*FWOOSH!*
Moving at a speed which Levi could not even react to despite his threefold powerup, was the elder stinger's tongue.
The long and thin snake like tongue shot out of the elder's mouth and soared forward, covering a massive distance of over two meters, before hitting its intended target- Levi right on the neck like a whip.
*WHIP!*
As the tongue made contact with Levi's skin, it seemed to completely bypass all of the latter's defenses as it injected a poisonous substance into him through the minute openings of his skin pores, forcing an unceremonious stop to all locomotive activities. Levi fell to the ground with a thud as his lags gave out.
'shit! I can not move!' Levi yelled inwardly as his body completely ceased all forms of locomotion. Levi's body felt stiff, like some sort of organic statue, as the poison had spread throughout his entire body in a mere instant!
'che...at least now i know why he was wasting so much time.' Levi spoke inwardly as he grit his teeth while struggling to no avail against the poison of the elder stinger.
*HISS!*
The trade mark noise of the stingers drew Levi's attention back to what was going on around him as he managed to move his eyeballs to catch a glimpse of the other beasts who had recovered from their daze and were making their way towards him with contempt filled expressions.
From the looks of it, the majority of the stingers did not like being shocked into a temporary paralysis or being run through like a bunch of living bowling ball pins.
"You idiot..cough...cough... Don't you know that..cough...elder stingers possess poisonous abilities?! cough...cough." Swift could not help but yell from the top of his branch.
He did not like humans, not a single bit, but it did not mean that he was so foolish and conceited so as to be unable to see the writing on the wall.
He was well aware that right now, Levi's victory or loss in this fight would be what determined his fate. He did not want to die yet. Even mana beasts shared that primordial fear- the fear of death.
'actually, i did not.' Levi responded in his mind, but he did not bother responding to the creature as that would be a waste of precious time and energy. Both luxuries which he was severely lacking right now as his arachnid-reptilian enemies closed in on him.
'alright, first things first, summarize everything that happened.' Levi thought as he quickly began to go through all that had happened in order to make an effective and informed decision on what to do next.
He did not call on Grim as he could sense through their telepathic link that he was quite busy with his own plans right now. He also did not want to grow too dependent on someone else as it would end up creating an easily exploitable weakness.
'from that idiot wolf's words, only the elder seems to be capable of wielding that deadly poison. But even that had limits. For the fact that he did not use it on me from the get go means that it is a limited use thing, it must also require a lot of time to prepare.'
'the mana fluctuation which came before the attack proves that there is in deed quite a bit of mana in it, and if that is so, then maybe i can still do something about it. This situation is still salvageable!' Levi said inwardly.
He used all the information he had gathered to determine the nature of the situation, all that was left now was for him to coin an adequate solution. Something that he was already working on as his brain went into overdrive.
'if there is even just a little bit of mana in that poison, then i can still pull something. After all, aether is the arch nemesis of mana.' Levi created an anchor for his mind, to ensure a more efficient though process.
'Aether is mana's greatest bane; wherever aether flows, mana evacuates. So i need a technique that can help me push out the aether. I need a technique that focuses more on aether circulation, i need....
'.....Aether flow.' Levi came to a decision.
'well, not a hundred percent accurate, but it should at least still be effective. Good luck.' Grim intrjected, confirming Levi's final desision to be the most plasible answer.
He had drafted a good plan and was about to put it into practice when he was interrupted by his enemies. They were not going to just stand and watch that happen.
"My brethren, here, I have provided a weakened enemy. He can no longer resist, kill him now!" The elder roared as he commanded his fellow stingers. He had already filled his quota and made the work much easier for them, all that was left was to finish the job.
"Kiiiiek!" The stingers let out wild battle cries as their morale reached new heights, they bore their mandibles and stingers at the paralysed human before charging at him.
Sensing his impending doom, Levi's head spun in search for an adequate solution. He needed more time. But his enemies were not stupid enough to voluntarily give him time to recuperate, so he needed to use his superior intelligence to trick them somehow and buy some time.
It was then that a brilliant idea flashed in his mind.
"Swift! I am sorry. I forgot even though you told me about their stinging abilities!" Levi yelled, purposely stressing the 'told me' part.
""what?"" Swift and the elder muttered under their breaths in unison. They were both confused by Levi's choice of words. But the reason behind their confusion could not be more different.
While one bore confusion as to when this happened, the other was at a loss in regards to how this happened.
"wait!" Yelled the elder, just before its subordinates could make contact with Levi's already injured skin.
