[Mother Cragulok lv. 8]
[56/56 HP]
"You've got to be kidding me," Alesha groaned in dismay, stepping back and wincing as she stood in a ready position facing the beast. It was fully twice her level, had taken out just over half her HP in one hit, and had gone straight for a crippling strike. There was no way she could escape now. Instead, she had to face the thing while poisoned, with a damaged ankle and while a timer ticked down to her death! It was just the death of a game character, sure, but it felt humiliating that it had gotten her from behind like that.
When it surged forward, she tried to dodge but took a shallow blow [-5 HP] as she swiped down with her dagger. She missed. Its eight legs made clicking noises as they moved, taking the Mother Cragulok in a circular path as they stalked around each other, poised to strike.
[5/23 HP remaining]
Alesha frantically tried to think of a way to beat the creature. Think, think, there had to be a way! Her only hidden card was the Bite skill, but that didn't seem particularly useful right now. Maybe something in the environment? Dodging another attack and successfully dealing a minor blow to the beast (only 2 damage), she wished frantically for a lava pit to materialize beneath the boss. She really wanted to play a very literal game of "The Floor is Lava" right now. Though, there wasn't anything to stand on except for the trees, so maybe not.
That's right, the trees! The thorns that climbed several of them looked long and sharp enough to hurt the Mother Cragulok. Now to figure out how to use them against her.
One of its legs slammed against Alesha as she attempted to dodge, thankfully not receiving much damage from the impact.
[-2 HP]
With what happened as a result of the blow, it didn't take long for her to wish she had tried to dodge in a different direction.
[3/23 HP remaining]
She had been so preoccupied while dividing her attention between her thoughts and dodging the boss monster that she hadn't been paying enough attention to her feet. The impact with Mother Cragulok's leg had sent her stumbling backward--and while furiously backpedaling to regain her balance, one of Alesha's feet struck a protruding root, sending her straight onto her back. She fell hard, her head slamming back into an unlucky rock.
[-1 HP]
[2/23 HP remaining]
The Mother Cragulok gave her no time to recover. It rushed forward, turtle beak opened wide, jaws aiming straight for her head as it moved quickly to a stand over her prone body.
Alesha had dropped one of her knives in the fall, so she only had one left. Shifting it to her left hand, she used her right to shove the monster's jaws closed by grabbing hold of its chin and pushing upwards with as much strength as she could muster. She was lucky--the Mother Cragulok had a formidable bite force, but the muscles needed to keep its jaws open were far weaker. With her body slowly weakening from the poison, she never could have managed it otherwise.
As she pushed up on the monster's chin with her right hand, Alesha slammed the knife into the fleshy parts at the base of its neck. It plunged all the way up to the hilt.
[Critical Hit! 15 damage dealt]
The monster started to pull away but she was not going to miss this chance. She took a risk and released the upwards pressure on the Mother Cragulok's chin, sliding her hand down along the underside of its head and onto its throat. As soon as her hand left its chin, the monster started to open its mouth and bring its head down to bite at her. She didn't give it the chance. The instant her hand transferred to the throat, she groped to find where the monster's skin covered a rod-like biological structure. There!
She grabbed the fleshy rod structure, otherwise known as the trachea, and closed her hand tightly around it, yanking it parallel to the ground and towards her head. The monster choked as its whole body followed the motion in an attempt to reduce the pressure on this vulnerable structure.
[1 damage dealt]
[Mother Cragulok: 38/56 HP remaining]
Alesha looked at the underside of the Mother Cragulok's neck, with the trachea pulled unnaturally far out. This wasn't enough. Even though the creature was choking and flailing about in an attempt to break free, there were no damage messages, and she couldn't hold it like this for long enough to choke it to death. She could feel her body growing weaker as the poison pervaded her system; she would soon fall unconscious.
That left Alesha with one option.
One option, that she wasn't even sure would work.
Trusting her instincts, Alesha opened her mouth wide, releasing the knife that was still in her left hand (leaving it hilt-deep at the base of the monster's neck) and hugged the back of the Mother Cragulok's neck to bring it closer. Then, she turned her head and bit down as hard as she could.
----
A tall, navy-skinned elf with stylish electric blue hair was hurrying through the forest, high-level equipment covering him from head to toe. His anxious eyes scanned all around him. He glanced regularly at his mini-map, looking for the little green diamond that would mark the location of his character's family member.
This was such a weird situation. He'd looked it up and no one else had ever had this problem when having a friend spawn in to join them. Not in trillions of users across hundreds of planets. And the chat and friend functions were both somehow missing? He couldn't even message Marshall anymore, which was even more concerning. What on Elantris was going on?!
As he glanced again at his mini-map, he stopped, spotting the green diamond he had been hoping to see. "Finally!" he cried, sprinting off in its direction.
Shortly afterwards, Dennis found himself looking at a scene that he really didn't know what to make of.
The Mother Cragulok's legs were flailing about frantically, its shelled body lying on top of someone. That someone was a female Dark Elf with lavender skin and shockingly white hair, drenched in blood, in the act of tearing bite after bite out of the monster's throat. She wasn't spitting the bites out, though… was she swallowing them?!
Dennis took a subconscious step back, hand going to his mouth, feeling nauseous. The creature had to taste absolutely awful. Just how terrified had Alesha been to reach this frenzied state? He'd heard of humanity's evolved Fight or Flight reaction and wondered if she had turned her Emotive Immersion settings up too high.
Before thirty seconds had passed, the boss fell limply on top of Alesha, who after gnawing on its neck for a little while longer seemed to finally realize it was over.
She rested her head back on the ground, exhausted. Whether it had been the full 5 minutes since she was bitten or not, Alesha didn't know, and didn't care. She ignored the flood of System notifications and fell right asleep.