Chapter 3: Chapter 003: Struggle

"Here comes another!" Adel said as she looked through a small hole in the wall of mattresses and down the winding stairs witnessing a bunch of Gurglins fight with one another to get onto the stairs first. And then another and another. The wood groaned under their weight, and also because of the big holes the Gurglings put through it every time they moved their... Legs. 

"Come here! I'll beat you to a bloody Pulp!" Adam psyched himself up, doubling down on his efforts to attract their attention. 

The second Gurgling came up those stairs, its legs spread out wide in all directions. Sone piercing into the ceiling above making it look intimidating. At least to most people.

Adam shifted his hands up the staff and shuffled two quick steps forward. Turning his core he thrust his staff right toward the main body of the Gurgling. In response, it withdrew its legs from the ceiling and weaved them together.

Adam bumped into those legs and pushed the Gurgling back. It lost its balance and unconsciously took the legs it had shielded itself with and pierced the wooden floor, opening itself up. From that position, Adam took one large step back and while holding the top of the staff brought his hands down and using a torque of his shoulder he pushed the other end of the staff into the air. It inched past the ceiling with as much force as he could Adam repeated his previous killing move and thrashed this Gurgling as well. 

He collected himself quickly as he changed his hand placements and took another battle-ready stance. The next Gurgling was upon him already. It had landed on the second floor with all eight of its legs as it had jumped past the corpses of the two that came before it and climbed from the ceiling. It screeched a challenge at Adam and charged forward. Adam went for the same technique again. 

But, this time the Gurlging Ducked below the staff thrusting towards it. Its main body touched the floor as its legs used all of its joints to keep it moving forward. Adam didn't have the time to pull his staff back, all he could do was go for the kick. The Gurgling pushed with its legs and was suddenly above the incoming food, dodging any major damage as only Adam's sheen managed to make contact. 

The gurgling twisted its body and now its teeth went in for the attack. It bit onto his leg and drew blood before Adam managed to bring the end of the staff and using his forearm give it enough strength to push it off. It in response tore of small bits of flesh from his leg before it was thrown off. Adam ignored the burning pain and continued the shipping motion he had started as he let the staff flow through his hands so the short end extended enough to reach the monster as he used all the strength he had to throw it off the ground and into the air. 

Its legs tried to long onto anything they could but they didn't have enough strength or time as Adam was upon it. He grabbed the hook on the leg closest to him and pulled the, thankfully, light Gurgling. He yanked it through the hall and sent it crashing into a wall. A pained scream was released as its soft main body hit the brick wall with great force. Its cries ended just as they started though as Adam swiped parallel to the floor once again tore into the gurgling's body. Using enough force to tear its flesh apart.

Adam, having finished with the third engagement felt exhausted. His left thigh was bleeding heavily. Without any time though he turned around to focus back on the stairs. To see Adel fighting off two gurglings. They had been trying to get up to the second floor for the whole time he was fighting and Adel was clearly out of breath. Their legs were either chopped off or entangled with one another. Adel seemed to have a talent for precise and difficult movement as her opponents could essentially do nothing as she moved around them, in and out of their range. 

But the fight had obviously been extremely taxing to her reserves and a mistake was made. Adel stumbled on her feet as she tried to jump and do a dodge roll to the right. She crashed down and tried to get up but her arms barely worked. She pushed herself off the floor and placed the soles of her feet down right as a third enemy entered the fray. 

It jumped from the stairs and rushed towards her. It turned its body and opened its terrible maw as its small black eyes swam around its body and locked onto her. 

"Stay down!" Adel heard her brother shout as she ducked her head down as a response. An extended and bloody staff came flying right above her as it made contact with the flying gurgling. Whose main body nearly exploded to a yellow pulp as the forces of the two moving masses countered one another. 

The Gurgling flew off back into the stairs with its appendages following right after as it hit the growing pile of gurglings trying to climb up. Pushing them further down and adding even greater strain to the staircase filled with punctured and broken rails

Adel was satisfied with the results. She pushed with her thighs and stood up. With hatchet in hand, she turned to the two gurglings she had left. They had steadied themselves after their previous jump, which caused her to make a mistake. Both of them were running straight for her and they were pretty close. She didn't have the time to do much as she brought her Hatchet overhead. The two gurglings had seen this action before and understood that their prey was going to chop off their legs again. Thus they split up and jumped to the ceiling using the legs they had left to 'climb' their way towards her. 

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Adal smirked at the expected behavior. She dropped her hatchet down and rushed after one of the gurglings. It sensed the danger and disengaged from the ceiling to drop down and regain its ability to defend. But as everything went according to Adel's plan she dived to the floor and did one more role, making sure to not fuck it up once more, Using the Hatchet that had traveled with her she chopped with a two-handed swing at the falling Gurgling. 

She had barely covered enough space to be able to cut it with half of the hatchet head. It cracked the planks on the floor as it dropped down. Its legs spasming here and there, in a twisted dance of death. A very morbid scene that Adel didn't even look at for one second as she turned around once again to kill the one gurgling left. 

She saw it being hit off the ceiling by Adam with a light swing of his staff. He sent it flying towards her and without making sure that she killed it her swiftly dispatched one more gurgling that had barely been able to climb its way up the pile of gurglings on the stairs.

It had to be said that without the gurglings entangling in themselves in a bloodthirsty race to the top of the stairs while trying to get there first when they could very well have gone one by one, or known that it would be better to get there last, after having the clearly superior fighters fight off the rest of their kind for which they held no sympathy. If they were even capable of feeling emotions. 

The rest became much easier to deal with, though still incredibly difficult. Only one or two could come up at one time as more and more idiotic gurglings added themselves to the pile. Which had become a scene from hell as fowl smiling shacks of screaming and howling meat, flailed around with their bony legs. Tens of those legs moved about with great speeds in a disorganized fashion as they scratched up fellow gurglings, the stairs the floor above them, and anything they could get their hooks on. 

For better or for worse only a few minutes later the stairs finally reached their limit. They met an unfortunate demise under the combined weight of twenty or so flailing gurglings. The cracked and cricked one last time before breaking their connection with the upper floor. The support beams broke in half and the nattered planks crumbled as all of the gurglings fell back down. 

Adam took a shaky breath as he sat down on his knees, letting his right hand, holding the slimy staff rest on the ground. 15 separate corpses could be seen strewn around the place haphazardly, puss still flowing out of them. Every now and then their nerves sent some leftover signals through their limbs as they spasmed ever so slightly.

"Can they... still... get up?" Adel asked as she also fell down to her knees, her shoulder supporting and being supported by Adam's.

"I think... they can... Don't wanna.. ruin it for you..." The two of them huffed between its set of words as they commented on the scrambling mess down below, a mess that disappointingly was starting to untangle itself. 

"We...Really need a fucking bath..." Adel said when she let her head fall on Adam's shoulder and caught a whiff of the smell wafting off of their clothes, which were more than simply scratched up. 

"I...Couldn't agree more..." Adam barely managed to say after he smelled his odor. He didn't really care all that much though. Instead what he cared more for were results. 

"Notifications." He said out loud to let Adel know what he was doing without having to speak more. 

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