19 Ch. 17- Battle Practice for Eme

Figuring there would be no better time to acclimate to his new form, I had Emett continue hunting with Jareth on standby, but this time we began to make our way over to the middle area where tier 3 monsters lived.

I didn't want him to gain a new form and not know how to use it, especially with the monster break coming up so soon. So to start off, I had Jareth practice with Emett and allow him to get a feel for his new body, what they did was more akin to play wrestling than a spar, but both seemed to be enjoying it.

Emett's limbs were long and mobile enough for him to grab and hold onto a limb, it wouldn't work against something large like a torso, but it would be just fine to grapple with a monster or person.

He also had 3 little fingers on each hand that seemed to work like claws and the amount of pressure he could use with them was insane for his body size. Solid rocks were being crushed when we had him squeeze them, and I imagine bones would be the same.

I almost feel sorry for anything unlucky enough to get caught in his grasp. If he caught a hold of you with his arms there wasn't much you could do to remove him, he didn't seem to tire at all as long as he was in contact with the ground and despite his diminutive frame he was insanely heavy.

By the time both my summons were done practicing, Emett had learned how to properly hold or wrestle something. This was perfect for his style of fighting seeing as he was a moving tank with unlimited stamina, his only drawback was a lack of speed but that wasn't too much of a problem against most opponents.

It seemed he also retained the ability to change his shape to some degree as a result of having a fluid inner shell of mud, not to mention that with his hardening ability he could turn himself into a weapon and so had no real need for one.

Once they were done I decided to try and test my summoning limits and bring Brutus out to see how long I could maintain 3 summons. After summoning him, I realized just how much more mental energy I've developed from constant summoning, as it didn't seem nearly as difficult to maintain as I remembered.

After thinking about it, I realize that isn't the only factor, as the energy strain lessened when Emett transformed and became noticeably more intelligent than in the past. It seems the skills of humanoid monsters weren't the only reason they were so coveted.

Figuring that since Brutus is out, I might as well let him and Emett spar and see how he does against a much faster and animal-like opponent.

With experimenting out of the way, I was hoping to come across some moderate or weak tier 3 monsters for Emett to gain actual experience with. Not to mention I was excited to see just what my newly formed golem summon was truly capable of.

It didn't take long for my wish to come true as the next monsters we come across were as convenient as they were disturbing. 3 bloated swamp zombies emerged from a murky pond as soon as they sensed us.

I had Jareth and Brutus keep 2 of them occupied for now without killing them, and allowed Emett to challenge the lone one.

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Humanoid zombies are usually created from any summoners who died while in the monster plane, but not every summoner was transformed after death, no one really knew just why some turned and others didn't.

Unfortunately, the bodies of the zombies were worthless and the usual protocol was to bury the bodies after making sure the brain was destroyed so they wouldn't rise again, they didn't even have cores to harvest since they weren't born/created as monsters originally and were animated by something else.

These zombies were especially slow due to all of the water bogging them down and all that was required of Emett was to position himself so that he could capture a leg before the zombie could reach him.

Once the leg had been secured, in a brutal display of strength, Emett crushed the leg and bones within in a sickening bear hug. The zombie already didn't have great balance and once its' leg was taken out it fell to the ground and began to crawl towards me as the closest living thing in its' vicinity.

Before it could make much headway, Emett lumbered over and stomped down on the head effectively killing it, albeit in a stomach-churning way.

I had Brutus and Jareth let the two contained zombies go so that Emett could try his hand against multiple opponents. He seemed to be able to shrug off the unnatural strength of the zombies and systematically mangled and crushed them until they were no longer a threat.

Feeling a little bad about using former humans as combat practice, I had Brutus dig out a deep hole and placed all three zombies within, we pushed the mud/dirt back in the hole and then placed a large stone as a makeshift gravestone. I paid my respects to the fallen humans and then continued on through the marsh.

It was beginning to grow dark and so we decided to find one last monster for Emett to fight before heading back for the day.

Staying within the tier 3 area of the marsh, we eventually had a monster come to us rather than requiring us to find it. If not for Brutus's excellent senses we might have been caught unaware by the expert assassin that is the bristled boa, it was slithering from tree to tree heading towards the living creatures it had sensed.

Seeing this as the perfect opportunity for Emett to really challenge himself against something he couldn't so easily capture, we allowed him to step up and face the recently discovered reptile.

Like all bristled boas it seemed to have a fur coating of white barbs flowing down the majority of its body aside from the head. The snake was around 15 feet long and had the circumference of a dinner plate, it seemed to rely on keeping a slimmer body to allow it to move quickly and tear apart its' prey.

The abrasive spines weren't too much of a worry for Emett with his stony defense, but how he would manage this monster was still unknown to me.

He seems to have learned from his fight against Brutus that a speedy opponent was best fought by immobilizing or slowing it down. He threw globs of mud that hardened upon contact at the snake with most missing, but a few lucky shots hit their mark and made it much harder to move around as effectively.

Seeing as there was an unlimited amount of mud at Emett's feet within the swampy environment, there wasn't a worry that he would run out of ammo any time soon.

After a few more globs were thrown and the snake was moderately contained, Emett decided to fight up close with the bristled predator. He went towards the head, but right before he was in range, the boa wrapped around him with the sections that either weren't hit by the mud or had broken free from their earthen prison.

A horrible grating sound was heard as the reptile attempted to rend apart the golem, but not much luck was had as the hardened mud and rock proved to be a bit too tough to tear apart with friction, after realizing this the snake attempted to crush Emett with its' powerful coils.

Aside from a bit of creaking, nothing the snake could do would crush the earthen golem. Before the snake could escape to try and attack some other way, Emett took his only unbound hand and after hardening it, he jabbed it into the upper section of coils wrapped around him.

He had made his hands point straight out into a knife-hand and pierced straight through the abrasive monster, it seems the spines were its' only real defense and against something so difficult to damage like the stone coating of Emett's there wasn't much it could do.

The snake had hissed out in pain and did its best to escape before any more damage could be done to it, unfortunately for it, Emett wasn't very keen to let it go. He grabbed onto the snake with his other now free hand and dragged the snakes head closer and closer to him before securing the snake's head in a vice grip and literally squeezing the life out of it.

I was equal parts shocked and impressed by the usefulness of Emett's transformation. Stowing the body and core away in my storage, I unsummoned Emett and Jareth and began to ride Brutus out of the marsh and back into civilization.

My first stop, as usual, was to sell off the cores I had gained. Placing the few cores I had retrieved from today's effort I only made 95 credits, which was a pittance of what I usually earn.

I, however, wasn't disappointed by the amount of money as Emett's evolution was much more important than any measly sum made from one day's effort. Him being stronger would net me far more money in the future than had I not taken the time to evolve him and just hunt like normal.

When I made it to the Summoner Association I immediately head over to Max's corner I go and greet the usually stoic man, "What's going on Max?".

He just looks over to me with weary eyes and says, "Everyone seems to be working extra hard to hunt monsters before the break, and as a result, everyone at the association is having to work overtime. I was scheduled to get off at 5, but it's already 7 and it still doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon."

Looking around I take notice of all the people within the building and note that there are almost twice as many people as usual. Realizing I'm one of the people holding him up from going home I sheepishly begin to take out the few corpses of the day which were 6 redcaps, an iron-scale newt, and a bristled boa that was rather mangled.

The bodies came out to a total of 135 credits, the boa mas mangled too badly to be worth much, and the redcaps had little use aside from cashing in as monster bounties, the only monster body of any actual worth was the newt and since it was a tier 2 even that amount wasn't much.