[NR] Chapter 183 - Charging Slug (Patreon)

Injured the redeath rose slug shudders, shaking the petals of its body. A sound like metal leaves can be heard and all the petals that make up the slug’s body shift around. While it becomes a fraction smaller, the wound has vanished as if it was never there. Off to the side, Jason is biting his lip while holding in his desire to shout out advice. The System doesn’t care if all he provides is a little advice, but if judged to have planned out too much of the fight it won’t work. So off to the side he stands, quiet and nervous like a parent.

Back in the fight, Lily uses her movement advantage to dodge circles around the slug as it fires a staggered volley of rays at her. As the last tentacle fires off a ray, Lily hops over it and tackles the slug. This doesn’t work too well as the slug just rolls with it and tries to bash her with the tentacles. Luckily for Lily because the slug rolled with the tackle she is able to continue her forward momentum and avoid the attacks.

With her back to the slug now, Lily thrusts out with a back leg and gouges into the slug with her paw’s claws. The furry little feet hiding sharp danger. Damaged once again the slug shakes itself but is unable to remove the damage. Off to the side Courtney nods and whispers to the others, “it doesn’t seem to actually regenerate. Rather, the slug repositions the petals to protect its inside. This time Lily only damaged a petal instead of ripping it off.”

Still injured, the slug hisses and fires off a single ray, seemingly more out of frustration than an actual belief it will hit. Then the strangest thing the group has seen in a long while happens. The slug coiled back on itself and like a spring jumped at Lily.

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Lily is taken by surprise as she had just dodged the ray and is rammed into a tree. She squeals in pain. The slug tries to take advantage of this and pummel her with tentacles again, but this isn’t her first time taking damage. With her head still in the game Lily squirms out from under the slug, retreating behind the tree she had just bashed into.

The slug, despite its unnatural bulk, crawls up the tree’s trunk and around to attack Lily from above. Lily isn’t expecting this angle of attack but has dealt with other mobile enemies before and dodges the slugs attempt to grapple her again with the tentacles.

She doesn’t dodge far though, just enough to avoid them because she has a plan. Lily approaches just close enough to tempt the slug into another grapple. This time though she just scooches backward before striking forward. The tentacle she targets isn’t able to retract fast enough and she gets a good hold on it with a nasty bite attack.

Lily braces against the ground and gives a mighty yank. This rips the slug off of the tree as it spasms from the pain of its eyestalk being bitten. Lily continues the motion and slams the slug against the ground behind her and then bites down hard.

The slug is paralyzed from pain as Lily bites the eye stalk off. And then the screaming starts. Before the slug had made all kinds of noises, but this was the most unearthly yet. It rears up with its mouth open and howls. Little wisps of rose-tinted fog pulses out of the mouth and starts to seep around the edges of its petals.

As the fog boils over the ground hints of blackness and a bone chilling blue flair up and burn away. Lily is freaked out by all of this and jumps away a good distance to watch. Jason and the rest all face palm at the obvious transformation sequence going uninterrupted.

Back with the slug, the petals are leached of their red as the fog escapes. As the last hint of color escapes the slug shrinks in size. The outermost petals harden like scales or a shell while the inner layers mold together like some invisible hand was smoothing out clay. All around it the light pink fog has spread out quite a distance though is slowly being used up as one spot or another flairs up with black and blue.

At the center, the slug has finished. Now bone white with randomly placed patches of scales, the slug charges at Lily. Twice as fast it takes her by surprise and while she dodges it catches her with a sideswipe. The scale patches slicing into her and drawing blood.

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This rightly freaks Lily out and she hops around erratically to avoid it. The slug continues to charge around in an attempt to grapple her so it can grind her down with its scales. With only half her health left, Lily stays on the defensive. Though the citation can’t last and the slug takes too sharp a turn. Slowed down by this, Lily is able to get a bite in again in an unscaled area.

This time when she rips a chunk out of the slug, the piece comes away like flesh instead of a flower petal. The hole left behind in the slug's side bleeds out a translucent yellowed ooze. Beneath this the others can see a flesh-like interior with pulsing green roots that even from a distance seem to be withered.

Unlike the other times being injured, the slug remains silent as it continues to charge at Lily who has to do some tricky maneuvers to escape. Then the slugs three remaining tentacles open up again, the insides like someone took a metal rose and partly melted it. Each tentacle emanates a pale gray ray that spreads out as it travels. While of a much shorter range, the rays are able to cover much more ground.

Lily can only save herself by hopping straight up as high as she can. Even then she barely escapes the rays. As she comes back down the slug charges over. She manages to get her back legs below her and spring off of its head but she slams into another tree from the uncontrolled escape.

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