Chương 8: Bonehound
The ground beneath Arino shook as he ran as fast as he could, occasionally whipping his head around to try to glance at his strange pursuer. He'd been searching for edible berries among the brush when all of a sudden tremors like some horror was running at him erupted from his surroundings.
Despite the clear bulk causing the noise, he couldn't see whatever it was behind him. He had been doing a great job of staying out of view, but he was sure it had some strange way to sense him.
Most things in this jungle did.
Arino passed tree after tree, running past every carnivorous plant and creature he could. The tremors from his pursuer were enough to keep the other creatures from chasing him as well, but Arino began to wonder whether he could escape or not as he saw an especially dense thicket of trees they were approaching.
He weaved through the first line of trees before taking a hard left and jumping up as hard as he could. Arino stabbed the twisted blades of the Lotus Stigmata into the trunk of one of the trees as hard as possible but he didn't pull both blades out immediately. He hung there for a moment whilst listening to the noises got louder and louder.
Now that he was up on in the tree however, he realized that the ground wasn't shaking. All that noise, but not a single wiggle in the branches of the tree he was in.
Peering around the trunk he was on, he saw his pursuer. It was an weird little wolf-like creature with stone ears it was slamming against it's exposed skull to produce the huge steps Arino had heard.
'Damnation! All that energy wasted running from some bastard half my size.'
Despite his frustration at the little guy, he was entertained by nature's ingenuity. Obviously there's no expectations when it comes to Noble Beasts and Nightmare Creatures alike, but the uniqueness was usually from millennia of evolution and quite creative.
Still clapping rocks against bone, the Bonehound slinked along sniffing the ground periodically. The clapping stopped as the beast put his nose towards the sky and the hole in the skull where a nose would grow from gave a hollow scrape, like a sandstorm through a canyon.
Arino watched in horror as the beast turned it's head towards him slowly, but didn't give it the chance to finish the motion. He let go of one of the blades in the tree and fell towards the creature.
Swinging down with all his might, he stabbed down to the base of it's neck, but it didn't break through. The hound smashed him in the side with it's skull, throwing him into the base of a tree. It crumpled beneath the impact instead of his armor or him luckily, but everything he saw shook.
Arino was concussed, but luckily the stars that encompassed his vision momentarily disappeared shortly. He got up to face his attacker only to see the horrible creature open it's cracked jaw and shake it's head violently.
Bone dust spread through the air only to be dispersed by a mighty howl from the Bonehound as Arino realized his mistake. Canines, even those far removed from the evolutionary tree, tend to hunt in packs.
Arino dismissed and resummoned the dagger left in the tree above the hound and ran further into the thicket. He was desperately cursed at himself for forgetting that, but he wasn't out of hope. All he had to do was reach the edge of the Shadespire Jungle and jump. The river between it and the next region wasn't too violent, but it wasn't friendly either.
His options weren't the best. He could either brave the pack of dormant beasts that was sure to answer their kin's call or the currents of the river.
Arino's foot got caught on a root at he was sprinting full speed ahead, barely catching himself, but it shortened the gap between them tremendously. The pack however, was nowhere to be seen. The edge of the jungle was barely out of reach when the Bonehound got close enough to bite at him, narrowly missing.
The pack on his back wasn't as lucky as him, receiving a huge hole which spilt most of the red berries he had been collecting before the beast came after him. Disgusting squelches were heard as they were crushed underfoot.
The river was finally in sight as an idea came to him. Planting his right foot in front of him as hard as he could, he pivoted and got low. Not low enough to be avoid being torn apart by the beasts charge, but that wasn't the goal.
He stabbed towards the hound and did his best to resist it's incoming momentum. Like it had hit a sturdy wall, the beast flipped as one dagger embedded in it's shoulder and another in it's open maw. He hadn't planning for the daggers to stay in unfortunately, so he was thrown with the Bonehound towards the river.
Seconds passed as the both of them tumbled through the air in some strange dance, where Arino tried to pull his daggers out and the hound did it's best to pull him closer so it could shred him apart. He was used to working with hounds however, and had plenty of experience with tug of war.
No mere dormant beast could win against him!
With a sickening crunch, the piece of the Bonehound's jaw that his blade was stuck in broke off. The forceful separation of the two had thrown him just far enough towards the river's other edge.
He was lucky the hound had been charging with such speed, or else he would have landed in the center of the river regardless of the extra boost he had gotten at the end there.
With a shout, Arino plunged the daggers into the bank of the river and began dragging himself to safety. He turned to make sure the Bonehound was finished just to see one of it's paws break the surface for a moment before it was pulled asunder.
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Bonehound!]
[Your soul grows stronger.]
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