Primary Nature—Bone-Melting Artillery!
The Millingers launched their artillery strike at the horde of approaching Forest Boars, resulting in a cacophony of sizzling explosions. Flesh corroded while body parts splotched on the ivory sands. But the speed of the Forest Boars remained unaffected.
One of them kneeled on the ground, clutching the stump of its left arm, watching the severed portion melting into a puddle on the ground. A spike had pierced into the severed arm. The ivory sand too was melting under the influence of the spike.
The Forest Boar grabbed the spike, ignored its melting palms, and stuffed it into its mouth. Crunching sounds resounded as smoke billowed out of its mouth. Patches of its throat skin fell off, revealing holes behind as a portion of the food pipe melted.
However, once the substance reached its stomach, the digestive juices acted upon it and turned it into fuel. Immediately in response, the rate at which its body was being corroded slowed down by a portion.
The Forest Boar then scooped the melted puddle before it and consumed it too, coughing dryly in response as its teeth turned into a molten sludge. It wheezed in pain as its windpipe got blocked, suffocating it.
The Forest Boar rolled on the ground in pain as its Gold Grade Prana sought to heal it. Slowly, it got up and sat upright, feeling a lot better now as it felt around its intact throat and buccal cavity. It then noticed another spike nearby and grabbed it, watching its palm corrode in response.
But strangely, the speed of corrosion was a lot inferior now. The potency seemed to have reduced, not because the spike used up the Prana within it, but the Forest Boar was just less affected by it now.
Beginner Gold Grade Pranic Beast-Forest Boar!
With a Prana capacity of 4200 and a lifespan of 1006 years, it was a decently powerful Gold Grade Pranic Beast. However, its intelligence was severely impacted by its unquenchable hunger, prompting it to recklessly charge at any and every food source in its vicinity that didn't have the same genetic material as itself.
Primary Nature-Voracious Subtlety!
Voracious Subtlety allowed the Forest Boar to consume any product of a Nature and gain resistance to it. It also extended to the source of the Nature too.
Thereby, once the Forest Boar consumed the Millinger's Bone-Melting Artillery, it gained some resistance to the latter's corrosiveness. The more it consumes the artillery, the higher its resistance gets until it can casually tank an artillery strike on the face from closeup and shrug it off.
This was limited to one Nature, and the gained resistance gets gradually flushed out of the body by the Forest Boar's Prana once it deactivates the Nature. When the Forest Boar consumes the product of some creature's Nature, its hunger would cause it to hunt the same creature as much as possible.
This was similar to the Empyrean Boar King's obsessive hunger towards Empyrean Tusks when it had twenty-plus Natures of Internal Inertial Gravity in its Astral World.
After consuming a few spikes and healing from the damage dealt by the corrosive power in the Bone-Melting Artillery, the Forest Boar wiped the blood covering its throat and grinned, staring at the Millinger on the Kalahatra Border. "That...Prey!"
It plunged its hand into its stomach and ripped out the organ, waiting in patience for a couple dozen seconds until it healed completely. Following that, it began to rush towards the wall, wielding its stomach as a Spirit Weapon.
The stomach was filled with the power of Voracious Subtlety. As it tanked the spikes from the Millinger's artillery strike, it consumed and continued to gain higher resistance. Soon, the spikes were doing less damage than the Forest Boar's recovery means through Prana.
Upon reaching this point, it needn't worry about anything and straight up charged towards the wall and threw its stomach towards the top.
The wall stood at a height of two kilometres, a height not possible for the Forest Boar to scale up. However, if it was just to launch its stomach-Spirit Weapon-using psychokinesis, that was barely possible.
As the stomach scaled up the wall, it exploded, raining stomach juices atop the Millingers who screamed in pain as these juices were geared to digest their bodies, treating them as prey.
However, after the first volley of stomachs exploded, the Millingers adapted to the attacks and didn't use their artillery strike. Instead, they waited until the stomachs were hurled to the top. And exactly a moment before the Forest Boars were about to detonate the stomachs, the Millingers took action.
Secondary Nature-Inhibition Dome!
All Prana activity within the Millinger's Spirit Weapon range was inhibited. This also included the stream of Prana controlling the Forest Boar stomachs through psychokinesis. With the stream cut off, the stomachs couldn't be detonated, since they lost contact with their source.
