118 In A Heartbea

Back to the present...

Allen eyes opened in an instant and he began coughing heavily. He vomited out large amounts of water onto the metallic floor.

"Are you okay?" Dorothy asked while kicking a five-legged monster's body down to the raging waters.

Allen looked around were they were, which was in the mid-upper part of the chamber, near to one of the vents.

"How long have I been out?" Allen asked.

"Only a few minutes since I dragged you out of water." Dorothy replied.

She added, "I healed most of your external wounds. If you had any internal injuries, your regeneration ability could have mended all of them already."

"I never thought you would actually have that kind of ability. Mostly monsters are the ones capable of doing such a thing." Dorothy approached him.

"Where's the sword?" Allen questioned.

"Right there." She pointed towards near a destroyed part of a certain pathway, only a few feet away from the waters. Stabbed through the metal pathway was a sword.

"These pathetic five-limbed creatures attacked me while I was carrying you. They are more powerful than before after the orb weakened." She said, "They are about a sub-level above us, I can hardly keep up with their assaults."

"We can still destroy the heart." Allen gazed upwards and saw the even larger veins originating from the organ.

"Probably, but it's even harder now." Nodding in agreement, Dorothy said, "It is such a waste if we don't finish the book, it's already the last page."

"We'll try assaulting again one more time." He stood up and leaned on the metal bars.

"How about I try it, you don't have to do everything, you know." Dorothy said, "Your injuries aren't fully healed yet, you need to time to recuperate which will be a waste."

Allen glanced at her for a few seconds in silence, then replied, "Go."

After a pause, he added, "Can you get near to the heart?"

"With your condition right now, I'm sure I would get farther than you." She replied and unstrapped a potion.

After that, Dorothy unbuckled her belt and tossed it near Allen.

"You go protect yourself with the remaining pills." She then drank the potion she was holding.

Until she drained the potion to its last drop, Dorothy felt she was reenergized and as if feeling she was more powerful.

A slight pause passed, and she jumped down from her current position to another pathway.

As soon as she landed, the monsters on the pathway where she landed pounced on her.

However, Dorothy jumped downwards again from the current pathway to a different one, evading the pouncing beasts.

While she was travelling down in a fast manner, a lot of monsters were tailing her from behind as she landed from a pathway to another.

Finally, Dorothy landed where the sword was and pulled it up.

She sensed the stored compacted energy in the sword, it was many times more of her current internal energy.

"A trigger type suicide weapon?" She determined while inspecting it. However, the monsters that were tailing her from behind all landed on the platform, making her stop her act of scrutiny.

"I got a long way up to go." Glancing towards the ceiling where the heart was, her sight passed through the numerous destroyed pathways, and where the central platform once was.

Meanwhile, looking down from above, Allen slowly picked up Dorothy's belt. There were still a considerable number of pills left inside the sealed-tight jars.

Suddenly, the pathway where he currently began shaking, but his stand was firm as he was holding onto the metal rail with his other hand.

Turning his body around, Allen spotted a few five-legged monsters that separated from the groups that were tackling after Dorothy.

With crazy shrieks, they charged towards Allen like an angry mob. The faster ones overtook their slower counterparts, even jumping over them.

But Allen was prepared and he already took off the cover of one of the jars. As soon as the jar was opened, he threw two red pills towards them.

Suddenly, the skin on the tip of the fifth limb of one of the charging beasts peeled off, creating a five-petal design around it.

What revealed from underneath the peeled skin wasn't a bone nor another skin, but was a gray gem!

The gem glowed, then it splintered into pieces. In a flash, the monster opened its mouth wide open and made a deep breath.

Like the length of the sound of flicking fingers, the monster breathe out loudly as if it was a roar and a soundwave shot through the pathway.

The soundwave crashed through the other monsters on its way, carrying them along with it.

On the other hand, the metal rails on the sides of the pathway were either bent or thrown away everywhere.

In response, Allen threw two explosive red pills to the incoming soundwave, but it didn't just stop there as he took out a cold light blue pill and threw it on the floor in front of him.

When the cold pill touched the floor, a wall of ice immediately grew from it.

-boom-

The two red pills exploded in contact with the soundwave, turning the monsters and some debris that it was carrying into ashes.

Continuing to travel on its path, it could be noticed that the soundwave was now slower compared to earlier.

With another loud sound, it crashed onto the ice wall, and with another boom, the soundwave destroyed the ice wall and it dispersed along with it.

From behind the supposed to be wall of ice, Allen emerged unharmed. He glued his sight to the particular five-legged monster that released the powerful soundwave.

The monster seemed steadier like a statue, however, it suddenly collapsed dead and its body began dispersing as it turned into dust.

The gem on the fifth limb of the monsters was a key component for them to live. Without it, like the recent monster, they would drop down dead.

He was about to approach the already vaporized remains of the monster when he stopped on his steps and glanced at the direction from the entrance where he and Dorothy entered.

"Dorothy, how much longer will that wall of mist last?" He shouted while his sights were glued to the entrance.

"It already evaporated; I can hear them coming!" She answered back from afar while evading several monsters by jumping up to the pathway above her.

The water near that entrance began shaking, at first it was only mild vibrations, but not even a long time passed short but chaotic waves emerged and bits of dust and stone fell from the ceiling over that location.

Allen then turned his gaze away. Holding the belt on his hand tightly, he took a deep breath and hopped up on the metal guardrail on the side of the pathway.

With it, he used the railing like a stepping stone and jumped up to the next pathway above him.

Successfully landing on it, he took another deep breath and like earlier, he hopped on the rail and jumped up to the next pathway.

He repeated this a few more times until...

