Ichor Cell-Chapter 33: The core II

The air shook as the monster peeled itself from the ceiling.
For a long second, it simply hung there, suspended by limbs the thickness of tree trunks, claws sunk deep into the wood. Then, with a sound like splintering roots, it tore itself free. Dust rained down in thick clouds as it dropped several hundred feet and landed in the middle of the cavern.
The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing through the floor.
“Wha…” Grenil swallowed loudly from the tunnel’s entrance. “What is that?”
“That,” Alex squinted through the dust. “Is a Boss.”
The creature’s body was enormous—easily the size of a truck—its carapace a warped fusion of bark, chitin, and dark stone. Each segment was traced with thin green lines that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat, or a timer.
Over a dozen limbs extended from a central torso, each with varying lengths, but all ending in a wicked looking barbed tip the size of a whale harpoon.
The head was worse; a monstrous abomination dragged straight out of an arachnophobes nightmare. Dozens of bulbous eyes embedded haphazardly throughout an insectoid head gave it an unhindered range of vision, while also looking extremely disturbing.
Rows of teeth fitted into a mouth the size of a washing machine rotated behind a set of razor sharp mandibles, promising a quick and painful death to anything unfortunate enough to find its way inside.
Alex took a cautious step back and glanced over his shoulder.
Grenil and Duran were still frozen near the tunnel’s mouth. “Go,” Alex ordered. “Back. Now.”
Grenil hesitated for a fraction of a second, then grabbed the cart and started pulling it away. Duran limped after him, his injured leg dragging behind him. Alex didn’t take his eyes off the monster until he was sure they’d made some distance.
Only then did he turn back—and froze.
The creature’s torso was swelling. Plates along its abdomen flexed outward, glowing faintly between the seams as it inhaled, expanding like a bellows.
Alex’s stomach dropped. He knew that pattern. He’d seen it in enough games, fought enough monsters that
telegraphed
.
His instincts screamed.
“Cover your ears!” he roared, his own hands clapping against the sides of his head a moment too late.
The monster
roared
.
The world detonated.
A wave of compressed air slammed through the cavern, carrying with it a shriek so high and sharp it didn’t even sound like sound—just pain. The floor fractured, spiderweb cracks racing across the glass before a whole layer shattered entirely.
Alex felt his eardrums burst. His vision blurred; blood poured from his nose and eyes. He screamed, but the noise drowned even that out.
The force picked him up and threw him like a ragdoll. He hit the ground hard and rolled limply to a stop, chest heaving, blood trickling from every hole in his head.
He tried to breathe, but his chest seized. The sound wave had torn something loose inside him. His organs felt like they were on fire.
A low, constant ringing replaced all sound as he tried to get up only to collapse, nausea threatening to overwhelm him.
Through the haze, he saw the creature crouch low and freeze, staying perfectly still. Its many eyes glowed faintly as it surveyed the destruction—watchful, patient, as though waiting for him to die before approaching.
Another ambush predator, except this time it was in it’s element.
Against any other creature, its tactic would have worked. With the type of damage Alex had sustained, most things would have died outright, and those that lived wouldn’t be far off.
Unfortunately, Alex was the one exception to that rule.
With every second that it spent watching him, Alex moved further and further away from death.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
The bleeding slowed. His lungs cleared. His vision stopped swimming quite as badly. With a sudden pop, he could hear again.
The monster seemed to sense his miraculous recovery, chittering in displeasure as it suddenly advanced on him.
He exhaled shakily in response, wobbling unsteadily as he got up on his feet. “Alright… round one goes to you.”
The guardian’s hiss faded into a crackling silence as it finally reached him, its massive form towering over him as it stare him down.
It moved first.
The creature’s nearest limb stabbed down. He threw himself sideways, letting it spear into the ground, the barbed tip stuck momentarily.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly it.
Alex stabbed his hand into a chink of its armour, lifting one plate just enough to wedge his fingers underneath and wrench. The seam tore an inch, then two, but the limb torqued and flung him aside with casual force.
He skidded on glass, screaming as the jagged edges shredded his feet, leaping back as a second limb speared the ground a heartbeat later, missing him by a handspan and showering him in shards.
It didn’t follow. It repositioned.
Intelligent. Patient. Testing range and timing.
Tamping down his fear, he surged in again, twisting and turning to dodge the shower of stabbing legs. One came in from the blind angle, a black blur, and only his preternatural sense for danger saved him from turning into a smear on the ground.
Jumping as high as he could, he threw both arms up to take the hit. Bone snapped. The world went gray at the edges for a moment before sensation roared back. He rode the impact, let it throw him, tucked, rolled, came up running. Regeneration stitched white fire through his arms; bones scraped, reset.
The guardian advanced, the rhythm of its many legs a dry thunder. It feinted with one limb and drove a second from below in the same motion, like a fencer doubling a thrust. He dropped his weight, the point tore a furrow across his ribs, and he slammed an uppercut into the joint. Something cracked, but the monster didn’t seem all that affected, calmly retracting the limb.
Before he could gloat, vents snapped open along its torso and a fan of green vapor washed across the floor. Alex jumped away just in time; he watched as the mist settled on the ground and started spontaneously growing.
Within a few seconds, the previously barren stretch of glass was turned into a thriving garden. However, a strange, constant crackling rang out as the plants and the very ground seemed to twist and shift, like waves on an ocean.
