Paralyzed, the centipede woman could do nothing but receive the incoming blows, crossbow bolts punching into her face and a weighted chain bouncing off her carapace as Raime and Ari both attacked. Though she had been brutally injured in a single, offhanded attack, the catgirl’s body was unencumbered by her near-death state, and she kept her distance from the slowly dispersing cloud of poison, striking at the maximum range her weapon afforded her. Raime, however, found that his white herbs offered no relief, and the pain continued to linger, the poison eating away at him more and more. His vision was turning red now, his breathing becoming more ragged. His crossbow’s string dug deep into his raw and bleeding fingers, while the cool taste of the Pearl Clovers only overlapped with the toxic burn, rather than relieve it. Perhaps with a persisting effect, the pain relief that Cacophony Concord normally offered didn’t occur. He lost [b]21 HP[/b] regardless. Things were getting dangerous for Raime now. If no one got any healing for him soon, then it might not be Ari, but rather Raime who was the one to die first. Lugh, however, was not concerned with any of that. The Lady of the Alabaster Scales had given him her decree, and even with an unsanctified weapon in his hand, he was deadly. The centipede woman, immobilized still, could only let out a horrid shriek as he unleashed a flurry of sword strokes towards her, slicing flesh and shattering teeth, before hefting his sword skywards and swinging down with the might of a giant, cracking her skull and sending her face into the dirt. The poison that he remained inside hardlyh bothered him; [b]9 points of damage[/b] was nothing. Amulak’s arcane shot found its mark as well, blasting open the crack that Lugh had made and exposing the black nothingness that existed within. The centipede woman’s twenty meter long body shuddered violently, black fumes pouring out of the many wounds she had sustained. With a response like that, the party must have been close to finishing off the monster, but conversely, that meant that the situation became just that much more desperate for the monster. One leg twitched, regaining functionality, and then the other ninety-nine did as well. With a horrid shriek, she tore her face off the ground and lunged for Lugh, twisting her head sideways as she crunched down upon him. More fumes, scarlet now, spewed from the inside of her mouth as hooked armor tore into her gums, but Lugh was restrained as well, clamped down by a vice-like grip that he couldn’t easily break free of, not when his SP had dropped to such low levels. And the centipede woman capitalized on that. Rising twenty meters up, she slammed Lugh into the ground, flipping from side to side as the warrior was smashed through skeletal trees and into the blasted dirt. The rampage, something that Raime witnessed up close, was of such intensity that even as Raime dodged away from each heaving blow, the shrapnel of cracked teeth and splintered wood still caught him, [b]12 points of damage taken[/b]. For Amulak and Ari though, the rate at which Lugh was losing HP was more terrifying. Even through massively inflated END and an almost full set of equipment, the warrior suffered [b]143 damage[/b] total from the onslaught, and the centipede women wasn’t slowing down at all. No, she was getting [i]greedier[/i]. One hundred legs coiled in unison and kicked off the ground as she torpedoed herself towards Amulak and Ari, intent on smashing them to pulp with Lugh as her human shield. [sub][@Psyker Landshark][@Cu Chulainn][@Searat][@GreenGoat][/sub][hr] The blue oni grunted with approval, and even bared his teeth at Ames’s hesitant response towards eating the offered food. It certainly didn’t taste good by human standards, even if meat sashimis such as horse or beef had become more popular in recent years, but there was a light numbness that came with each bite of the bear meat, and as the two continued to chew at it, the flavors of the meat dissolved into a fizziness upon their tongue. Almost like carbonated meat, in a weird but not too uncomfortable way. It was when Ames offered his halberd, however, that things changed. A raising of the eyebrows from the blue oni, a burst of empathetic speech from one of the red onis, then a rapid-fire discussion amongst the three as they passed the weapon around. Finally, they raised their fists, shook it three times, then splayed open those fists into different shapes. The slightly slimmer red oni shouted out, slapping his hand against his chest, and took the halberd; the others rolled their eyes, but seemed to assent to this. Raising up his new weapon, the red oni took a deep breath, twirled it around a couple of times, before, with a mixture of savage strength and surprising skill, butchered the bear’s corpse into five separate pieces, two of the pieces smaller than the others. The trio of oni hefted up the larger pieces on their shoulders and back, before walking off, with the blue oni looking back at Ames and Magpie only to twist his head in the direction they were travelling and say, [b]“Roife.”[/b] What the two Immortals were to do with this situation was unclear still, but they didn’t have long to decide, if, for whatever reason, they wanted to follow. Though the Thunderstruck Grove hadn’t been murderous so far, the fog was still dense, and the oni had already become but mere shadows in the distance. [sub][@Yankee][@OwO][/sub]