"... Bloody hell, man!" Sam exclaimed when Osho got close.
"I didn’t think you were actually gonna go for it," Ellie admitted with a slightly incredulous smile. Osho just shrugged in return.
"What I wanna know is how you were so good at reading its movements! It was like you knew where it was gonna move and how it was gonna strike each time?" Sam asked with bright eyes, and Osho smiled.
"I’m not gonna be that guy and say it was simple, but once I got a feel for it, it started to make sense." He motioned with his hands to mimic the cobra’s movements.
"You see, it only really had two main attacks, a forward lunge with its head and shooting venom from its fangs. The key was figuring out the cues that indicated it wanted to do any of those attacks. When it wanted to strike, it would coil its body like a spring, especially around the base of its neck. And when it wanted to spew acid, it would open its jaws and become stationary for a moment." He paused, letting them visualize it.
"As for the rest, well, nothing is truly random. It knew how its body moved. Hence, it WANTED to be unpredictable. Slithering into odd angles, lunging from strange positions, etc. But in trying so hard to be unpredictable, it created patterns. Repeating the unusual is still repetition. Once I noticed that, I just moved opposite to the patterns and used the gaps they created." Osho shrugged.
"It was more about paying attention than just reacting fast. Once I had that down, it was just a matter of dealing a lethal enough wound." When he finished, the two girls were silent as they pulled over his words. After a while, Sam just sighed.
"Remind me not to try and fight you." She stated, and Osho shrugged.
"I wouldn’t encourage it either." She glared at him, but Ellie seemed like her eyes were glittering.
"Well, I now know what to teach Sugil when it comes to close-quarters combat." She said, and Osho nodded. Since her beast was a snake, learning how other snake-like beasts operated was a good idea.
"So, should we go fetch the other two?" Sam asked.
"In a moment. Come help me with this." He led them to the corpse of the snake. Sam’s nose wrinkled a bit at the sight of blood and brain matter seeping through the hole in its skull, but no one complained.
"So what gives?" Ellie asked, and Osho faced them with a faint smile.
"Well, you know that I wanna kill a certain Adept rank Beast, yeah?" The two of them nodded.
"Well, while I’m confident, I’d rather bolster our chances to 100%. So, we shall make preparations ahead of time." He pointed at the corpse.
"I made sure not to damage the poison gland in its body so we can use it later. So some help would be appreciated." The girls blinked.
"I... didn’t think of that," Ellie admitted, but Sam frowned.
"No offense, but even if we extract the gland successfully, how would we store its contents. I think you know that carrying a large gland filled with acid isn’t the smartest thing in the world." She voiced her doubts and Osho nodded.
"You’d be correct, and fret not, I have a plan for that." He looked at Gale.
’Go and find the other two and lead them here.’ Gale tilted his head.
’Will you be fine alone?’ He asked, a little bit worried, but Osho just smiled.
’I’ll be fine.’ Hearing this, Gale lingered before flying off.
"Now then." He turned to the corpse and took out his daggers.
As soon as Osho killed the cobra, the spectators went crazy.
"Well, I’ll be. That Osho kid is actually like that!" Mira exclaimed with genuine shock and excitement. The battle hadn’t been too long, but calling it exciting would be an understatement.
Many professionals were already working to analyze the battle and explain what Osho had done, but they didn’t need to as Osho explained his logic to his teammates, and the more he spoke, the more those watching understood and the more amazed they were.
"He has incredible combat sense for someone who is barely an adult," Fredrick commented earnestly. Osho’s performance had been, quite frankly, incredible. With little to no flaws in his approach.
Everyone seemed to agree, even Principal Vermont, but that seemed to irk him even more.
"You see this, but you still let him choose the Beast Engineering course." Quite a few people resisted rolling their eyes, but now, there were a few who started to see the man’s point. Osho’s performance WAS stellar, and having skills like that, it made the idea of him picking anything that wasn’t a combat-oriented course seem wasteful in comparison.
"I’m done with this argument Vermont," Timothy said with a sigh, at this point, he just wanted to watch his students perform.
"You know I’m right." He commented, but got ignored.
