Mordecai felt overwhelmed.
The pressure from the large praying mantis was crushing and its blood lust was so thick he could almost smell the blood in the air thickening. Even the other mutated creatures stayed clear from it.
His heart pounded in his chest, threatening to jump out of his rib cage. As he looked into its large compound eyes he couldn't help the chill that ran down his spine. He had a hard time breathing and even staying awake all his willpower to manage.
Usually, he could trap beings in place for up to four or five seconds. It might seem like a small interval but in a battle to the death against an enemy that had magic skills and even stronger bodies than usual…it would be enough to end a fight or at least deal a fatal injury.
However…
Mordecai staggered backwards. His body swayed dangerously, his knees weak as though they had suddenly turned frail. The mantis moved…It was too powerful to be held in place for more than 2 seconds. I Its right scythe-like hand rose to the air…and then it fell.
By the time Mordecai blinked it was already too late.
Dulton, who had been directly in front of the creature with his senses still reeling from having experienced death through his body double, had felt the terrifying presence of the mantis. And he saw it through his blurring vision.
To his utter horror he saw the scythe raised above his head with a cold lethality and suddenly he felt smaller. He wanted to move, he tried to, but his body was stood frozen.
All he could do was watch helplessly, despair filling his heart with a small pang of regret.
He barely followed the mantis' movement, the scythe falling like a guillotine coming for his head. It glistened with a green light, curving through the air mercilessly. The last thing Dulton saw was the world shifting.
Mordecai opened his mouth in a wordless scream as the scythe tore through Dulton's head, splitting it down the middle and all the way to the space between his legs. Two halves fell to the ground spilling whatever remained of his organs and smearing the ground, red in a pile of gore.
Mordecai's brain short circuited. His knees gave out from beneath him and he fell to his knees. Dulton's blood slowly crawled in his direction. For a moment everything went silent, the sounds of the battlefield faded from his ears, his eyes fully concentrated on what was before him.
"DULTON!!!" in the distance a loud voice wailed out. "MORDECAI GET OUT OF THERE!!"
Clara shouted as she pulled an arrow from her quiver, she had condensed so much of her mana into the arrow that her face paled from the mana depletion. It shone with a bright golden pulse as she nocked it to her string. Clara strained her arms, her muscles burning as she tried to control her breathing to aim accurately. But it was of no use.
Her anger was too great. Her sorrow was too great. Her loss was too great.
First her brother, now her friend and comrade Dulton even though they didn't know each other for long and by the time she launched the arrow…she had lost Mordecai too.
Clara's arrow hopeless tore through the air with blazing speed fast enough to rival a bullet but wasn't fast enough to stop the mantis.
The mantis had already moved to his next quarry…Mordecai. Its scythe sliced through the air in a horizontal arc that sliced the top half of his head clean off- ear to ear.
The golden arrow impacted the praying mantis' torso, blowing a hole the size of a baseball before exiting through its back and continuing to land at a distance away with a deafening explosion that killed stray mutated creatures in the process.
Clara felt the soul essence of those creatures pour into her soul just as the letters from the Spirit Record flooded her vision for a moment. But she wasn't content.
No far from it, she was aggrieved because even though she put all her strength into that shot just now, the large mantis wasn't dead.
There it stood in the distance, releasing sharp cries from its mouth as though to express its pain. Green blood oozed from the space between its small mandibles, the same green blood that spilled from the hole in its torso.
Clara vision swarm but she could see the mantis making its way over to her. It approached with slow labored strides. Its eyes burning with a furious light. Clara's arms lowered to her side, devoid of strength her bow slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground.
"Please…somebody help…" she whispered quietly. Her voice swallowed by the roars of the battlefield.
It was a vain request to no one in particular…maybe a divine deity somewhere heard her but she doubted they even existed, and if they did then they were probably taking pleasure in her suffering. She hung her head low, looking at the ground as despair settled in her soul.
A shadow covered her figure, prompting her to look up. And as she did her eyes met the compound eyes of the mantis as it looked down at her.
The finality of it all settling in. Clara sighed with tired eyes.
"I give up" she whispered.
The mantis raised its scythe, prepared to swing. By now the ground below was a puddle of green blood and the mantis' skin tone seemed to have taken a paler complexion. Some parts of it even seemed…withered in way.
It would die soon but not soon enough.
Clara wanted to almost laugh at the irony of it all…almost.
The mantis wanted to kill her as much as she wanted to kill it. She spent the last bits of her mana. An immense feeling of emptiness filling her body as she felt her mana reserves hit zero.
Dizziness threatened to take her but she bit her lips to the point of drawing blood. To her back a single arrow took shape as her quiver consumed her mana and forged an arrow with it, this one seemed like a blanched gold and even calling it gold would be giving it too much credit.
Her hand gingerly reached for it. She pulled the arrow out of the quiver. It felt like the heaviest object she had ever laid hands on. She held the shaft of the arrow as though she were holding a blade instead.
The green scythe fell just as Clara brought the arrow up.
For a moment the serrated blade of the mantis' scythe-like hands met the blanched golden shaft of the arrow, locked in a temporary stalemate. It didn't last long.
The mantis pushed down with a little more force. At the point of contact between the scythe and the arrow, cracks formed along its shaft. They spread and then the arrow turned brittle. With a SNAP!
The arrow broke fading away into dim motes of light as though blown away by the wind.
The scythe continued along its path, biting into Clara's shoulder.
The pain stung, travelling all the way from her shoulder to the entire side of her body. A moan came from her lips. Weak and agonizing.
Blood fell to the ground first a drop, and then a stream.
The scythe dug deeper travelling almost three inches into her body. At that point the pain flared so much that her pained moans became nothing but a scream of absolute pain. Clara's pale mana drained face twisted into an ugly expression that didn't suite her beautiful face at all, tears falling from the corners of her eyes.
The scythe dug even deeper, cutting through bone and threatening to rip through her ribcage.
At that point Clara felt something inside her snap. All the emotions she had bottled up, all the resentment and hate she had kept buried within her heart spilled over taking over her mind and filling her with murderous thoughts.
'I should have killed him…I should have avenged my brother-I SHOULD HAVE KILLED HUEY COLEMAN!'
Pchu!
A dark shadow entered her vision. Passing over the arm supporting the scythe that could kill her at any moment. The sound of something sharp filled the air as the dark shadow glided over, the scythe suddenly losing all the strength it had been carrying and hanging loosely within her body. It been disconnected at the joint…no more like cut cleanly through.
Clara was so shocked that for a moment she forgot all about the pain she was experiencing for a couple of seconds.
Even the mantis paused and looked to the side.
The dark shadow was just hitting the ground, its form vaguely looking like that of a human being. But Clara couldn't be sure as her vision was already fading. What she could make out though was that the shadow seemed to have pierced something into the ground to stop themselves from going any further.
"I hope I made it in time. You can rest now Clara, I'll handle the rest" the shadow spoke in a tone that soothed her and enraged her at the same time. She wasn't really sure what to think at this point but one thing that she did know was that she as glad to hear it.
"Make…sure to kill it boss…For…Dulton…Mordecai-" her voice barely came out in a whisper as she passed out.