CHAPTER 37: Prequel To The End

The reason for this shocking development was that thanks to the Alex and the beast's battle, Alex had been in a state of constant motion, which made the combination of the herbs that went to his brain burn through faster, and coincidentally led to the speeding up of the final stage of the pill's effects.

Alex's legs buckled beneath him, but he managed to extend his arm, preventing a collapse atop the sandy ground.

Alex began breathing hard, then gritted his teeth and pushed himself back to his feet.

'This complicates things, I have even less time than I thought.'

Alex's body swayed from side to side. 'From how I'm feeling, I think I have at most three minutes before I'm not able to fight the sleep anymore. Hopefully it will be enough time to kill beastie over there.'

*GRRRR*

Almost like it had sensed Alex's thoughts the beast, AKA 'beastie', stared viciously at Alex and bared its teeth.

It held its front left leg off the ground and began hobbling toward Alex.

Beastie's body was in a terrible state, as even disregarding its injured arm, it had multiple places fist shaped marks on its body, the worst being the one on its abdomen. It also looked like it had lost a few of its teeth while some had been cracked or completely broken off.

Beastie now looked a pale and dim shadow of its former glorious self.

But that's not to say that Alex was any better, in fact he looked much worse.

Through the course of the fight he had his forehead cut and bloodied by one of the beast's razor-sharp claws, a few of his ribs shattered, several times he was hit by the projectile spikes from beastie's tail which lead to them exploding all over him, and finally he'd been hit multiple times by the tail, claw and once, even the head of the beast, which even though they didn't break his bones thanks to the Hani shift stance, still hurt like hell and left many bruises on his body.

So from a passerby's perspective, Alex right now would seem an evil demon who had blood dripping down his face, several red and purple bruises on his body, and burn marks on many places on his skin.

Beastie continued his slow limp toward Alex, and although its body was badly injured, the hate in the beast's eyes didn't dim in any way, rather, it got stronger.

If looks could kill, Alex would have found that he had died from having been skewered by hundreds of arrows.

Alex then moved his badly injured body despite his muscles screaming in protest, and began running at the beast.

*ROAR*

Beastie seeing Alex coming let out a deafening roar and increased the speed at which it was moving toward him.

Both Alex and the beast had long since stopped moving as fast as they had been moving at the beginning of the fight because of the severity of their injuries, so right now they were moving at the speed of normal humans.

But that didn't reduce from the intensity of their battle, in fact it made it much more brutal and gory since everything could now be clearly seen, and the victor would now be decided by who had greater skill and also had the more cunning mind.

Most people would assume that as Alex was a human he would be much smarter than the wolfish beast, but that assumption would be wrong.

Since the beginning of the battle both the beast's eyes and its reactions had shown emotions just like a human could, it also laid down traps to bait Alex into doing exactly what it wanted him to do.

Alex felt a sting at his side as if to not to forget what the beast was capable of.

Alex and Beastie were now only about twenty meters away from each other, but with the beast's size it could cover that distance in a few moments.

*ROAR*

Beastie let out a loud bellow that echoed around the space, and leaped the remaining few steps toward Alex.

"YAAAH!" Alex responded with a huge roar of his own and raised his leg up in the air.

Maybe Alex got caught up in the moment, or maybe he wanted to go out with a bang, but he opened his mouth and screamed into the air.

"HANI SHIFT STANCE!"

Alex then stomped on the ground.

Everything seemed to go silent for a few moments, before suddenly, a loud noise reverberated around the battlefield.

*BOOM*

The sandy ground began shaking slightly and a huge cloud of black dust was thrust into the air.

"Awu?"

Beastie was not prepared for this and got swallowed by the cloud of dust.

It landed on the ground in the middle of the dust and realized that Alex had disappeared and it could no longer see him.

But obstructing the beast's vision was nowhere near enough to defeat it, since it didn't really need its sight to track Alex.

As was mentioned much earlier, beasts don't track Ranked by sight or smell, but by the Hani in their bodies.

Even though Alex's Hani was basically exhausted, it was still enough for the beast to know his location.

*GROWL*

The wolfish beast abruptly turned to the right, and immediately raised its remaining good front leg and swung its claws in that direction.

Suddenly, Alex ran out of the dust cloud.

But since the beast had already sensed his Hani, it already knew where Alex would attack from, so the claw it had swung earlier was headed right for Alex, aiming to separate his lower and upper body from each other.

With each passing moment it started looking more and more likely that this was it for Alex, beastie would prevail and be the last one standing.

A look of triumph appeared in the beast's eyes, and it used the remaining of its strength to increase the speed its claw was coming at Alex with.

That was what Alex was waiting for.

"Heh." A slight smile suddenly appeared on Alex's face and he whispered under his breath. "Not today my dear beastie."

Then without reducing his speed, Alex smoothly dropped onto his knees and pulled the back of his head back, until it was almost parallel to the ground. He then let momentum carry him forward over the sand.

*SWISH*

As the claws flew over his body, Alex could feel a sudden gust of wind, which made him swallow heavily. 'I hope this works.'

The beast's claws then went within inches of slicing his upraised face, but luckily it missed him, then milliseconds later, it harmlessly passed by Alex's body.

Alex immediately got up once he was clear of Beastie's claws, and without missing a beat he squatted down before jumping up into the air.

Alex didn't want to wait for the beast to recover from its surprise and realize that now that Alex was so close, it could just lunge at him and crush his bones with its powerful jaws.

*GRRRR*

However, the beast did exactly what Alex didn't want, as it recovered faster than he had anticipated and immediately unhinged its jaws, before it then angrily lunged at him with rath filled eyes.

Just as the beast was on the brink of devouring him, Alex stretched his body wide, slowing down his descent. He reached out with his bruised arm and clutched the fur on the side of the beast's face.

The fur felt surprisingly soft under his hand, yet it conveyed an underlying strength. Alex saw this as his last chance to turn the tide of the battle. He used the fur's grip to propel himself upward.

*ROAR*

Beastie bellowed in agony and fury. It thrashed its head violently, attempting to fling Alex away.

Alex clung to the fur for dear life, swaying up and down and side to side. 'It's time to end this,' he thought with unwavering determination as he tightened his grip on the beast's black fur. With a resounding shout, he propelled himself higher into the air.

*SNAP*

Releasing the fur abruptly, Alex felt an intense tearing pain in his arm. "Ummppphh," he grunted through gritted teeth, suppressing a scream that threatened to escape. This pain surpassed any agony he had endured during the entire fight.

By this point, Alex had ascended to his maximum height, soaring five meters above Beastie's head.

'Now!' Alex then used part of his little remaining Hani to, for the last time, activate Hani shift stance on his remaining uninjured hand.

"YAAAH!" With a shout that released all of his pent up emotion, Alex plummeted down, and moments later his fist went through the beast's eye.

*ROAR*

With a blood curdling cry, the beast dropped onto the sandy ground and began thrashing about.

'I haven't gone deep enough.' Alex then steeled his resolve and thrust his hand even deeper into its eye, ignoring the black blood that splashed onto his face.

'Come on,' thought Alex in frustration as he moved his strengthened hand around in the beast's eye. 'Where is that core? It has to be in here somewhere.'

However, no matter how much deeper Alex pushed his hand, he didn't reach the beast's core.