(General POV)
Mustering as much strength as he had, Lyze jumped onto the giant leg that was covered in his hell flames. With the newfound physical stat growth he'd obtained, he dug Libur into the leg and flew across it while the sword was still lodged in the flesh.
Goliath screamed as it felt the burning blade cut open the first layers of his skin. Kicking upwards, it righted its torse and swung slapped sideways at an awkward angle which Lyze could not avoid.
The slap connected and sent the boy flying again into the ground. But running on pure adrenaline, Lyze flipped back onto his feet, stumbling a little before he levelled Libur to his eyes and charged again.
This time Goliath was trying to get back on its foot, attempting to stand and balance and was on its hand and knees, ready to lift itself off the ground. It's eyes looked up to see the boy running underneath it's face. Seizing this opportunity, Lyze slashed vertically at the brutes lips, splitting its chin in two.
The pained roars of the giant left his ears ringing and bleeding as well as his perceptive vision blurry but he made sure to keep his feet moving. But suddenly, 'Thread' warned him off danger as his mind saw the events a moment before they happened.
Goliath, still on it's hands and knees, lowered its chin to look through his legs and spotted the child running through. It opened it's mouth and its deadly howl came rushing out towards Lyze.
"RISING TORNADO!" Lyze screamed just in time, and also felt another incredible drain on his Mind pool. A twister of wind formed right behind him as the howl connected with the magical construct. This only served to lessen the strength of the howl and nullify its fatal effects.
Lyze still felt felt a massive gust of wind slam into his back and send him eating the dirt, sliding on his stomach and face as grit and pebbles tore at the skin on his face. Coupled with his blurry vision and his perception clouded from the earlier roar, Lyze lay there for a couple of seconds dazed.
That gave all the time needed for Goliath to swell with so much hatred and rage, it got to one foot and kicked the ground with its stumped leg. The stump dug up rock and dirt, taking Lyze with it as the boy smashed into the wall yet again.
'Not good.' He thought as he coughed up more blood. 'I'm losing my speed and my vitality. He's able to hit me more often.'
Nimble and innovative as well as power as Lyze was for somebody of his level, Goliath was still a level 4 monster rex. Even with its own injuries, it could definitely outlast him in a fight. So Lyze had to somehow finish this as quickly as possible while at the same time avoiding being hit.
He flew up again with his flight spell as Goliath's fist smashed into the rock face where he'd previously been.
"You're not getting me with that again!" He yelled. With Goliath's arm overextended and therefore his guards down, Lyze divebombed the thigh he'd raked earlier and stabbed Libur with as much momentum as he could muster into a particular spot.
The earlier leg wounds of the stumped leg had been cauterized by the flames of his sword, so not much blood had been running. And while the skin was thick, the flesh was more easily damaged.
A geyser of blood suddenly began splurting out of the thigh as the Goliath howled in blinding pain as well as feeling its leg go cold from the loss of warm blood. It fell on its ass as it tried to slap at the spot he'd been stabbed. But Lyze was long gone at this point.
Instead, Lyze had dropped to the ground and ran off behind the brute just before it's as connected the ground and he'd ended up being sat on by a giant that probably weighed a hundred tons.
'The femoral artery.' Lyze thought gleefully. 'The biggest artery in the body located in the thigh. Any damage done to it is fatal, and with this I can wait for it to bleed out and gradually weaken. It was a gamble to assume its physiology was similar to a human's, but I guess it paid off.'
Immense pools of blood, gallons upon gallons was now spilling onto the ground, so much so that for a second, Lyze believed he himself might end up dying by drowning in it.
So he took to the air to stay as far away as possible from the red pool. Goliath had collapsed with it's back to another wall and Lyze flew up to its un perched on it as if he were standing on it. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the exposed part of the back of the Goliath's head.
Remembering how he'd taken out the wyvern earlier, Lyze flexed his legs and shot towards that spot, intending to repeat the same move and fry its brain with lightning magic.
