Chapter 167

◈ Chapter 167:

There were those in the crowd who panicked, yes, but there were also those who when faced with an enormous solid black panthara stepped up to fight.

Many had experience fighting dungeon surges, and the panthara themselves in the dungeon, they felt their chances were good against a singular panthara with so many allies around, even if it was a particularly large one.

So did Brax as he eyed the massive thing up and down.

"Big, but just a trick, illusionary form."

He glanced underneath the thing to see Rain running for the stairs and clucked his tongue.

"The same nonsense as the tigers."

He leaned back, spear over shoulder, twisting his hips. This panthara would die and then so would Rain a moment later. In fact if he aimed it correctly the spear would pass through the panthara and skewer Rain in the same throw as he climbed shakily up the stairs behind.

Eyes narrowed with focus and measured timing Brax torqued up through his body, legs then hips then chest then arm then wrist whipping around.

The spear rocketed from his hand like a bolt of lightning, aimed straight for the panthara's upper stomach.

It struck home, pierced, and… stopped.

The panthara looked down at the spear embedded a few inches into its stomach. It brushed talons across and the spear was plucked from its abdomen and clattered to the marble floor below.

Brax blinked at the spear on the ground then up at the panthara above, his body still in full throwing pose.

"uh… what…"

The panthara roared its outrage, its disdain, lunging for a startled Brax with one massive taloned arm. Frozen in shock Brax barely managed to escape the talons, a flash of light coming from his palm jetting him backwards and out of reach, sending him tumbling out of control and out of sight amongst the crowd.

The panthara missed and the levelers surrounding unleashed a barrage of magic, every element crashing against its dark form, pure magical destruction, enough to annihilate an armoured legion.

If it had any effect at all it wasn't visible.

The panthara's red glowing eyes studied the attackers in a malicious way. And then it twisted.

The panthara showing fine dexterity spun around on the spot, back feet lifting slightly from the floor, its massive tail whipping out behind it.

The results were horrifying. The tail swung low to the ground at about hip height, and it cut through the crowd like a scythe through corn, hundreds of levelers splitting in two, their hips disintegrating in liquid mulch as the black terror smashed them apart.

The panthara didn't stop, making a full sweeping spin to come back to where it had started and then immediately lunging forward as its eyes alighted on the survivors sprinting for the exit. Nearly fifty levelers crowded the doorway, fighting against each other to get through, pushing and shoving in the squeeze, trampling each other.

A great taloned hand came down and disintegrated a half dozen, their liquified remains pulsing under the impact and splashing across the crowd, then the taloned hand tore to the side, slicing a great swathe through the levelers, gore slashed across the marble, bits of people, hundreds of gallons of blood washing across the floor until it filled the hall wall to wall, a lake of crimson madness.

The panthara smirked at the last remaining living levelers, rolling its talons as it prepared to shred them.

"What a curious phenomenon."

It paused as it heard a voice different from the others, this one was calm, collected.

The panthara turned to see a woman standing at the top of the stair, an elven woman with straight black hair and red eyes.

"A mass of something that should be impossible, given form and a mind and a soul. A summon like I might summon a monster, yet it was a monster who summoned you, not a leveler."

The barbels of the panthara writhed with irritation, what was this elf?

"Oh, I really want to bind the monster who summoned you, to summon a summoning monster? What a very interesting idea."

The panthara took a step toward her, its eyes burning with raw unbridled hatred, a starscape of ten thousand dying suns.

"I realise I can't do much with you however. You are not a monster."

She lifted a hand and the panthara paused, waiting expectancy for some magical attack or other to happen.

Nothing did for a moment, and then a ground shaking boom rocked the hall, dust falling from the ceiling as the plaster cracked across its length.

The panthara blinked in surprise and looked up to see the ceiling was starting to dip down in the middle.

"Ah, again then? Punch again?" said the elf.

There was a moment of held breath and then the ceiling came apart as a blue skinned and craggy fist punched through, the ceiling falling away in great sheets as the fist descended like that of an angry god, directly on top of the panthara.

A fist the size of a house.

Unfortunately, despite being very large, the giant fist was still made of meat and bone, and on violent contact with the panthara burst apart like a pumpkin, even as it smashed the panthara to the ground.

Skin splitting and finger bones launching free, muscles writhing as they tried to flee the panthara's touch, the fist became a tsunami of gore that roared across the great hall swallowing the gore of the slaughtered levelers, many still alive despite being cut in two, and washing them through room after room of the mansion in a tidal wave of red.

