Chapter 31: Match with the manticore

As the immense beast burst out of the ground, sending broken shards of bone flying in all direction, I instinctively dove for cover. Landing hard amongst the mountains of skeletons, I scrambled to find my footing before I found myself buried along with the fleshless dead.

Above me, the manticore bellowed, a bestial sound that reverberated fearsomely across the confined space of the valley. I risked a glance upward and for a moment froze at the terrifying visage of the gigantic beast that now loomed before me.

Like I suspected, the monstrosity was about ten meters in height and three times that length. A lion's head turned to glare at me, its majestic mane swaying as it framed a feline snout lined with teeth the size of long daggers. Wings sprouted out from its back, resembling bats – except that there were no bats ever that big. At the end, a gargantuan scorpion tail rose and arched above the monstrous creature, venom dripping from its cruelly curved tip.

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be stung by that that. I doubted it would feel like a sting.

The manticore growled, scanning the area before fixing its gaze upon me. It was only natural that I would stand out among the white skeletons, given my black and red jacket, dark pants and black hair. Plus I was the only thing in the valley besides the manticore who still had his skin on.

The manticore lunged at me without hesitation, its incredible speed belying its immense size. I barely managed to draw my staff and let loose a Doombolt that smacked against its ugly face, sending it sprawling back with a roar of pain.

"?"

I had half-expected it, but I was still dismayed to see that my Doombolt had scarcely managed to scratch the gargantuan beast. Snarling, it turned toward me before swiping a claw that sent a shower of bones raining down on my position.

Scrambling through the uneven terrain and struggling to find a foothold, I managed to evade its paw, which was tipped with huge claws the size of an adult. Crashing through the skeletons, I dove away in time to avoid the enormous scorpion stinger that buried itself past the shattered skeletons and deeply into the mountainside.

"Gosh, if I get hit by that thing, it's going to sting."

I gulped as I stared at the gigantic stinger for a second before I swung my staff vengefully to capitalize on the manticore's momentary immobilization. Unleashing a powerful Shadow Lunar Fang, I sent the manticore toppling to the side, yelping in agony. Black smoke billowed from its scorched flank as the manticore crashed into a bed of bones.

"Gr…"

With a growl, the manticore forced itself back to its feet, its stinger ripping free of the mountain and forcing me into evasive maneuvers again. I ducked under the whipping scorpion tail before counterattacking with a second Shadow Lunar Fang, which struck the manticore squarely on its lion face and sending it tumbling again.

However, in less than ten seconds, the immense beast had rose to its feet again, lashing out with its paws in fury.

"I don't believe it," I muttered as I dodged the manticore's vengeful strikes. Staring at its superficial wounds, I shook my head in disbelief. "I hit that thing with two Shadow Lunar Fangs and I only scratched it a little?"

The manticore was less surprised. Growling, it charged at me with open jaws. I hit the ground, allowing the massive thing to fly above me and smack right into the mountain. Even as tremors reverberated throughout the mountain, I was already scrambling back up and dashing away from the massive beast.

"Whoa!"

It was my instincts that saved me. Sensing danger, I threw myself at the messy ground in reflex. That action saved my life as something massive flew above me. The stinger, curled and poised to punch a hole through me, stabbed into thin air before arcing down into the ground. I looked up and stared at the black, barbed stinger that was piercing the dirt, then scrambled away in fear. Even if I was an undead, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about suffering such immense damage.

Twisting around, I sent another black arc of Shadow Lunar Fang at the manticore's face, bruising it, and then leaped away to widen the distance between us as much as possible. Slipping on the uneven ground of the boneyard, I righted myself and turned back.

The manticore was slowly getting back to its feet with a feral snarl, shaking its head after the smarting it received from my Shadow Lunar Fang. With my most powerful attack doing little more than uh, stinging it, I felt helpless.

Fortunately, I wasn't restricted to spamming energy blasts. I was a necromancer, after all. Not a Shinigami wannabe.

"Rise from your graves, skeletal ones," I murmured as black energy spread out from my staff. The black fog unfurled across the valley, suffusing the skeletons that had been lying dormant since their brutal deaths. With the shrieks ad laments of hundreds…no, thousands, the skeletons jerkily stood up, their bones clattering wildly with vengeance.

