Doc Doctor

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

Shashous-throth cascaded through bushes and weaved through trees, trying to lose the ranger. It would likely be a futile effort, but in fights like these all options had to be tried and exhausted. Poking and prodding at all the little joints until a chink was found. Soon enough it would come upon its lair, but it wouldn't likely be what the elf had been looking for. A rocky, man-sized hole in the ground at the base of a large hill, overgrown with vegetation and trees. It was a hideout, a sanctuary of imagination. The sort of place young boys would hang around when exploring vacant lots in Northern states. Crual might easily miss it, his impeded sight and expectations making him not notice until it was too late. As the Magna Pater neared its dwelling, it would discretely snatch up a stone as it clawed its way forth. At first glance the hole would be too small for the monster to enter, if it were able to reach the opening, however, it would be able to contort its body and squeeze through in a sickening fashion, slipping into the winding little passage with ease. It wouldn't be practical to try and fire an arrow after it, unless the ranger's arrows could curve sharply mid-flight, and attempting to collapse it with explosives would be equally improbable. It was no feeble mineshaft held up by wooden support beams, but a cave system of solid basalt and dolomite. Even a bunker busting missile wouldn't be able to bring the entire place down.

The ranger would be damn right about the importance of preventing his foe from entering. Wise is the man that follows not a mother bear into its abode, and very, very much worse than a bear was the thing that stalked these woods.

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This seems pretty interesting; while certainly no stranger to this concept, this video was still a great reminder, helping me refine my understanding of it. Hope this is of interest to somebody else, too.

@Vordak

Neat video!

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@Alphakoka@Skallagrim

I haven't gotten points yet for winning the Ghost in the Darkness match then!

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Does a ranked match win count if the match was started in November but ended in December?

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

The monster had tried to time its toss so that when the ranger appeared he'd be quite close to the explosives. Regardless of what happened there, the shockwave would have probably stopped quite a few of the arrows from reaching the tree, and by the time the ones that hadn't been effected did...

Shashous_throth would have ditched that spot. It hadn't expected a big boom, and when there was one it would have lunged to the ground and zipped right off at full speed, startled halfway to hell. Several energy arrows pecked through the ground near where it darted along, but it had managed not to get hit this time. The energy arrows were vast in quantity, but more easy than normal arrows for the monster to notice due to their, well, energy.

A new trick had already slid into the devious beast's head. How could a physical being harm something that could vanish at will? The answer came naturally, though not in any form of thought comprehensible to a sane man. It had seen the obvious solution first hand, as its prey had dove into the solid tree. The Magna Pater launched itself full steam in the direction of its lair.

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

The ranger must not have accounted for how his appearance was always foretold by an accumulation of shadows and a rushing sound. Disregarding the obvious noise, it was true that Shashous-Throth could not see shadows as other creatures did, but... The ranger's shadows were were multidimensional silhouettes that displaced light. Light, according to the law of thermodynamic equilibrium, contains a temperature. A cold spot, however so insignificant, the monster could detect. Normally it ignored so small a thing, but the last two times the elf had used the technique it had indeed sensed the strange phenomenon.

And so it decided to give its coilful of bombs an almost playful toss in that direction right before he popped in to see what would happen. The results might be... Explosive?

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

Were the packets to be so sensitive that bumping against each other when dropped caused a detonation, the ranger would have probably blown himself up long before he had ever met Shashous-Throth. One didn't go leaping about with vials of nitroglycerin strapped to one's body, and even a vial of nitroglycerin could take more than a light tap.

Still, if somehow he did manage to get around with those things, then the ranger would be in for a surprise. Not a one blew up. Not because they weren't volatile, no. They had been gently caught. The monster had come up behind the ranger with a plan of its own. It purposefully made its presence known behind him in the hopes that he would try to jump off the branch. It had only wrapped its tail around the trunk once, and there was still more than enough length to it to seize the elf's ankle if he tried to escape. That had been the original plan, basically. But as he had simply vanished, it was left there with its tail right below where he had been, in the perfect position to catch the explosive packets with remarkable care in the flexible, oozing coils. Certainly no less care than with which the ranger darted around carrying the things. It was like a high level version of someone tossing you a water balloon and, amazingly, you catch it out of pure reaction and it doesn't pop. Even the monster's incredible senses and reaction speed hadn't fully accounted for what it had done. It was just one of those things that happens suddenly and you're all like, "Whoah, did I do that?"

It did not know what they were, but instinct and experience told the Magna Pater that they were dropped on purpose and had been meant to land with at least a little more force than they were normally subjected to.

It knew that its opponent could reappear at any second and could perhaps try to reinforce his attempt at dropping the things by going after its tail. It also knew though that in doing so he would make himself tangible, and therefore vulnerable. Even the ranger himself probably knew what was passing through the Magna Pater's head right then.

Chuck the things at the human and see what happens...

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

If the ranger held perfectly still and listened...
He'd be able to vaguely hear the nearby sound of bark groaning beneath him. No doubt that horrendously strong tail squeezing about the tree. But it wouldn't be doing that from the ground... It had climbed up and was just about behind him. Something dug softly but firmly into the trunk beside his head. It was holding itself in place, perhaps getting ready to bite his head off from behind. Crual would be able to feel its gnarly breath on the back of his neck, a suffocating odor of rotting meat and fear. Every moment he held still was another moment to escape lost.

Yami and Doc vs Cruallassar and Lunar

As the ranger finished tending to his vision, he'd be able to see that... the imaginary field was devoid of life. Nowhere could the monster be seen, not even in the distance. How could it have...

*Because it wasn't in front of him*

Whilst he had been preoccupied with escaping to a branch and tending to his eyes, it would have slithered back into the treeline, eating up the remainder of its left arm to replenish its right so that it could be once more in fair enough shape to fight. As it did so, with incredible speed and silence it'd have attempted to sneak up behind Crual. The tricky bastard had figured out that though the ranger could see anything in front of him, he couldn't look backwards through his skull. Even if it thought that it had blinded him, it still took no chances. Depending on how quickly the ranger recovered, he might notice the monster as it was in the midst of flanking him, or perhaps he wouldn't realize where it had gone until he felt an icy sense of impending death welling up directly behind him. The Magna Pater did not screw around.

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Ah, alrighty then. I've never been very story driven myself, so I can understand. Perhaps when the season starts again we can have a ranked match and I can use a more appropriate character.