The Decaleech's tendrils absorbed blood voraciously through its needles that attracted blood like a magnet. Its flat body pulsed in response and swelled up, growing to resemble a thumping heart. With every pumping motion, its size grew, having swallowed more of the Empyrean Tusk's blood.
From the start when it latched onto the 1st Empyrean Tusk's trunk to when it started sucking in blood, the 1st Empyrean Tusk didn't feel an ounce of pain. Rather, for some reason, it wasn't even aware of its blood loss. This was why Decaleeches were a menace.
Primary Nature—Bloody Affection!
When activated, the Decaleech can attract blood towards itself and absorb it without alerting the target. While doing so, it would inject neurotoxins that prevented the target from becoming aware of its blood loss.
By absorbing large quantities of the target's blood, the Decaleech consumes the Prana and minerals in it and deconstructs the blood into elements that help in building its own body. Through this, it can grow in size and strength.
Both the strength and size gain were temporary. Only its body's growth was permanent, which was the Decaleech's primary objective. Without absorbing blood, it would never grow up and reach maturity.
The Primary Nature of Bloody Affection didn't stop at that. While absorbing the blood, the Primary Nature sometimes causes the Prana to fuse into the blood, creating a reaction in which the mind aspect of the prana gets triggered.
This casts a net and fishes pieces of information present in the blood. The majority of this information is useless for the Decaleech and typically forgotten by it after a while. As for the rest, it carefully consumes it and uses that information to become more aware of its world.
After all, the Decaleech has no sensory organs. Its sole means was to sense the blood in a target through its Primary Nature. Hence, it uses the data in the blood to learn more about its terrain, the various creatures that exist, etc.
The longer a Decaleech lives, the more cunning it gets, armed with a large arsenal of information sourced from various Pranic Beasts. Unfortunately for this race, Decaleeches were short-lived creatures, living for a maximum of 301 years, the shortest for Silver Grade Pranic Beasts.
But they made up for it with a Prana capacity of 2108, which was decent enough to do everything they wanted. Moreover, their gelatinous body had no organs and therefore didn't have any weaknesses that could be targeted.
If any, its Spirit Container could be termed a weakness. The Decaleech typically moved its Spirit Container across its body, keeping it safe. The mind aspect of Prana combined with information-rich blood would form a small cluster around the Spirit Container and act as its brain.
Therefore, it always kept a reserve of 100 Prana that would work to be its brain. If that were to ever get consumed, it would enter a vegetative state.
Decaleeches were immune to blunt damage, making them very annoying to deal with. While absorbing blood from a target, they could eject large volumes of the target's blood—containing the target's Prana—into any abilities directed at it by the target.
It would merely result in a clash of the same Prana—within the blood and the ability—and neutralise each other to a great extent. Hence, it was hard to get rid of Decaleeches once they attached their bodies to a target.
The Decaleech on the 1st Empyrean Tusk's trunk continued to absorb blood when suddenly, its surroundings resembled a desert, with intense heat targeting it, causing it to shrivel up in response.
In a matter of seconds, all the blood in its body dried up, stopping its functions to result a body in a vegetative state. Staring at it from nearby was Raaha, observing the amount of blood it had absorbed in that short duration, "They are indeed a menace."
"Take position!" At his words, elites took up position within grooves on the sides of the 1st Empyrean Tusk's legs and its underbelly. These locations were the target spots for Decaleeches.
An elite tied a rope to his leg and dangled from the underbelly of the 1st Empyrean Tusk, holding a Spirit Weapon that glinted with a mysterious radiance and sped towards a rotary Decaleech approaching his location.
He, alongside ten elites, targeted it with attacks, barely able to thwart it. They were unable to kill it and just managed to negate its momentum, following which it fell to the ground.
But immediately after that, the Decaleech curled up into a cylinder, using the compression to store energy in its tendrils similar to a spring, keeping them intertwined to not launch itself prematurely. Once enough potential energy was stored, the lock was released, causing its body to shoot up towards the 1st Empyrean Tusk's underbelly once again.
Its tendrils unfurled and rotated like rotor blades, being bombarded by Spirit Weapons as it approached its target. As the 1st Empyrean Tusk moved forward, the number of Decaleeches targeting it continued to increase.
The Decaleeches were similar to Ewworms in that they didn't emit any presence. Moreover, when a Decaleech moved underground, it neither generated sound nor vibration, truly stealthy in nature. It would approach the surface only when it senses a source of blood. Otherwise, it remains asleep deep underground.
The Empyrean Tusks stomped the ground with such force to hopefully crush as many Decaleeches as possible. The meteor strike was also in an effort to make them wary and not approach the herd. But Decaleeches were instinctual beings, worse than most Iron Grade Pranic Beasts.
Hence, they blindly shot forward to target the Empyrean Tusk herd.
Contained in every single Empyrean Tusk's body is a volume of blood enough to fill a sea. Therefore, in the senses of the Decaleeches, there arrived a row of bloody seas, possessing enough food for the entire region to feast upon for centuries and still not run out.
And of course, every single Decaleech in the Sticky-Slip Plateau could detect such enormous seas of blood and rushed towards the herd.
The only reason the herd passed through such a dangerous area was that their only losses would be blood. There wouldn't be a single casualty among the Mammoth Clansmen due to the Decaleeches as long as they attacked while remaining safe in the groves covering the Empyrean Tusk's exoskeleton.
The region beyond the Sticky-Slip Plateau was rich with resources and could allow the Empyrean Tusks to replenish their lost blood. The losses sustained here would be minimal when compared to more dangerous terrains that littered around the Sticky-Slip Plateau.
Of course, only if the Mammoth Clansmen hid within the groves on the exoskeletons of Empyrean Tusks would their lives not be placed under harm.
"Die!" The elite hanging from the underbelly of the 1st Empyrean Tusk was overzealous in his attacks, ignoring his safety. Taking the opportunity, a Decaleech latched onto him, wrapping its ten tendrils around his body to form a cocoon.
Five seconds later, it free-fell to the ground, transferring the vertical descent into rotatory motion, hence falling slowly. Left behind at the spot it had targeted was the withered husk of the elite. Five seconds was all it took for the Decaleech to suck him dry.
Seeing his condition caused other overly zealous compatriots to retreat into the groves and launch projectiles from there. Of course, they could only do so because they had the option.
As for the reincarnates on the caravans, they were fucked. On Sumatra Chronicles, this event was pretty major, as it happened during a time when the newborn Empyrean Tusk brought by Resha's parents still hadn't grown big enough to accommodate them. Hence, they had to desperately protect it from harm.
5th Minor Crisis!