A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay 67 (Patreon)

A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay

Chapter 67

-VB-

I looked around the entire area.

Crawler was trying to keep me contained. The rest of the Nine were watching but Jack wanted to kill me.

… But now, I was a little disappointed.

When I killed Manton, I did it with the utmost caution and planning. I waited for hours on end just scouting the area and then waited even longer for the perfect opportunity to kill the Master. Mannequin was a flurry of action that took me from the top of the tree canopies to the ground, and a rush of attacks that ended in a quick but brutal battle.

Crawler in front of me. Jack Slash behind me with Shatterbird, Bonesaw…

Where was the rest?

Whoosh-!

I ducked underneath a stream of fire aimed at my torso and rolled… toward Crawler. Crawler laughed as he reared his monstrous reptilian body up, towering thrice my height with the mass of a small whale.

And then he fell down on top of me like he was using his entire body as a club. The way he blitzed down toward me almost reminded me of watching a skyscraper falling in 2x speed.

I slammed my feet onto the ground mid-roll and pushed myself out of his fall.

That’s when Jack came at me with a vertical strike. His power let him strike from afar, and the attack retained the literal razor edge of his razor blade. But that razor edge screamed as it met my Rock Flesh hardened skin and bounced away. The deflected attack sliced through a whole tree trunk that was as half as thick as my body, and the tree began to fall.

I jumped off of the ground and kicked the falling tree and forced it to fall toward Jack and his crew.

Jack looked at me in surprise but that was all I got to see before Crawler was back on my ass.

He came at me with his mouth wide open with rows and rows of needle-like teeth.

And then he spat a stream of green acid.

I pulled my arms and legs into my body. I fell just a little faster than before and just barely dodged the neon green stream.

That’s when Bunscar, who I still couldn’t see, threw another ball of fire.

I kicked off the ground and flew across the ground almost horizontally, narrowly dodging the truck-sized fireball that just hissed by my hair. There!

I landed horizontally at a tree trunk and jumped off of it with bark-crunching force.

Burnscar, who’s been hiding behind a few trees, saw me coming with wide eyes. She tried to set her immediate area on fire and teleport away but I tore into her first. My shoulder checked her right in the face, and a splatter of blood and crunch of bones rang out in the forest. I didn’t wait and before she could fly away from me, I grabbed her by her flailing arms, grabbed her neck, and snapped.

I rolled in the air from my hasty jump-propelled flight and then slammed into a tree trunk with none of the finesse of my previous actions.

I fell to the ground and got back up.

My body grumbled at me, and I knew I would have some bruises by the time I left.

But the thought of killing as many of these bastards as I could now that I’ve engaged them in this do-or-die fight? When i could run away but I stayed because killing just one more of them was that much less of a threat that might come for my girls and babies?

I wanted to kill them all.

“You are just wonderful, aren’t you?!” Jack laughed. “You jump around the forest like a rabbit, tougher than a rock, and more violent than most villains! Just what am I going to do with you?”

I snorted. “You can let me kill you,” I drawled as I looked around. Burnscar might not have been successful in teleporting away but she still set the forest on fire. I might be able to take hits from Jack and Crawler, but I don’t think I could survive oxygen deprivation.

I wiped my face with my forearm and cracked my neck from side to side.

“Ah? You think you can?” he asked me with a grin.

“Well, at least my attempt at your life won’t be as pathetic as your attempt at mine. There’s no way you’ll turn me into a bad boy like you turned Bonesaw into a bad girl.”

My comment almost immediately threw the girl into an outburst.

“I’m not a bad girl! I’m a good girl!”

“I’m not sure your mother in heaven would agree with what you became, Riley,” I drawled.

Jack lashed out at me before I could say more.

But his attack did nothing, bouncing off again.

“Does the truth irritate you, Jack?” I asked again. “Truth always irritates evil, vain men.” I paused as I kept talking. And now for a finishing blow. “But you’re not really vain, are you? You’re just … sad. Little, little Jacob. The world doesn’t care about you. Your parents kept you locked up in that b-”

With a scowl that might have scared others, Jack screamed and attacked me again.

Again, it did nothing.

“... Does the truth hurt, Jacob?” I asked with a grin. At this point, even Crawler had stopped to watch and Shatterbird… the cold bitch was looking with something between smug amusement and wary respect. Of course, the bitch would respect someone who dished out psychological damage to others; that’s why she did her city-wide attack shtick. And, of course, the vial cape didn’t have something like a Trigger Event for her weakness.

As Jack was the only one who I could verbally attack because I didn’t know if angering Bonesaw would even have an effect, I continued. “It hurts so much that you had to hurt others, didn’t you? Lashing out just like everyone else does when they get hurt. You’re not special, Jacob. You’re as normal as they come.”

When he raised his razor blade up to attack me again, I leaned forward and jumped. Before anyone could interfere or stop me, my fist buried itself in his forehead … and then caved it in. Bone crunched underneath my knuckles, skin tore, and blood splattered out from the point of my fist’s impact. “Just go fucking die, you normie.”

And then Jack flew backward in a ragdoll tumble. To my surprise, the man’s head didn’t just disappear under what was something close to my full-power punch. He must have had some kind of defensive biotinker upgrade Bonesaw gave him.

Speaking of whom…

“Uncle Jack!” Bonesaw screamed and then whipped around to me in anger as I landed next to her after sending Jack flying away. She pulled her arm back like she was about to throw something at me (and I also noticed that she had her brain spiders scattered about camouflaged that were beginning to rise up to attack me). But I was already spinning around with a kick aimed at her temple.

“Too slow,” I whispered before -.

I gasped in surprise and just a little bit of pain when a bus slammed into me from the side, and I looked and saw Crawler. The bastard tackled me!

He kept going, making the entire forest rumble from his charge, and then slammed me into a tree.

The tree snapped in half with an earthly crunch and sent me tumbling away. I hit the forest floor once, twice, and then landed on my feet on my third.

Fighting in the woods at my maximum speed was not possible, and because of that, I was constantly getting bodied by Crawler. He didn’t do any damage because his tackles couldn’t damage me and I kept dodging his acid attacks.

No, I accomplished as much as I could.

“Yeah, I’m done here,” I said to myself and them before jumping away at max power. The earth cracked from my jump and I sailed clear of the tree canopies before anyone could stop me. Shatterbird, still too shocked by what had just occurred, turned just in time to try to do something but I was moving too fast and she already used her power to locate me previously and now I didn’t have any silicon on me anymore.

Crawler gave a brief chase but I was moving faster than I ever did in our fight among the trees. He stopped before he got too far from the rest of the Nine.

With this, my Plan B (Plan: Fucking Kill Jack Slash if they find and catch up to me) was a resounding success. I’d like to see that bastard survive having half of his brain crushed.