Seeing this, the man shook his head and turned back to the screens. However, his eyes sharpened.
’I won’t allow you to waste such a good talent, Timothy.’
"Why are you so resourceful?" Sam almost lamented as she stared at the work the three of them completed.
Several bottles that looked to be made of purple crystal sat on the ground in front of them. They looked crude, but they were functional.
As for their purpose? Well, after safely extracting the venom gland from the cobra, a task that was met with lots of gagging from Sam, Osho had Ellie create several bottles to house the contents of the gland.
However, Ellie pointed out that while the crystals were durable, they would still be slowly melted through due to how volatile the acid was. Osho knew this, which is why before pouring the acid into the bottles, he cleanly sliced off parts of the snake’s body, specifically pieces of skin and internals that were immune to the acid, and used them to line the insides of the bottles.
With this, they managed to safely store the acid for transportation.
"Don’t underestimate my IQ," Osho said half-jokingly at Sam’s question. It took them about thirty minutes to finish their task, however, they didn’t move right away.
They were still waiting for Gale to return, so they would use this as a chance to strategize.
"So the beast you set your eyes on is an alligator?" Sam asked and Osho nodded.
He started explaining his plan to them and how he intended to use several of the resources one could find in this forest to make the task easier, but not long after, Ellie and Osho tilted their heads near simultaneously, confusing Sam.
"Incoming," Osho said just as Ellie had Sugil erect a wall around them.
As soon as she did, Something sharp and pink whipped at them from between the trees.
It smashed into the wall, and surprisingly, several cracks spread across it as whatever had struck it carried immense power.
Ellie tried to make the wall latch onto the object, but it was retracted too quickly. Preventing her from doing anything.
’Fast.’ Osho narrowed his eyes as he immediately focused his attention on his Mana sense. But to his surprise, whatever was attacking them moved just outside the range of his senses, allowing him to only see the fast projectile moving through it as the creature constantly changed positions.
’... A tongue?’ He thought before the wall was struck again from another direction, even more cracks forming this time.
Osho frowned, he felt Mana lingering from the impact, and it looked to be of an affinity related to force, or something related to hitting harder. Kinetic energy perhaps?
"It’s a frog." He revealed calmly. Ellie fortified the walla just as another strike smashed into it, stronger than the last one.
This made Osho even more certain in his assessment that it possessed some sort of Kinetic Affinity, and the more it struck, the stronger the power behind its blows would be.
"Ellie, after the next strike, open a path for me. Sam, send out Blackie when I give the signal." He instructed, and there was no protest as the two girls just nodded.
They didn’t have to wait long as another strike came, this time, splinters of crystals fell off from the force, but as soon as the strike came Ellie made an opening in the wall.
Osho dashed out, daggers in hand.
As soon as he did, he immediately felt a gaze fall on him as his hair stood on end.
A moment later, the attack came.
Time seemed to slow down as a pink tongue that resembled a whipped moved towards his head at incredible speeds. Osho was certain it should have broken the sound barrier with the speed, but he didn’t have time to dwell on why there was no sonic boom as he barely managed to duck down while at the same time swinging one of his daggers above his head.
He found purchase as he struck the appendage, but had limited success as it felt like he had just struck a horizontal metal rod.
Not to mention, there was still some remnant momentum, causing him to almost lose his grip on the dagger as his arm was blown back.
Osho decided to ride out the force as he was thrown off a bit, and as soon as he recovered, he rolled to the side as the tongue smashed into the ground where he was a moment ago, its speed even faster than before.
’This is troublesome.’ Osho as he got to his feet.
He didn’t dare attempt to block one of those blows head on. His arms would get shattered at the very least and be blown off at worst.
Instead, he took a different approach.
As soon as the next attack came, he dodged it by a hair’s breadth, and at the same time, he smashed one of the poison bottles on the appendage.
Osho asked Ellie to make the bottles as durable as a normal glass bottle so that they weren’t impossible to break at key moments. Something he was glad he did as the bottle shattered against the durable tongue of the creature and spilled its contents on it just as the tongue retracted.
A moment later, he heard a pained croak as he smirked inwardly.