1182. Acid spray all Day
After the stone was molten off, it revealed a smooth, dark snail shell, like polished marble. Then she noticed it, the mass of slime surrounding the foot of the shell. Meat and body parts were emerging from the ground and flowing into the shell. Even at this point, this fat snail had the gall to calmly continue to eat her men right in front of her!
"Cook it, Kalzemir!" she commanded the dragon to melt the snail. At first, she had considered adding the mountain to her subordinates, but she didn't want a giant snail. This beast didn't deserve an intact corpse.
At her call, the breath was shot once again. The shell was baked in dragon fire and started to quickly pop off and break away. Massive plates of shell rained to the ground around the beast, quickly revealing scaled flesh below.
The shell fell away, the flesh charred, but the slime didn't stop, as the dragon burned the snail, the snail just kept consuming the army of Spatia. Just what kind of horrible beast had this world given birth to?
When the dragon's breath ultimately came to an end, half the creature was burned away. With dismay, Natina found that the streams of dismembered people and bloody slime had slowed, but not stopped. The worst part revealed itself when the charred places started regenerating at incredible speed!
"Shit!"
The curse inadvertently slipped through her lips, when she realized that it was not just an incredibly strong monster, but was also infected by the zombie plague of Urth! A massive beast like this, with that kind of level... How long would she have to fit this, all the while the creature devoured her army!
"Kalzemir, lift it! get this thing of the ground! We have to get this thing away from the army."
If she couldn't kill it quickly, she simply had to get it away from the people and fight it somewhere where it couldn't creature any more harm, while she fought it. It was the quickest solution that came to her mind.
The giant dragon followed her command. Its massive bone claws dug into the regenerating flesh and crumbly shell, while it wings started flapping with tremendous might. As the dragon magic flowed through the wings, the Lou Carcol slowly started rising off the ground.
Only now, when it was lifted into the air and the stretching slime snapped, depriving it of its food, did the beast finally react to its attacker. Opposite to her expectations, it was not the head of a snail that emerged from the snail shell. It resembled that of a crocodile-like dragon a lot more.
Many hundreds of long tentacle-like barbels gave it the look of having a beard. The lip-less snout exposed rows of crooked teeth. Its three rows of eyes looked at the dragon above with malice and bit at its ankle, with a speed hardly believable for a creature of its size and making.
The jaws of the dragon snail clamped on the bones of the ancient dragon, but couldn't even leave a scratch. The bones had not just the same damage nullification as its scales, they had also a much higher durability and defense. In addition, Kalzemirwas also strengthened by its legend and Natina's skills as a necromancer and Chosen of Kali.
However, from its maw emerged the same slime that had crushed and taken her men. As the teeth didn't work, the creature attacked with acidic slime tentacles. The slime it used against the skeleton dragon was actually so caustic that it managed to slowly deal damage, despite the 80% damage nullification and strengthening.
"This thing must actually be really close to being a legend..." the necromancer thought, seeing the white fog rising from the bones, where the slime tentacles held onto Kalzemir.
"Just a little further!" she cheered on the skeleton, while she began attacking the Lou Carcol. Spear burning with purple flames of destruction and death rained down on the crocodile snail and its slimy tentacles.
She found that the rare death attribute had some effect against these urthan zombies. It was another conclusion they reached during their self-imposed quarantine. Although they had not yet found why, wounds with the death attribute seemed to need much more energy and time to heal for the undead.
They flew for five minutes, traveling several kilometers before Kalzemir dropped the beast into a massive glacial valley. It tried holding on, but the slime tentacles ripped under its weight. The thick snail shell crashed into the eons-old ice and cracked all over and some of the creature was spread across the glacier as it was partially splatted.
The Lou Carcol, half-crushed and covered in burns, screeched in madness. It disgorged the contents of its innards to the sky in the form of an acid breath to cover the whole skeleton dragon in its expectoration.
However, the attack was blocked by a city-sized shield that surrounded the skeleton dragon.
"We are far enough away from camp, use your real breath!" Natina finally commanded. It was time for the skeleton dragon to get serious and reveal its signature move. The true fight began now,
....
Far away, Haa'Skon sat on his steed and watched on as the beast that had eaten too many zombies and became one itself, was bathed in miasma. Ungodly amounts of darkness escaped from the maw of the skeleton dragon.
Any life that flourished in the harsh climate up here waned. Animals rotted away instantly, monsters decayed at a visible speed, and trees wilted everywhere several kilometers in every direction from the attack.
The Miasma Breath even colored the snow and tainted the very mountains black. The whole glacial valley was covered in a black mist that blocked even the knight golem's vision. When the breath ended, the dragon kept hovering above the dark sea it created.
Had the weird snail creature died just like that? Haa'skon thought that it was very strong and had hoped it could reveal more of the enemy's strength to him. He was about to give up on the pawn he stumbled over by chance when something left the mist.
It was so fast, that it was almost impossible to see from this distance. The acid spit, much smaller than the earlier attack, traveled at such a high speed and velocity, that it broke through the dragon's shield, aiming straight for the necromancer.
Had Natina died here and now, Haa'Skon would not have even known what killed her. However, the dart of acid slime splattered when it hit a pitch-black shield that had suddenly appeared around Natina. The black shell, which seemed like an incredibly powerful defense spell, saved Natina's life, but it also crumbled away after the attack.
All of this happened in an instant, but he realized just as fast, that he had underestimated the beast he picked up on a walk. Just how many souls had it devoured, to become strong enough to resist the dragon's breath at point-blank range? It seemed that this fight would not end anytime soon.
...
---Two days later---
Natina was exhausted, but they finally did it. Overcoming all the hardships, she finally saw the floating peaks of Delta on the horizon. They could see the end of their journey. However, her reputation was beyond saving at this point. No matter what she tried to tell herself...The price she paid to reach here was tremendous.
The way from Gamma to Delta, which could be flown in a couple of days, cost them almost two weeks. During this perilous journey of disasters, she actually managed to lose the lives of 13000 soldiers.
Most of them thanks to the courtesy of the Lou Carcol, which also cost her over a day to finally put to rest. Even if she tried to argue that there was enemy involvement, it didn't change a thing. She was responsible.
All she could do now was vent her frustration on the destination in sight.