'yes! It worked!' Levi rejoiced, but showed no outward evidence of his inner joy.
The plan had worked, and he was indeed happy about it, but he did not have any time to waste on such trivial and short sighted enjoyments as he immediately activated Aether flow.
After they had already halted their attacks, the normal stingers just turned to their leader with quizzical expressions. But the latter made no responses to their questioning glances and just focused on what was before him.
Climbing down from his perch, for the first time since all of this started, the elder walked through the encirclement of stingers before stopping right before Levi and shooting him a confident and condescending look.
Fom the elder's perspective, Levi was at the mercy of himself and his brethren. He was confident, and he made sure to fully showcase this confidence in his dealings with the human.
The only thing about the human that had piqued his interest so was the underlying meaning of what was supposed to be his last words. If thought about consciously, then one could infer that Levi possessed an unnatural ability to understand mana beasts.
That was why, despite the inaudible but obviously questioning murmurings from his brethren, he still kept the human alive. He had ran into humans a good few times before and not a single one of them could understand mana beast speech, in fact, he never even gave most of them a chance at this before outrightly attacking them.
He did not know why, but he always bore this abnormal malice against humans. But thinking about it now, he never felt such malice towards this human. In fact, his mind was perfectly clear right now.
He wanted to know how this was even possible. No, he needed to know. He did not expect his brethren to understand. But he could have never expected Levi to have predicted ALL of those thoughts.
'first things first, I have to confirm whether or not this human is lying.' The Elder thought.
"Human, is it true that you can understand mana beast speech?" The elder asked. He was as straight forward as possible as he wanted to get a specific answer from Levi.
'why does this all seem so familiar?' Levi asked a rhetorical question as he was starting to see a pattern here. But he did not dwell much on it and just answered the question.
"yes." Levi responded. By then, Aether flow had already pushed most of the unwelcome mana in his vessels to a space near his core, where he would disperse it all at once with aether burst.
He was thankful that the elder only asked simple questions as most of his concentration was directed to his inner cleansing.
At Levi's response, the beast went wide-eyed, before saying; "So it is true, you can understand our speech....."
'you bet I ca-oh! Almost lost my concentration there.' Levi thought, breathing a sigh of relief inwardly. If his concentration came undone, then so would the spell. He could not afford such costly mistakes right now.
"What is your name human?" The elder asked. The qustion was also a test, just in case the last correct answer was a fluke of some sort. It was never bad to double check.
"Levi, sir." Levi responded promptly. Although it irked him greatly, Levi had no other choice but to just suck it up. In order to not raise any form of suspicion, or alert the enemy in any way, Levi had to maintain a polite facade and cooperate with the mana beast.
What he had to do did not stop his malicious thoughts from surfacing though.
'This bastard...he is looking down on me! Oh wait till am done with this shit, I will have your head!' Levi roared in his mind, but somehow managed to hold his blood lust in.
"Levi..hmm, what a supremely stupid name. Truly befitting of a similarly stupid race such as yours." Said the elder. At this, visible veins began to pop up on Levi's forehead. Was he angry? No, he was furious!
Although not completely, Levi had actually managed to cleanse most of his body of the unwelcome mana. He could now move his body, but he did not for fear of the remenant poison coming back to bite him later on. But right now, he wanted nothing more than to just aether burst what he had already gathered and let loose on these lizard hybrid bastards.
'Hold your shit in idiot. I just came up with a brilliant plan, wanna hear it?' Grim interected, before asking a question. There was an obvious excitement in his tone, like a child who had just made an earth shattering discovery. He wanted to share his genius.
'sorry, I am too busy dealing with the cleansing as well as trying to hold an ideal conversation with this overly pround and stupid lizard hybrid!' Levi voiced his complaints. Truly, he had a lot on his plate right now as his mind was already divided into two, anymore than this would deinitely be pushing it.
'Alright fine, I'll just pour everyting into your head instead.' Grim said with a pout, but Levi was worried about something else entirely.
Wouldn't having all that information forced into one's mind at once be much worse than having it told by word of mouth? Levi reasoned along those lines.
'Um, Grim, could you-' Levi said, but he was cut off before he could even finish.
'Transmitting information in 3...2...1....' Grim counted down before forcibly sending the details regarding his supposedly brilliant plan into Levi's brain, without a single shred of care for the latter's wellbeing.
'AAAAAAAARGGGGH!' Levi screamed inwarldy, and did his utmost to prevent it from showing on his face. However, the shock of having all that complex information being forced into his already strained mind all at once, was a little to much for the human to handle.
He blacked out.
.
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