ALL NOVEL 62: Nero and His Human Chimeras
As the sun rose higher, though still obscured by the clouds that blanketed the sky, the monster wave began to surge, giving the adventurers and knights a plentiful stream of work to do. Yet, as the sweat began to run down even the most experienced, in-shape, and powerful adventurers, a deep rumbling could be heard alongside a cackling, uncontrollable manic laugh.
Trampling a number of monsters underfoot, the nature elemental appeared first, barreling forward, trying to make its way towards the town itself.
The nature elemental, a small hill-sized mass of rock and mutilated monster flesh, all held together by a bundle of energy, rampaged forward only to be stopped by the joint effort of the knights’ shield wall, Dexter, and Jerod.
Pulverizing a rock with a single punch, contrary to Jayce’s beliefs at the impossibility of the feat, Dexter called out to the group, “Partially corrupted!”
His words, although short, described the sickly green energy that held together the rock and flesh, the nature energy itself. However, this year, in contrast to the other years where the yellowish, brownish, green energy was the only energy present, this year, deep black-purple tendrils could be seen extending and wrapping their way through the elemental, corrupting it bit by bit.
Following Dexter’s words, Chelsea, who had been pacing herself, squeezed out a call towards Kaitlyn while raising her arms, calling forth the swords in the last three carts of swords that had been prepared, “Kaitlyn! I’ll cover your area alongside Dexter’s! Jayce will get Jerod’s! Go work with them to kill the nature elemental!”
Giving a short reply, Kaitlyn backed off, running towards the nature elemental that was trying to force itself forward. As she ran, eviscerating any monster she could along the way, Kaitlyn felt a rush of wind as a cloud of swords took her place, killing all the monsters that tried to make their way towards the wall.
As Chelsea pushed herself, directing the battle while living up to her name as the bladestorm, Kaitlyn plunged her swords into the flesh parts of the nature elemental, carving out the meat and exposing the innards towards the air.
Her actions, although random to a casual observer, were the only thing that she could really do against the nature elemental. As the elemental was a bundle of mutilated—and obviously dead—monsters and rock held together by energy, the only way to ‘kill’ it was to expose the inner area made up of pure energy to the sky outside, hastening the natural process that the energy would dissipate through.
With the energy dissipated, the nature elemental would fall apart on its own, becoming a random mass of rock, earth, monster bits, and anything else it managed to pick up.
Sending a large chunk of... mysterious unidentifiable monster... onto the ground, Kaitlyn leapt back as she watched the nature elemental try and extend a tendril of energy to reattach its lost monster flesh.
Sighing as the monster bits floated back towards the elemental, Kaitlyn watched as Dexter flew by, punching the sack of flesh hard enough to send it flying away, breaking the connection between it and the elemental.
Getting back to work even as she felt her breathing become ragged, Kaitlyn recited a few of the conversations she shared with Rachel, pushing herself to work harder and get this all over with.
However, as the nature elemental began to weaken, allowing Jerod to return to his own section, lightening the load off of Jayce who had been a storm of his own, a typhoon blowing through waves of monsters, a long roar and maniacal laugh marked the arrival of Nero.
His jet-black scales patch-marked, riddled with scars, his one wing marked with a number of gaping holes, Nero roared, sending a plume of purple fire forward, baking a field of monsters and sending all the adventurers to the side.
Then, having isolated the nature elemental, Nero’s grating, cackling laugh rang out once more as he pulled the nature elemental towards himself, siphoning all the energy into himself in mere moments.
Shocking all the adventurers present at his quick moves, Nero spat with a drawl, “You don’t think I’d wait and let it die, would you now? I’ve prepared a suitable replacement after all! I, the greatest dragon ever born, the one chosen by the night, the survivor of the fallen empire, shall show you what it means to be in despair!”
Raising a claw as all seven of the swords of execution leapt towards him, Nero laughed, blasting a few of them away as several monstrosities lumbered out from the trees, all chimeras of flesh, each made out of an uncountable number of his loyal followers, each wielding weapons made of bone.
Each of the chimeras screaming out in pain from an uncountable number of heads dotted across its body, these twitching, spasming monstrosities all ran forward under Nero’s direction.
“Kaitlyn...” cursed Nero with a venomous tone that would kill if words alone could, “The one who tore my precious wing off, you shall be the first!”
Swinging his arm forward, punching one of the other dragons to the side, Nero growled as the nature energy began to take effect, “FORWARD! KILL THE INSECT.”
With his call, the five towering chimeras, who were all swinging their bone weapons at random while screaming and cursing, ran forward trying to massacre the lone adventurer. As this happened though, Nero’s body began to swell as the muscles bulged, the scars healed, the scales reappeared, his missing wing began to sprout from the stump.
An insane grin—the best a dragon could do—sprouting on his face, Nero, who felt his life force waning for this temporary power smiled towards the overcast skies, “Today is the day...”
With that, Nero leapt into battle with five members of the Swords of Execution, with the two weakest having been ordered to go help hunt the chimeras.
Rampaging, Nero felt unstoppable as he drenched the dragons in front of him in fire, punched them, bit them, threw them aside like ragdolls, beginning to taunt them, “Is that all you got? I’ll kill all five of you myself!”
Smash.
Following his taunt his fist dug into the ground, the head of one of the dragons pinned under it as he roared towards the sky.
