693 Living Rock
James slid over the ground, dodging the heavy slam of one of his opponents. Clicking his tongue, he stared at the figure in front of him, trying to keep track of the ones closing in from the other end of the hallway.
They were monsters of living rock. At first, he thought they were something like Golems or Automatons, but no; he could hear breathing, and they reacted differently to sudden attacks compared to the kind of beings that have a predetermined course of action placed into them. But even so, that didn't really change anything about the situation that he had found himself in.
All of a sudden, without any sort of warning, he found himself in this dome-like room. There were small openings all around where these rock monsters were rolling out of, before fully standing up. When rolled up, they barely reached up to his hip, but like this, they actually were comparable to Krog in size. The only saving grace was that they were slow, so James was able to get away from them well enough, but that also had its limits. There didn't seem to be a stop to them, so soon enough he'd have nowhere to run anymore.
These were practically the worst conditions he could ask for. Nothing to climb up onto and nothing to hide behind. And worst of all, he was surrounded by enemies that were possibly the worst match-up for him. Being made of stone, the usual tactic was to break them with heavy impacts; shield bashes, clubs, that sort of thing. Not only would they blunt, crack, or just shatter any blade that one used against them, but that blade would barely do any damage in the process. James was a speed-based, close- to mid-range attacker; his attacks were comparatively light, but many. In situations like this, he would usually be the one to get the attention from the enemies, while either Jess, with some earth magic, or Krog, with some general heavy attacks, would actually attack the enemies. But he was alone now; he had to figure something out.
So this was why James had never heard about this monster before. It wasn't 'natural'. Eiro had warned the party that this was a possibility here; that the Devil had used the 'Key' to create new monsters altogether, taking a quality from one monster and giving it to another. And clearly, the Devil hadn't been lazy, considering how many there were.
James pulled out one of the vials attached to his belt, and a translucent, softly glowing mass of magic appeared above the cork. It formed a needle and stabbed into the bottle, as the liquid inside of it was pulled out. In just a second, James had created a dozen of these needles, and he quickly threw one at the exposed back of the monster in front of him, and then one at the newly-exposed hand of the monster that he had tricked into attacking its comrade.
Of course, the needles created from his unique ability hit and stabbed through their skin, falling apart after their contents were pushed inside of the goblins' bodies. Of course, the one whose back was hit collapsed first, but the other one quickly followed as well.
"It's Eiro's own creation, after all," James grinned. If it was like this, then he did have a chance to beat these guys after all. Tricking these monsters into taking each other down wasn't easy by any means. But if the base for them were goblins, then they weren't intelligent, and all their senses were incredibly restricted due to the rock that was covering them. They could probably just vaguely realize where things around them were, and maybe they hadn't even been able to tell that the other monsters were dying one by one. If they had, then even stupid monsters like these would have stopped at some point.
However, the problem was still their sheer amount. James had to move constantly, and barely had the opportunity to properly think and plan things out more thoroughly. He had to improvise, think on his feet, and constantly create new supplies of poisoned needles so that he could take the monsters down. Until the floor was completely covered in the dead monsters. At some point, there were none left alive. Whether it was because the entrances were now blocked by corpses, or because there were simply no more monsters to come at him, but James finally had the time to breathe. With a broad grin, James ran his hand through his sweat-drenched hair, "And that's how you do it."