Chapter 61 (Patreon)

Lillin didn’t hold back. No one would see her in the horde. She knew Nox wouldn’t appreciate her letting loose her true mouth and eating her way through the crowd. However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t use biomass to develop subdermal armor. The worm lord she devoured during their previous delve could sacrifice flexibility for protection. Lillin hadn’t mastered the ability yet, but she had practiced it enough for use during battle. No one would know if she shrugged off a few blows.

Next, Lillin added fleshy padding around her squishy human organs. They were the most annoying part of her physiology. Fixing damage was no trouble, but it was significantly harder than repairing muscle tissue or blood vessels and always took time, leaving her vulnerable in the meantime. Her human shell struggled to function until the damage was patched.

Finally, Lillin separated her collected muscle fibers and wrapped them around her skeleton in a thick lattice pattern. There was nothing more annoying than a broken bone. She lacked the ability to fix them and needed recovery brews or a healer’s touch to do the job. Nox hated it when she did the latter. It put her secret, and by extension, him, at risk.

Lillin’s body weight increased significantly as she pulled biomass weighing more than half of her human shell from the dimensional pocket in her solar plexus. It didn’t bother her for long. Instead of conjuring a gravity sphere, she decreased the effects of it on her body. She immediately felt more agile than her usual self. The minor enchantment combined with her natural mimic stealthing gifts were responsible for sneaking around unnoticed. Even people specialized in detection, like Kris and Annabelle, struggled to find her. So, she used her natural gifts and sprinted into the battlefield.

Mana arrows surrounded by essence glass spikes cleared a path for her. They ripped through multiple targets, shearing limbs and removing heads. Pride was a new feeling for Lillin, but she felt proud of her human. He had grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of months, and she couldn’t help but wonder whether he still needed her protection. As long as Nox didn’t make any stupid decisions—which he rarely did—she didn’t have to worry about him dying.

If not for the arcane contract’s strict parameters, Lillin would’ve ended their deal months ago. She believed Nox stopped needing her as soon as they left the Golden Isles. He had suffered one beating, but besides that, Nox had the necessary strength and friends to survive without her contracted protection. That didn’t mean she wanted to part ways. As the feedings made her more human, she came to adore Nox.

She was his person.

Lillin no longer needed the contract to help him. Unless they successfully defeated a powerful enough dungeon lord, and she consumed it—which was unlikely—they wouldn’t complete the deal within his lifetime. However, she was happy to stick by Nox until he achieved his impossible goals or died in its pursuit.

Nox was her person, and Lillin hated he was willing to risk power for a silly girl. She only wanted what was good for him, and Annabelle wasn’t it. The girl wanted to be strong, but she wasn’t. Lillin was sure that when her father increased the pressure, Annabelle would return to him, abandoning Nox and leaving him heartbroken. However, he was her person, and she wanted his happiness as much as his dreams fulfilled.

Lillin only conjured two gravity orbs. Each was as big as her head. Their locus resided in his fists while the dark light-bending spheres expanded outwards, covering her wrist and a quarter of her forearms. She had spent years learning to use them without suffering their adverse effects. It involved coating herself in a gravity field that extended half an inch past her skin. Balancing it against her attacking conjurations had resulted in lacerations and broken bones. Fortunately, such issues were long behind her.

Clumsy swings broke bones and ripped away flesh as she sped through the asuras. A manic grin spread across Lillin’s face as she felt blood spray on her skin. She struggled to remember the last time she cut loose and gave into her mimic urges. A trail of blood and viscera remained in her path.

Arrows found Lillin’s arms and torso. Neither dug deep. Manipulated flesh pushed arrowheads out of the former. Meanwhile, projectiles that struck her back, chest and abdomen failed to penetrate. Lillin was too fast for most axe and mace wielders. A talwar successfully sliced her arm, and a spear left a shallow laceration on her cheek. The offending asura didn’t last long. If Lillin didn’t take care of them, mana arrows snuffed out their lives.

An asura close to seven feet tall blocked Lillin’s path. Unlike the grunts and the lesser leaders, it had an extra pair of arms. The scale male armor had gold sections, adding to his ugly splendor. It carried dual maces with onion-shaped heads and a round shield. The weapons had seen better days. They were dented and stained. Somehow, the poor maintenance only added to the creature’s threatening air. However, it was the empty hand that worried her.

The asura spun at her, swinging the dual maces hard enough to whoosh through the air. One of its smaller companions was too slow to get out of the way and suffered the full force of the attack. It sounded like the crunching of gravel under a heavy boot. Lillin ducked under the onslaught. She doubted her subdermal armor and reinforced bones would survive the attack. Before she could counterattack, the shield swung into her face. It knocked her back, and she felt her reinforced nose buckle under the force.

When Lillin tried retreating to prepare a Gravity Spiral, spears poked at her rear, forcing her to stay in the fight with her giant asura. As she pondered how to deal with her opponent, a giant fireball manifested, floating in front of the creature’s empty hand.

“I knew that was going to be trouble,” she whispered.

Then a thundering boom from the asura forced her human nervous system to flinch, leaving her unprepared for the shockwave that followed. The force knocked Lillin off her feet and into the masses of smaller creatures behind her. She felt a spearhead scratch her inner thigh, and another grazed her lowermost left rib. Thanks to the subdermal armor, neither bit deep.