The centipede upper bodies of the Millingers twirled around, gracefully caught the stomachs and then threw them towards the ground. Immediately after, each of the Millingers grew their mandibles, infusing as much of their power of psychokinesis in them as possible and launched them towards the stomachs.
The stomachs had only gained resistance to the corrosive power behind Bone-Melting Artillery and not the momentum behind the artillery strike itself. A single confrontation was enough for the Millingers to grasp the entire situation.
Instead of dispersing the power of their psychokinesis through a hail of spikes, they
concentrated it upon the mandibles and shot them at the stomachs. Upon contact, the mandibles clamped shut, severing the stomachs into two and rained the stomach juices on the
Forest Boars.
The acidic stomach juices caused the skin of the Forest Boars to melt when they were bombarded with an artillery strike. This time, the spikes didn't have any corrosive power. Instead, they were just the spikes growing on the centipede upper body of the Millingers, filled with the power of psychokinesis.
Snort! Aiee!
The Forest Boars wailed one after another as they were shredded apart, turned into a sieve in a
matter of seconds.
A group of Zinger Aristocrats were stationed next to them, in charge of trading with them. Their mouths were agape, dumbfounded at the sheer might expressed by the Millingers, 'S-
Strong!'
The injuries sustained by the Millingers healed at a visible rate as smoke emanated from their beings, giving them imposing grandeur, 'From a single exchange, they adapted, planned, and executed their enemies without a single casualty.'
[I'll leave it to the Quip Clan to erect a bridge for us!]
One of the Millingers stared at the Zinger Aristocrat and communicated in the language of the Centinger Race.
[Yes!]
The Zinger Aristocrat nodded and unleashed a Zinger Shriek, summoning a horde of Quip Zingers who condensed their Prana Bombs and shattered them, causing the fluid within to spill on the ground.
The shells were then dropped on the carcasses of the Forest Boars, causing them to melt as
they absorbed the corrosive power. After the first round was done, a group of Quip Zingers used their Prana Bombs as Spirit Weapons to plough the ivory sand and clean up the place.
By then, the Zinger Guard, Kenzar Echo had heard the message and was transported by a Zinger Aristocrat that had slingshot itself into the sky. Landing at the designated location, Kenzar consumed the Prana within the Prana Bombs created by the Quip Zingers and condensed a glass pillar in the shape of a nail.
Through his psychokinesis, he drilled the nail into the ground, positioning it at a height of
1750 metres. He then placed the second one at a height of 1500 metres, the third at 1250 metres, and so on.
There was a gap of 200 metres between each glass nail as they formed a flight of stairs from
the wall to the ground. The distance of 200 metres and height of 250 metres was within the jumping limit of the Millingers.
"Wait...seriously?" The Zinger Aristocrat exclaimed in surprise upon hearing about the details communicated to Kenzar by the Millingers.
A Millinger leapt from atop the wall and landed on the first glass nail, observing to see if it
was sturdy enough to bear its weight. It jumped down one after another and landed on the ivory sands of the Kalahatra Desert.
It turned around and nodded at Kenzar Echo, causing the latter to create a few spares of the same and address the Millingers, "We'll be sending more of these glass nails to you soon.
Please wait a little."
Boom!
The Millinger that had entered the Kalahatra Desert returned now, with its centipede upper
body coiled around a Forest Boar corpse. It dropped the corpse before Kenzar, having
consumed the heart and stomach.
[The heart and stomach are the most valuable among the Forest Boars.]
Kenzar didn't argue much, observing the Millingers stare at him without an ounce of fear,
'They have probably thought of a method to face my Homing Satellites, if necessary. They are one of the chilliest but the crankiest Pranic Beasts around.'
Things would be different if the trade agreement was set by the Royal Zinger. The sheer difference in power would cause even the troublesome Millingers to submit. However, as a fellow Gold Grade Pranic Beast, the Zinger Guard, Kenzar Echo had to treat them as equal.
He was pretty powerful. However, the objective here wasn't to get into a conflict but to
negotiate a trade deal. In the end, it was up to him to work out an aggregable sum between the two parties, 'This annoyance has been endless. Hah!'
