Chapter 51 Choices 2

Even the skeletons were having trouble getting through the silk-slime goo mixture – though they were still better off than the leeches.

Jay and Anya had more time to fire some spells and bolts now, and began to kill some at the front of the pack.

Whenever the leeches got closer, they simply ran until they passed another dead leech, turning its corpse into another sticky slow-trap.

After sharing some of the silk, Anya was launching bolts with silk wrapped around them, turning the leeches into slow-traps as they died, betraying their own kin.

Jay was down to his last unstable tooth, so he decided to save it.

Out of the thirty-five leeches chasing them, only ten remained. Jay knew he could fight them, though he would have to suffer a few bites.

The skeletons were bringing up the rear, culling them from behind while Anya fired bolts from the front.

Jay jumped into the fray, killing the leeches as he began to run circles around them. He was lunging in with deadly stabs and thrusts before jumping back out of the leeches attack range. With his dexterity and speed, he was essentially not giving them enough time to bite.

Two more leeches died, falling victim to the skeletons’ relentless stabbing. The undead were uncompromising, putting 100% effort into every attack.

The red-stripe leeches were level two with double the health, but other than that, not much else had changed. They were a little physically bigger, but just as fast as the level one leeches; the main difference was that they formed an encirclement the first time.

Jay lunged forward, stabbing again – suddenly, as he jumped back he ran into something, causing him to get ensnared by a leeches bite. He bumped into something.

It was the mysterious girl.

“What. The. Fuck.” he said loudly as he stared at the girl. He completely forgot about the battle raging on behind him.

The girl was not normal, which caused Jay to gasp from the horror that was her body..

Her legs were black tentacles, some human flesh still loosely clung to them. The hood she wore had fallen off since he bumped into her, revealing a bald head with two red lines going over it, similar to the leeches.

“I told you, you wouldn’t escape.” she said in an emotionless, empty voice.

Since Jay was so distracted, another leech behind Jay had enough time to attack now, biting him on his tricep – though he didn’t notice due to the anaesthetic properties of the leech saliva.

Two leeches clung to Jay from behind as he glared at the girl, holding his sword and shield ready.

The little girl had milky white eyes and no pupils, only a red ring which travelled around where the pupil used to be. Both eyes were now widened as they stared directly at Jay, her mouth had no lips and was beginning to drool.

Jay had a sense of uneasiness as he was about to strike her, but since she clearly wasn’t human anymore, he went ahead and slashed his sword right across her face, causing a deep tear across the skin.

Her head flicked to the side from the force of his strike, but when she turned back, a black gash appeared where the sword had cut, some red blood trickling out.

[0.8]

Her eyebrows had an angry expression while her mouth-hole curved into a sort of smile – at least from what Jay could tell.

“Shiiit…” said Jay, realising he had only made her angrier.

Before Jay’s eyes, her bottom jaw slowly split down the middle before opening sideways, strings of slime between the jaw bones as her mouth widened.

The whole mouth split apart. Opening sideways, it revealed sharp, spiny teeth which covered her mouth and throat. Some of these teeth had even started to form on the cheeks.

Apparently she no longer had any human teeth or even a tongue.

She roared at Jay, spittle flying as her jaw stretched wider than her ears, before biting down on him. The creature’s face wrapped right around his neck as its teeth sunk into his flesh.

“Whah the fuh…” Jay was startled by her transformation and didn’t react in time. Bitten, his jaw went numb as his mouth opened wide.

“Hey, this feels kinda good…” he thought as his head leaned back while his eyes rolled back into his head.

[Paralysed – 3 seconds]

[-1] [-1] [-1]

The three seconds that passed felt like an eternity to Jay as fear began to set in after the paralysis notification. The numbness felt fine for a moment but then he couldn’t move, it was like sleep paralysis as he stood there behind drained. The girls throat was making peristaltic movements as it drained his blood away – along with his HP.

Finally, a skeleton arrived to help Jay – it was Blue, the skeleton that had been with Jay from the start.

Without remorse, Blue plunged its sword into the girl, stabbing through her ribs, her neck and her shoulder blades, rending flesh and bone as it slashed away – though it did less than one damage with each attack.

Jay was still being drained by the leeches behind him too, though he hadn’t noticed them yet.

The other skeletons and Anya had killed two more leeches; only six remained alive, including the two attached to Jay.

Blue’s savage attacks helped Jay to mentally keep his head in the fight.

After the paralysis ended, Jay immediately slashed at the girl’s face again as he tried to jump away – yet the leech on his arm stopped him from moving any further.

He quickly pulled out his last tooth as he charged it. The girl learned forward again, grabbing Jay with her arms – which were really arms anymore as much of the human flesh was missing.

Jay head-butted her, right before the girl snapped at Jay’s neck again, stunning him and doing three more damage.

The leech healed a little every time it drained Jay as it stole his life, but Blue was here, fighting by his side.

While he was being drained, Blue continued to do more damage – more than the girl could regenerate from biting Jay.

The leech slapped a hand at Blue, trying to push it away – but to no effect.

After the stun, Jay finally finished charging the spell in his hand.

As she was pushed off Jay’s neck, he punched his hand right into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat, opening his hand and dropping the tooth in before pulling his hand out of her mouth as it exploded in her throat.

“AHH!” she screamed, her voice having many different tones, some of the screams were deeper than a man’s voice as she howled in pain.

The leech on Jay’s arm was nearly dead; the level one skeleton had been attacking it, while the Molodus coat was poisoning everything that dared to touch Jay at the same time.

It was a happy coincidence that the molodus coat applied poison every three seconds, poisoning the girl twice every time it bit him.

The girl’s voice sounded like it was made of many different voices as she continued to scream at Jay “YOU WON’T LIVE”

Jay raised his shield, ready to finally block her bite as he took a moment to analyse her.

[Rosa – Leech Queen Level 6]

[HP 24.2/30]

[Glade Vision]

– Sees temperatures rauther than colours. Thermal vision.

[Annelid Body] (Passive)

– It’s segmented, boneless, muscular, jelly-like body can bend, squeeze, flatten, stretch and twist to extreme proportions, making it hard to wound.

– Requires a moist environment.

– Immune to crushing damage.

– 90% reduced slashing and stabbing damage. Pierce damage counts as stabbing damage.

– 90% increased damage from fire-based attacks.

[Devour]

– The leech queen is hungry, she begins to swallow her meal (1 second channelling time). Once swallowed, the victim begins to be digested slowly by stomach acids. After the meal, anything non-organic is regurgitated along with excess mucus.

– 1 damage/minute.

– Once swallowed, the victim can only escape if the leech queen dies. Can attack from inside with 90% damage reduction penalty.

[Anaesthetic Bite]

– The queen bites into you, syphoning blood as she heals herself.

– 1 damage/second.

– 0.6 Hp heal/second.

– Paralyse the target for (3) seconds.

– Local anaesthetic. Victim feels no pain. Most creatures will not realise they’re being attacked.

[Mucus Movement] (Passive)

– +25% speed in mucus.

[Create Royal Clan]

– After consuming enough blood, can create a leech imp, a loyal servant – capable of producing more of its own kind.

“Yikes, one second to channel the devour skill?” Jay thought as he stepped back, not wanting to be swallowed.

There was a leech still attached to him from behind, stopping most of his movement. It was nearly dead, but still holding on firmly till the very end. He nearly even slipped over onto it as he lost his balance, waving his shield in the air.

“Ah, you little bastard”