Dandralith uses an earth skill to lock onto their location before sending her roots. The smoke only blocked their view of the battlefield. A dumb move from a dumb human. Yet she suffered the loss, unable to connect a single hit.
There is more trickery added to that smoke.
'Humans...' Her voice grew sharp with fury,
A gust of wind carries away the smoke along with the spores. A clear view revealed the human staring dead into the Dandralith's eyes.
Cold calculation and unknown forces under his command.
'I have to kill him.' The Dandralith snaps to a decision.
Tetsu stared at the Dandralith, confused. 'How the fuck does it see?' He shrugs and turns to the rhino again. "See these..." He points at the roots he butchered. "These are its limbs or whatever. We have to leave." He joins his hands, pleading.
RJ steps aside, gesturing him to leave.
"That ain't the only flower in the wilderness..." Tetsu tries using sign language for the first time, hoping this will convey the warning.
Normal words didn't get through to her, and he didn't want to yell and alert the Dandralith of their findings.
"There are others out there and there and there." He points by twisting his mouth in various directions.
RJ gawked at the weird human and boiled its doubts to one question. "It? Is he talking about the Dandralith? But all of them are she's, not it's. Everyone knows that."
Tetsu kept tossing charcoal shards as he tried to put some sense into the 'jelly for brains' Rhino.
A gust of wind carries the smoke away into the forest. Tetsu makes a plan to follow the wind, using the smoke as cover. They just had to find a pit and hide...
Dandralith activates a skill, detonating each pore with more firepower than a hand grenade.
The entire section of the forest behind the Dandralith levels to the ground with a lucky few boulders surviving the blast.
A blazing forest severed every other root of escape.
Tetsu gapes at the roots he struggled to cut while using two runes, a skill, and his tooth acting as the blade. A tiny piece of info he hid away, resurfaced.
The true affinity of a Dandralith; Fire!
The Dandralith was done playing games. Its initial plan to level up its weaker skills faded. Now she wanted to level the entire area.
A green blaze covered Dandralith's roots as she uprooted herself from the ground and floated into the air. The flames over the whip-like tendrils create an air pressure to keep her afloat. The Air pressure also worked as a protective layer that blocked any smoke from entering.
This wasn't much of a transformation but pure mastery of herself, as she used the arrows in her quiver to form a barrier.
Unable to identify the smoke, she played it safe. Some fuckery went on inside that smoke and she made this barrier to keep that fuckery away.
Despite being stuck at level one, the human slipped past her tendrils, severed them, and also disappeared into the smoke. With so many deceptive skills, it's not far-fetched to assume a smoke skill, hiding its true level. Which meant that the human had a bond and skills related to smoke.
That is the reason it keeps releasing smoke. All of its attacks revolve around the smoke affinity. Perfect for a cowardly, deceitful race.
The Dandralith withdrew her head, the silvery white blob, to the center and manipulated the blazing tendrils to surround it. This way, she can both attack and defend at the same time.
"Run." Tetsu's mind screamed, yet his body wouldn't listen.
The two flaws he benefitted from, the Dandralith's caution and ignorance, were about to lose their edge.
Tetsu used the smoke as a cover to hide his true weakness. If the Dandralith knew, the caution he used against it would fade, and so would their lives.
With this new form that wielded pure destruction, Tetsu assumed it had even lost its ignorance.
Yet he couldn't help but wonder... 'If a single Dandralith can level the entire forest, what are her friends capable of? Will the grasslings even stand a chance against such destructive power? Is hiding even possible?'
!..Blood..!
Tetsu's tooth craved a morsel of Dandralith flesh, snuffing out his fear and replacing it with hunger.
"No wonder they feared you freaks." Tetsu thanks his tooth with a chuckle, startling RJ and the Dandralith.
"I was a fool to think we can run, huh?" He looks at RJ and gets a nod.
"This is my fault." Tetsu flips the stick and points the toothy head at the Dandralith. "Time to fix my mistakes." He says with a terrified look on his face.
RJ wanted to roll her eyes into her head, which she can technically do but decided to poke the imbecile instead.
Tetsu and RJ bickered and shoved each other, while the Dandralith sighed and used 'Identify' over the artifact.
"Which imbecile made that?"
Artificers are notorious for making artifacts that rival the gods. Some even made artifacts that turned into gods. The only reason the current and past gods hadn't hunted them down like the other races who rose to power was their nature.
An Artificer will look at you dying and wait to take notes if it's interesting or ignore you if it's the same old death he or she had already witnessed. They have a one-track mind, focused on creating their current, tinkering with their past, or developing their future artifact. Only once, when anyone intrigues them, do they make a personalized artifact.
They are one of the top minds in the multiverse, but getting their attention is as simple as showing a new toy, in this case, a new concept, to intrigue them.
A general rule of thumb is that a level one Artificer can create a level twenty artifact with ease and yet Dandralith stared at what she can only mention as a level zero artifact. If she forces her will too hard, the artifact will break into a million splinters.
Artificers love their creations. Not even the most pathetic Artificer will make such a creation and call it an artifact. They will destroy it out of shame or fear of a bad record. Sure, the lower-level Artificers work for credits; some stay mediocre, making level twenty artifacts for the rest of their life. Yet none of them, in fact, no one in the entire multiverse, would name and describe their artifact as Tetsu did.
Dandralith squashes her intuition, that told her to be wary of this level-one human. She felt ashamed that she even let her guard up—the group would never let her hear the end of this fight. It was too late anyhow; she burnt too much mana in this form, and going back would only increase the taunts. Her plan of leveling up her weaker skills and attacks failed due to a minor miscalculation—A cunning backstabber, humans.
'No more playing nice.' Dandralith sharpens her gaze. 'Get a quick kill and find some better prey to hunt.' She shifts to a serious stance. The tendrils uncoil from above her head and drift down, preparing to attack.
Tetsu understood the shift in the mood. "New plan. Outlast its mana pool." In a split second, he plans and executes the first phase of the plan.
Tetsu activates RR and notes the position of four mana and health bubbles filling up. Before RJ finds out or protests, he marks the lower mold 'fix-point' and makes a rune 'Devour' on her main body.
A skill made both runes, so until and unless that entire area is ripped apart, the runes should work with Tetsu controlling the runes. She wouldn't have to split her focus.
He was good at multitasking and wasn't sure anyone else could do what he did. Even Kile sometimes fell behind in putting his mind in several places at the same time.
It's both a curse and a boon for every overthinker. They can care, care less, and not care at all at the same darn time.
RJ felt a prick from the human but didn't dwell deeper into why he was stupid. That ship had sailed before he was born.
As per her mother's instructions, RJ learned about various species that she could come across on these grounds. From what she remembered, Dandralith were known for their honorable duels, so if she could manage a victory against this one, the others should leave her alone until she recovered, and based on the Dandralith's missing teammates, RJ confirmed this information to be true.
Now all boiled down to focus. She will focus and tank every hit, otherwise, well… both of them will die. With a bigger mana pool, courtesy of a higher level, she must be able to outlast the Dandralith.
Now if only the humans would stay still until...
Tetsu ran away from RJ, tossing pebbles at god knows what.
"He's going to die." She shakes her head, making up her mind.
Tetsu tags the mana-bubbles and depletes them once again. He topped up his mana pool and made sure the Dandralith wouldn't use these against them in the fight. It already has enough firepower. No need to add more pure gas into those flames.
He just had to keep track of the bubbles' accumulation through RR and keep depleting them before the Dandralith found out.
Eight roots shoot up from the ground, disrupting all four Ru'nic formations and consuming the resources within.
Tetsu dodges one root as his mind commands his body away. RJ wasn't lucky nor fast enough to dodge as the root caught her off guard, stabbing her lower mold.
"It can sense mana from that far away?" Tetsu tried to suppress his frustration. He made those runes and still relied on 'RR' to aim at the right spot and later determine with the needle disappearing.
Dandralith played one step ahead of Tetsu as she destroyed every Ru'nic formation around them and topped up her resources in one go. She trailed the human and immediately guessed and threw a wrench into his plans. The incubation grounds in this area had some unique formations, but there was no way she was going to let a mere human use them against her.
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