Ichor Cell-Chapter 36: The Core IV

Forcing himself to stand, Alex swayed unsteadily on his feet. Although free now, his situation was far from good. A fist sized hole was knitting itself shut in his torso and he had lost what felt like several adult men’s worth of blood. To be honest, it would be a miracle if he could walk straight at the moment, much less fighting a regenerating fifteen-legged spider the size of a house.
The only thing that kept him from collapsing was the sight of a severed arm lying on the ground, still gripping a stake dripping with green blood.
‘That idiot…’
He swore in his mind, sorrow warring with rage in his mind.
Forcing himself to look away, he channelled all his emotions towards one singular purpose: killing the thing in front of him.
The guardian too, didn’t look the best, though its condition was undoubtedly better than Alex’s. The veins of green light coursing through its body were much dimmer now, and it was slower now, with tired, jerky movements.
The wooden prosthetic it had attached to its missing limb was also showing signs of falling off, suggesting that its healing factor was not as strong as his own, though the wound in its abdomen was nowhere to be seen.
All in all, it looked like the battle would end soon one way or the other.
“Come on then…” He rasped, raising his arm to his face. “Let’s finish this.”
Drawing on the last of his mana, Alex pushed it into his leg, launching his tired body forward. Wary of its recent clash with Duran, the guardian retreated to attack at range, summoning roots around the approaching vampire.
Alex smiled. Abruptly drawing back his mana, he collapsed to the ground, the roots sailing harmlessly overhead.
And landed face first in a puddle of bright green blood.
Confused, the boss was just about to press the attack when a sudden sense of danger made it jump back, the roots it was about to call forth forming a wall in front of it instead.
“What’s wrong?” Alex’s voice echoed through the devastated cavern, though it suddenly lacked the pain and exhaustion that had filled it earlier. “Weren’t you gonna crush me like a bug?”
With a bang, a figure streaked through the air, dodging around grasping vines and landing on the defensive root wall.
“Oh, sorry.” Alex grinned down at the retreating spider as power flared through his body, the very air around him distorting. “Wrong choice of words.”
Almost as if it understood him, the guardian stopped its retreat, letting out a chittering roar.
It launched a barrage of roots in his direction as its body started inflating. As he dodged, Alex’s mind flashed back to the start of the fight, when a mere roar had rendered him incapacitated for several seconds.
“Fool me twice… You’re not fooling me twice.”
With an exertion of will, he flooded both his legs with mana, crouching low before kicking off with all his might.
The ground cracked.
He shot forward like he’d been shot out of a railgun, a blur of red and green blood. Roots speared the space he’d just vacated, hard and fast enough to punch holes in stone. One grazed his back, but his acceleration carried him past the first wave.
The guardian swelled, carapace plates shifting to make space for more air, its fifteen legs spreading for stability. It had seen his agility before and had learned from it. Instead of trying to chase him with individual roots, it rolled the floor.
A dozen foot wide section of the cavern floor bulged up in front of him, like a hill trying to grow in an instant. Roots braided under the surface and erupted in a wall of spikes and thorns.
Alex couldn’t slow.
Mid-air as he was, he cut mana from his legs and shoved it up into his arms. Both limbs saturated entirely with mana, growing razor sharp nails and making him feel like he could break a mountain in half.
With a roar, he raised his arms and brought them down in a double handed hammer blow.
Wood shattered. Splinters cartwheeled through the air. He rammed straight through the half-formed wall, arms shredded from the impact. Strong he may be, that didn’t prevent the mana enhanced wood from ravaging his flesh.
Grunting in pain, he burst through on the other side—and saw a tree trunk coming at his face.
The guardian had closed distance while he broke the wall, surging on its many limbs. One of its true legs, thick as a pillar, was scything down to pulp him.
Alex twisted right before impact, slapping the limb and using the recoil to throw himself to the right. He didn’t fully clear it.
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The leg grazed his leg and sent him tumbling. Even a partial hit carried monstrous weight. His foot dislocated with a crunch. He crashed into the ground and rolled twice to bleed off his momentum.
He did not waste time letting his body recover slowly.
He dragged the mana from his arms and stuffed it into the ruined calf. Flesh ballooned. Tendons snapped tight again. Bone ends met and fused, rough but functional.
The guardian pressed its advantage.
A tangle of roots snapped like whips toward his face, fast, each tipped with a knobby knot that would crush bone. Alex yanked more mana into his legs and kicked off again, slipping through a gap in the assault. The roots lost their target and smashed into the floor where he had been.
Extending his arms, he flew between the guardian’s front legs, close enough to smell the surprisingly pleasant smell of sap and moss on its underside. Flesh tore. Green spurted from several of the guardian’s joints; Alex’s claws having left deep rents in the relatively weaker sections of armour.
The guardian responded by dropping its entire body on him again.
Unfortunately for it—while diminished from the attacks he had delivered—the speed of his jump took him well clear of the beast’s underside by the time it connected with the ground.
The beast slammed down, pulverising the glass flooring, and released a bright flash of green light at the same time. Roots erupted around it in a ring, forming a spiky wave of death rapidly heading in his direction. He tried jumping out of the way, but a flare of pain in his ankle made him stumble.
