Goblins

Slicing through the air, the knives struck their unmissable target. Damon had thrown 3 of them, not simultaneously but fast enough for the bear to have no time to protect its vitals. Two of the knives slid into the bear’s flesh but were easily shaken off as the bear continued to attack the warrior goblins. In fact the bear didn’t even notice those two knife strikes, they had been completely shadowed by the pain and high it was feeling from other sources. But it certainly felt the last knife he had thrown, it had found its home within the bear’s eye cavity.

“RAWWWR”

The bear roared in pain but the goblins barely took notice as they had already been completely desensitized to sound during the fight, after all the bear had battered them with roars throughout the whole thing.

Damon continued to throw knives at the bear, though none of them hit any vitals like the eyes. The fight had been going on for about 3 minutes now, the constant attacks on the bear had certainly worn it down as its movements were beginning to slow, even if they still had the same anger behind them. But this was even more evident for the goblins who had been on the defensive positions for the whole time, despite the fact that they were here to hunt the bear. Withil’s other men had already fallen, either due to death or from exhaustion but it had been fine since Raraak’s men had gotten back up to fight again. Though this did little to help considering most of them were also taken out, currently there was only Withil, Roger, Raraak and another goblin warrior under Raraak’s flag fighting since all the others were downed.

Due to the major downtime in comparison to the first half of the fight, the bear finally had time to think as its immediate danger went down. It was then that the cunning bear realised that even if it beat the goblins, it would need to rest for months just to attempt to evolve again. It had been completely overwhelmed by anger at the goblins attacking it, it was as if a mouse starting attacking a lion: the mouse was even too small to be the lion’s prey and yet it was the one attacking the king?! But why did the bear have to fight when it had no advantages to be won from such a fight?

Raraak wielded his large battle axe with one hand as he went in for another strike, his body already completely exhausted. All the fighters in this battle had been warriors, goblins used to long and hard battles. But that was against enemies of similar battle prowess, but here just blocking the bear’s strikes made his joints creak as the massive pressure threatened to break through his limbs. At this moment, he and Roger were on one side of the bear while Withil was on the side. His man had already fallen to the ground and was struggling to get up.

Rising his axe once again, Raraak lumbered onwards as blood slipped down his body, targeting the bear who was hopefully just as tired. It was to his and all the goblins' surprise when the bear suddenly exuded out energy as it actively bashed into them. Their mouths physically gaped at what followed: the bear ran away. It was almost like depression hit them as all of the remaining warriors fell onto the ground, after all the prey that they had sacrificed nearly all the goblin warriors for had just simply ran away. Worse still, they didn’t even have any energy left, unlike the bear ,to chase it down.

Damon felt fire burn inside himself, he felt completely belittled by the world as he saw people he had looked up to all his life face such an embarrassing defeat all due to one monster. They had all come here with high hopes, hopes that dashed away as fast as it could. He felt indignant as he felt his legs moving before he even knew it, chasing down the bear, without giving any thought as to what he would do when he caught it.

The other pack carriers seemed to break out of their stupor as they saw Damon chase the bear. None of them had fought in fear of interfering, though that made little to no sense near the end of the fight when everything had slowed down. But none of them had gone out then after seeing the monster in action, a true beast earning the name monster as it crushed warriors under its claws. It was for this reason that none of them chased the monster despite all being well, after all what would they do to a beast that even their superiors couldn’t kill? Nevertheless those worries and fears seemed to disappear as they saw Damon chase it: he was the smallest of them, how was it possible for him to have such courage when they didn't !? Thus they followed Damon and bear, due to jealousy and a bit of recovered confidence.

Damon watched the bear run for about 30 seconds, before hiding behind a large rock. Perhaps hiding was the wrong word as the bear had collapsed upon its knees, exhausted due to the accumulation of wounds and fatigue. Damon instantly slowed his steps as he began to climb the boulder the bear was hiding behind, in order to get behind the bear.

In fact such a scene was almost like a retelling of the previous scene of Withil sneaking behind the bear; the bear would have easily been able to notice both if it payed a little attention to its surroundings. During the first time, it had been distracted by its battle-high whereas now it was so exhausted that it only focused onto the forest in front of it...

His legs reached the edge of the boulder as he took out his last knife from his bag: he had thrown all the others and hadn’t the chance to recollect them. Taking a large breath he ran off the top of the boulder, freefalling on the resting bear. The knife slightly pierced the head but was stopped by the layers of flesh and the skull, in fact it was extremely unlikely a 40kg goblin would be able to kill such a muscular monster by using downwards force. Regardless it broke the bear out of its rest as it roared once more and leapt towards Damon who was now retreating backwards.

