Morphling

The first to act was the changeling.

In a move that contained all its stored power, its legs grew taut and like a spring, it unleashed a force strong enough to cave the earth as it was propelled forward.

In the blink of an eye, it arrived before the red entity as it unleashed a hook angled from above.

Despite the suddenness of the attack, Bolragmal was prepared and was able to block the punch with its arm.

The blow was incredibly heavy as the force from it alone was enough to crater the ground it stood on.

Unexpectedly, the Niskari Lord’s only reaction was a grin.

[You’re surprisingly stronger than you look. But with no mana to enforce your blows, even if you hit harder, that black monkey’s punches hurt more than yours.]

Unfortunately, since the changeling couldn’t understand its words, it could only sense that the creature was mocking it again.

However, it had succeeded in its objective.

While the Niskari Lord was distracted, the three Tyrants began their attack.

Oneris leapt into the air as it curled its body into a ball.

The massive white ball of fur then came crashing down like a meteorite.

The changeling jumped backwards just as the shadow appeared above them.

The Niskari attempted to do the same, but found its legs glued to the ground with an adhesive substance. The changeling had left it with a parting gift.

Infuriated, it tore through the earth as it pulled to free its legs, but it was too late. By the time its legs were out, the furry meteorite had struck.

With a loud bang, the earth caved as a crater formed under Oneris’ gravity enforced slam.

From the force alone, it seemed as though nothing alive wouldn’t become paste from the weight of the blow. And yet, the ground showed no signs of something being crushed underneath.

Almost instantly, a red mist formed above Oneris and coalesced into the red monster with its arm reared, ready to tear into its back.

However, as though it expected this, the black Tyrant had been ready to strike and by the time the Niskari appeared, Zamorg had already thrown its fist.

Struck at its side before it could even understand what happened, Bolragmal was smacked away as though it were fired from a cannon.

At the end of the trajectory, the red Tyrant was in position as it intercepted the thrown Niskari like a ball from a serve and smacked it upwards.

Thrown like a rag doll in the air, the red Tyrant finished by firing several payloads of its stored projectile calculi within its fists. The result was the Niskari being turned into a shredded mess.

And yet, despite its state, the Tyrants could still feel a sense of dread.

As the body of the Niskari turned in the air, its head suddenly twisted towards them from above. In its mouth, an eerie red glow started to intensify as it appeared to prepare an attack.

However, a tendril had suddenly wrapped around its waist and with the force of a whip, smashed the Niskari onto the ground once again.

The changeling hadn’t been idle. It had morphed one of its arms into a tendril in preparation to intercept the red monstrosity as soon as the Tyrants finished their assault.

Before the dust could settle after Bolragmal was slammed, it was suddenly blown away by a thunderous roar.

There, standing with its arms raised was the Niskari Lord, roaring in its anger.

As the intensity began to increase, a vortex of wind suddenly surrounded it and muffled its cries.

With its blue horn revealed and aglow, the white wolf, while hiding in the air, had commanded the winds to entrap the Niskari.

The wind turned with the force of a cyclone, severely limiting the red monstrosity’s movements.

Surrounded by a cloud of dust and grey mist, it failed to notice the yellow-eyed presence hidden within the storm.

A sharp presence assaulted it from behind, tearing into it and gouging its flesh. In a fit of rage, the Niskari tried to lash at it, but its claws only struck the torrent of wind that nearly shredded its arm.

The shadow of the entity struck it once more and just like before, the Niskari had failed to catch it once again.

It continued its onslaught and slowly whittled away at the Niskari Lord, but Bolragmal would have no more of it.

With a surge of its powers, the Niskari Lord unleashed a torrential wave of corrosion in the form of a bright red light.

The vortex was forcefully canceled as the hidden presence within it, the black wolf covered in a shell-like armor, leapt away from the source of corrosion. It looked towards the Niskari and snarled fiercely.

Finally seeing the one that had been harassing it from within the vortex, the red monstrosity moved in a flicker as though it had suddenly appeared before the black wolf.

Unable to react to the Niskari’s sudden appearance, the black wolf could only watch as a claw fell towards it to tear into it.

However, before the attack could connect, a black hand had caught the red monster’s wrist.

