
Shizu's sight was set upon a large figure in the distance and she instructed Azi to strike when he found an opening while she distracted it. Azi nodded in agreement and loaded a blood steel square into his gauntlets.
It was just in time as the head that looked to be 3 meters tall was soon upon them. It was all black and had the appearance of a large centipede that was similar to a gengiri but incredibly large. From a distance, one would mistake it for a worm but upon Shizu's closer inspection, she realized that it was an overgrown baby gengiri.
The color of his carapace was black but not as black as it had a slight gray hue.
Resolving herself to fight, Shizu unhesitantly attacks with her umbrella but it surprisingly bounced off its carapace. She thought that it was an overgrown baby gengiri and underestimated the strength of its carapace.
Unfortunately, the carapace was much more durable for unknown reasons which was a shortcoming that caused her to be caught off guard as the large monster attempted to take a bite out of her.
Azi moved quickly to cover Shizu and impacted his fireball infused gauntlets into the large gengiri's head. Again, Azi was caught off guard as the monster's head did not explode like usual.
Instead, the monster's head was pushed away and Azi clicked his tongue as he knew what had happened. Bad luck, the gauntlet he punched with had a white knuckle piece missing and seemed to not fully invoke the fireball spell. Azi noticed the damage before but hoped that the other white knuckle pieces would compensate but it seemed that they were reaching their limit.
So instead, Azi's fist was only fortified and strengthened but failed to form the fireball. Shizu quickly ran to Azi and grabbed him, she then jumped away by magically infusing her legs. They were now a few meters away from the monster. It hissed and snarled at them while eyeing them hungrily as a line of drool ran down from its huge maw.
Mysteriously, the monster did not chase but instead screeched, not pain, but delight as if it found something interesting to eat. Answering the screech, a large swarm of kengiri and gengiri formed around the large monster.
At this point, Azi was standing next to Shizu and had a somewhat fearful expression on his face. He knew that they would have to fight all these monsters as the look on Shizu's face conveyed her commanding side which he usually got to see during training.
Responding to his instincts from his training, he asked a question with one word.
"Orders?"
"We hold here. Work to reduce their numbers and do not attack the large monster. We wait for reinforcements, if not we will attempt to drive it off and retreat."
Azi nodded without hesitation and followed Shizu into the fray. They struck down numerous gengiri for an hour while dispatching a few kengiri when the situation allowed. Shizu and Azi kept the large figure in the corner of their eyes as they feared what it would do next.
Luckily, with Nosuri and Kajima's arrival the large monster had slithered away from the battle as it was cautious from facing a larger group of humans. For years its kind had been killed by groups of humans so it endeavored by its wild instinct to flee for the moment.
In the distance, a man atop a watch tower grinned as he then ordered the black figure beside him to prepare the men. The black figure nodded and wiped the red blood away from their knife before sheathing it.
-Present Time-
After Azi successfully fended off a sudden attack from projectiles, he was left kneeling on the ground as he gasped for air. He had exerted himself to quite an extent with his barrier magic as the large amount of sweat he was drenched in made it clear on just how exhausted he was. Besides him was Shizu, who looked on in horror at the foe a distance away from them.
With a snap decision she ordered all non-combatant to flee to the village. She turned to Rulu behind her and gave her a commanding look as she ordered her sister to flee.
Rulu grimaced and hesitated to flee as she still thought that she could fight, but what broke her from her contemplation was a sudden tug on her clothes from behind.
She was raised off the ground in the next moment and then whisked away from Kokona, who had picked Rulu up by the back of her clothes. Shizu ordered Kokona with a pleading tone.
"Please, Keep her safe."
Kokona nodded and proceeded to take Rulu with her before she could protest. Shizu then turned to Azi and asked him with concern in her voice.
"Are you alright? Can you still fight?"
Azi nodded his head in affirmation as he still heaved heavy breathes. Through his exhaustion, he loaded new blood steel squares into his gauntlets and took a count of how many he had left. This prompted Shizu to ask him.
"Can you use that barrier again?"
"Yes, but only for a few moments. I don't have enough materials to keep the barrier up and using my personal magic energy would only be too taxing on me."