Not too behind, the other pack carriers arrived to see Damon running away from the once more enraged bear. They instantly charged towards it, unleashing their attacks upon the bear. Some might call their previous fear cowardice but in truth it was not dumbfounded. The warriors had been barely able to injure the bear, while the attacks the pack carriers unleashed did nothing but cut a bit into the fat layers. In fact the bear wasn’t even the slight fazed by the attacks as it striked one of the pack carriers into the ground, crushing his bones under the bear’s weight. It proceeded to leap onto another one, which his head it bit off…

Seeing the futility, the other two pack carriers turned tail as they sprinted off for their lives, while Damon used this time to pick up the weapon of the first dead pack carrier: a short thick sword which looked like it had seen much better days. The bear instantly relaxed its guard as it saw the goblins sprint for their lives, though it immediately turned around as it heard footsteps pacing towards it. But it was too late…

The sword was pushed upwards into the bear’s rectum, though the blade didn’t go in very deep due to the immediate reaction from the bear. Nevertheless such a strike was enough to enrage the bear as it roared due to raw pain it felt since it didn’t have folds of fat nor muscle to protect such an area. The roar of intense hatred was enough to wake Damon of his idiocy; what was he going to accomplish by himself that 12 warriors had failed to do?! Seeing the danger at his life, Damon also turned tail as he sprinted of alike to the other pack carriers. It was just his unfortunate luck that the bear most definitely would not let him get away, after all he had come back to attack it in such a place even after his previous chance to escape.

Damon POV

I jumped across the thick tree root that protruded above the ground, just fast enough to survive as I heard the sound of the root being smashed apart. I didn’t need to turn my head to see it, I could hear the beast breathing heavily with the occasional thunderous roar.

It was truly a pity my feet couldn’t run any faster as I feel my body fall out of control, as the pain overpowered my senses into oblivion. In my mind it made no sense how come the bear hadn’t fallen yet, it had been stabbed everywhere we could have stabbed it and yet it still wasn’t dead. At one point I had seen Raraak smash it across the head with his axe, and yet all he got out of that was a bite on the torso.

The pressure on me from the forest was building up, I could feel it push down on me as my feet dared not slow down despite the intense pain they were in. This was exactly why none of us came this deep into the forest, the pressure was so large that I was finding it hard to breathe at this point.

“RAWWWWWWWWWWWWWR”

Another earth shattering roar, but not aimed at me?! I feared what I would see but still whipped my head around as I saw the bear in battle with some kind of bug. I couldn’t see it clearly due to the bear blocking its figure with the bear's massive body but I was certain that it wasn’t a tier 1 beast, perhaps not even a low tier 2 beast. After all I could feel the pressure pushing down on me making it hard to catch my breath but I was sure the bear wasn’t having a jolly time this deep in the forest either, since the monsters here would start to become the ones that would be willing to fight the bear.

I had heard it during the briefing the old clan leader; the bear was a top tier 2 monster but it should actually be living around this deep in the forest, not in the cave way out where it had been hiding. It turns out this was due to it not wanting to get into fights with equal monsters in its territory before its evolution since the other tier 2s would tear it down during its weakened evolution state. I guessed that was what was happening right now, a monster had picked the bear as its prey after seeing how injured it was.

Inside of me I knew perhaps this was the only chance I would get to kill the bear, and thus decided to get closer. It would be perfect if they both killed each other, leaving with me the spoils that I could take to the chieftain but it seemed not to be the case as I saw the other monster take control. It turned out to be an extremely long centipede, one which was actually 3m long and had two large blade like limbs at its front and back. At the moment it had wrapped its needle-like feet around the bear’s head and was dragging the struggling bear somewhere, using one set of the blades to stab into the bear while the other pair was used to pull itself across the ground to move.

The centipede was far too occupied with the struggling bear to notice me tailing it as it continued onwards, towards what turned out to be a deep cave within the wall of a ledge, next to where they had fought. I continued to follow the duo until they made themselves to the end of the cave where the centipede used its other pair of blades to try and stab the bear in the heart. It had been trying to strangle the weakened bear all this time but had ultimately failed and thus it chose instead to kill it another way.

It was unfortunate for the centipede that it had to loosen its stranglehold in order to use its other pair of blades to stab alongside the other, which gave the bear the opportunity to escape. The bear roared with pain as it pulled apart the stranglehold altogether before it bit deep into where the centipedes head should be. Reacting appropriately to the danger, the centipede went into a frenzy as it began to randomly stab the bear in random areas. What followed was such a dirty struggle that I struggled to comprehend some parts of it, as blades, teeth and claws ripped each other apart.