But Goliath chose that inopportune moment to jerk its body upwards so that instead of Libur plunging into its brainstem, it instead plunged into a meaty part of the neck.
Knowing that the pain was an indication of the boy being there, it slammed its back on the wall, crushing the boy between its back and the wall. Lyze felt the wind knocked out of him as some of his ribs crunched but being kicked around like a ragdoll by Nekros had taught him a thing or two about pain tolerance.
Instead of passing out or giving into the urge of letting himself be crushed completely and give himself the sweet release of death, he let go of Libur which was still stuck in Goliath's back and free fell to the ground, not possessing enough concentration to fly out of there.
The stupid monster had realized that by doing this, it had actually driven the sword deeper into its neck and it became awkward for the beast to turn its neck as stinging pain would stop it from doing so. This took its attention away from Lyze and so it had not even registered that the boy was off his back.
Lyze looked up from where he was sitting and he had to say...it wasn't a pretty sight. As well as view the expanse of it's back and seeing where his weapon was stuck in the monster's neck, he also had a front row seats of it's massive ass. That nearly made him gag, but he held it in as he needed to focus on retaining as much blood as possible.
Catching a glimpse of his sword again, he was struck by a brilliant idea. He also weighed his options as going through with this next plan was going to cost him even more Mind. But even now he was running on fumes. Only the adrenaline allowed him to move at this point and if he rested too much now, he would be able to move anymore and he would be at Goliath's mercy.
Not to mention all the pain he was feeling now. He was pretty sure most of his intercostal muscles were useless and torn at this point with his ribs also being shattered. So he really didn't have that many options.
He lifted his hand in the air, and called Excalibur to him using 'Snatch'. As the wielder and master of Excalibur, he could have just called the weapon to him but it would not do what he was making it do with this magical ability.
The sword came to him alright...by raking itself down the monster's back and unzipping the skin like a jacket to reveal its own ribs and muscles beneath. The whole middle floors shook with the scream the beast let out. Libur fell to the ground beside him as he felt 'Snatch' consume the last of his mind and his brain threatened to go to sleep.
Operating on pure willpower, Lyze summoned all the rage and hate he could muster. The humiliation he'd felt at being stepped on by this creature, anger and hate from the pain it had caused him, and the despair he felt when he realized this beast could kill him pretty easily if he wasn't fighting the way he was now.
With the pain in his body as a focus, Lyze lifted his hands and summoned hid Force Lightning at the greatest intensity he could currently muster. For the first time since Nekros had given him this gift, bright blood-red lightning shot from his fingers and connected with the exposed muscles in the Goliath's back.
The beast's scream froze as it began twitching and spasming as hundred's of thousands of volts of mystic lightning seared its flesh and fried its nervous system. The intense light of the red lightning bounced off the walls off the caves and reflected in Riveria's eyes as she pondered to herself what this was.
It looked like magic certainly, to another person's eyes. But she was a scholar in magic, and she could FEEL in her very bones that this was not magic. It felt different...and far more deadly. She could literally sense the hate and fury embodied within the horrifying arcs of energy as cooked the meat of the monster's back.
Lyze cut off the connection as the red electricity disappeared. But he spared no time observing as he knew the beast was standing still, unable to move if only momentarily.
He picked up Libur off the ground. Crouching down, he grit his teeth as hard as he could, pouring more and more of his strength into his legs as he jumped as as hard as he could.
The ground he left behind cracked a little as he shot up high enough to be level with Goliath's head. Bring Libur around with a mighty swoop, he performed the most power slash technique he'd learned from his master. It was the very same technique he used to cleave hills in half.
The air pressure coupled with a momentary flash of energy was expelled from the blade and cut clean through Goliath's neck. The head was torn off and sent sailing through the air, landing right in front of Riveria with a loud 'THUD' as it shook the ground around her.
Lyze wasted no time here either as he used the same technique again to slash downwards vertically. The shockwaves cut down into the headless body deep, until it reached the monster core within and completely shattered it.
