章 163: Manus not hot...

After excitedly stuffing the scrolls into his Folded Space Reima keeps fighting through the humanity sprites while descending deeper into the cavern, after taking a small detour for a White titanite slab he can now see the Fog-Gate... His medallion shudders ominously as he stands a few meters away from the Father of the Abyss and owner of the Dark Soul. He wreaths Arcell in Chaos Flames before eating an unhealthy amount of Green Blossoms, he feels hyped up and not just from the ill advised dosage of herbs but also for the upcoming battle. He tugs on his Gleam Cloak as if it were a lucky items before stepping through the Fog-Gate and immediately seeing numerous red eyes in the darkness... Loud thudding sounds out as it's large body becomes visible from the darkness, the 15ft body of the creature is completely black with huge horns erupting from it's skin in every which way imaginable... Small red eyes decorate it's horns and skin while funnily enough not being present on the creatures actual face, which looks horrific in it's own way. It's face looks emaciated with large inhuman teeth sticking out and forming a wide grin. It appears to be leaning over as it's legs are thinner than they should be for holding up such a large body, but it apparently makes up for it as it's right arm is proportionate to the rest of it's body while holding a large dark wooden staff in it's hand which it topped with some sort of axe head. Probably the most noticeable thing about the creatures anatomy though is the left arm which is huge and somehow not even connected to the body... It has black mist coming from the part that should be connected as it moves about in a manner defying physics.

Without any time to spare the creature known as Manus leaps at Reima, so quickly that he barely has enough time to blink away. Even so Manus immediately launches his large left hand towards Reima, and even despite being initially out of range the arm detaches and stretches while successfully surprising Reima with a heavy punch to the chest. It launches him away and into the darkness, his Armament Haki barely cushioning the blow... How the hell did his arm stretch in the first place! He quickly gets up as he can hear Manus charging him again, as he becomes visible Reima blinks behind him and slices into one of the large creatures legs causing it to give an inhuman scream while retaliation by slamming it's limbs on everything around it, Reima watches from a distance having just barely escaped it's small temper tantrum but becomes more alert as black mist begins to form on Manus's staff... It's a mage too!?! Reima mentally screams as he barely dodging a barrage of Dark magic orbs being shot at him, having felt the spell once before from the creatures in the Oolacile township he is not willing to be hit again.

After dodging all the spells it seems that Manus is charging up another one, Reima blinks forward and slams the sword into it's side, leaving a large scorched gash along it's black skin. The flames seeming to be very effective against it. He's about to strike again when he's launched away by a magic blast emitted by the insane creature, it roars again while slamming everything near it, the shards of what it smashes being a deadly attack in itself. Reima casts Flame Whip at the creature which entangles it's right staff wielding arm, it roars at him and tries to punch him again with it's large left arm, he blinks away which leaves the Flame Whip still attached and burning it's right arm, although it won't last much longer due to it no longer being provided Mana.

Reima has to blink a couple more times as Manus keeps launching Dark magic at him when he appears, another blink which places him behind the creature allows him to stab into it's leg, hopefully crippling it's movement. Fortunately the attack does injure it's leg but to compensate Manus starts using it's left arm to fling itself at Reima while simultaneously casting spells with it's right... He tries to stop this by chopping at the staff being used to cast the spells but he isn't able to deal any damage to it, despite delivering many clean heavy blows against it.

After 30 minutes of back and forth fighting, constant blinking and spells being flung everywhere Reima starts to slow down. He would eat some more Green Blossoms to give himself an extra boost but Manus won't allow him any time to rest as his seemingly endless assault gets closer and closer to pinning him down and finishing him. Reima back up and tosses a couple Great Chaos Fireballs into the air before blinking away again, hoping the pyromancy will provide a big enough distraction for him to try and finish the fight. The Fireballs explode as they rain down on Manus, covering him in extremely hot lava causing him to scream and thrash around, Reima uses this opportunity to attempt to finally kill the creature. He blinks above Manus, being weary of his extremely sharp horns before making use of his momentum and delivering a heavy slash to it's neck... Only to be stopped by another horn that has randomly grown amongst the others. "Shit." he says as he's smashed away again by the creatures left hand. He rolls backwards along with the force to try alleviate some of the impact, it helps as he only seems to have broken a couple ribs from the vicious strike.

He looks up at Manus who's still thrashing around due to the lava covering him and sighs, "It's gonna be like this then huh?". He reluctantly starts flinging more Great Chaos Fireballs at Manus, despite his large magical reserves he starts feeling the strain after the 50th fireball that only adds more lava to the newly forming puddle underneath the creature. Manus doesn't look like a monster of darkness any longer due to the brightly glowing lava covering every inch of it's form, it's screams grow hoarse as it struggles to thrash around much longer. It casts every spell it can think of to try and get the pain to go away but it has no effect, the last thing the creature ever feels is searingly hot pain, and a sense of loss for it's stolen item.

Manus starts fading away, taking some of the lava covering it with him as he goes, which is fortunate as a young woman's figure appears where he had just disappeared... Atleast she won't be cold surrounded by lava, Reima muses to himself as he approaches her. As he gets closer he gets a good look at her face, short dirty blonde hair with the same dress she was wearing before... He flicks the weird ornament she's wearing on her head which causes her eyes to open, "W-where am I?"