Jungle Fight!
Trees withered, leaves dried, turned brown, and cracked. Fighting through the pain of a hundred mosquito bites, Elijah was barely able to use Dodge in time and evade the cone of the leaching attack. Even so, the fingers of his left hand were caught in the area of effect. In less than a second, they desiccated, taking on the appearance of a mummy’s digits: black and crispy.
The teen hissed in pain as he rolled to the side of another moisture-sucking attack that laid waste to a strip of jungle. Using his Mana Manipulation, the young man watched as, one by one, the once vibrant motes of water mana deluminated in an area six feet across and thirty feet long.
Elijah thought this was supposed to be a Treasure Seeker; hell, this Trial didn’t even explicitly say they were supposed to fight, so why did this monster have such powerful attacks? If one of those humidity-sucking spells had hit him directly, he would have immediately died!
There was a reason his crew had chased him towards the monster. Its attacks were strong, but they covered wide areas of rainforest; had they all attacked the sixteen-year-old at once, there would have been friendly fire. The pirates had tricked him here, then decided to retreat to the red X; meaning; even if he beat this moisture-sucking mosquito, he’d still have to deal with them.
As Elijah’s big toe was desiccated, causing his next jump to turn into a stumble, he reminded himself not to get distracted by ‘what if’s and focus on the fight in front of him.
Elijah vaulted fallen logs, his palms pressing through softly rotting wood; slid along mulchy leaves, aided by his Slimy Trait; stripper-poled around trunks, causing his velocity to change rapidly; and threw rocks and dirt in order to distract the monster. None of it worked.
He wanted to run up to the thing and punch it in the face, but he couldn’t. These water-absorbing attacks came from the mosquito man’s extended proboscis; if Elijah drew in too close, he would have no room to dodge.
Elijah was the goalie in his local sixteen and under football club; he knew to run towards an attacking player in a one-V-one, cutting off any angle they might use to make a shot. As he was the one being ‘shot’ at in this scenario, he wanted as many angles as he could get.
The forest around them was quickly becoming a dry desert, and the teen was losing his visual concealment. There was nothing left but to retreat and regroup. If he was fast, he may be able to slip between the crew's defences and make it to the treasure first, ending the Trial.
Elijah was not fast enough. He thought that his Agility-enhanced speed would be more than enough to outrun the insectoid - it had been sufficient to stay ahead of its men - but that was not the case.
He ducked under a branch and turned back to gauge his lead. The Mosquito was only a foot behind him, hand outstretched, nearly touching him. Thanks to the instincts his Initiative gave him, now that it had exceeded the first threshold, the young man was just about able to throw himself out of the way of the ensuing wave of deaquafication.
The sudden jerking motion was too much for his already injured toe, and it snapped off.
Elijah had thought the pain, caused by losing all the water in that part of his body, had been bad. This was worse. Much worse.
The sixteen-year-old let out an involuntary crying whimper as he continued his stumbling flight through the jungle. Dark blood oozed out of the charred stump of a joint, leaving a trail, flocked to by the ever-growing number of mosquitos.
Despite the teen killing as many as he could, the wretched insects only seemed to increase in number.
Once he got the pain under control, he threw himself aside once more, re-aggravating the wound. Though he hadn’t been watching the pirate Captain, Elijah had begun to get a sense of the time the thing had to take to recover between attacks.
Elijah watched as another strip of once vibrant forest was turned into wasteland. His Perception picked up on something.
Right after attacking, The Treasure Seeker’s insect face began to dry out and crack. Elijah was confused for a moment before he caught sight of the notifications scrolling past in the periphery of his vision.
Unkillable was returning a portion of the damage Elijah successfully avoided, likely more than normal as these attacks would have definitely been fatal. Interestingly, the Trait inflicted the same type of damage as would have been dealt; in this case, it absorbed all the water from the insect-person monster.
Unfortunately, all the water it was already absorbing had to go somewhere, and in seconds the cracks in its carapace had healed, and it was shining with a wet gleam. If not for Elijah's Trait absorbing all the water, the monster likely would have burst like a balloon by now.
He would disable the Trait if that were an option. But if that were an option, he would have done the same to Slimy long ago.
Elijah stopped running, choosing instead to face the beast. Its Attributes were higher, and it could outrun him, so he was better off not having his back to it. Facing it, he could at least dodge reliably.
He had briefly considered not dodging, getting hit by the attack, and hoping the Treasure Sucker overfilled on water before he was drained dry, but that seemed like a stupid plan. One that was all too likely to fail, knowing his Luck.
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He couldn’t even use his rudimentary water magic. As the moisture was sucked up, it seemed to sap the water mana motes of all their energy. If he wanted to get them to do anything, it would likely require him to expend all his mana to power them.
“How are you doing this?” Elijah asked between heavy breaths, partly out of curiosity but mainly in an attempt to gain a moment's calm to think. To the young man’s surprise, the violent insect didn’t immediately attack but took the time to answer him whilst it continued walking slowly closer.
“It's simply in my nature,” the Evolved Treasure Seeker slurppled.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Elijah replied, backing up and maintaining the distance between them. “I know you’re some kind of treasure-seeking monster; how does that lead to a power like this?” he asked, gesturing to a swath of bone-dry jungle with an arm that then returned to frantically swatting away mosquitoes.
