As the Centurion passed her, she held her breath. So far, everything has been going according to the plan.
Nephis felt weirdly excited. She knew it would be normal to be afraid, but she couldn't help it.
When they had fought it last time, they had barely won even with the help of an echo. And now their situation was even more disadvantageous.
They had almost no preparation time and were in surrounding with less resources for them to utilize.
Cautious of a potential enemy, the Monster approached the dead scavengers. Luckily for them, humans weren't very common enemies in the coral labyrinth and the Centurion wasn't used to face such threat.
It sank its teeth into the snack and wasn't particularly interested in the oddness of the whole scene.
But before managing to swallow the first bite, the meal suddenly exploded straight to its face. Although the flame itself did very small damage, its purpose fulfilled perfectly.
The Monster, caught in surprise by the foreign and unpleasant light, furiously roared. It couldn't see properly since its vision was perturbed.
It started to quickly regain its composure, but at that moment, Nephis was already behind its back, piercing its weak point with all her force. Along with the blow, she sent the strongest flame she could manage into the wound.
Although the Carapace Centurion's defenses were almost perfect on the outside, on the inside it couldn't be said the same. And although the brute force or her aspect wouldn't be able to wound it properly, when combined, it became a whole different story.
The Monster roared again, this time from terrible agony. It seemed to dislike the feeling of being cooked alive from the inside.
Unfortunately for her, the wound wasn't fatal. Furious, the abomination grabbed the annoying ant and tossed it down from its back.
Nephis – the ant in question – crashed down in astonishing speed, breaking several bones from the impact.
The damaged enemy lunged at her, but then it halted, when seeing her healing up from the injuries. It seemed to grow a healthy dose of respect for fire.
Before it could decide what to do, another intruder interrupted it.
Sunny finally concluded that it was time to help and attacked the Centurion from the back, striking the same wound as Nephis. Without waiting for its response, he jumped back to a relatively safe distance.
Now utterly mad, the Centurion started furiously smashing into everything around it.
They hurriedly tried to get out of its range and although neither of them was directly hit by its fists, they were unable to escape from the shockwave.
Each in the opposite direction, they were sent flying, while trying to take as little damage as possible,
Suddenly, Nephis saw a hunk of carapace flying towards her in astonishing speed. Unable to evade, her vision darkened, and her head started throbbing strongly.
Without waiting for anything, she started to heal herself up once again, but the Centurion had already started to calm itself down from the burst of rage.
And now it was scrutinizing its pathetic enemies with the hateful eyes, deciding which one to kill first.
In the end, it concluded that it would go after the easier prey and turned towards Nephis, who was temporarily immobilized.
With the astounding speed, it lunged forward. She barely avoided the first attack, and the second terrifying scythe was already hurtling towards her. Unable to dodge, it pierced her abdomen. She gasped and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
The blow was fatal enough to kill a normal Sleeper in an instant, but Nephis started healing already. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Sunny to slowly getting up and moving forward.
Although he was stealthy, she doubted that he could sneak up to the now cautious monster.
Idiot, now was the perfect moment for you to run away.
Cursing herself for not being able to communicate telepathically, all Nephis could do was to summon her remaining flames and blow it to the Monster's face. It shrieked, aroused by that pesky fly while ignoring Sunny until it was too late.
He jumped on its back once again and started stabbing its injury continuously. Centurion writhed in pain, trying to sweep down the source of it, but Sunny held tightly, somehow withstanding the Monster's clumsy attempts to get rid of him.
Nephis stood up, ignoring the pain from the half-healed wound and rushed to aid him.
From the ground, she grabbed a handful of mud and threw it into its eyes. Then she started to zigzag in front of it, from time to time launching a fireball.
Her attacks didn't harm it in the slightest, but Centurion's mind was too primitive to be able to ingest so many new information at once while being in harrowing pain and injured.
At some point of time, the speed of the Monster started gradually decrease, albeit only subtly. It slowly started to realize the direness of the situation it was in and halted. Nephis didn't miss the opportunity and went on the offensive, but the abomination ignored her. Instead, it grabbed Sunny, who wasn't as flashy as Nephis, but currently possessed a much bigger threat.
Sunny screamed in agony as the Monster crushed his bones and brutally tossed him away.
His body crashed into a crimson coral as if it was just a puppet.
In that moment, Nephis felt as if something snapped inside of her. She discarded all her defenses in the favor of the only purpose.
To kill.
She shot forward, narrowly evading the attacks. With the sword imbued with her flames she slashed its eyes. Then, without waiting for anything, she leaped on it's back and attacked.
And once again.
The Centurion tried to get rid of her by all means, but she ignored it, seeing only her goal.