He looked down and noticed a small root wrapped his foot, holding the limb tight.
‘Mother fu-’
Then the tide was upon him.
Discarding all thoughts, Alex entered a hyperfocused state as he stretched his body and mind to their limits to survive the onslaught.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty. The roots kept coming. With every one he cut down two more took its place. An unending deluge of stabbing strikes that forced him to twist his body beyond what was possible just to survive.
He gritted his teeth as a dodging manoeuvre tore a hamstring, only for the next blow to come for that same leg.
Letting out a hoarse yell of determination, he endured, the seconds dragging slower than snail’s pace.
Then, suddenly, the attack ended.
For a moment, the cavern was silent except for the creak of settling roots and Alex’s ragged breathing. Bending down, he tore off the root still squeezing his foot like a vice, finally freeing himself.
Looking up, the guardian’s massive frame slowly rose from where it crouched, listing slightly from the numerous injuries on its legs. The glow of its veins was almost non-existent now, a mere shadow of the molten green that once filled its form.
A low creaking drew his attention, before its wooden leg detached, collapsing to the ground with a thunderous crash.
Alex didn’t hesitate.
Licking off the bright green blood coating his hands, he dumped mana into his legs and ran—limbs burning, blood surging, muscles thrumming with stolen strength. Dust and fragments flew behind him. He aimed straight for the monster’s left flank, the side with the missing limb presenting an obvious target.
The guardian reared up in response, legs stabbing the ground to keep balance. A volley of roots shot out, but sluggishly—they drifted, half a second too late. He cut through them like tall grass.
Then he was under it again.
The spider’s eyes tracked him, glowing faintly, but before it could react he slammed both claws into the nearest leg joint and pulled.
The sound was wet and cracking—like snapping apart a bundle of thick branches. Blood burst out, splattering across his chest and empowering him. The leg bent at an impossible angle, the fibres inside tearing one by one until it tore off completely, blood gushing from the wound like from a bucket.
The guardian shrieked, its many legs scraping the floor. Roots quickly burst from the wound, sealing it shut, but the damage was still done.
This time, he went for the abdomen.
He vaulted over one of its remaining stable legs, rolling across its shell, then slammed both fists down on a cracked section near the middle of its body. Green blood welled up instantly. His claws dug in, widening the fracture, until chunks of chitin broke loose and fell to the floor with wet thuds.
The guardian thrashed, slamming its bulk side to side to shake him off. Each movement sent tremors through the cavern. Alex clung tight, legs braced, arms locked in deep. His muscles screamed from the effort, but he forced them to obey, pouring mana into his grip.
He tore out a slab of armour the size of a shield and flung it aside.
Underneath, glowing vines pulsed faintly—its organs, maybe, or nerves, but they looked alive. They moved like worms, twisting and contracting, trying to close the hole.
Alex didn’t let them.
He plunged his hand in and ripped them apart. Green ichor sprayed up in a wave. The guardian shrieked again, louder this time, a piercing chitter that rattled his teeth.
He didn’t stop.
He ripped with both arms again and again, pulping whatever was beneath. His blows came faster, more savage, each one leaving a deeper crater of ruined flesh and shattered resin. Sap and blood mixed into a foul-smelling sludge that steamed in the air.
One of the guardian’s massive forelegs swung toward him in a panic. It was a clumsy attack, but it still had power behind it. He barely twisted out of the way in time, and it grazed his ribs, sending him skidding across its back. Bones cracked. His breath hitched.
He growled, half in rage, half in pain, and forced the bones to knit as he landed. Then he kicked off the carapace and shot toward the monster’s head.
He hit the guardian’s face, grabbed a protruding mandible, and yanked.
It resisted at first, but he filled both arms with mana until veins bulged dark under his skin. With a wrenching twist, he tore it free. The limb came off in a burst of sap, the creature’s scream echoing across the cavern walls.
Alex hurled the mandible aside and smashed his fist into one of its eyes.
Green gel exploded outward. The spider staggered, its head jerking back. He punched the next eye, and the next, until half its face was a ruined mess of shattered lenses and leaking fluid. Its remaining legs flailed wildly, lashing out in every direction, but Alex had already jumped back onto its body.
He planted his hands in the shattered shell again and resumed savaging its insides.
Clamping his hands on either side of the savage rent, he flooded his arms with as much mana as he could, muscles visibly bulging from the effort. The guardian screamed, all fifteen legs slamming down in unison. The ground rippled. Rocks split.
Alex screamed back at it, muscles tightening, fangs bared.
He tore upward.
The carapace ripped in two. The sound was deafening. A geyser of green erupted, washing over him in a steaming flood. He didn’t care. He tore again, carving the wound wider, until the monster’s body was nearly split open from abdomen to head.
The guardian’s legs faltered. It tried to lift itself, to move, but they buckled under its own weight. Its abdomen deflated like a collapsing lung. The vines around its wounds went limp and lifeless.
Alex climbed up onto what remained of its back and stood there, chest heaving, blood dripping from his hands.
The creature twitched once more—one final, instinctive spasm—and finally went still.