[NR] Chapter 370 - Seven Inches Back (Patreon)

Jason burst out of hiding, the trickster coyote wasn’t completely surprised by this, but that didn’t matter. Even though the coyote was prepared for the attack, it hadn’t actually seen him and so the assassin title was in full effect. Sure, he would have been able to eventually beat the coyote without it. Just would have been hard to do without his middle finger.

See, instead of one of his usual ways of dealing with monsters, Jason decided to try a method that would put the trickster down much quicker. A simple one finger punch, straight to the ear. Normal people would break their finger just by considering this so it took a lot of Energy reinforcement on Jason’s part to not have the same thing happen to him.

With the title removing System restrictions against one shot kills and the protection it normally gives vital organs so the idea of hp has any meaning, Jason’s attack succeeds. His finger pierces through the delicate ear canal and into the brain. From there it was a simple matter of channeling an Energy Blast into that oh so delicate organ and the fight was over.

Sure, there were other coyotes in the area, but seeing their boss being one-shot didn’t exactly help morale. Even with what had to be some nudging from the System, it took much too long for them to decide to attack. Jason, on the other hand, knew exactly what he wanted to do, run away again.

He could have taken them, but the event only required him to kill the bosses and fighting them all would have been a painful and drawn out fight. Jason knew his combat niche was slowly but surely moving towards being an assassin and so leaned into it. Though there is a silent promise to himself that it wouldn’t always be this way. That later he would be able to wade into battle and fight.

For now, though, he silently makes his way towards the snakes as the coyotes fall apart. It was an inevitable outcome. While the snakes focused on personal ability, the coyotes were focused on teamwork and leadership buffs. Now that the trickster was dead, those buffs vanished and what had been an even fight fell apart. Even the System couldn’t keep the carefully balanced event chugging along.

Jason hadn’t even planned for this, but it provided the perfect opportunity. While all the snakes streamed into the coyote’s side of the battlefield, the titan python stayed back, worried about this being a trick. A valid enough fear, though in this case the perfectly wrong option because it left the python alone.

A situation that was ripe for the taking and Jason was just the person and knew just the vital point to strike. The old saying was somewhat out of fashion now, but the idea of a snake’s vital point being seven inches back from the head has an important shred of truth to it. If you just smash a snake’s head in, the body will still be able to flail around for quite a time. Not exactly the best thing to have happen when the snake you’re fighting is as big around as you are.

The idea behind hitting “seven inches” back isn’t to get out a ruler and measure out exactly seven inches. Rather, it is to hit far enough back to cut off the nerves and disable as much of the body as possible. Oh, and of course since snakes can vary in length and organ location to some degree, exactly seven inches was simply a silly generalization.

Instead of some arbitrary length, Jason settles in near the titan and spends over an hour observing it. This could have taken longer, but thankfully the snake was restless and had constantly slithered around. From that, Jason was able to narrow down the point he needed to target.

That point wasn’t seven inches back obviously, but compared to the length of the titan python it was actually quite close to the head. Then again, for an evolutionary line that led to mythical beasts in the vein of World Serpents, a discrepancy between length and width would be expected. This all led up to Jason once again hiding as he waited for the perfect opportunity.

A wait time that didn’t last too long as once again the titan’s restlessness assisted Jason. Within hours of hiding in one of the larger trees near the titan, it arrives underneath him. Still, he waits. The correct move, as just around when he would have been in the air, the titan looked up. While it was mostly vipers that ruled the treetops, trickster coyotes had more than once managed to get up there and kill a titan python before they caught on.

Jason hadn’t known that, but had simply been overly cautious. As the titan returned, though, he made his move. Without a sound, Jason slips over the side of one of the large branches. Not to fall down, but rather to get under the branch. A normal fall would be too slow to take the snake by surprise so he had decided to take a trick from Lily and use an unexpected surface to jump off of.

Fingers barely holding onto the branch, Jason coils his legs up under himself and blasts off. The titan python hears the noise but is too slow looking up. Before it can even react, Jason has arrived at the correct point. With a move that almost looks delicate, Jason arrests his forward momentum with a powerful strike. His fist hits right at the point between two vertebrae and a powerful Energy burst penetrates deep into the spine, pulping the spinal cord.

The python’s head goes wild at the attack. It wasn’t a killing blow, technically so the head still lived. The snake just could move anymore and without healing magic likely had no method to recover. Still, it was technically alive and so the event continued for another five or so minutes as Jason took advantage of the hp system to just wail on the paralyzed body of the titan without any fear.