Slowly but surely, Monster's attempts started to reduce, until they stopped completely. But she continued to pierce and burn, until the Spell finally whispered into her ear.
[You have slain an awakened monster, Carapace Centurion.]
Nephis languidly climbed down from the corpse, not paying the attention to the Spell anymore, and with all her might she dragged herself to the unconscious Sunny.
On the periphery of her blurry vision, she noticed something red.
Huh? When did my arm fall off? Whatever, it's not important.
All she could concentrate on was the limp body, which was so close yet seemed to be endlessly far away.
From her last strand of power, she trudged over to him.
Unable to hold herself standing anymore, she tumbled down right on top of Sunny. She hugged him tightly with the remaining arm and healed him.
Despite her flaw acting up and her grave injuries, she felt as if she was in heaven.
I did it.
She smiled, while her mind started to slowly drift away, and she submerged into unconsciousness.
A sweet melody entered Neph's ear.
Her tired, naked body lied there in a gentle embrace of someone. Instead of being frightened by the foreign situation, Nephis stayed as she was, enjoying the warmth and feeling of security.
The unknown person hummed and caressed her hair.
She had an inexplainable feeling that she knew the melody, but by all the dead gods she couldn't remember where or when she heard it.
Nephis had a feeling that there was something important to do, but at the current moment, she couldn't help but give into the blissful feeling.
Smiling, she let the arms lull her into sleep.
But before her mind could fully drift away, a small cold hand grabbed her tightly and a pitch child's voice said in a monotonous tone.
"If you will not wake up now, you will sleep forever."
It jolted Nephis awake.
Right in front of her, she saw countless eyes.
Some of them were no bigger than an eye od rat, yet others were as big as Nephis herself. And all of them were looking at her, as if she was just a piece of meat to be sold.
She turned her gaze down to her hand.
There, a dead body of a little kid, which couldn't be older than six years, was holding her. Worms were swirling inside of its open wounds and its glassy eyes were staring right into her soul.
It didn't say anything, yet Nephis instinctually knew what to do.
The flames enfolded her whole body, burning away the eyes, the kid and all of her nightmares, until all what remained was ashes.
And she woke up.
The first thing what welcomed her was the bright sun, which was already slowly leaning towards the horizon.
Then she noticed her companions. Sunny was staring at her as if he saw a ghost and Cassie was nervously standing right behind him, holding the rope.
They seem to be alright. Good.
She inspected her body.
Her wounds were quickly closing up and her arm was halfway on growing out again. It looked like by summoning the flames in the dream, she summoned them in reality too.
Huh, what dream?
Whatever, it didn't matter. Nephis had more important things to think about.
Judging of the position from the sun, some time passed while she was unconscious. Their surroundings changed too, although they still were somewhere in the labyrinth. Sunny must have carried her on his back, not wanting to waste time.
"What happened?"
As if woken up from the trance, Sunny, red as a tomato, averted his gaze. "After that Monster tossed me away, I lost consciousness, regaining it only after you healed me. Thank you by the way."
He paused for a moment, as if unsure how to continue. He was firmly looking onto the ground.
"You were extremely injured, and the dawn was quickly drawing near. We had no time to spare. All I could do was to give you some basic treatment so you wouldn't bleed out, take you on my back and hurry to the next high point. Honestly, if you didn't wake up, I don't think we would manage to make it on time."
Then he chuckled. "Honestly, you gave me quite a fright when you suddenly started burning on my back."
"I see. Thank you for taking care of me," she sincerely expressed her gratitude.
Sunny smiled embarrassedly and quickly turned away, without sparing her a look. "We have to get moving, it's almost dawn."
Why does he act-
But then she looked at herself once again and blushed. Of course, her temporary bikini wouldn't be able to hold on in such fight. And in the heat of the moment, she must not have noticed it.
She side-glanced at Sunny who was looking anywhere but at her.
Neither of them brough up the fact that she had fainted on top of him, completely naked.
No. But why does he act so disinterested? Is my body not good enough for him?
Instead of being occupied with useless thoughts, Nephis rather went to check her runes.
At the end of her short list of her memories she saw new, yet familiar runes.
Memory: [Starlight Legion Armor].
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Type: Armor.
Memory Description: [Born in the all-consuming darkness, seven valiant heroes made an oath to return light to the cursed land. Time has erased their names and their faces, but the memory of the defiant oath still remains.]
This really brings back my memories.
Grateful for finally having a proper set of an Armor, she immediately summoned the Memory.
Why do I feel a little disappointed though?
Not wanting to linger anymore, she decisively stood up.
"Let's go. We still have a long way to go."