The mountains echoed as the beast roared when it saw its meal, trying to scare Jay into submission.
The beast still had over one thousand health, and Jay definitely didn't have the damage to stop it, neither did he have the mana to sustain his skeletons - especially when each of them were dying in one to two hits.
Jay had no doubts that his fate would be the same as Lamp's - encased helplessly in vines as they drained all his blood before twisting the remains of his body into a paste, wringing out every drop of the blood as if he were a damp cloth.
Fighting a level twenty-seven beast was just too far beyond his skill level.
Perhaps if it didn't know exactly where he was and had no health regeneration there would be a way to hide somewhere and send his skeletons in over a few days, whittling it down slowly, but right now the only option was to flee. There was no escaping its blood scent.
Jay could only hope that the beast wouldn't follow him across the desert, which would at the very least give him more time.
Perhaps in the forest he would be able to find a dungeon and take refuge inside one, but even then, the beast would still be somewhere outside, lurking for prey and waiting.
With the three-thousand metre range of its blood scent ability, there was also not much chance of escaping its maws.
Jay could only hope that once he crossed the desert, there would be another glade deer which the beast would chase instead.
Sure, it would have to travel around the desert again, but that would only prolong the inevitable as it resumed the hunt.
What mattered right now though was what was in front of him: the beast, which was already decimating his skeletons.
With no other options, Jay dashed from behind the boulder and ran straight towards the mushroom desert.
The beast almost seemed to be shocked as its second meal was about to run into the embrace of the carnivorous mushrooms again.
It released another frustrated roar, shaking pebbles and shifting the grains of sand, but this time it had undertones of sadness and alarm; ironically it was like it was trying to warn Jay, just so that it would be the one to kill him.
Jay ignored it completely. Its fearful roars still had no effect on him whatsoever.
Getting to the edge of the desert he didn't hesitate as he jumped right onto the sand and began weaving between the hazardous mushrooms.
Each step was concise and purposeful as he navigated around the field.
Suddenly an intense burning pain came from Jay's arm - looking down though, there was no mushroom clinging to it.
He didn't have time to worry about it though. The beast was gazing at him coldly, ignoring the skeletons for a moment as it shrugged off the hits. It waited to watched Jay die.
Its eyes squinted for a moment as it gazed, and finally it saw something which re-ignited a fire in its belly: a skeleton was on the other side of the field, two skeletons were in front of Jay, also crossing the field.
The beast wasn't mindless, and after living for so many decades, it's intelligence grew along with its strength. It was its intelligence that stopped it charging recklessly into the mushrooms in the first place, but right now it was only thinking one thing: there was a way across.
The prey was not dead.
The hunt was not over.
Finally it would steal a meal back from the damn mushrooms.
As Jay dashed across the field, there was a change in the sand - instead of shifting constantly by all the wriggling and squirming lizards underneath, it suddenly stopped.
But only for a moment.
Suddenly, the small waves of sand were moving in one direction: towards Jay.
“Oh fuck, oh shit... what are they doing?” he thought, dodging another mushroom.
So many variables and thoughts were running through Jay's mind at once:
- where would he run to next after crossing the desert?
- Will the beast follow him across? How would he outrun it now? The only chance of living would be to miraculously find a dungeon on the other side, somewhere in the forest? Since when did he have such profound luck.
- Why were the lizards suddenly all coming towards him?
- Oh, stop! Dodge that hanging fruit!
- Why is my arm burning with a hot itchiness?
[Your skeleton has been slain]
Now the death notifications were annoying him in the already stressful situation.
If Jay could put his current situation into words, he would only have three: “I am fucked.”
The gaps between the mushrooms got skinnier to run through, and he wasn't even half-way across, though he came to the area where the skeletons started cutting away the red fruits - this only made it harder as now he had to push past the hanging tendrils, and if the skeletons missed even one fruit, Jay would only be able to escape via amputation.
For a moment, he wondered if his situation could get any worse.
As if responding to his thoughts, a new threat emerged from the sand - the damn lizards.
Each of them were no real threat to Jay, however they had one ability which set them apart from all other little critters: they could utilize the fruit.
A little lizard head popped out of the sand with a red fruit on its mouth - right near Jay's foot.
“Fuck!” he flinched, only missing it slightly.
He quickly pulled his foot up right before the lizard started waving its head around, trying to attach the fruit to his body.
One red fruit would not do too much to slow him down, but ten? One hundred? If they were stuck to his body, he would progressively get slower, allowing more fruit to stick to him, and soon enough it would be a death sentence. A painfully slow one.
Remembering the lizards eating their own kind to consume the fruit, Jay's blood started pumping and his adrenaline started coursing through his veins; his heart beat accelerating and seeming to make time slow as his thoughts became clearer, almost calm, as his current objectives to survive were simple.
Dodge the red fruit, don't slow down.
All his other thoughts were pushed to the back of his mind.
Jay checked the bottom the the mushroom tendrils, pushing them aside like curtains before dashing through. Thankfully the skeletons carved a straight path through the mushroom field.
The beast had finally killed the skeletons and was already running towards where Jay entered the desert.