As one, they turned to glare at the manticore, red light blazing in their otherwise empty sockets. Their jaws clacking, the skeletons rushed at the monstrosity like an unstoppable tide of bones. The sea of white washed over the stunned manticore, clawing and scrabbling at its thick hide, seeking to bring their killer down with sheer numbers.

"Grr…!"

The manticore howled as it flung the skeletons off, but the broken bones merely regenerated and pieced themselves back together again before they lunged at the behemoth again. Even as the gargantuan scorpion tail whipped out sending scores of skeletons hurtling against the mountainside, even as the corrosive venom dripping from the stinger disintegrated the bones of vengeful dead with its sheer acidity, the dead continued to come.

"Go forth. I'll allow you to claim your revenge on the creature that killed you."

I stood alone at the back, and watched the handiwork of my army of undead. The skeletal warriors – both human and beasts – were crushing the manticore under the weight of their numbers. Jumping and grabbing onto the flailing manticore, they buried it under a ball of white, tangled bones, hacking, scratching and clawing at the shrieking behemoth.

"Regret killing so many now?" I mocked the manticore. "This is the weight of your sin, the burden you've to bear for slaughtering so many. Now, they've come to demand their price, and you'll pay for their violent deaths in blood."

The manticore didn't understand human language, presumably. It didn't have to, and in any case it was too occupied by the skirmishing skeletons to listen to a word I said. I shrugged and sat down at my corner, waiting for my army of undead to eventually subdue it.

It helped that the battlefield was to my advantage, a boneyard of countless skeletons and dead that I could turn into my minions. The moment the manticore left such a vast number of resources in its backyard for me to use, it had handed over the home advantage to me. And I wasn't going to squander this chance.

What irony. To be killed by the dead of the very prey you massacred in bulk. There wasn't anything sweeter for the dead than to enact this final revenge of theirs.

However, despite being a solitary hunter, the manticore was still a massive behemoth of a monster. There was no way it would go down that easily.

"…!"

A ball of skeletons flew past me and slammed into the mountainside, shattering from sheer force. Turning back, I watched as the manticore slowly but surely shook off the forces of the undead and trampled their bones underneath its mass. Even as more skeletons swarmed over to replace their destroyed brethren, the manticore lashed out with its tail and claws to smash them into oblivion. As much as the broken bones regenerated themselves, even my unholy magic couldn't completely restore the shattered shards of bones to their original state.

My endless numbers of skeletons were gradually declining.

"Well, that's fine."

I had been waiting for this.

"Thousand Astral Graves."

The thousand and eight graves rose from the slopes of the mountain, casting the sun-bleached valley in darkness. Golden light began crackling around the surviving skeletons and they grew. They didn't just expand – they consumed and devoured their fallen comrades, the broken bones and shattered shards rapidly flowing toward them and adding to their individual bulk.

This was the reason why I didn't use Thousand Astral Graves right from the start. It would be disadvantageous to my gargantuan skeletons, who wouldn't be able to make use of their sheer size and numbers when clustered tightly together in the confined spaces of the valley if there were too many of them. Furthermore, I had instinctively understood that my enhanced skeletons required to feed off the bones of their brethren to grow.

The manticore found itself surrounded by a dozen gaikotsu that actually towered over it. Snarling, it swiped at the nearest gaikotsu, actually shattering it, but the pieces seemed to flow seamlessly and regenerate much more fluidly than the unenhanced skeletons. The Thousand Astral Graves were certainly doing their job.

The twelve or so gaikotsu pounced on the hapless manticore and began tearing it apart limb from limb. The manticore struggled and managed to smash a brittle gaikotsu. As large as they were, they were still fragile. In exchange for enhanced regeneration, size and strength, they had traded away endurance and durability.

Not that it mattered. They were already dead. The gaikotsu didn't mind dying a few more times as long as they were able to bring the manticore down with them.

Yet, for all their numbers, the skeletal warriors' attacks weren't very effective. Even as they battered ineffectually against the manticore, the behemoth sent them flying in pieces with each strike. Its immense stinger jabbed out repeatedly, corroding bone with acidic venom at a damaging rate that surpassed their regeneration.

