A black charcoal like arm arced towards Tristan at blearing speeds.
Blankly staring at the arm, at the penultimate of its arc the arm suddenly stopped with a jolt causing Tristan to belatedly realize that a thick rusted chain had wrapped itself around the monsters arm.
It quickly continued however since there was only so much rusted metal and degraded wood could do against a desperate monster that had only one goal.
The flesh of the man standing in front of it.
And in all favor of not becoming the meal of the monster in front of him, Tristan hurriedly used the brief pause in the things movements and kicked against the water, hurriedly bolting backwards his lizard brain cursed as it woke up from the depths of his instincts.
'Curses!'
Lizard brain pushing itself into overdrive, it hurriedly cycled between the three modes of Fight, Flight or Freeze during his predicament of having a terrifying monster move towards him.
He chose fight.
Pulling up the already drawn lighthouse with his right hand with a skill only found from tackling a sudden mugger in broad daylight, Tristan pulled the trigger while kicking himself backwards.
White light gathering at the tip of the barrel, a yellowish laser made from mana quickly blasted out of the barrel landing on the outstretched hand that had replaced the position his head was in mere seconds ago.
Scorching the flesh of the unknown monster, the arm continued to barrel through and scratched at the remaining chunk of rust lodged into the door, tearing it off of its hinges as the laser carved a glowing yellow line on its body.
And seeing that, Tristan felt a shiver travel up from the base of his spine from the inhuman force that may re enact the mighty watermelon vs bat experiment with the watermelon being his head.
Something that Tristan dutifully wanted to avoid.
Forcing out an incomplete frame half filled with the required threads, the bullet exploded halfway in its travels turning into an orange blue smoke cloud that sizzled angrily in front of him, lightly singeing the monster as it dashed at him with an open mouth.
|Tristan! That's an Endling! Corrupted monsters spawned from contact with the void! Make sure to not get scratched by it otherwise you'll become like them!|
"There's God damn Magic Zombies here!?"
Cursing loudly as the monster barreled towards him, its mouth opened itself up wider and wider until it's chin touched its chest, merging with it.
Feeling a shiver travel down his spine, without even a second thought, Tristan turned Firefly to the side and fired it, igniting a small explosion that blasted boiling hot water onto him.
Something he was less than happy about, but since the Endling had just spat out a tongue as large as an arm and way more flexible than it, he was rather glad that he burnt himself.
What could he say? Tristan preferred being lightly burnt than to be turned into a black magic zombie.
Hell, when comparing the options of losing all sanity and turning into something that was less than a beast, a slave to their instincts and emotions, a light 1st degree burn on the skin was getting off of it lightly.
Purple head snapping towards him unsettlingly, the Endling screamed as its swirling back mouth expanded to cover more of its chest as the tongue swiftly arced towards him again.
And greeting it with a bullet from the fully formed Firefly, the flaming bullet covered the tongue causing it to writhe about in pain as it diverted from its target and slammed against the ground, breaking it apart like tofu causing Tristan to cringe slightly.
|Tristan!|
"Kinda busy here!"
Blasting his feet to dodge the burnt charcoal tongue that came back with a vengeance, flames tickled his legs and burnt the hairs off of his leg.
Relying on Firefly to move himself around in attempt to escape the Endling, the hand holding Lighthouse never stopped holding down the trigger as a bright yellow ray of light continued to draw blistering marks on the rough skin.
This had the downside of causing some back pain, but it wasn't a problem right now.
'Cause this is a much more major problem!!!'
|Aim at the mouth! That is a mouth type endling and it's mouth is a gateway to the void!|
'What does that even meAAN!?!?'
Feeling his heart leap out of his chest as a second tongue suddenly speared out of the mouth that now took over the rest of their upper chest, Tristan quickly formed an incomplete bullet and fired it above him causing the same cloud of brief orange and blue to blast him back downwards.
|It means that the longer this goes on the harder its going to get! And if the Endling gets its hands on the shard of freedom, then its going to open a gate to the void!|
"Is that a bad thing!?"
|It's a very bad thing!|
"Got it!"
Hearing those words, Tristan became agitated as the mouth had already reached its lower abdomen before stopping and revealing another tongue that had the same force as the two others.
And seeing as they were able to pierce through the ground like a hot knife through butter, Tristan really didn't want to test whether he was stronger than the earth.
He already knew the answer anyways.
And throughout all of this the damn Endling hadn't moved an inch as its body struggled against several sets of rusted black iron chains wrapped around its entire body.
Tristan feared that he would be doomed once it freed itself from the rather durable chains.
He would be interested in the material if he wasn't literally fighting for his life against three seemingly sentient tongues that had a tracking system built into them.
'Oh God.'
