It had barely been twenty minutes since Elaine fell asleep. A few Yellow beasts had invaded the stone formation in that time, searching for food. Nesha had made quick work of them at first, buying Percy time to don his armour.
Not that it was necessary for these weaklings, but he might need it if a stronger one showed up. Perhaps, it would have been prudent to do so before entering the Valley, but it would have only made the climb more difficult.
As soon as he was ready, the two switched places. Percy took over guard duty, while Nesha now watched over Elaine, shielding her from the drifting globules. Neither of them looked forward to holding their ground for the next several hours, but it turned out that was the least of their worries.
At some point, a faint tremor reverberated through the ground, causing everything to shake. A second quake followed a moment later, and then a third. And a fourth.
Something massive was approaching.
Slowly at first, but it didn’t take long for its thunderous footfalls to grow both louder and more frequent. The monster was now accelerating directly towards them, having probably caught a whiff of their scent.
“Shit. Should I wake Elaine up?” Nesha asked, the colour draining from her face.
Percy shook his head.
“I doubt she’ll manage to sleep through the commotion anyway… But let her try. I’ve got this.”
Yet, Percy wasn’t afraid.
He wasn’t the same person he’d been in the Guild. Granted, his cores hadn’t advanced since then, but strength was determined by so much more than one’s grade.
Summoning both of his scythes, he turned them invisible like his armour, clenching them tightly. Walking outside the enclosed space, he turned to the direction the tremors were emanating from, waiting with bated breath.
Soon, the creature came into view. It was a hulking rhino, charging towards him at full speed. The ground shattered beneath its feet, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. Even the pebbles next to Percy bounced up and down, his force absorption runes flaring up on their own to mitigate the shockwaves. The creature wasn’t much larger than a regular rhino, despite being three grades higher.
But all those advancements clearly hadn’t gone to waste. Its pale hide was thick and hard, glistening under the dim light like ivory. It was densely covered in bony spikes, each half as thick as a man’s fist, and twice as long. Yet, they looked like toys compared to the massive horn jutting out of the abomination’s nose, long and sharp like a curved greatsword.
‘Let’s not get impaled by that…’ he smiled.
Percy had probably seen it first, thanks to his mutated eyes. It wasn’t until the monster had covered half the distance separating them that it seemed to have fully locked on him, somehow speeding up even more.
‘Come on then. Time to see how much I’ve grown.’
Pushing Synchronization to its absolute limit, he squatted slightly, taking a fighting stance. He could have activated his trollsfury tattoo too, but he didn’t think the situation was dire enough to waste it.
His gaze sunk into the rhino’s massive frame, tracing the Green mana flowing through its bloodstream, and the silver flames of its soul, flaring like a raging inferno. Instantly, a projection of its body shot in front of it, charging a few steps ahead of the actual creature.
Reading its movements was so much easier than Rambert’s or Jason’s. Beasts weren’t weak by any means, but they were certainly predictable, their fighting style simple and straightforward. A good thing too, because Percy couldn’t afford to let a single hit land on his body. He wasn’t confident his armour would hold against this walking calamity, and he had no intention to turn into meat paste today.
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Alas, the time for planning was over, the creature finally upon him.
Percy almost leapt to his left to dodge the charge. However, both Grim Dance and Greater Foresight showed him that was a bad idea. Instead, he switched directions at the last moment, leaping to his right instead, narrowly avoiding getting skewered by its horn.
But he wasn’t out of danger just yet.
Through a series of rapid steps, he danced around the creature’s frame, circling its stomping foreleg, before slashing with both of his scythes.
The weapons ignored the forest of spikes entirely, phasing beneath the rhino’s hide. The teal blades sank into its soul, meeting almost no resistance as they sliced a pair of deep, horizontal gashes into the silver flame.
A Green’s soul was far stronger than a Yellow’s, but Percy’s weapons weren’t the same he’d used against the oversized wasp. Not only were his scythes larger and made of reinforced mana, he’d added quite a bunch of powerful enchantments on them a few days ago.
Two of the rhino’s legs buckled, though its momentum carried it forward for dozens of metres, as its spiked exoskeleton shredded a wide groove into the stone. The attack had definitely caused a lot of damage, but Percy knew it wasn’t enough to finish the beast. It was way too bulky, so the blades of his scythes still hadn’t cut deep enough – relatively speaking.
