[SS 2.77] Don't Look Down on Me (Part 2/3) (Patreon)

Poor snake Malignant. It sort of looked like a bundle of broccoli with all of its heads smooshed together, tethered to one nonsensical base. How did the inner ones ever eat, or did they not care, since it was all the same body? It certainly worked in Angelica’s favor, however, because it meant only a few could attempt to attack her at any given time. And it tested the waters with only a single head at first. 

Its maw was certainly intimidating, and Angelica honestly wasn’t certain how well she could thread the needle between the massive fangs bearing down on her to land a solid hit on its flesh. Maybe it was best not to try. She swung her open hand up toward the mouth, spawning a second axe mere moments before impact, quickly giving herself an Order to aid the tactic, on top of her already standing Contract to defeat the beast.

[Current Order: Parry it!]

The icy head clanged against the teeth, causing cracks to appear in both from the sheer combined force. Angelica did her best to push through the recoil that was trying to knock her back, preventing it from debilitating her as it did the snake head, sending it rearing up in pain.

[Current Order: Cut it down!]

She followed through on the opening, Slicing through the now upright neck like it were the trunk of a tree. Though with a bit more added power than even she was used to, thanks to both the Order and new ability.

[Combo Skill: Parry and Riposte Lv.1 unlocked | Offense is the best defense. Don’t let them hurt you, and instead repay their arrogance with an attack Skill of your own. Leverage the impact to create a staggering opening for appropriate reprisal, and deliver a definitive blow to sway the fight in your favor in the form of your choosing. Ability to defend yourself and follow through with an appropriate counter-attack scales with Skill Level, Might, Competence, Creativity, Egoism Attunement, Destruction Attunement, and any additional Attunements of utilized Skills. Results can be enhanced by further performance boosting Skills]

Wow, so it actually works. The idea to perform such acts hadn’t really been from her own Creativity this time. In the actiony book she’d read recently, the main character performed similar moves, so that’s what had inspired her tactics. Knowledge was power after all. And to think the Skills were directly translatable to reality, well, to Demon reality at least. Though in that story, they had been separate abilities while the DGS apparently lumped them together. 

Which made sense, because they weren’t very effective alone. Riposte couldn’t really exist without a prior parry, or something else that created a sudden opening. And a parry didn’t do much more than regular defending would if the opportunity wasn’t capitalized upon. Yes, they were most effective together. 

Also interestingly, this Combo Skill was quite different than the others she possessed. It didn’t directly pertain to any of her existing Skills, it would seem. Rather, she could utilize whatever was right for the situation, and it would help her achieve the desired result. Or maybe that was the caveat. If she tried to stab with her axes, that likely would have produced failure. 

So it wasn’t an instant win that would let her deflect any and all incoming attacks. Competence still had to be at a certain level. Then for Riposte, it didn’t specifically say what the follow-up had to be, just that it took advantage of the situation. Maybe she could have more choice than the weapons currently on hand. Well, it’d be time to find out since two heads struck at her this time.

Angelica swung both axes to intercept the incoming bites. Ambidextral Mastery was definitely coming in clutch, because even while utilizing Slash, it felt like her accuracy would be severely diminished. And then Parry refined it further, guiding her hands to the pivotal point for maximum stagger. After the collision, it was even harder for her to maintain her composure, having been hit with double the force. This is definitely where having a bulkier body would come in handy compared to her light, and easy to off-set frame. But since she didn’t really want to become a swole bodybuilder, she’d just have to overcome it with more Might in the future.

Annoyingly, there would be no way for her to Riposte properly with her axes. In the time it took for her to recover her balance and follow-through with additional attacks, the Malignant probably would have recovered too, or launched a new strike with different heads. But a familiar feeling washed over her in that moment, and of all things, it bore a striking similarity to Auto-Color. It was like time had slowed, only for a split-second, but just long enough to think of a plan, formulate the appropriate tactic to take advantage of the Parry. And as soon as she put it into motion, time resumed.

Six smaller handaxes appeared in front of her, and three flew forward at each head, chopping into the staggered necks. It wasn’t as much force as she’d be able to produce with a direct swing, but that’s why she’d done multiple. On one of them, two of the axes actually managed to hit the same spot, tearing through and decapitating the head. But on the other, they still dug themselves in deep enough to kill that snake. She took a moment to scry the Malignant. It unsurprisingly had most of its Health still, because she’d only taken out a fraction of its heads, but there was something else she didn’t expect.

[Malignant Lv.77 | Health 84% | Poisoned: Toxic - 9 Stacks]

When the heck did I poison it? Her axes purposefully weren’t imbued. There were a bunch of better ways she could kill this Malignant, but she wasn’t doing so for a reason. Because the Malignant suddenly exploding into Essence without proper visual storytelling to accommodate its defeat could confuse her spectators and cast a lot more doubt in her direction than she wanted. 