However, their enhanced strength was proving to be a problem for the manticore. One of the gaikotsu punched the roaring manticore, leaving a huge, gaping hole in its body where blood gushed out like a river. Another grabbed hold of the wildly swinging stinger and pinned it in place. The others began grabbing hold of the manticore's legs and holding them still. With brute strength, they ripped off the shrieking manticore's legs, leaving its hapless body to topple over.

The remaining gaikotsu closed in to finish the manticore off.

Before they could, the manticore swung its tail with such force that the gaikotsu clinging onto it was carried along. With a final surge of strength, the manticore sent that particular gaikotsu clattering into its brethren in an untidy heap of fallen bones. With a roar, it flailed about before going into spasms, its tail smacking more gaikotsu and sending them flying.

And then, something unexpected happened.

Blood sprouted out of the severed limbs with the force of a geyser, but unlike a random fountain, they began twisting in and intertwining, different shaded streams of fluids weaving together to form new bone, muscle and flesh.

Within an instant, the manticore had regenerated its limbs. No, it didn't just restore its limbs – its paws looked different, more dangerous somehow.

With a roar, the manticore lunged forward and shattered a gaikotsu into pieces with a single swipe of its new claws.

Adaptive Mutation?

My glasses took on a faint glow when I used Absolute Appraisal. It appeared that the manticore had a special ability called Adaptive Mutation that was allowing it to uh, adapt to the battle. The growing back of its limbs wasn't just an ordinary regeneration. It was an adaptive mutation that allowed it to grow stronger, more powerful claws and limbs. After being overwhelmed by the gaikotsu, it had mutated to match their strength and account for their numbers.

You've got to be kidding me…

I licked my lips as my mouth went dry, but took a deep breath to calm myself down. Well, that explained the manticore's immense size. Every time it was injured in battle, it mutated to adapt to the changing demands, and as it survived, its transformations and enhancements accumulated. That was how it got so enormous and so powerful.

I'll have to finish this quickly, before it mutates even further!

I didn't use the word evolve, because it seemed that everyone had the misconception of what evolution was. Evolution wasn't used to refer to changes in a single organism, but the process of how advantageous traits were retained and passed down genetically to offspring for them to survive better in a particular environment. Mutating and transforming in the middle of a battle was not evolution. A lot of people seemed to misinterpret what evolution was (especially a lot of self-proclaimed scientifically minded atheists who loved to use evolution to mock religious people without understanding either evolution or religion clearly).

But how? Summon new monsters? My Shadow Lunar Fang clearly isn't able to do much damage to it…

I gritted my teeth as I considered my options.

Well, I have no choice but to use "that".

Sword Saint. The special ability I devoured from Minamoto Kureha's corpse. I had to use it in conjunction with my undead and overwhelm it before it could mutate into something even stronger and harder to kill.

But I don't have a sword…

It mattered not. I had an ability that could provide me with whatever swords I needed. I strapped my staff to my back and held out both hands, conjuring twin swords in my hands. Taking a deep breath, I raced forward while the manticore was still occupied with razing my gaikotsu to the ground. With its new limbs, it was able to overpower them physically, knocking them over and pulverizing them with sheer force.

Ducking under its swinging paw, I slashed at the manticore, opening up a new gash in its body. The summoned sword in my right hand shattered from the sheer power of the strike, unable to endure the strength of the Sword Saint.

That was all right. I immediately summoned a new sword while hacking with the other sword in my left hand. The manticore screeched as another huge chunk of flesh was gouged out of its chest. It tried to swat me away, but a gaikotsu clamped down on its arm, distracting it for a precious few seconds and diverting its attention from me.

That was all I needed.

Holding my newly summoned sword with both hands, I unleashed another strike that I had no doubt Kureha would be proud of. The powerful strike sent the manticore tumbling backward, and my gaikotsu wasted no time in clambering on top of the behemoth and tearing into it. The manticore writhed and kicked them off, but the damage had been done.

Adaptive Mutation was not the same as Regeneration. The manticore clearly couldn't heal its wounds at the same rate as we undead could. Even though it could grow new limbs, it couldn't heal the more superficial ones.

However, I could see its skin hardening and becoming more impervious to my gaikotsu's onslaught as they clawed at it. I hoped the damned Adaptive Mutation had a limit, or my sword strikes would eventually become ineffective against it.

"…!"