It turned towards the one that interrupted it and received a heavy blow to its face.

Taking it by surprise, the changeling had brought down its bone-plated face onto the Niskari’s head.

The blow was surprisingly effective as the red monstrosity actually seemed dazed. Without letting up, the changeling rained blows upon blows onto it with its fists.

However, rather than effective, the assault appeared to have shaken it out of its daze instead.

The changeling reared its head and slammed it forward once again, but it found that it couldn’t move its head even an inch.

It looked down and found that on its neck, the Niskari’s claw had pierced through it.

It tried to pull its head backwards, but the claw kept a firm grip and kept it in place.

Using this opportunity, the Niskari tore at the changeling with its free hand, but soon noticed that the damage it caused was easily repaired. In fact, it didn’t even seem to bleed.

Seeing that physical attacks were useless, the Niksari instead concentrated as much [Nul] energy as it could into its mouth.

Seeing what it’s attempting to do, the changeling acted without hesitation and forced one of its arms into its maw.

The concentration of the corrosive energies was dangerous even for the changeling, so it concentrated as much of its virophage into its arms before parting with it.

Sensing what was forced down its throat, Bolragmal began to hack and gag, but a kick to its lower jaw forced down the destructive concoction into its bowels.

Understanding what it swallowed was quite dangerous, the Niskari Lord concentrated all of its [Nul] energy to be converted into [corrosion]. This created a dense cloud of destructive energies surrounding its body which rendered attempts to physically harm it to come at a price. The rate of corrosion was so great that even mana was instantly disintegrated upon contact.

The changeling wasn’t left unscathed either.

The price it paid after acrificing its arm while producing as much virophage as it could cost it at least 10% of its total stored biomass.

That wasn’t its only problem as the contact with the concentrated [corrosion] from the Niskari’s mouth had caused remnants of it to stick and slowly spread, decaying its body in the process.

While the virophage it created could deal with the otherworldly virus, receiving a concentrated and potent amount of it is causing a viral overload, which has put it in a precarious state.

In other words, both the changeling and the Niskari Lord were currently incapacitated as they both needed to deal with each other’s destructive exchange.

The changeling needed to produce enough virophages to deal with the red monster’s virus, while similarly the Niskari had to concentrate as much of its virus in order to overwhelm the virophages inserted into its body.

The balance would shift depending on who recovered faster.

The changeling’s companions were anxious as they couldn’t carelessly approach the Niskari due to the [corrosion]. The little green fae was more worried for the changeling’s well-being and wanted to help it recover, but the changeling lifted its hand with its palm facing forward before it.

It saw what the energies of the entity it is facing did to the others of the little green one’s kin. The destructive energies were several times more potent against their kind and what’s worse is that its virophage couldn’t help them in any way as it was yet to be developed enough to thrive within beings not made of flesh and blood without potentially harming them.

The problem now laid in what action could they do to change the tide of their fight.

Even if it were to overcome its current state, the battle was still at a standstill. It didn’t yet know how to proceed since so far, their actions appeared to have done little in the way of harming the red monstrosity.

If the changeling could recover first, it could try flooding the entity with its virophage while it’s still immobilized. However, it wasn’t sure how much of its stored biomaterial it could convert in order to overwhelm it. If it possessed more capacity than the changeling stored mass then it would end up weakening itself for nothing.

On the other hand, if the red monstrosity recovered first, then they would undoubtedly be the ones in danger.

Just as the changeling was pondering this, a change suddenly occurred within the red entity.

Letting out an ear-piercing roar, the red mist around began to swirl like a vortex.

As its roar echoed out across the battlefield, hundreds upon hundreds of the Niskari forces began to disintegrate into a red mist that joined together like a stream flowing towards the source of the cry.

The great masses of red swirling clouds converged into a twister with its tail seemingly being sucked into the red entity’s gaping maw.

With such an overwhelming amount of corrosive energies, the changeling understood that it was only a matter of time before the entity would overcome its current state.

Now that the situation has turned deathly dangerous, it was it this moment that the changeling sensed the approach of a familiar presence.

A presence that once aided it in defeating its first greatest foe.

An old human with a long staff and a wide-brimmed hat approached.

***