‘Holy shit.’
Alex’s face immediately paled as he realised what he was looking at.
‘Are those
roots
?!? Did it just try to grow a fucking
tree
into me!?’
He looked at the monster with a new level of fear.
The spider ignored his horror. Two forelimbs hooked under a ridge and heaved; an entire slab of glass tore free with a crack and came at him like a wall.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”
Alex didn’t even try to block it. He ran. The slab hit the place he’d been standing and exploded into hundreds of shards of spinning shrapnel. He used the opportunity to slide behind a particularly tall ridge, the murky material obscuring him from the thing’s eyes.
The creature hesitated when the dust cleared, its many eyes flicking across the jagged terrain. Each limb moved independently, tapping the ground in short, deliberate motions that sent faint tremors through the glass. It prowled closer, lowering its body to peer between the ridges, the click of its joints echoing like cracking wood. Alex pressed himself deeper under the ridge and waited as the shadow of its bulk passed over him.
The guardian’s belly loomed overhead, armoured plates constantly shifting and rearranging, never leaving the glowing flesh underneath exposed for long. Muttering a quick prayer to himself, he surged out from under the ridge and leapt into the air.
Flooding his arm with mana, he drove his razor-sharp nails into an emerging gap in the beast’s armour and ripped a tear the length of his arm into the beast’s underbelly. Hot, bright green blood showered his face, though thankfully this time it wasn’t acidic. He shoved his other hand in up to the wrist, grabbed something that pulsed like a cable, and tore until it snapped.
The guardian’s whole body bucked, taken aback by the sudden attack. In a panic, it stabbed blindly at its underbelly, but Alex managed to evade it’s blows with only superficial damage.
That all changed when the beast decided to sit on him.
Due to the creature’s blood blinding him, a sudden weightlessness was all the warning he got as the beast slammed its bulk into the ground, hoping to use its multi ton weight to turn him into a smear on the ground.
Desperately tearing his arms free of its underbelly, Alex threw himself to the side just in time; the monsters full bulk slammed into the ground a second later, shaking the entire cavern and raining dust from the ceiling.
He came up to a crouch, swaying, blood slicking down his side and pattering on the glass. The guardian rotated to face him, the plates on its torso rearranging to cover the wound, but he knew he had done damage; the blood seeping out from the cracks was proof enough.
Encouraged by his success, he sprinted up the slope of a fractured sheet and vaulted high. The guardian raised a limb to swat him like an insect. Midair, he twisted, kicked off that limb instead, and landed on another at a dead run, his hand catching a plate edge as he went. He used the momentum to wrench that plate up, the entire tray sized cover peeling off with a squelch.
‘God, I love this body!’
Alex laughed, despite the terror, despite the pain, despite everything, the fact that he could do something like this would always fill him with elation.
The spider whirled, furious now. Three limbs stabbed together like a trident in retaliation. He threaded the gap by reflex and leaped back, feeling the third kiss the skin over his spine. Cold followed by heat followed by an itching, and then his back was whole again.
He was breathing hard now. Even with mana burning through him like alcohol, the muscles had to move. He felt the muscles in his calves and forearms shake, the fine tremors that told him he was truly pushing himself.
Alex grinned. “What’s wrong? Getting tired?”
He darted forward again before it could recover, vaulting over a shattered ridge and landing on its back. His claws bit deep into the shell as he scrambled toward the head, intent on prying another plate free. The monster thrashed wildly, but he clung on, slipping between the stabbing limbs like an eel.
He could feel its panic. The wound on its underside still oozed thick, steaming blood. With every second, the pulsation of its veins got slower—proof that he was wearing it down.
“Yeah,” he muttered, teeth bared in a grin. “You bleed just fine.”
He drove a hand into another seam and pulled until the shell tore apart with a crunch. More green burst out, coating him in scalding heat. He barely noticed. The adrenaline drowned everything else out.
He dropped to the floor as the creature reared up, its underside exposed again, trembling. For the first time since the fight began, it seemed to hesitate.
Alex laughed breathlessly. “What’s wrong? Lost your nerve?”
He prepared to charge back in.
Drip.
‘Huh?’
He stared dumbly at the three-foot-long spike of wood protruding from his chest, his foot frozen halfway to the ground.
The sound registered an instant later, a sharp
crack
, followed by a wet impact. His mouth opened, but only blood came out.
Drip.
He blinked, mind sluggishly trying to catch up.
‘How the…?’
His thoughts came in fragments, scattered like the shards of glass around him.
He coughed, dark red spilling down his chin as his vision blurred. His body was desperately trying to fix the damage, but there was an obstacle in its way.
“Alex!” a muted voice shouted from somewhere to his right.
Drip.
‘Duran?’
He tried to lift his head, but his body wouldn’t respond. His limbs felt foreign, and nothing below his chest responded. The only thing he could feel was the searing pain radiating from the wound.
‘Ah. That’s bad. Thing probably got me in the spine.’
He coughed again—wet, bubbling—and more blood spilled across his lips. His vision was fading now, the edges dimming.
The guardian loomed over him, its eyes gleaming in the violet light, chest plates expanding slowly in another deep breath.
‘Cunning bastard…’
he thought weakly.
‘Hiding magic from me.’
His hand twitched, reaching for the spike impaling him. It was slick with his own blood, the wood pulsing faintly with mana.
Drip.