Despite the fist's disintegration however the panthara was struggling. While the hand of the giant became a slurry it did not slow the great forearm bones behind it and they stabbed through the screaming panthara, punching straight through its dark form and out the other side, impacting the ground with such force that it cratered down for a dozen meters around.

The panthara thrashed, pinned and desperately trying to survive, to maintain its form, to hold itself together.

But slowly it started to disintegrate, the hole through its body had ripped it in two and the impact of the fist had done its damage. Bit by bit the thing became a black mist that bubbled up through the crushing weight of meat to drift up through the hole in the roof until it was just a screaming raging hateful head, and then that was gone too.

---

Rain made his way through the puddled halls. It seemed everyone with their wits about them had fled because he hadn't seen any levelers capable of standing in some time. Probably for the best as he was dead on his feet, huge grizzly lines of blood dangling from his split jaw, blood pouring from every spear wound and leaving trails of red in the puddles that spread like ink in water.

"You need to get inside me Rain," slurred Lyra.

He peered down at the sheep girl even as his vision swam. There was Red on one side, running around frantically snatching jewellery and purses from the half drowned and unconscious levelers. And on the other was Opal who was fiddling with a potion bottle. She finally managed to pop the lid off and with shaky hands threw the contents up over Rain's front. The soothing feeling of wounds gradually beginning to close sharpened his mind momentarily and let him process what Lyra meant.

Near unconscious now he got down on his paw and knees and began half-crawling, his other arm dangling and unable to support him. The sheep girl jumped in front of him and held her legs together, enough for him to climb inside as she shivered.

Opal followed, leaping into her wool as she readied yet another potion bottle, and then so did Red with a heaping armful of loot.

Lyra shook her head trying to clear the alcoholic fog. Swaying wildly she made her way toward the nearest door, her footsteps quite a long way from being in a straight line. There seemed to be some kind of gold and white scaled tube in the way. Not sure what it was, she climbed up on top of a washed up table and from there crawled over the top, sliding down the other side with a squawk and landing upside down, her dress falling over her head, legs kicking madly at the air.

After a moment to reorient herself she staggered to her feet and made her way through the mansion's garden and to the front entrance where she found a dozen terrified guards huddling down behind a hedge.

"Hey, uh, there's some bad things happening in there mister guard guys."

The sounds of a screaming dying crowd drifted over.

"...Yeah, you should probably sort that out or some stuff," she waved her hand vaguely in the mansion's direction. None of the guards made even a slight move toward it.

She passed the wide eyed guards by and wandered out into the lightless city streets.

---

Baera crawled from beneath the corpse she had fallen under and checked over her metal arm. A great split ran up it, the mark of the panthara's talon, tearing through the metal exterior like it was paper. Inside the metal slime writhed, busily working to pull the plate metal together and heal the damage.

She was dipped head to toe in blood, her white hair dyed bright crimson. Not that she noticed. Her brow was furrowed with deep concern. What had she just witnessed? She shook her head to clear it.

The anomaly had evolved. That was a fact. The anomaly had gained the ability to summon a dark mass that formed monstrous things and couldn't be touched. Then it had summoned something so so much worse than that, a panthara.

A panthara that had slaughtered a crowd of powerful levelers with ease.

The question was… If the anomaly was still growing stronger… Did that mean that more of these dark panthara might come about? More than one? What if the monster was to unleash a dozen dark panthara on the city? A hundred? A thousand? More?? The growing threat curve posed by the anomaly had gone vertical, it was now of extreme and immense danger.

She shuddered as she looked over the steaming hill of gore that was the giant's abandoned hand, the white of finger bones sticking from it like sticks from a mud pie.

No, this anomaly was something else, this was bad, really really bad.

Her hope that she had a chance of killing Rain alone had been laughable at best, not even Bane at his strongest could stop this anomaly now, the hellhound man had been made utterly worthless in her eyes, a bad joke.

That meant she had to change her plans. Extreme measures were in order.

She turned and strode from the room, marching through the mansion, ignoring the soft cries of the survivors. As she walked a pale faced and soaked through Jilli scrambled from beneath a washed up table and hurried after her. She passed into the garden and made her way to the entrance.

The guards gave her blood covered appearance one look and fled.

Outside she found what she was looking for, a coach and horses unattended. She leapt up onto the front bench and took the reins as Jilli scrambled up after her.

The coach began rolling, picking up speed until it was racing through the city, toward the city gates, and out onto the plains surrounding Florens and then toward the mountains.

If Rain were to be stopped then she needed to discard all caution and bring out the greatest weapon available to her.