Ah, right. She’d turned on Venomous Strike when they arrived at the industrial complex, but just hadn’t noticed any activations before now because she’d basically been killing everything in one hit. So she’d honestly forgotten about it. And by the looks of it, she’d triggered it twice against the snake, which was definitely beating the odds. 

The six hits from the handaxes didn’t count, because the Skill specifically only worked with Melee attacks and not projectiles. Which meant she’d only touched the things four times. Venomous Strike currently just had a little over a twenty percent activation chance after her training, and now gave five stacks per proc, so she was far luckier with it than she should be. 

The poison didn’t seem to be doing too much though. As a snake, it probably had some level of Poison Resistance itself. But it was doing enough to warrant keeping it—the Malignants Health ticking down another point. So she might as well leave it on. Since she had new Skills to play with and test, she didn’t necessarily want the fight to end too soon, but it was better to have backup just in case.

Interestingly, the Malignant seemed to understand that it was poisoned. Some of the heads began to tear off the limp necks. So it was either attempting to remove the constant ticking damage or remove the dead weight that was impeding its movements and preventing the inner layers from lashing out at their foe. Either way, it was weird and disturbing, so Angelica did her best to not stare at for too long, especially because she was under fire once more.

The Malignant repeated the same two-headed attack, so she repeated the same counter, working just as well. Except… the snake’s attack hadn’t been the same. Angelica flinched from the pain of the fangs digging into her shoulder, also having grazed the side of her neck. They were sunk in deep, with the monster showing no sign of letting its snagged prey go anytime soon.

[Passive Skill: Puncture Resistance Lv.1 unlocked | The damage and pain from an attack that attempts to pierce into your body is reduced, and the recovery rate from qualifying sustained injuries is increased. Amount reduced and recovery boost scales with Skill Level, Vigor, and Suffering Attunement]

[Vigor has improved from Stable to Firm] 

Bet you think you’re clever, don’t you? If Angelica wasn’t holding back a scream, she probably would have spat that out loud. The pain had mostly subsided already, and a quick check of her Health showed she hadn’t really sustained too bad of an injury, losing more from a typical Angie summon. It was a fairly smart attack. A third head had hid behind another, out of her line of sight, and snuck in its attack while she was dispatching the other two. 

[Plague Resistance Lv.9]

Apparently that was the DGS’s way of telling her that she had been poisoned, since such things were normally kept from the one inflicted, or it would negate the subtlety aspect that other Status Effects tended to lack. Honestly, she wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Her Health wasn’t really dropping at all after the first chomp, and if she did watch until it happened, she could very well assume it was from the continued bite digging into her flesh.

This was likely the Malignant’s big plan, to poison her to death while keeping her held in place with its strong jaw, not realizing how deep in bed she was with Pestilence herself. It had chosen a good spot for its strike too. With the fangs digging into her nerves, her right arm was currently useless. And it’d be hard to hit it with her left at that angle. Maybe it also didn’t suspect she could get a good angle on it with Seeking Projectile, not knowing the extent of from where she could cast it.

But there were plenty of ways to punish this rambunctious bold monster, her bubbling Malice wanting it to suffer a bit for the audacity rather than just kill it outright. Part of her kind of wanted to bite it back and inflict Bug Bite with as many stacks as possible to really make it suffer. It’s something she’d definitely do if she had Gelic’s pointy proboscis, but she wouldn’t be able to get the proper purchase with her current small jaw. Though it didn’t take long for another painful idea to come to mind—painful for it. And it would be best that she acted quickly before the Malignant realized it wasn’t actually winning. 

Angelica tilted her head as far away from the snakes as it could, just out of an abundance of safety. Overly precautious since she had full control, but it still made her feel safer, especially after a hole ended up in her hat. Coat of Arms. Rather than a literal coat, she had just spawned a pauldron on her shoulder, one riddled with pointy foot-long spikes. 

She felt the fangs pull out of her immediately, while the snake head writhed away, hissing the entire time. It had taken many of the icicles with it that were penetrating out the other side, like it had tried to eat an angry porcupine. Two more heads converged on the damaged one and began to rip it apart, putting it out of its misery. Angelica took the opportunity to relocate, having already done plenty of damage to this side of the multi-headed snake.

A new head tried to strike at her during the transition, but it whiffed entirely since she didn’t try to Parry it. Instead, she used Bumble to give herself a boost and quickly skirt out of the way, allowing for the beast’s face to dive straight into the dirt, which she took advantage of with a double-axed Slash. And she continued the momentum to get to her new position, staring down a bunch of fresh faces. 

It really was nice that Bumble worked without her proper wings, allowing for higher agility than just using her legs, as Flutter had before it, like when she was a magician’s assistant. In a way, it felt like her wings were still there, just invisible, because she could swear she felt a gust of wind beating at her back. And fortunately, she was far away enough from the onlookers that they shouldn’t be able to question why she was able to move in such a way. Though to them, it would still probably look a bit like her feet were gliding across the grass.

