Lucy wielded sword and dagger as she stared down the creature in front of her, going over her plan. That was the sort of plan fighters made, right? She reminded herself that she had fought things before. Frightening creatures even, and she had won!
She’d just never fought anything like this.
The beast was massive compared to its old wrinkled form.
And better armed, she thought, as she stared at the appendages pulling it crazily forward. Then she watched the tentacles extending from the overgrown primary appendage as they easily ripped up a patch of plant-tendrils from the ground and shoved them into what seemed to be a secondary mouth at the center of the mass of tentacles.
Lucy tightened her grip, feeling each of her hands closing smoothly around a weapon.
Okay, no time for puns. Cut the legs, hamper its mobility, go for the kill, and stay the hell away from the stabby tentacles.
As she moved to position herself behind the monster, she saw Rikorlak forming his fin. With any luck, he would act as a distraction like he had with the guards, allowing her to go in for the kill. Just before she charged, she opened up her System and dumped all the points she could into the 4 point membrane strength upgrade, leaving her with 3 EP to spare.
She focused on the appendages protruding from the creature’s underside as she neared and the upgrades took hold. If she got too close and one of the arms managed to get a good grip on her, it would be over.
Lucy took an experimental swing with the cane-blade, only to realize she was still too far back.
Come on! she urged herself, pushing back the fear that told her that anywhere within a hundred body-lengths of this creature was too close for comfort.
It left a swath of torn plant tendrils and swirling water in its wake as it lumbered toward the pit, and as soon as it leaned over the edge to work its way down the slope, Lucy gave herself a final mental push and committed to the attack, surging forwards on her new flagellum.
She swung her blade, feeling the resistance of the water more keenly as she tried to leverage enough force to slice through the “leg”. She pushed with all her strength, and with some effort, her blade hacked through the appendage she had chosen.
Then she thrust herself backwards in the water, expecting the creature to turn around and attempt to savage her with its deadly tentacles.
Instead, it continued lumbering on forwards, and Lucy felt her stomach drop. The monster was ignoring her completely, heading straight for the herd. She mustered up her courage.
Alright, buddy, if you’re not gonna fight back like an honorable organism, I’m gonna stab your face!
Swimming quickly above the pale, bloated back, Lucy moved just far enough along to avoid any of the grasping appendages and brought down her sword in a plunging stab.
It didn’t actually need to be the thing’s face, of course, since it didn’t have a brain, and Lucy wasn’t stupid. Piercing its membrane anywhere should do enough damage to at least make it turn and fight.
She leaned into it as she stabbed, pushing with her tail for extra power as the base of the sword itself poked slightly into her membrane. The sword slid into the doctor creature’s membrane for about a fifth of the blade’s length, then stopped. Awkwardly, she pressed down harder on it with the added help of her hand that held the spike, and it went in another little bit.
But then it stopped again, and no matter how much she pushed against it, it wouldn’t budge.
Okay…fuck. I guess I could use some better weapons!
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
It felt like trying to stab through a whale’s blubber with a pocket knife. She could work it in, just not far enough to do any serious damage.
All the while, the doctor barreled forwards.
New plan, new plan!
Somehow thinking the words didn’t make them reality. So much for manifestation!
As she tried to free the sword, she saw Rikorlak up ahead, trying to urge the microbes to move along. That would help, but as awkward as the doctor-creature’s gait was, the herd was even slower, panicked and disorganized. Some of them were unable to move at all, slowed or fully tethered by the fungal strands that now trailed out of them and into the ground.
Microbes wriggled back and forth in a panic, some clustering with their immobile kin as others moved on. At the center of the chaos Rikorlak bumped and jostled to nudge them out of the way, but it wouldn’t be enough. It was still up to her to stop the doctor and save them.
I mean, I could just leave now I guess…
It was tempting. At this point she didn’t think he was likely to, but Bug-Man could show up at any moment, and even if he didn’t the fight wasn’t going too well.
But then she caught sight of the red-membraned microbe casting about wildly in fear, and she sighed. Alright, alright, I’ll try something else.
Finally she was able to rip the sword free with a tug. A large, quick spurt of cytoplasm leaked out, but then it stopped almost immediately as the wound closed partially back up.
At the sight of the cytoplasm pluming into the water, Lucy had an idea.
I mean, I’ve never given an IV before, but I have seen it done.
Jabbing her dagger down into the slight indentation it had made, Lucy commanded her body to start producing a certain enzyme.
Maybe those experiments will pay off even before I get rid of the fungus.
The enzyme she produced was the one that had begun eating away at her own cell structure, and she hoped it would do the same to the creature she was fighting. Using motor proteins to maneuver her vacuole around the newly produced enzymes, Lucy started to produce a spike internally as well.
This…might be tricky.
As the creature bucked beneath her, Lucy stabilized herself with her flagellum, swishing it to anchor her in the water as her vacuole began to fill up with destructive enzymes. They immediately began to eat away at it, but she only needed the vesicle to hold out for a few seconds longer.
Letting go of the sword completely, Lucy worked the dagger in her hand as far into the wound as it would go. She knew it was deep enough when cytoplasm began to flow out from the hollow spike in a dense, steady stream.
Lucy looked down to see how far they were from the herd, only to see that the doctor-creature below her was bounding after a microbe corpse that had come untethered from the ground and was now rolling away from the crowd of confused microbes.
Claude! she recognized. …poor fella. After cutting him loose, the guard who’d taken him earlier had come over to stop Lucy and Rikorlak from escaping, and his body must have been left behind.
By the time the doctor reached Claude, Lucy’s vacuole walls had grown thin, and were near to releasing the corrosive enzyme into her own cytoplasm.
The movement of the creature stilled below her, and as the spurt of cytoplasm coming up from the spike impaled in its back slowed to a dribble, Lucy seized her chance. This was going to be the tricky part.
Wincing, she maneuvered her internal spike until it jutted halfway out of her body, then lined it up with the spike in the creature’s back. Then she slammed her body down, connecting the two in the world’s shittiest IV.
Then, just before the vacuole inside her burst, she brought it over to the spike inside her and pressed it against the hole. The enzymes began to flow through it, moving from the vacuole through the connected spikes and into the doctor’s body.
Then the vacuole burst, spilling its deadly contents inside her.
As quickly as she could, Lucy opened membrane channels all over her body, letting in a rush of sulfur-rich molecules.
And before the dense pool of enzymes could destroy her ribosomes or anything else, they were pulled through the hole in the spike inside her, and began again to pump into the creature through the spike in its back.
The enzymes were suctioned forward by the low density ahead, and pushed by the influx of molecules swelling the rest of Lucy’s cytoplasm from behind. Not all of it made it though the spike, however, and she mentally gritted her teeth against the pain as a hit-marker floated up in her vision.
By the time the doctor realized something actually dangerous was entering his system, it was too late. He bucked wildly below her, but Lucy had already detached herself from the makeshift IV and started to swim away.
With a feeling of triumph she swam farther away as the enzymes went to work.
Ha! How do you like it when someone injects something nasty into you, mother—
Then she saw the remains of the microbe she had known as Claude hanging in a limp, fleshy curtain from the monster’s mouth, even as it writhed and squirmed, its appendages opening and closing as they grabbed at the membrane they were attached to.
Lucy’s mood sobered as she watched the creature suffer.
And as a rush of blue dots—more than she’d ever seen—flowed into her from the corpse, Lucy thought about life, and what her next steps would be. She had seen the number of points awarded for killing the creature.
It was time to Evolve.