The artromus that descended upon them was an anatomical nightmare.
The long, sinuous appendages that the wind-type artromus had possessed mixed incongruously with armor reminiscent of the earth type one.
But it was its face that made it truly disturbing: a curved and sharp proboscis dominated its features, while enormous bulging eyes observed from a disproportionately large head.
Despite the horrible figure...
There was no exchange of words, no moment of recognition. They didn't intend to greet it or establish friendship, so the appearance didn't matter to them.
This wasn't a social encounter and no one pretended it was.
Elio reacted first, his eyes blazing with that familiar crimson radiance from the start. Bands of resistant metal emerged with surgical precision that revealed months of practice, each finding a specific joint of the monster. This wasn't the desperate control of previous encounters; each restriction was calculated, optimized.
