Crusader King-Chapter 123: Beneath the Statue(8)

As the monster rushed towards him, the rhythm that had once inhabited it's legs, now twelve in total, being completely crushed and instead just turning into a mass of legs that tried to desperately wished to kill Cades, as he could infer from the thick intent that he could feel, after having finally snapped out of his dizzied state and the shocked state that had followed shortly after, he began to look once more, this time at the monster that was now even more powerful, having turned into what he could only describe as a demi-transcribe.

However, as ironic as it might seem, this being might've just weakened itself from what Cades could tell, and, of course, already knew of the rank of a transcribe, being one himself, he was quite knowledgeable about that after all, at least he thought so.

The being that the spider queen, one of trickery and wisdom, having once raised a whole nests of spiders and even have had to strategize when fighting, much like even ants do, one who had once troubled him with it's knowledge of not only smaller beings, such as himself in this case, but also it's knowledge of the terrain, having run straight towards the closest river, something impossible if one was just a ravaging, mindless creature, like the one that now ran towards him.

He, however, was now much calmer than before, having looked at the beast for about half a second and already having been able to interpret this much, he had already realized that it had gotten weaker than before, quite a bit in actuality.

The transcribe-rank was more so about utilization, intent and magical energy than the other ranks before it that were simply about pure muscular strength and magical force, almost completely dismissing intent and utilization, both things being something that Cades had however now realized how important they were, utilization as to utilize his ever-growing magical power, for example by using it in actives, intent to understand his enemies and, partially, even himself.

This beast however, did not care for utilization, it barely cared for magical power, it didn't care to look at his intent, neither would it be able to, it was simply a ravaging beast, one without mind and reason, one that Cades would be quick to defeat, and yet, also one that would be difficult to defeat if he didn't move his feet before that ravaging mass that now seemed to weigh even more than before crashed into him, sending him even further away than before, or even just ripping him to shreds with it's mandibles, be it that he might be able to resist the second scenario.

Cades, now having wholly calmed down after seeing the thing rip itself to shreds and appear even stronger, having changed it's weaker shell, one that it had probably faked while it had still been of sound mind and soul to get Cades to die by it's hands, something that Cades had turned to naught after it had despaired against that tree, something that was quite pathetic for a being at the peak of the lord rank, but on the other hand this place was quite weird in that, wasn't it..

He took a few steps to the side, quickly escaping the rushing monstrosity that could only really be referred to as an abomination, and let it run straight past him, luckily not being hit by the legs after he dodged ever so slightly late by about a tenth of a second, a span of time that might seem insignificant to many but was quite meaningful in a battle between such fast and powerful beings, a surprisingly calm and non-destructive battle at that.

What he did saved his life, barely any doubt about it, but it was not something positive for the beast that had run straight into another tree and was now covered in even more of the black liquid, a liquid that Cades still assumed to be poisonous seeing as no normal creature would excrete it's own blood without a hearty reason to do so, such as for example, if it was poisonous.

And indeed, whenever he saw drops and chunks of the monster fall down, still ever-so-silent as was everything on this island, the very first island that Cades however quite liked, seeing as everything was silent, something positive in his opinion, and the rest could easily be evaded using some rather simple magic and a bit of concentration, however, what fell from the monster could not be ignored, or at least he thought so within his mind, as he saw the chunky black goo dropping onto the stones that absorbed them, that was fine, but when they dropped onto normal ground they started to steam and he felt as if the earth itself was screaming for help, something that was however more of an audible hallucination than anything else.

Cades turned around, sword ready within his left hand, still searing hot and burning his palm as he started to dash towards the monster that was once more struggling in this forest of incredibly hard trees, something he did kind of understand, but something that just underlined the foolishness of turning into such a big being in this space, one with twelve legs, two long tails, and even widening the way that the legs walked, something that could only really get it killed within this place, in this case, by Cades hand.

He arrived at the tree where it was now struggling within barely a second, actually, quite a lot less than that, but the monster didn't even really react due to the same dizziness that Cades had previously experienced, a dizziness that he knew would take quite a bit to wear off.

This time, however, Cades didn't opt to strike, slashing the now scaleless monster to try and kill it, instead he did something that he had only really done with Manug's head before, he stabbed the spider's body, intending to run his overload through it.