Chapter 45: Chapter 45: Two Lions and a Jiggle

How much more efficiently could she have dispatched of her foes with power like this? How many more people could she have killed? Would she have been able to provide the voice under her house with enough bodies to release her father from his mysterious imprisonment with enough 'level up's under her belt?

Of course, she knew now that she never would have been able to accomplish that particular feat. She had 'broken' her father, so no matter how many people she killed, she wouldn't have been able to make a difference. All that blood spilled for nothing...

She leapt into the air with cat-like ease and initiated her first [Crunch] midair with a dark grin, eager to bury her current train of thought under a new bout of bloodshed. This bloodshed had a very clear purpose, which made it the superior bloodshed.

Nikola surged forward, air whipping through her raven hair, cleaver up and at the ready.

She prepared to feel the bones popping apart beneath her blade, to see the shrapnel scatter beneath the skin, but nothing of the sort happened.

Her weapon connected with the lion's flesh, but no wound opened and no redness rose to the surface. She'd hit rocks that had had a stronger reaction.

The creature grumbled softly and the apparently ineffectual Butcher sliced diagonally in the air. To her surprise, it worked despite this lion not seeming [Crippled] in the least, but upon sinking her cleaver's edge into the second feline, the same thing happened. Or, rather, the same lack of things; no skin splitting, no bone breaking, nothing.

Did these things not feel pain? Was their skin so thick it couldn't be penetrated? Was their fur so dense it couldn't be cut?

The third lion was preoccupied with the others in her party and perhaps too far away for her [Crunch] skill to reach, but she had to try something besides hanging lamely in the air and waiting for gravity to take hold of her.

She cut the air and sailed through it, and nearly goose pimpled when the blade sank into this lion's meat the way it was meant to. She had aimed for its front left 'shoulder' and her blade sent a ripple of tearing muscle and bone down its limb, ripping a horrible yowl from its throat as its front left leg became uselessly [Crippled].

It put its weight on its back legs and used its one good front leg to swat Nikola out of the air just as her feet were touching the floor.

She caught herself gracefully enough, moving with her momentum instead of against it and rolling a couple of times before springing to her feet. When she glanced back up at the trio of lions, each one at least six times her size, all nine of their combined eyes were upon her, but the one closest to Katalyn remembered its objective and turned back toward the young mage.

The other two had a clear objective of fucking up Nikola in particular. With terrifying speed and force, they pounced over to her and each one unleashed a silver-tinged roar that she couldn't back away from fast enough.

Hundreds of silver hedgehog-like quills embedded themselves all across her front and even with all her DEX, she only moved her arms quickly enough to stop any from sinking into her face.

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It felt like she had been stung by thousands of bees all at once, but she couldn't allow the felines to follow their scream up with a swat that would drive the needles further into her skin like nails through drywall.

Fuck, fuck, fuck...

She took off and ran from the pair, unsure if each one had another stabby scream in them, and plucked the tiny daggers out of her as she forced some distance between them. They were surface wounds, the razor-sharp tips only barely hanging on, so even the motion of her sprinting away shook some of them out.

She used this opportunity to snap her fingers, her [Minor Health Potion] flowing into her from her inventory and popping out several more of the metallic quills via knitting her flesh back together. The burning radiating from her entire front half calmed in an instant.

The feline duo pushed off their powerful hind legs and chased after her, prompting her to kick it up a notch and yeet further ahead. It seemed that, going as quickly as she could, she could stay out of their scream's range and still have a fair bit of room to play.

Behind her, the lion the others were handling was reaching the end of its rope. Katalyn was surrounded by two strong Warriors, Giga with a golden wall of a shield in front of him and Luke with his weighty sword. Phoenix was flanking them, firing arrows steadily into the lion's center mass.

When it pulled in a breath to scream, Phoenix caught it in the throat with an arrowhead, causing it to sputter out only half as many metallic spines. They found purchase on Giga's shield and Luke's skin, and the few that made it past the front line peppered across the front of Katalyn's robe, sinking into her chest and arms.

Blood formed polka dots throughout the fabric draped across her front and each quill stabbed inches deep into her flesh; much further than it had into Nikola's, and even Luke's. But as a mage, her Strength and Constitution would be low, rendering her squishy and vulnerable to stabbing. A quarter of her health bar fell away in just that moment alone, a shrieking cry bursting from her lips as she swiped at the metallic daggers embedded in her.

"OW! Luke, keep your arm in or I'm going to burn it," Katalyn warned in a high-pitched hiss.

She retaliated angrily in the form of a [Fireball] that just barely arced around Luke's arm - between the whirling sphere of fire and Luke's follow-up of a [Sword Dash] crashing straight into the creature's muscular chest, it crumpled and whimpered.

Luke returned to his position and, in a last-ditch effort to do damage, the lion charged.

Even Giga toppled beneath the feline's show of force, three massive paws and sets of claws trampling over them and bruising their flesh and health bars as well. Before the tantruming lion could make it to Phoenix, the Archer loosed short-ranged a [Volley of Arrows], ten arrows burying themselves into the lion's face and fluffy neck simultaneously.

Three panicked slitted eyes rolled back into the lion's skull and it crashed to the stony floor, just in time for one of the other entrances to the tower to start jiggling and moving, as if someone was on the other side...

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