[As per our agreement, we'll pay you with resources according to the value the remainder of te
Forest Boar's corpse provides.]
[Good!]
The Millinger nodded and jumped onto the glass nail one after another, reaching the ground.
Close to twenty Millingers had assembled within the Kalahatra Desert, watching a second horde of Forest Boars approaching their location.
The number of Forest Boars this time had reached 200 and seemed a tad stronger than the
first wave.
Around the same time, in the lake filled with Poulrays, there was chaos as the water body was
dyed crimson.
Four Forest Boars were standing within the lake, each grabbing a Poulray to feast upon. A
bubble of water slammed into one of them and threw it off balance. But the Forest Boar simply got up and swiped upon another Poulray to consume.
Fibres covered its mouth, making it hard for it to move its jaws. Moreover, some of the fibres had crept into the nostrils too, gradually beginning to suffocate it. But suddenly, the Forest Boar twisted its lower jaw and yanked it out fiercely, pulling with it most of the fibre strands.
It dropped the lower into the lake and then pulled out one tooth after another from its upper
jaw. It used a canine to scratch its buccal cavity and also cut off its nose. Any fibre strands that remained stuck were scrapped off with the canine.
Blood dripped from the wounds, but it didn't matter as they healed in a few seconds. Now, as
the lower jaw of the Forest Boar began to regenerate, it creepily stared at the Poulrays in
hunger. It had already consumed more than thirty Poulrays, treating the place as an all-you- can-eat buffet.
Only one Forest Boar had been killed, but over 300 Poulrays had already become casualties in the process.
Irrespective of how much its intelligence was nerfed through hunger, the Forest Boar was, at the end of the day, a Gold Grade Pranic Beast. So, killing it wasn't easy. The Millingers could do so easily since they were Mutated Gold Grade Pranic Beasts, with a perfect build for ranged
and closed combat.
"Kireeee!"
"Kuaaaaa!"
"Awooo!"
At another location, there resounded helpless cries from Pranic Beasts that were stomped by
group of Forest Boars. Though they had been prepared for the fight, they couldn't deliver and
hence were pretty much wiped out.
But that wasn't all...
Shriek!
[There's a breach in the defences!]
The Quip Zingers in the vicinity were shrieking in a fluster, watching the Forest Boars
climbing atop the wall to jump over the other side. They had simply piled up the ivory sand to form an inclined slope, allowing them to climb up the wall and land on the other side.
Over thirty Forest Boars stood atop the wall, pouring down their stomach juices that acted as a
binder for the ivory sand being piled. They were making a slope on the other side too, making it easy for the Forest Boars to rush into the rest of Sumatra Continent.
"It has been less than an hour!" At a spot far away, Pet exclaimed in a fluster, "How have we
been breached so soon? What about the Homing Satellites?"
"They're being overwhelmed," A Zinger Aristocrat in charge of communicating with Pet
stated with a worried expression, "800 Forest Boars suddenly swarmed that location with only armies of Silver Grade Pranic Beasts serving as defence, "The Homing Satellites are fighting, but the numbers of Forest Boars are too much. Most of them are slipping past."
'There's just too much area to defend about. The Forest Boars located a weakness and swarmed there to break out.' Pet thought, suddenly noticing a figure walk out of the forest. It was a humanoid with patches of fur covering its six-metre-tall body. It had a boar head
resembling the Wean Clan's Boar King in terms of appearance.
The fur on its back resembled a mane as it sat on the shoulder of a Forest Boar and seemed to
be watching the wall carefully, 'Dammit! That makes sense now. There are commander types.
No wonder the Forest Boars are behaving like an army!'
"Do you seriously think we can face these types of endless waves for long, Inala?" Pet
muttered sullenly, sighing at the end, 'Maybe this is your insurance, so that I'm forced to revive you as soon as possible.'
'You're scheming against your only friend too, Inala.' Pet thought before recalling their time
in the Mammoth Clan, 'Though, I guess you've always been that way, from day one. The only
difference is that, despite scheming against me, you treat me as a friend and as a result, share your plans with me.'
"Is that right?" In the core of a Dungeon, Grehha muttered as he stared at a certain Empyrean
Incubator and shattered it after removing a certain nail, watching the figure within collapse on the floor and cough out, "Inala?"