It took her half a second to recover from the shock. Her giant opponent kneeled on the ground, using all four arms to hold itself up. A massive chunk had disappeared from the top left quadrant of its face. Only one eye remained and pieces of skull hung from loose, ragged skin. It didn’t Lillin long to figure out that Nox’s sonic arrow had caused the devastation. She punched the creature in the damaged section of its head, and her hand disappeared into the gore within. She felt squishy tissue compress against her fist.

Mimic-given powers of biomass manipulation helped close the shallow lacerations covering Lillin. Annabelle and Wilson were much too far to pay attention to her, and Ernest was too busy. After another handful of minutes of clearing oversized obstacles, she reached the hulking party member.

Much to Lillin’s delight, he had shed his left hand, exposing a toothy worm maw underneath. Countless finger-thick tentacles surrounded it. Some ends appeared embedded in the mysterious appendage, while others wriggled freely. The worm-head appendage had a lot more flexibility than an ordinary limb and rippled with muscle. Ernest swung an axe half as big as him, only with his intact right arm. When he successfully pushed back the pair of four-armed Asura attacking him, he pointed the worm's mouth at them.

Thick grey slime spread from the orifice. The tall Asura recoiled as it coated them. At first, Nox expected the liquid to harden like his trap foam. Instead, it adopted a web-like consistency as it dried instantly. Attempts at scraping it off only entangled them worse. One specimen sprayed orange flames from its free hand, which only accelerated the drying, making it look like they were coated in wax.

A gravity-sphere-enhanced right hook took care of one asura. Lillin punched clean through its chest. Meanwhile, Ernest decapitated the other with a one-handed swing. Another sonic boom rocked the battlefield, and another giant asura fell.

“The army is losing its morale.” Annabelle’s voice spoke in Lillin’s head. She hated the telepathic communication but put up with it for Nox’s sake. “Take out the last two four arms, and they’ll retreat.”

The noblewoman’s hypothesis proved correct a couple of minutes later. Lillin tracked down one while Ernest slaughtered masses of grunts. She danced around the creature and avoided his slashing talwars until she gave up on punching. She conjured a third giant, creating a monstrous Gravity Spiral using the two in her fists. They pulled the creature off balance midflight. Several smaller specimens were pulled in too. All that got in a couple of feet within the spell suffered a painful demise. It continued its path of destruction until the edge of her mana zone before the spheres separated and flew off in different directions. They didn’t make it far before dissipating.

In the meantime, Nox slew the second four-armed asura with a pair of acid arrows. It lay on the ground with a molten shoulder and abdomen. As predicted, the smaller creatures crumbled without a leader. The survivors retreated, and Lillin immediately dispelled her enhancements and returned the excess biomass to its dimensional pocket.

Given how Annabelle occasionally stared at her and blatantly avoided spending a moment alone with Lillin, it was clear she suspected something. Lillin believed it was time she and Nox told the truth to Annabelle and Kris. Both appeared to have guessed her monstrous origins. Pudge had accepted Lillin. She believed the others would do. Unfortunately, Nox thought it was too early to take the risk.

Annabelle was glad for her brother and fiance’s death. Lillin had set the woman free by eating Victor and letting Roque die. She believed Annabelle wouldn’t turn against them. However, Nox knew humans better than her, so she didn’t argue.

“What happened?” Nox asked once the party regrouped.

“It’s my fault,” Annabelle said sheepishly. “I found what I think might be the boss’s lair and tried to get a peek inside. The guard had stealthed scouts with dark essence. They saw me coming and must’ve alerted the garrison. I thought we could take care of it, but more kept coming. You were already out of my range when I tried to reach you.”

“It’s for the best Wilson accompanied us,” Lillin commented. “You’re going to get yourself killed without someone watching your back.”

Annabelle glowered at Lillin but fired back no retort.

“I would’ve managed them if I got a chance to unleash my right arm,” Ernest said. “You arrived while I was still charging it up.”

“Good thing we showed up when we did, Ernest,” Nox said. “It looks like you were about to be overwhelmed. Should we retreat?”

“No,” Ernest and Annabelle said in unison. Then the latter continued. “I say we find a safe spot and camp for the night. We can figure out what to do after we’ve rested.”

“I think separating turned out for the best,” Nox said. “We finally know what your full capabilities are, Ernest. I reckon, given enough time to unleash your weapons, you can take on a whole army on your own. Lillin and I found something resembling a hovel that might house elites. How about you clear the rest of the garrison in the morning while we take care of the other?”

“Are you sure?” Lillin feigned concern. “Shouldn’t we stick to Annabelle and Ernest after what just happened?”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Annabelle said. “You found us just as we were about to retreat into a bottleneck. The garrison’s corridors are narrow. We’ll have no trouble dealing with the remaining dregs. If either of us finds the Rift Lord’s lair, we’ll retreat and find the other. Does that sound acceptable?”

“I’m okay with it as long as Ernest can manage,” Nox said.

“Ernest will be fine.” All jaws—including Lillin’s fell open—when Michelle appeared from behind Ernest. The coffin-shaped pack he carried lay on the ground behind him and had tripled in size. Minitarized vats of red and grey matter, glass cylinders of monster parts, medical equipment, and a lot more sat within the container. Ernest had carried his sister and an entire laboratory into the rift. The tale about only changing the size of the inanimate suddenly looked like a lie. “I’ll fix him up to deal with any other four-arm that gets in our way.”