Tilting his head back just far enough to dodge the spiked tongue, Tristan became close enough to observe the taut black covering on the incredibly flexible Endlings tongue.
Reflexively pulling the trigger of Lighthouse, a bright yellow laser quickly carved through the water and cut off the tongue with incredible ease.
Eyes brightening at the sight, Era took this time to speak right into his mind.
|I just remembered! Illuminae mana is very effective beings affected by the void! Use Lighthouse!|
"And why didn't you tell me that earlier!?"
Complaining loudly, Tristan nevertheless followed on Era's words.
'Blueprint'
A simple rod structure that could be commonly found in engineering.
'Framing.'
A grid structure that appeared in an empty space and slotted itself into Lighthouse.
'Filling'
Efficiency be damned, several threads flowed out of his body and into the weapon, twisting and turning as they roughly stuffed themselves into the frame, filling it like a battery.
'Firing'
And finally, although it wasn't optimal, it would do the trick.
Pulling the trigger, a white pillar blasted out of the barrel and cut through the water.
And as all light does, it was fast
Quickly twisting his wrist and spinning around, the laser quickly followed the path he drew with Lighthouse and carved a hole into the flesh of the Endling.
But not to be outdone just yet, the two still relatively intact tongues arced towards Tristan with malevolent intent as he watched in horror as the third one slowly regenerated itself with bubbling flesh.
Disgusting, but not as disgusting as the fact that Tristan realized belatedly that this guy's main form of attack was to lick people to death.
Something that Lighthouse hated dearly as it made sure to sound out its displeasure in the form of a very dangerous laser.
Cutting apart its tongues to reveal the purple flesh underneath, the Endling's eyes bulged creepily as its one remaining tongue continued to extend as Tristan hurriedly circled the basin he was in with the burning help of firefly.
Numbness assaulted his toes and fingers, but if it meant not turning into... that, then he would gladly embrace the numbness.
But that didn't mean that the Endling itself liked the situation it was in.
Screeching loudly, the two flailing and still regenerating tongues swiftly retracted into its body.
And as if to compensate for its reduced number, it grew in length before arcing towards him with renewed intent.
"NINE HELLS!!!"
A monstrous scream left the endlings throat as it threw its bloated tongue towards him, causing Tristan to instinctively fire Firefly right into its tongue despite being in the blast radius.
Fingers twitching from the pain of hot water around it, Tristan didn't even get to acknowledge the pain as the Endling's tongue crashed its body into his own as if the guns were completely useless to it.
"KUAK!!"
|Tristan!|
Coughing out blood as he felt his organs and spine get messed up from the blow, the Endling screeched as the tongues rapidly wrapped around him much to the perverse delight of it
Swiftly pulling him closer so that it could stare at him in delight with what little sanity it had left for finally catching the annoying bug that had annoyed it so, the tongue slowly but surely tightened around him
And at the rate it was going, Tristan was going to be long dead if he tried to fight a war of attrition with it.
Heartbeat trying to escape his chest, Tristan felt the blood rush to his head as he ignored his instincts that screamed at him to do something.
Bones crackling and head spinning from the lack of oxygen reaching where it was supposed to go.
The Endling showed its mouth full of a swirling black and purple void that swallowed all of the water into it, screeching loudly into his face and bursting his eardrums in a manner that could only be called a victory call.
Blood leaking out of his mouth and now his ears, he quickly thought up a solution.
It was a stupid one, but it at least had a chance of saving his life.
'Lighthouse don't fail me now!'
Adrenaline flooding his limbs, despite the pain running through his veins, Tristan grit his teeth and forced his arm to move.
Stuffing his left hand into the Endlings mouth, the swirling portal in its open mouth immediately began to move to ground up his hand into minced meat as he pulled the trigger.
"DIIIIEEEEE YOU DAMN BASTARD!!!"
Mana flowing from his body, every sensation in his senses became infinitely magnified.
His eyes strained as they revealed visible threads of white particles flowing through his body, entering through his bloodied mouth his eyes sparkled with eight rapidly spinning circles.
And as those circles continued to spin, he saw the entire process o fhow the particles of white were woven into long thick pure white threads that immediately flowed through his back.
Wrapping around the broken spool, simultaneously as it was dissipating into the surroundings as thick white threads that slowly broke down, more threads of white flowed through his body all the way to his left hand.
'Visualisation'
An image of a metal rod not unlike a piece of rebar formed in his mind as the next step was immediately continued from the frame that had been made.
'Framing'
The white threads immediately poured into the mold like a 3D printer filling up the frame with pure white shining threads.
'Filling'
Unlike before where he twisted the threads about within the frame, for the sake of efficiency and for the sake of his arm that was stuck down its throat, he twisted the threads within his arm.
