Zarek grinned wildly, his amber eyes flaring with arcs of smoky crimson and blazing brass within. Akin to torches of gold in the night, they lit up like lanterns as he could finally feel his heart churning with heated intent.
He dodged to one side, lashing out with his whip in the same instant. Godsfall pooled into the whip in his palm, lengthening the thread of black until it latched onto the body of one of the enormous Turned worms.
While he couldn't emit Godsfall from his body, a treasure was a far different thing entirely.
With a flex of his lats and a pull of his arm, he launched himself into the air, swinging up and in a wide arc, just missing the open maw of one of the Turned worms.
He didn't even bother to check their stats, feeling not the slightest need to. He only knew one thing.
They were weak.
He fell down the backside of one of them, his Godsfall Steel machete slashing down the length of its back and filleting its body open.
Blood of black and violet spurted, coating Zarek from head to toe, but also masking his scent quite well.
He had studied these worms since the moment he appeared. They were blind as bats, and there were only two ways they could track opponents:
Vibration and scent.
If he was in the air, there was no vibration for them to feel. And if he was coated in their own blood…
What was there for them to smell?
The only thing not coated by the blood was the white smile on Zarek's face. Like a madman, he slashed and hacked, swinging from one Turned worm to the next as though an ape having the time of his life in the middle of a dense jungle.
BANG!
He landed on his steel-toe boots with a heavy thud to the ground. Corpses of Turned worms were littered around him, and the world seemed to have finally grown entirely silent.
Since he stepped foot into this place, he had easily killed over 50 of them. And now, even though he had created such a violent vibration on the ground, there was no movement at all.
'Unfortunate.'
Mutants were smarter than normal, so it made sense it wouldn't want to appear now. But it could also be that he was wrong from the start and there was no alpha here either.
Turned forming packs wasn't exactly rare, but it wasn't common either. They also tended to only come from animals turned Turned.
Earthworms did exhibit some pack-like behavior in some portions of their life, so it wasn't illogical for so many of them to be grouped together here, though the environment itself was a bit odd.
Unfortunately, Zarek wasn't some biologist, so he had no idea just how odd it was that earthworms, let alone so many, had decided to call this place home.
Even if he did know that earthworms preferred moist, organically rich environments, he might just assume that they had clustered here anyway due to the Hub. After all, to Turned, dense Godsfall was their nutrients.
Zarek took a breath and exhaled slowly. The fog of his breath had become crimson in the deepest of senses. Sweat coated his body, forming shimmering beads almost akin to crystal. Every echo of his heartbeat felt like an earthquake to him.
And then he suddenly and violently tilted his head to the side.
The sound of ripping paper and a spike of pain came from his shoulder.
Zarek didn't seem to react much… but his smile slowly faded away. He didn't even cast a glance at the bloody gash in his shoulder, his eyes focused on what he had just seen.
—
[Springy Menace]
Core Stats:
[Strength: F+]
[Dexterity: D+]
[Intelligence: F]
[Endurance: E]
[Charisma: F]
Talents:
[Accelerate: E-]
[Abilities: Burst]
[Coil your body into a spring and reach your top speed instantly while being unaffected by G-forces]
—
'A Dexterity Type?'
The leap from E to D was simply enormous. As Zarek had said before, the odds that D stats would appear now were incredibly low. While it was alright for a few E Warriors to pop up within a few days, and most would probably be E Warriors within a week or two, that was when the real ball game started.
Zarek could easily bridge the gap in raw power between F and E Classes with his skill alone. But doing so for the D Class… that was a tall, tall order. Impossible, even.
The only reason he had been able to overwhelm the Lurker of the Night with D Class Dexterity was by using its own power against it. The spring of the black thread had made him far faster than he would have been alone.
It wasn't easy to replicate that feat alone because the only thing his own Lurker's Whip could pull against now, especially against such a small opponent, was his arm. Relying on his arm strength would be stupid if he had his legs.
The especially annoying part of all this was that this "Springy Menace" wasn't even a Mutant. It was just a normal Turned that had either stumbled into an opportunity or had exceptional Growth Stats. Zarek wouldn't even be able to use it to trigger the Gambling Hub.
'Annoying,' Zarek said with a shake of his head. 'Even so, your Godsfall Droplet should be quite dense nonetheless. I wonder if the reason for your rapid evolution is around here, though…'
Chi.
The wind whipped again, but this time Zarek dodged in advance, his whip stretching out.
'Missed…' Zarek knew the result before his wrist even finished its motion.
He shook his head and let the whip curl into his palm. Taking a breath, he calmed himself, closing his eyes.
The rumble of the earth had calmed, his heartbeat became white noise in the background, the circulation of [Godsfall Eclipse Resonance] continuing as though a simple act of breathing.
Chi.
This time, he moved before he even heard the sound. The small worm was expecting the whip again, but it was wrong. Dead wrong.
Zarek's machete flashed, cutting it in two.
It fell to the ground in pieces, trembling as though trying to maintain its life, but it was all futile.
Zarek's whip moved and latched onto its body.
The Turned soared through the air, both halves of its struggling form landing in Zarek's mouth.
BOOM!
An eruption shook the depths of Zarek's stomach.
Zarek smiled to himself despite the pain splitting his inner organs. How lucky. He just might have a chance to Limit Break his Dexterity too.