Not wasting the opportunity, he hurled both of them at the creature, taking advantage of its momentary disorientation to inflict another pair of injuries into its soul. They were shallower than the previous ones, since he wasn’t there to manually add force to the attacks, but still rather painful.
The rhino let out a terrible roar, but its agony didn’t prevent it from climbing back to its feet. It wobbled a little, but it brushed it off, its eyes glaring at Percy with hatred.
Then, it charged forth again.
This time, the shadow in front of its body didn’t reach as far ahead. It had clearly wised up, planning to attack more carefully this time.
Either way, Percy was ready for it.
At the last second, the projection swept its head in a wide arc from left to right, trying to cleave him right in half!
Percy barely jumped above the horn in time, but that wasn’t the end of it. The rhino then swept upwards, in an attempt to stab him mid-air!
Turning both his weapons corporeal, Percy moved them in front of his body, parrying the attack. He wasn’t confident his constructs would hold in a head-on collision with the monster, but its upward slash lacked the forward momentum of its charge, and the full weight of its body.
The impact was still powerful enough to shatter both scythes, the runes on his armour struggling to absorb the shockwave coursing up his arms.
Luckily, he did manage to push himself out of the horn’s path, skidding and rolling clumsily along the rhino’s back, before falling behind it. The spikes left many cracks and dents on the Phantomscale Regalia, but the self-repair enchantments were already mending them.
Percy looked down at the broken shafts in his hands.
Had this been a week ago, the clash would have left him disarmed. Unfortunately for the beast, it wasn’t so easy to destroy his weapons anymore. Pouring some fused mana into the constructs, he watched as the controlled self-repair enchantments did their job. The shafts grew rapidly. Not as rapidly as Percy would have liked, of course.
At least, not at first.
A few inches up the shafts, another enchantment appeared, sucking even more mana to accelerate the process. And then a third, and a fourth. Within mere moments, the shafts were back to full length. If that wasn’t enough, a pair of brand-new blades started growing off the ends.
Despite the numerous enchantments working in tandem, Percy still needed about half a minute to fully restore the weapons. Obviously, the rhino wouldn’t just wait for him. It was already charging at him once more.
When the beast was about to reach him, Percy tugged at two other constructs with his willpower. The original blades that had broken off his scythes during the previous clash. Shooting upward, they dug into the rhino’s soul from below as it ran over them, causing it to stumble.
This gave Percy the chance to sidestep the attack more easily. In fact, he managed to land another debilitating slash with one of his weapons, having almost finished repairing its blade.
And that was just the start of the creature’s trouble.
Percy flung both of his scythes at the beast, before calling the discarded blades to his hands. He poured mana into those too, causing more runes to flare. Soon, the blades were back to their original shape, a pair of brand-new shafts growing underneath them.
By the time the rhino recovered from the latest attack, Percy was holding a third and a fourth scythe in his hands!
Needless to say, these weren’t the old Soul Harvesters. Through a series of controlled self-repair enchantments distributed evenly along their length, Percy could not only repair them from any part, but he could even duplicate them from the pieces!
The rhino attacked again, but it was slower and clumsier than before. The only thing its reckless charge had earned it was another pair of gashes in its soul.
And that marked the end of the fight.
The two sides went back and forth for a few more minutes, but there wasn’t any suspense. Percy’s advantage only continued to snowball, as he avoided the attacks with ease, pushing the Grim Dance to its very limit to inflict more injuries with his four weapons.
He could have made more scythes if he wanted, to surround the beast from every direction, like he’d done against Rambert. But he didn’t see a need for that. This was more than enough to put the creature out of its misery. Besides, he didn’t want to fill his spatial seal with constructs. Plus, he still had some trouble handling that many weapons. This was one of the skills he was planning to work on during his stay in the Valley.
Alas, the rhino wouldn’t live to see that day. Breathing its last, it collapsed once more, shattering the ground beneath it for the final time as Percy’s Status notified him of the upgrade.
[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Soul Harvester – Refined -> Replicating Soul Harvester – Refined!]