-crack-

After landing on another pathway, a crack sounded out from inside Allen's body and made him pause on his movements.

Meanwhile, a five-legged monster attempted to ambush Allen by jumping behind him and slashed with all its sharpened limbs.

Looking from the corner of his eyes, Allen rolled away and dodged the attack. Without stopping, the beast lunged towards him again.

In this instance, Allen sidestepped to the side. When the monster landed, it created a slight shake nearby it.

Nevertheless, Allen was firmly holding on the rail and his balance wasn't affected. In a second, he focused most of his internal energy to his right leg and directly kicked the monster.

A quiet boom sounded and the monster was thrown away.

Allen rubbed his back and felt he touched something hard rising at the lower part of inside his body.

'My regeneration ability is still healing the other parts of my body. It won't be able to heal this one immediately.' He immediately opened another pill jar.

He searched for a healing pill in that particular jar, but couldn't find any. Closing it, he searched on the next jar, but there wasn't a healing pill too.

He kept on checking until to the last jar, where he found that only one healing pill was left.

"Dorothy could have used a lot of healing pills on me." Allen said to himself and swallowed the pill.

A cool feeling washed over his body that was gone in a flash. He rubbed his back again and sensed that there was still something hard rising from under his skin, but it was shorter this time.

"The medicinal strength of the pill is weak." He judged.

There were a few reasons why the strength of medicines were weaker. The user could have consumed a lot of them which made his or her body immune to its effects or the medicine wasn't that of good quality. But in Allen's case, he knew it was the former.

He gazed around him, looking for Dorothy. When he looked above him, Allen spotted her jumping up to another pathway.

Behind her were the numerous five-legged monsters; with some of them shooting soundwave out of their fifth limb, causing themselves to turn into dust.

But those soundwaves didn't hamper her the slightest and successfully passed by location where the central platform once was.

Allen turned back his head towards the earlier entrance, "The vibration on the water stopped." Noticing the abrupt calming of the surge of water on that place.

Then from the dark portion of the entrance, a scaly claw slowly and carefully emerged into the light.

After that, another claw came out along with the earlier one, moving side by side with the other one.

The owner of the claw then showed its head. Unlike a normal lizard's head, its shape was more of like a dragon with bits of its scales near the neck extending upwards from the skin.

In addition, at the end of those rising scales was a crown of green erected thorns surrounding the neck like a lion's mane.

With the lush green appearance of the crown, it made seem look like as if the lizard was what would a Visergoroth Chomper would look like if it was an animal.

As the lizard's whole body came into light, the next most striking characteristic was its big tail.

Next, the tail split into three, with the middle one being the largest.

The lizard turned its head upwards, and it met Allen's gaze.

Gazes meeting, they stuck their sights to each other for some time until the beast squinted and closed its eyes.

Opening them again, it redirected its look towards Dorothy who was already near the heart.

Its tails then rose up, then flippers grew in between each of them at a fast rate.

The tails vibrated, creating waves over the flippers. At some times, the right tail would close its gap between the middle tail and widen it again, which was also the same scene with the left tail.

Allen recognized such actions. The monster was signaling something else with its tail!

Glowing patterns emerged on the tails and the flippers, changing their positions and colors every time in short moments.

Behind the beast, more glowing patterns displayed themselves, lighting up the dark tunnel and exposing the uncountable giant lizards inside it on its floor, walls; and even on the ceiling.

For a single second, everything in the tunnel and in the core chamber vibrated as if there was an earthquake; then the glow on the lizards' patterns intensified and spread throughout their bodies, making them look like a living lamp.

From the middle tails of the other beasts, beams of light shot towards flippers of the furthermost lizard on their front.

They were preparing for a powerful attack!

Allen went on the move, jumping down at once to a small circular platform beneath him.

-whizz-

His movements suddenly froze as a beam of light coming from the tunnel nearly hit his head. The beam then continued to shot forward and hit the wall, creating a deep hole on it.

A pause later, numerous beams of light were launched from the tunnel and they rained upwards to Allen.

The beams of light were like shooting stars, grazing the night sky.

This time though, it was the metal pathways and platforms that they were aiming for, leaving holes as they go through them, turning them into piles of scrap metal that would then plunge to the waters below.

Allen immediately jumped upwards as fast as he could.

Each time he landed, more and more cracks could be heard from inside his body, to a point that his body shivered and became heavier to carry.

As he jumped and landed one more time, a loud crack came from both of his legs. The bones on his legs were completely collapsing and becoming dislocated.

He was forced to hold onto the railing and kneel on both legs!

Meanwhile, as the beams evermore destroyed the pathways below him, he threw the belt with pills that he was holding towards the newly-arrived beasts!

-boom-

All of the remaining pills were destroyed by a tremendous explosion.

Clouds of fire; green, gray and black smoke; cold and hot vapor; golden shimmering lights, and many more then coalesced into a giant ball of pure destruction!

However, the beams weren't even slowed by one bit and resumed to approach Allen at lightning speed.

Allen looked at the beams, seemingly unceasingly on its movements, whatever he could do, it would still go towards him.

-eeeeeng-

In a heartbeat, a high-pitch slash of a sword sounded out.

Everything around Allen paused, literally everything.

The smoke, the beams of light, the large explosions, the waters, all of which were still; only he seemed to be moving now.

He glanced towards the gigantic heart, where a humongous wound pierced through its middle by the sword held by Dorothy.

Dorothy, meanwhile, could also move. Now, she was falling down from a height after successfully attacking. Wounds were all-over her body which she obtained not from the monsters, but from the sword itself. It was after all a suicide-type weapon.

She let out a relieved sigh and muttered, "Finally."