And maybe Tristan was imagining it, or the pain was getting to him but Tristan felt as if his eyes were bleeding.
But that might just be because of the pain and the red tint on his vision.
'Firing'
Eyes now bleeding as he watched this entire process wide eyed, the pure yellow rod of light formed within the gun in slow motion as his finger instantly pulled the trigger.
Everything briefly went white.
*BANG
*Ringing
"Ugh..."
As if a flashbang had went off right in front of his eyes Tristan slowly tried regaining his disoriented senses.
It really didn't help that the flash seemed to have knocked out some of the adrenaline in his system.
Groaning in pain, Tristan blinked away the light spots lingering on his eyes before being able to actually see what was in front of him.
|Tristan... You damnable fool|
'What..? Oooohhh... That's bad.'
Left arm now rendered into a bloody mess that had absolutely no signs of it being an arm previously, if he didn't know any better, Tristan would've thought that it was an unidentifiable meat chunk as bits of bone peeked out.
Thankfully adrenaline numbed his nerves otherwise he would be crying like a bitch.
|Hahah.| Dull laughter sounded in his ears.
"I don't see what's so funny about this."
Mentally glancing at Era, she waved her hand.
|It's just absurd that's what it is, your such a genius to have thought up of a technique that took others years to think up that your an idiot you fool.|
She let out a sigh. |Honestly, I was going to tell you how to properly manifest weaves within your body since it uses stitching techniques that you are unfamiliar with|
|But you just went and did it, and now you've ruined your arm.|
'The Endling isn't any better though.'
Turning to look at the Endling past his broken and tattered arm still somehow holding Lighthouse in its fingers, he stared at the devastation before him.
And there it was in all of it's gory glory.
The Endling was... disgusting to put it bluntly.
Several chaotically drawn purple lines appeared on its body as if some amature artist had gone wild with their feet.
'Ahem'
Long arms that reached its legs periodically twitching as the fingers continued to morph between one and five, a large gaping hole glittered in the Endling's body.
Flesh sizzling as glowing and flashing yellow lights continued to attack it's innards, the purple swirls within the Endling's eyes seemed to brighten before dimming, revealing a pair of black sclera that located the panting Tristan.
Opening their mouth once again as if the previous punishment wasn't enough, instead of screaming loudly like before, a small voice leaked out.
And despite the quietness of it which it was spoken, Tristan could hear it as if it was crystal clear.
{You}
The Endlings eyes were filled with a sudden flash of maddened clarity as the pupils stared at Tristan, a strange menacing aura coming from them as a weird voice entered his mind.
'!?!?!'
{You shall serve the cause well}
Staring dumbfoundedly as the Endling suddenly spoke up within his mind, Tristan could tell for a fact that whatever was currently resting in the Endling's body was not Damian, not that he thought that Damian still existed.
The mouth on the Endling's body twisted into the vague form of a smile.
{Once the time comes... ANSWER THE CALL}
The final words spoken by the Endling echoed within Tristan's skull, carving it into his mind as he absentmindedly nodded.
"Answer... the Call?"
And as if satisfied upon hearing those words, the presence suddenly disappeared, leaving behind only a black thread that quickly sunk into Tristan's ruined arm.
Leaving Tristan and the Endlings body behind, the body soon deflated.
On that note, the noise that the body was making was rather... concerning.
|-et out of there Tristan!|
"Era?"
|Can't you hear me you blithering fool!? Get the hell out of there!|
"What? Why?"
|The corruptor of the Endling just descended in front of you! Get away before they explode the damn corpse!|
"Wait, what about the fragm-- "
|I can't revive you a second time! So go now!|
*Grrrrr
Like the rumblings of the very hungry stomach, the black swirling mouth portal that was peacefully swirling around before with the tongue poking out of it suddenly spun around violently, tearing apart the tongue that had been previously poking out of it.
*Crack
The sound of glass shattering reached Tristan's ears as he watched in horror as a black crack suddenly manifested above the deflating corpse.
The sea and earth around him trembled worryingly as parts of the earth disappeared into the rapidly expanding black crack.
|Run!|
"You don't have to tell me twice!"
Belatedly realising that the earth around him wasn't exactly in the best condition, Tristan immediately booked it.
Turning around and kicking at the sea, his flailing performed incredibly poorly in the swiftly disintegrating earth as the black crack rapidly expanded itself towards Tristan, the void energy contained within the portal now going haywire as it consumed everything it touched.
Collapsing in on itself from behind him, the ship that had already broke apart had its wooden parts get ripped away into the black crack, disintegrating into nothingness
+++
Don't wait for opportunities to come to you, instead, make opportunities to come to you
Tree