"Alright, then we go on the offensive. Nosuri! Ougi! Kajima! Help us bring down that monster."
Pointing the tip of her umbrella in the direction of the monster, the remaining combatants nodded in agreement. Shizu had ordered the village soldiers to help carry the wounded away, so only the 5 of them were left.
Nosuri and Ougi quickly moved to stand at Shizu's side as they awaited their orders. As Kajima walked up to them he asked.
"So what's the plan? We don't have much time. That beasty is already on the move, we got maybe 2 minutes."
"For now, our goal is to kill it. It's too close to the village and is too dangerous to be left alone." Shizu looked over at the now gathered group of combatants and began giving out instructions.
"For now Kajima and I will take the front and attempt to weaken it. Nosuri and Ougi will cover our flanks and Azi will support either group. We will try to keep it contained until reinforcements come or find a way to kill it."
Hearing and seeing no complaints from everyone, Shizu nodded. Their 2 minutes were up and the monster was upon them.
Still a few meters away, Shizu and Kajima ran forward and split up to attack the large centipede like monster from two sides. With a swing of her umbrella, Shizu attacked the side of the monster. It did no damage but served to get it attention.
Distracted, the monster's blue insect-like eyes shined and attempted to pounce at Shizu but its trajectory was thrown off by the impact on its other side. With a sword in hand, Kajima began to use his naturally high physical strength to cut away at the smaller legs of the centipede-like monster.
The monster felt only a slight amount of pain from this and was more irritated by the human's attacks. The pair of humans continued to attack one after the other with the other three humans kept a distance away from its front. A few minutes passed and now completely irritated, it screeched to call for its kin to aid it.
Shizu and Azi tensed up in anticipation of another swarm, but left out a sigh of relief as only a few gengiri answered the call. It was likely that the initial swarm that the monster called was its main force and that these were the stragglers.
But these monsters could still pose a threat as they could easily harm everyone if taken off guard.
So, Nosuri and Ougi promptly went to work and covered Kajima's and Shizu's back as they ran past the monster to intercept the small group of gengiri.
Shooting arrow after arrow, Nosuri was making quick work while Ougi was faring much the same. They had recently got Azi to make emergency repairs on their weapons when they had taken a break when tending to the wounded.
With two sudden glints of his blade, Ougi decapitated two gengiri with a wide cross slash and then backflipped to dodge an incoming gengiri that attempted to flank him.
Soon, an arrow was impaled into that gengiri's head and it fell lifeless to the ground. Without pause, Ougi charged again and threw a few firecrackers from a pouch on his clothing which disoriented a few gengiri.
Slipping into the middle of the group of gengiri, Ougi then spun and jumped away while Nosuri covered him. More bodies fell and the pair continued to fight without pause.
The large centipede like monster looked on with intense anger and made to get its revenge, but was yet again interrupted mid pounce by Azi's punch towards its face. This time, his punch invoked the fireball and it exploded in its face.
Its lower jaw fell to the ground as it burned on the snowy ground. As Azi fell to the ground, he attempted to quickly jump away but underestimated the monster's speed. He thought that the monster would recoil from his attack but it instead attempted to bring its head down like a hammer over him.
With no time to properly react, Azi fortified his arms and braced for impact.
"BOOM" "CREAK CREAK CREAK"
With his gauntleted hands over his head, he pushed against the upper jaw of jagged teeth that made up the large monster's mouth. Its maw was so big that Azi felt like he could walk down its gulet with no issue, but pushed such distracting ideas out of his mind.
Azi strained himself to keep the monster from crushing him and while he did attempt to push the monster away, the strength he could muster was not enough.
"A LITTLE HELP GUYS!"
In response, Kajima and Shizu moved quickly to aid Azi out of his predicament.
Kajima was the quickest to act as he was the closest to the monster after his attack. He ran to the front of the monster's head and jumped up to then throw his sword into the monster's insect-like green eye.
It howled in pain and gave Azi the chance to jump away as the creature released Azi from the weight of its gigantic head.
Shizu moved to position herself in front of Azi to cover his front while he loaded the last blood steel square into his gauntlets.