“Ye do, do ye?” The mosquito pirate squelched out rhetorically before mumbling to itself, “Must have some kind of identifying Skill.”
“What?” Elijah asked, unable to catch the garbled words. The young man’s distraction cost him, and he stumbled backward over a fallen branch. Rapidly, he shimmied away, keeping the distance between them, before finding his feet once more.
The monster did not seize the opportunity. Certain in its victorious revenge, it continued stalking Elijah as it answered his question.
“Ye’re right, I am a Treasure Sucker,” The Mosquito said in a tone that may have been joyous, “But that doesn’t mean I’m stuck only sucking up gold and jewels. Different people have different definitions of treasure. If ye’d ever been to a desert, ye’d know the people there prize water above all else. So, I can suck it right up out of anything.”
“Then what’s with all the insects? I don’t see how they relate to treasure.” Elijah asked, trying to get the monster to talk more and sticking another armload of the buzzing annoyances to his Slimy skin.
“They just seem to like me,” the pirate captain replied, with a note of finality in its sucking voice.
Before he had even said the last word, Elijah had jumped aside, expecting the draining attack that lanced through the leaves, wincing as pressure was placed on his injured foot.
The teen continued walking backward, keeping enough space to dodge. The monster began a lurching run, and the chase was back on.
The sixteen-year-old was unable to run at full speed as he had to keep his eyes on his attacker's proboscis. The monster had taken to swinging its cutlass at him in the time between its draining sucks. Elijah was forced to use his new Skill, Berserker’s Bark, in an attempt to keep from losing more of himself.
It wasn’t quite as effective as he had hoped. Its skin turned to bark, and a cut that would have cut through muscle and bone behaved as if it were slicing at wood. Unfortunately, The Mosquito’s Strength was also very high. Elijah’s arm was cut halfway through.
Despite the sharp sting, he was able to suck it up and lash out with a retaliatory strike at the monster, sending it flying back with the power gained from blocking at least some of the attack.
The Treasure Sucker crashed through the underbrush, sending a wave of desiccating energy up into the air. Had he wasted any time in counterattacking, he would have been turned into Elijah jerky!
He didn’t waste any time now either, continuing his flight along the same animal trails he had used earlier in an attempt to escape The Mosquito’s crew.
It wasn’t long before the monster had caught back up, what with its superior Agility, leaving Elijah in a desperate dance for his life once more.
Despite how it looked, the teen was doing his best to control the battle, well, its direction at least.
He evaded another sucking wave, breaking through branches and ending up in a clearing. Elijah had hoped to bring the fight on top of The Mosquito’s crew, but they hadn’t stuck around when they saw the lines of destruction headed their way.
Empty tents were trampled over and fires hastily snuffed out. Leaving the red X of sand, complete with a dug hole and a suspiciously treasure-shaped chest half pulled out.
The Treasure Sucker saw what Elijah was angling for; whoever reached the treasure first would win the Trial, but The Mosquito couldn’t allow the test to end until he had gotten revenge for being humiliated by the presumptuous human.
The Treasure Sucker sucked, creating a magical vortex around its proboscis, which drew the wooden chest towards it.
Elijah, thinking quickly, spat on his hand, using the still-energised mana motes within it to create a tiny water blade. The magical construction was no larger than the crescent of a fingernail, but it was enough to nick the monster’s fleshy sucking-tube.
The injured protuberance twitched in pain, sending the chest careening off into the jungle with Elijah in hot pursuit.
Before the projectile was more than halfway through its canopy-crushing parabolic arc, the monster hand caught up to the young man. As they ran, the pair locked eyes. In a moment of frustrated anger, Elijah lashed out, striking the thing in the head. To his surprise, it rocked back slightly.
Anger overcame the monster, and, forgetting its main form of attack, it retaliated with a punch that cracked as it struck Elijah’s nose, breaking it.
By that point, it was too late. The fight devolved into a dirty brawl, both sides momentarily forgetting their Skills and abilities in a flash of anger.
They grappled in the jungle muck as Elijah tried to claw his way closer to the chest while The Mosquito kept dragging him back.
Covered in mud and already Slimy, the young man was able to slip away, lunging towards the rotting wooden box.
Just as he slammed his fist through the crumbling lid, the monster remembered itself and hit him with a desiccating blast.
Elijah was unable to dodge, still locked in the primitive mindset of anger.
Just as his hand broke through the wood, his eyeballs shrivelled and popped out.
Just as his arm fell towards the prize, his skin blackened, shrank, and cracked.
Just as he grasped something cold, his blood, as thick as treacle, began to ooze out of his every pore.
Elijah died. Elijah touched the golden treasure.
Congratulations!
You have completed the Trial of Evolution 1: Treasure Seeker
Grade: B
Objectives:
- Beat the Evolved Treasure Seeker to the treasure on your first try: ?
- Don’t Die: ?
- Fight the Evolved Treasure Seeker: ?
Rewards:
You have earned the right to Evolve from a Treasure Seeker into 1 of 4 Treasure Seeker Evolutions:
- Treasure Sucker
- Treasure Sniffer
- Treasure Listener
- Treasure Taster
Choose Now!
patrons: