With the town far behind them, still somehow intact and only slightly scorched, the strange group was faced with an even stranger situation.
Though Shiv would probably use a more graphic word than 'strange' when describing the situation they faced.
Just ahead, a massive herd of hippopotamuses with tiger stripes and curling goat horns slowly trudged across the road. "I just want you two to know that I'm done with this world, and that I'm going to destroy it the first chance I get."
"Yay, me too!" Blaze said and hopped up and down with her hands on fire. "Let's start with the hippostripohorpotamuses!"
"What did you just say?" Shiv asked.
"Let's destroy the world!"
"No, the other… ah forget it. How long do you think it'll take for these suckers to get out of the way?"
"Brother Uriel taught me that they move in biiiig herds during the rainy season." She knelt to burn a leech that was slowly inching toward her on the ground. "They go from the big lake to the Northwest all the way to the big lake in the Southeast." She showed him the burned leech and he nodded with a tolerant expression.
"You do know that you didn't actually answer my question, right?" He was ignored. "Hah! Fine, then. Why do they do that?" Shiv asked with genuine curiosity, to which he received a shrug in reply. He thought for a minute, then asked a question that had been bothering him for a while. "Where are you from, kid?"
She was silent, which was strange for her, as she thought about it. She nodded to herself and opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Shiv, who tackled her to the side.
They rolled a few times with Shiv protecting her with his body as best as he was able, till they came to a stop and got up to look at the horned hippo that had charged them. It was a massive brute, even in comparison to the rest of the herd. It slowly came to a stop and turned around to regard them with crazed eyes.
Not wasting any more time, Shiv grabbed her and ran for the woods flanking the road as quickly as he could.
The hippo followed, starting slow but quickly escalating to a speed that looked unnatural for such an obese creature with such stubby legs. Shiv glanced over his shoulder and saw that the creature was way too close, so he employed one of the strategies he'd developed in anticipation of his next duel with the blind boar.
Glad that he'd neglected to wear shoes, he manipulated the earth a bit of ways in front of the rabid animal so that a small wall grew. He knew that the monster would just break through any normal wall he tried to make, no matter how thick, so he decided upon a more subtle strategy: tripping it.
It failed epicly. Not even pretending to slow down, it jumped easily over the obstacle and increased its speed.
'That's literally not possible.' Shiv resorted to the next strategy as he closed in on the woods. 'Two more steps…' He manipulated a particularly dense portion of rock into a spear that erupted from the ground directly underneath him, barely missing the tip of his heel as he continued running.
The manic hippo changed direction abruptly, gaining a long, bloody scratch down its side. The shift in direction took valuable time that gave Shiv just enough time to reach the woods. Finally there, he rapidly put several trees in between himself and the monster. Before setting the excited little girl down.
"It's a cheater, daddy, a cheater!"
He nodded distractedly and pulled up his status screen. He went through it till he came to the Class Ability he was looking for, and focused on it. Doing so revealed the information he was looking for.
[Class Ability: Heroic Appraisal Description - Let's you heroically appraise anything you physically touch.]
"I have to touch it!? How useless is that!" Shiv would have thrown the ability screen if he could, but alas - it was intangible. "And what's with 'hero' stuff?"
He was distracted by the sound of falling trees. "Where the hell did Uriel go?" He growled as he pulled Blaze farther into the trees, then glanced at her awkwardly when he realized his slip. "Sorry."
Judging he was sage again, he set her down. "Let's destroy the cheater, daddy!"
"Why?" Shiv asked and looked around worriedly, making sure nothing was sneaking up on them.
"Because anything that tries to kill us needs to die." She declared with passion.
Shiv stared at her. "Alright." He knelt. "How should we destroy the sucker?"
"Climb a tree and throw fiery things at it!" He was impressed with her response, not having expected much.
"Good plan. Let's use that tree right there." He picked her up and helped her reach the lowest branch, and was just about to climb up himself when a loud wheezing noise made him dive to the side instead.
"How. How did you get back here?" Shiv rolled to his feet in time to witness the hippo slam into the tree, causing it to shake violently. Blaze grabbed onto the branch below her, but was shaken off. With a strength belying the tiny form, she gripped the branch and barely managed to hang on. She was hanging by her arms with her legs dangling above the gigantic now-open maw of the purple and black creature.
All reason left Shiv and he threw himself forward, slamming a fiery shoulder into the creature's side. It stumbled a few steps, then a few more when Shiv gripped the earth and pulled out a very large mallet that he swung in a complete circle before letting it come into contact with the monster in the same place he'd hit it with his shoulder.
Crack!
The faint noise, barely noticeable over the sound of Blaze's shaky yells of encouragement, galvanized him into swinging again, even harder.
Crack!!
The hippo jerked around and tried to hit him with its horns, but missed by a hair when Shiv threw himself to the ground. He scrambled to his feet again and scrambled backward, abandoning the hammer.
Pressing its advantage, the monster moved forward and snapped its jaws at him, again missing only by a hair due to Shiv throwing himself to the side.
He awkwardly rolled to his feet with a new hammer in hand and, without looking first, swung with all of his might.
CRACK!
He made a solid connection with its head, knocking it violently to the side and making a visible dent. It roared, opening its mouth wide enough to fit Blaze standing straight up. Shiv used this opportunity to build up momentum for his next attack, and just as it closed its mouth, swung.
The resulting connection made a much more noticeable dent right between its eyes. With a loud muted crash, it slumped to the ground.
Not feeling any rush of power, Shiv swung again and hit the same place. And then again. Finally, he felt the rush of power he usually got upon killing an enemy, but this time he also felt his vision faintly blinking. He focused on stopping it, and received a message that flashed in front of his eyes.
[You killed a hippostripohorpotamus (Level 27) with rabies]
"Thanks. I hadn't realized." He said, then rushed over to help Blaze down.
"You did awesome!" Blaze informed him as she brushed her hands off. "Next time I will be able to help for sure."
"Hopefully there won't be a next time." Shiv laughed, then remembered he was planning to destroy the world. "Actually… you'll probably get more chances than you'll ever want to help me fight people." He said gloomily.
He was distracted by a faint buzzing in his head. It was annoying and needed to be addressed. It had been there ever since he'd killed the hippostri…whatever, but he hadn't noticed it till now. He focused on it, and was again surprised.
[You leveled up. Congrats and all that. You are now level 26.]
[You have ascended from the Class of Commoner to that of Initiate. You have unlocked Class Abilities: Basic Reading and Writing, Inventory Crafting, Recipe Use.]
"Hey, does your status screen have a personality?" Shiv asked while rubbing his chin.
"A what?" Blaze blinked with a tilted head.
Momentarily shaken, Shiv started to explain, then shook his head. "Forget it." He tried to check the inventory of the corpse of the largest creature he'd ever defeated, and found that it didn't have one. Or one that he could access, anyway. "Shame."
The two of them walked back to the road, and were coincidentally joined by Uriel on the way there. Reaching the edge of the woods, Shiv hid until the last of the strange hippos were gone, ignoring the amusement radiating from the annoying wolf.
They set out again, and this time Shiv was a bit more wary of meeting mismatched versions of animals from his home planet.