It was almost 2 minutes of struggling before both of the monsters eased up, not due to a clear winner but rather because both were nearly dead. Damon didn’t dare to go up though, as what he had seen from the two still scared him deep inside. He waited 5 more minutes in which both of the monsters went completely still before he went towards the corpses. The bear had its whole torso ripped apart from the blades of the centipede, while the centipede had a crushed head. It certainly showed the power of the centipede as it had been able to pierce through so deep despite 12 warriors not being able to do it.

Damon made extra care to make sure the monsters were dead before directly touching them, first touching the centipede’s blade. He didn’t even notice it as he put his palm over it, but it was as he took it off he noticed his palm had been sliced through half the way. Damon wouldn’t know but the monster was actually a beast named the Blade centipede by the humans, a low rank tier 3…

That had been the reason why the monster had targeted the bear, since it knew it would come out on top. In fact if both were in prime conditions and the bear still had an able spine, it would have easily come out on top; this was because the bear was at the highest a tier two could be, and was awaiting evolution. If it had evolved, it would straight away become a mid-tier 3.

Damon hadn’t noticed as he had watched the fight but the centipedes blades were actually coated in a toxin. The bear hadn’t showed any external signs to the toxin due to its strong body but it was another matter for a mid-tier1 monster like Goblins. In fact Damon felt the effect straight after he noticed the cut, and persistent pain spreading across his body quickly. He felt his body burn up as it felt like he was actively losing his body to the world physically, as his body parts seemed to shrink. Despite in pain, Damon managed to jump into the bear’s body where he found its bloody heart, split through the middle. Seeing what the chieftain had said had the highest chance of forced evolution, Damon instantly stuffed the 20cm heart into his mouth?

It was alike to pouring cold water over a hot item, he instantly felt his body feel better as he chewed the tough muscle down into nothing. Even though the pain hadn’t died out, it certainly had subsided. Damon continued to eat the inside of the bear as he felt the pain slowly subsiding as he went further in, using his fingers to claw out the parts of the bear, although none of the meat cooled his body down like the heart had.

After battling the pain for about an hour, Damon noticed not only had he been filled by the massive meat meal but the pain hadn’t died out either! Instead he could feel it growing once more and yet the meat from the bear seemed to have little effect in subsiding it unlike the heart had. Not wanting to lose out to the pain, Damon turned his head towards the Centipedes body which was getting cold. He noticed the centipedes shell was crushed at certain points where the bear had bitten it, namely its head and halfway down its body. In hope of the Centipede's heart, Damon began to dig through the centipede’s meat which he also ate. It was then he noticed that this meat had a bigger counter-effect on the pain than the bear meat, which turned into a thing of joy as he felt the pain almost disappearing.

Almost 30cm through the centipede, he noticed a large bloody organ that gave off strong sense of power, alike the bear’s heart had. Gulping down his saliva, he knew this was the centipede’s heart and it was like a dream as he ate the heart, fully escaping the pain he had been in. In fact it turned out to have other side-effects as well since he almost felt like all the meat he had eaten suddenly entered his stomach, as he all of a sudden he felt his stomach fill up completely. Being in a cave with a full stomach, his body fully relaxed as the strains of the day accumulated, tiring him beyond exhaustion. It was only 2 minutes since he ate the heart that he fell into deep sleep, still surrounded by the cold, bloody corpses of the two monsters.

In fact forced evolution wasn’t usually successful unless it was a higher tier monster and it was a good body part, and even then the evolved state wouldn't be that strong. This was because it was forcing the body to change despite it not being ready, meaning the evolution was limited in a sense. This was only further emphasised since tier one monsters like goblins had limited perception of mana, meaning they wouldn’t be able to collect much of it during an evolution which only limited their immediate evolved state's strength even further.

Despite not knowing it, Damon had actually eaten the hearts, the body part most likely to cause a successful forced evolution, of a top tier 2 monster and a low tier 3 one. He had also eaten so much of the two monsters meat, which was strengthen by mana. This meant that he had a resource of mana inside of him for his evolution, and quite a hefty one at that. It seemed his luck wouldn't stop as mana coursed inside the cave: being attracted by the dead bodies of the monsters. The higher the body, the stronger it acted like a magnet for mana, which would only intensify after the body’s death. This was an unexplainable occurrence which was happening right now, acting as a catalyst for Damon's evolution.

He hadn’t known it as he had gone to sleep but he would wake up different, very different to what even he thought he would become...