"I'm out of materials, so I only have one more spell to use."
Shizu nodded and began to analyze the situation to hopefully come up with a new plan of action. Her's and Kajima's attack did little to the monster while Azi's attack did quite a number on it.
She assumed that if Azi could get a good hit in, and have her follow it up with an attack of her own. Shizu believed they could kill the monster or at least mortally wound it.
While she was thinking, Kajima was distracting the beast while Ougi helped as he noticed that Kajima was having trouble keeping the monster's attention
In the middle of her thoughts, numerous warcries could be heard behind her.
Shizu turned to see who had come to their aid, but her face morphed into an expression of disgust.
"CHARGE!!!!!"
Leading a group of 15 people was Jerome, who ran forwards with his ornate set of refined steel armor equipped with a one handed sword raised high with his dominant hand. The 15 men at his back were mercenaries and they wore mismatched clothing and armor. They wielded a variety of weapons but they looked well made.
In Jerome's head he thought to himself that this was the moment he was waiting for. If he showed his "valor" and "skill" in battle, he would be able to gain the lost favor he had with Ozen and establish himself as both a competent business man and warrior.
He had arrived early to the village to set the stage with a band of brigands and purposefully had a second caravan come to act as bait for the monsters. He had initially hoped to attract a few monsters but was greedy and added precious items into the bait he used to make it as if he had made a score with his monster "hunt".
He did not predict that a large monster would arrive, but took it as a good omen as this meant he would gain more merit. His mercenaries were trained professionals and he had hired these men for the past year.
They were savage warriors and skilled assassins who all served him well.
'I can do this. My men will weaken it and then I'll make the killing blow. This will work, I know it will.'
This thought only took a second in real time to occur and at the end of his thoughts, Jerome had blinked. When he opened his eyes, he expected to see his men fighting and winning.
He saw one of the two things he thought.
The mercenary that was quick on his feet ran forward and drew his katana when he was in range of the monster's side. With a horizontal slash, he expected to cut through the carapace but instead the blade snapped and shattered.
He was soon sent flying by the slight whip of the centipede-like monster's backside as the length of the monster was over 5 meters. The men that were behind him faltered in their next few steps, which proved to be fatal as they were soon swallowed and eaten by the large monster.
In only a minute, 5 of Jerome's mercenaries died in front of him and with it, his self preservation instincts kicked in.
He immediately turned tail and ran, but unceremoniously tripped on the snow at his feet and fell pathetically face first into the ground.
Noticing this, the large monster pounced at the easy prey as its blood curdling scream caused Jerome to curl up into a ball in fear as his life flashed before his eyes.
Jerome expected to feel pain, but yet again his expectations were off the mark today as when he peeked out from between arms, that he had instinctually brought up to his face in fear, he saw a small figure in front of him as it held the beast's face back as.
The child's arms glowed a bright blue and he wondered just who this child was, but did not get the chance as he was suddenly pulled away from the fight by a figure in black.
Holding the monster back, Azi put all the strength he could infuse into his body to keep the beast from killing the fool hardy man behind him. With a grunt, Azi dug his fingers into the hard carapace to get a better grip and was able to push the side of the monster's large head to the ground.
This exposed the monster's underbelly to Shizu who was on his left. With a single word, Shizu understood what Azi was trying to convey and made her move. Unsheathing her black katana, she slashed at the monster's underbelly and purple blood began to paint the snowy ground.
The monster reeled back and instinctively howled in pain, the sudden jerking of the monster caused Azi to lose his footing as he held onto the monster's head. He then lost his grip as a sudden turn of the monster's head caused him to be flung away only a few meters away.
As Azi saw the ground coming closer to his sight, he braced from impact but was surprised when he was caught out of the air before hitting the ground. Kajima, as if always being there for him, had deftly caught him.
Azi wanted to thank him but chose to focus on the task at hand and told Kajima in a curt tone.
"Toss me."
Kajima grinned and did as Azi told him. Thrown by the scruff of his shirt, Azi flew through the air and mid-flight he donned his goggles to ensure that the air did not get into his eyes.