The head stayed there where it was before it exploded in a puff of white smoke, the same happening to the still standing body as Lyse fell down towards her. Where the head had been was now lying a huge tooth that dropped to the floor. Lyze landed beside it on crouched legs a moment later.
He placed his hand on the tooth and a flash of purple showed before the tooth was slung into his hammer-space. Panting hard, he glanced up at her with a small smile.
"It's over." He said breathlessly.
She stared at him, blinking as she could not fathom what had just happened before here.
"You...You...You killed a monster rex...on you're first run." she said, still having not come to terms with it herself.
"Yeah...I guess I did, hehe." 'cough' 'cough'. He chucked up more blood from his gullet. He still kept up the smile though as he returned his gaze to her. "Is that so rare?"
She stood there, still examining him. She just could not believe what she had witnessed. A boy just a couple months short of his ninth birthday had entered the dungeon on his first ever run, and had taken down a monster rex in one of the most violent, most brutal, most cruel ways she had ever seen.
Yet at the same time she understood that it had been necessary. While she would be able to survive, the giant was clearly out for blood, Lyze's blood in specifically. She stared down at the boy in utter amazement, disbelief, and a tiny bit of trepidation as she considered the implications of these events.
'What have we brought into out Familia?' she thought exasperatedly.
"Umm, hey Riveria. Mind casting some healing magic on me please? I think I need it now more than ever." Lyze said as his eyes drooped.
"Oh...OH!.. yes, of course!" She exclaimed before she began chanting. A green glow of magic encompassed Lyze as he felt much better and most of the pain disappeared. The ribs mended together but they still bloody ached when he breathed. It seemed that even though his injuries were healed, he still retained the damage. Something for him to keep in mind for later.
"Can you stand?" Riveria asked him. He tried doing so before he immediately began wobbling and stumbling.
"No, I feel really, really tired."
"Mind Zero." Riveria muttered. "Come on, let me hold you up. You can collapse into sleep now while I carry back to the mansion."
"No flipping way." Lyze returned before he put a hand on his chest, and activated his Force Lightning again. Blue lightning shocked him awake this time as the fatigue momentarily disappeared in his fear of the pain he'd just inflicted on himself.
'Shocking himself to stay awake.' Riveria thought as she studied him. 'Sudden pain really is something to help when you're trying to keep awake. But a child should not know that! Oh Lyze...what happened to you that made you so nonchalant of hurting yourself like that?'
"Home?" Lyze asked weakly. Riveria put an arm around his back and pulled him into her side to support him. He was a complete mess as most of his clothes were gone, reduced to bloody shreds with just pretty much his groinal area and the boots on his feet being spared.
"Home." she replied firmly as they walked back to the entrance of the 17th floor. The dungeon had managed to repair the bridge by this point and the boulder had been removed of its own efforts. Slowly and deftly, they made their way to the upper floors.
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It was around the first floor when suddenly, Lyze jerked to a stop. Riveria was suddenly forced to stop as well as she watched him twitch a bit.
"What is it Lyze?" she asked, bewildered at how he seemed to be scanning the area even though he was blindfolded. Miraculously the black pieces of cloth had survived the whole battle.
Lyze's head suddenly snapped to a pile of small rocks and he stuck out a finger. A ray of lightning exploded from his fingertip and struck the rock pile, blasting them apart as she heard some sort of bird-like squawk.
And her affiliations were correct, as she a small bird with blackened feathers, although the ones that were not burnt were coloured a bright yellow-gold. To Lyze, it just resembled a burnt chicken. It let out another squawk before disappearing in a puff of smoke and dropping a golden egg behind.
Riveria just shook her head and continued walking. Picking up the egg on her way and stuffing it into her robes, she shook her head again.
'A jackbird as well. At this point, nothing surprises me.'
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Read ahead on my P@treon:
P@treon/ Vulkizaro_Zoromi