I almost paid the price for not paying attention. The manticore had lashed out at me, almost catching me off guard. Taken by surprise, I loped off its paw in reflex, causing the flailing limb to crash heavily onto the ground.

"Holy Terra! My mistake!"

I never meant to do that. Over the next few seconds, the manticore grew a new, more powerful leg that was disproportionately bigger than the other three. Like an oversized pincer, the manticore's new claw was powerful enough to reduce the mountain to dust, as demonstrated when it pulverized the nearest gaikotsu.

What's the point of buffing them with Thousand Astral Graves if they still end up dying so easily? I wondered.

Well, at least they weren't dying as easily as before the buffs, and they were still doing enough damage to annoy the manticore. They weren't powerful enough to defeat the gargantuan monster, but they posed enough of a threat and were distracting it long enough for me to continue whittling away at the monster's health.

However, if dismemberment couldn't kill the manticore, then I needed something more drastic. Something catastrophic enough that I could kill the manticore in a single strike. Jumping away to avoid another slash from the manticore's odd claw, I studied the creature and analyzed it. The manticore had to have a weakness somewhere.

A vulnerable spot that's not armored, a place where it wouldn't have been hurt enough to require the mutation…

Absolute Appraisal kicked in, the lenses of my glasses literally blazing with blue fire as I shifted the special ability into overdrive. There were so many numbers that they were almost meaningless. I just needed to know where the weakest spot was…

There it is!

As overwhelming as the numbers were, they provided vital information. My glasses were automatically sifting through the information and displaying the most relevant data, and that numerical value stood out as being the lowest.

Lowest in terms of thickness…that meant the least protection or armor. In other words, a weak spot.

Sending a mental command to my gaikotsu, the remaining giant skeletons piled forward in a near suicidal manner, clutching and grabbing the bellowing manticore. More of them were smashed to the ground – by now, I only had four left. They struggled, grappling with the huge stinger and the limbs, but the tail whipped free after the manticore crushed another gaikotsu with that disproportionately large paw of its.

Three left.

"Uwaaah!"

With a determined yell, I lunged at the manticore, summoning a new two-handed sword. The manticore didn't flinch, its gigantic paw swiping over to swat me to death. I did a cartwheel and flipped my body over the soaring claws, landing on the back of its paw before running along its arm. Snarling, the manticore struck with its tail, the immense stinger streaking toward me with deadly accuracy.

In reflex, the Sword Saint working its way into my mind, I swung my sword and severed the tail. The scorpion tail crashed down, jumping wildly even when disembodied. The manticore roared in agony and reared back, almost yanking the surviving trio of gaikotsu off their feet but they remained firm, digging their skeletal feet into the wasteland and holding it down.

Long enough for me to jump off the manticore's paw and summon a new sword.

The manticore darted forward, attempting to seize me with its teeth, but I spun around in midair and landed on its nose with a single foot. Just barely avoiding a fall into the deadly pit of teeth, I kicked off from the manticore's nose and launched myself further back, above the majestic mane. Sailing above the air, I twisted my body around to glare at my target.

The neck, just barely exposed beneath the shock of brown mane – unlike the other parts of the manticore, the flesh covering its spine and neck was hardly armored. Probably because any wound dealt to that area would be undoubtedly fatal.

It was here that I would deliver my fatal strike.

Channeling black mana into my summoned sword, I gripped it with both hands before swinging it as hard as I could. I wasn't just releasing a blast of Shadow Lunar Fang. I was executing a technique of the Sword Saint and extending the slash of my sword on a metaphysical level. The black blade seemed to expand momentarily before arcing outward and slicing through the manticore's neck cleanly. Blood spurted out of the wound, almost like a volcanic geyser erupting from the core of a mountain. As I landed on the ground behind the manticore, the behemoth staggered for a few moments and went still, as if it didn't believe what had just happened.

And then, slowly, its head slid off its neck. At the same time, the summoned sword in my hands broke apart and fell into pieces.

"Phew."

I exhaled in relief as I turned back to the falling manticore. Using Absolute Appraisal, I ensured that it was clearly and undeniably dead. Even after a few seconds passed, there was no new head growing out of the manticore's neck. Smiling, I shook my head.

"Try adapting to losing your head."

The headless manticore jerked in its death throes one last time before finally going still.