weeThe orb had broken, and I was not expecting the next event.
It was like the world was trembling, but I knew that this was only a local occurrence happening.
And then I saw it.
A gigantic worm that was a deep rotten brown, and covered in eyes.
{It has gotten bigger than the last time we saw it. It seems to still be a young one, though. Lucky you.}
'This is a young one?!'
{Worms are something that have a range of abilities depending on their diet. This one has been living in this area for years upon years, so it has become this thing. You are lucky that this race is almost extinct by now.}
'How many are left if it's only almost extinct?'
{Only 3.}
'Yeah, that's definitely almost extinct.'
This short conversation took only a second from start to finish, so I was still watching the gigantic worm tunnel out of the ground.
I watched as segment after segment passed through the ground, leaving a hole where the worm had once been.
It was an unnerving sight.
'This fight is going to suck so bad.'
{It will definitely suck. Especially since this thing has the tenacity of a tardigrade.}
'The hell is a tardigrade?'
{A creature that won't die even if you tossed it into space. Made one once, and it evolved. Never going to make that mistake again.}
'Did you get rid of it?'
{Yes. It had evolved into some sort of parasitic disease that did some weird things to a creature.}
'I'm not going to ask.'
I snapped back to reality after sensing the tremors caused by the approaching worm.
'This is going to be quite tough.'
And then it appeared once more, shooting out of the wall in an attempt to hit me.
I saw the inside of its maw for only a split second, and that split second was all I needed to see that I needed to dodge no matter what.
The inside was just teeth. Rows and rows of serrated, rotting teeth extending into the darkness of its maw.
'Ew.'
{Ew indeed.}
I dodged the lunge immediately, escaping the reach of the creature.
I threw my spear at one of the eyes of the creature, hoping to pierce the beast's skin.
The result was a pleasant surprise.
My spear passed right through, leaving a hole inside of the worm.
I threw a few more spears, leaving even more holes in the body of the creature before it would be able to reach me again.
'That is a really weak body...'
{True, but this is also one of the reasons it has survived this long.}
'Its body?'
{Correct.}
And then the creature reappeared out of the wall, but not near me.
I noticed that it was a small distance away from me, so I began attacking once more.
This time with my blade.
As I slashed at it, I noticed that the flesh felt like a thick paste instead of a solid piece of meat.
I stopped slashing at the worm, instead focusing on holding my sword inside of its body as it dug past.
It glided through the worm with very slight resistance, similar to the feeling of waving a stick through still water.
I held the blade until it reached its tail, retracting it after I prepared for the next strike.
While I was expecting another attack, the attack was not what I expected.
The body of the worm started to excrete some sort of spit and proceeded to shoot it out of its surviving eyes.
It was not very troublesome due to most of the worm being currently buried, but it was surprising nonetheless.
'I was not expecting that.'
{But you were expecting not to expect something.}
'I guess I was.'
The projectiles all missed me due to the remaining eyes not facing me, and I returned to the offensive.
I decided to try and cut the worm into separate parts, hoping that it would kill the removed section.
That was a mistake that I immediately regretted making.
As soon as I cut the worm into two, the back of the first part closed up, and the front of the second part grew into the same shape of the front of the first part.
{And now we have two. Good job.}
'Well f***.'
And then the front of the first reappeared, lunging at me from a random angle.
I was able to dodge, but the second half had to step in as well, lunging at me from an even more annoying angle.
I dodged both, and noticed that I was slowly shifting to the losing side of the battle.
I didn't like that at all, so I decided to change tactics.
'I guess I'm going back to my old style.'
Blowing everything the f*** up.
I pulled out a small bag filled with several bombs, holding it in my hand so that I may be able to feed it to one of the worms.
As soon as one of the two appeared, I tossed the bag into the flight path of it and watched as they swallowed the bag filled with lit explosives.
I also watched as the worm dug back into the ground after I dodged the lunge it made at me.
I waited a few seconds (And dodged a worm once again) and felt a small tremor in the earth.
'Looks like it worked. I just wish I knew how well it worked.'
{You're about to find out.}
The trademark tremors reappeared again, and I dodged what I assumed to be the second worm dig out of the ground.
I watched it pass by, noticing the change in length.
'Yup, it definitely got shorter.'
I looked around the battlefield that the cave had become.
The battle had been going on for several minutes, and the cave was now riddled with holes. I had to focus on avoiding the holes since they were definitely large enough to fall into.
Other than the annoying hazard, I felt that my 'plans' had been going quite smoothly.
{Thay have.}
The words of the Gods caught me off guard, making me pause for a split second.
'What?'
{Sorry, I was interrupting the narration.}
'There's a narration?'
{No?}
'I just write it off as one of your "omnipotent being" quirks.'
{Hey! Why did you put omnipotent being in quotation marks?}
'How the hell do you hear quotation marks?'
{I'm reading the script.}
I was utterly confused at this point, so I decided to take their words with a handful of salt.
{We are being serious here.}
A large handful of salt.
After our quick conversation, I refocused on fighting the worm, whom I realize that I never inspected.
[Eater of Worlds
hp 3469/10479 (Total health)]
'Huh.'
{It is quite tanky in our opinion.}
'Your opinion is correct.'
{As always.}
I felt that the worm was extremely fragile, yet extremely tenacious. That was probably the only reason it has survived this long.
I decided that I should kill it as fast as possible, so I got to work.
I repeated the same process of blowing the worm up over and over again since the Eater seemed to never learn from its mistakes.
{You expect too much from something so far gone.}
It took me a matter of minutes to completely remove everything but the head of the monstrous creature.
It had lost all the strength of its size, so it was no longer a threat to me, and I dealt with it with a weapon I had not used yet: The fungicide.
The worm was stupid enough to launch itself straight at me, so I made one move and shot it straight in the face.
The bullet struck the worm head-on, and I dodged out of the way of the flying body.
I watched as the bullet disintegrated inside of the worm, and seemed to spread throughout the body of the creature, leaving a mushroom covered husk.
Lucky for me, the weapon didn't zombify the Eater's remains, only killing it upon the full takeover of the creature.
I watched the worm disintegrate into ash with a satisfied smile.
Good riddance.
Uploaded early once again because I have more AC: New Horizons to play.
I hope you enjoyed it!