Apparently, the snake was down playing around, or at least playing it safe. Six heads converged on her immediately without reservation, and the speed of their strikes honestly made her recoil a bit. But she leaned into it, crouching slightly, compressing her body like she was trying to hide. It looked like the Malignant was now wary of her shoulders, but not the rest of her body. Two sets of teeth were headed for her own head, two more for her arms, and the last two were aimed at her sides. 

Well, she’d just have to make them fearful of the rest. Coat of Arms was more literal this time, spikes protruding from all over; her hat, the sides of her dress, and out of new icy sleeves that covered her arms. It wasn’t really meant to stop the attacks entirely, just create a moment of hesitance while she finished the six handaxes spawning at her side. They flew together in a formation, striking each snake head simultaneously, landing a Parry on each of them. 

Once again, time seemed to teeter, slowing down to a near stop while Angelica formulated her next steps. It was so convenient of the heads to line their necks up in an arc for her, though regrettably, she didn’t have the wingspan to reach out and slice through all of them in one clean motion. Maybe she could supplement that with magic.

Angelica crossed her arms, with the blades of both axes aimed upwards at the monster’s flesh. She lunged out of her crouch toward it, beginning the swing toward the lowest pair of necks which she’d miss by a hair. So instead, she released the axes, letting them fly a few inches out of her hands. That would normally do nothing, but then she activated Seeking Projectile on both.

Since she’d already started the momentum, the axes followed along the same path. She had them target the closest ones first, then changed their mark to the next in the sequence, until they both finally reached their sixth target, cutting through each neck along the way. She wasn’t stupid enough to try to fly them back toward herself afterward, as cool as that would look. Instead, she Salvaged them and Reprinted new ones at the exact same time, making it look like the weapons had teleported back into her hands. 

After that, with almost half of the snake already defeated, she went from the prey to the hunter. 

One by one, Angelica severed the heads from the Malignant as it attempted to escape. This made her quite thankful for her modified dress that was easy to move in. Otherwise, attempting to sprint and Slash in a corset would be marginally unbearable. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t like some kind of hydra where they regrew in greater numbers, or else she would just resort to more drastic measures to kill it outright. It was interesting to watch the beast’s Health tick down in accordance with its lost heads. And now that she was having to resort to chasing it down, landing weaker, less devastating hits, the poison stacks were ramping up, which just served to enfeeble it further, not to mention the growing dead weight it was having to drag around.

That made it more difficult for the Malignant to move, and also for her to get close to the vulnerable necks. She was starting to clamber onto its body in order to reach the few heads that remained in the middle, often finding herself having to Bumble away to gain footing again each time it would writhe. At this rate, it would just keel over and die before she could finish her pruning. In a way, she felt bad for tormenting the monster instead of performing a mercy killing, but a lot of that empathy was lost when she thought about how many humans it must have tormented.

They needed a final clash to end this for good. Unfortunately, Malignant Bait had stopped working on it at all. The Skill description did warn that repeated uses on the same one would be less effective. So now its fear outweighed its hunger, desperately attempting to get away. But maybe she could change that. Now that it was down two heads, she cast Starvation on the beast, inflicting as many Hunger stacks as she could.

That completely changed its demeanor. It began to rip apart at the remains of its body, eating what it could without further harming itself, slimming its frame down in seconds until only the two heads remained. Kind of crazy that it could stomach all that mass, but it was really being broken down into Essence that it absorbed, same for all the heads it had removed earlier. Maybe if it was left alive, it would regrow them after all. But none of that satiated the Malignant, since Angelica just cast her Skill again until only she remained as a source of nutrition.

The twin heads struck at her with unparalleled speed compared to any attack before it. Having lost so much weight, coupled with its entirely unrestrained rationale, made it lash out with abandon. Honestly, it was too fast, and maybe not her brightest idea. If she hadn’t already taken a bite and gauged the damage it could do, the fear could have easily paralyzed her. 

But Angelica had been prepared for retaliation like this, and already had her finger on the magical trigger. Her arms swung forward, cleaving the axes to kill the monster. With their current aim, they’d fail the Parry, and she could very well lose her arms from the poor positioning. Except, she hadn’t even tried to utilize the Combo Skill in this instance. Two ice spears jutted out of the ground at her feet, skewering straight through their targeted heads, pinning the snakes in place right as the axes came crashing down.

When the fog of Essence flooding into her cleared, Angelica glanced back over at her party. Surprisingly, they were still engaged with a few Malignants themselves, probably having been half-heartedly doing their duty to exterminate them while watching the spectacle. So she reached out to Angie. “Hey, if you’re up to it, why don’t you try helping them out. Looks like just small-fry you could handle.”

That made the Puck leap to action, and begin stabbing every enemy in sight with her claws. She was relying on that instead of magic herself to not waste MP. Angie didn’t have much to begin with, and the less she used, the more she could return to her main body, which was getting a bit close to being tapped out after the events of the night.

Today's chap was a good bit longer than normal, but tomorrow's will be double the standard length because there was no good place to split it. Oh well.