Monster of the East

"Does that matter? We give him a few painkillers, have him act like nothing is wrong and the Nobel Prize is ours for the taking," Vin spat. "You froze his real liver, right? If this fails, we need to put that back."

"Yeah, it's frozen."

He came back to reality and held his stomach. "ah," He froze the hand in a ball of ice to keep it from dying.

Page walked over to the man who had let her go and slammed him into a wall. "You just cost us a large bit of information. You better be ready to pay for that."

"HIIK!" He squealed.

Elves and dwarves took map eagles out that day to search for stragglers and hunt down the rest of the men, 15 of them which should still be out there. The claws of map eagles are shaped like grappling hooks, with spikes protruding inwards to ensure that they can grab onto their prey securely and kill them easily.

During this time Zeeth had tried to give back the blue shield but the dwarves refused profusely.

"No, no, no," Drawk said, "Alba said without the shield, you will die within the next few days. It's hard for me to think something could kill you so easily, but that's what her premonition said. And she's been true so far, you must keep it with you."

"Really? But it's important to you guys and you're just giving it to another human."

"It doesn't matter just 'cause you're human, we just didn't like that human."

He checked the information on the shield,

[Shield of Mystery Creator: Unknown

Made with Magic gems and metals, carefully carved with intricate Magic Circles of Xorbia, it takes in and repels magic through these masterfully carved circles. It is not yet considered completed by its creator and its function is not revealed.

Durability: 50/50 (against physical damage)

Defense: 7000/7000 (against magical damage)]

'I wonder what's not completed about it. It looks amazing to me, the creator was daring enough to actually carve on magic gems and actually created something amazing out of it.' he held it in front of him like the hundreds of times he did before, inspecting all the circles the creator carved. Nothing seemed out of place and nothing seemed wrong, at least not to his knowledge.

Iustus landed 15 feet from their base for the Three-Eyed Cult. she was missing her left hand and bleeding all over the place. She froze the wound and grimaced in pain but the bleeding finally stopped.

"Iustus!" Sinistra yelled, "your hand! Why did you cut it off?"

"Why do you think? I had to before I died! Help me grow one back."

"You know it's not that simple. This takes time."

"Just give me a stone one for now."

"Fine." Sinistra held her hand and created a stone hand, "what happened?"

"The man I fought, he has a third eye on his forehead."

"What!? What, are you sure? Could it not have been painted? Or illusion magic?"

"No, it was a real eye, I highly doubt he has illusion magic. It was charging up and fired a beam at me, which is why I had to close the portal early. It was pitch black and opened up on his forehead when I went to attack him. He wouldn't have used an illusion at the time, he has many forms of attack up his sleeve."

"But then… could he be the one? Can we finally reveal ourselves to the world? With his reappearance and influence, we can reap in new followers by the hundreds."

"I'm not sure. I don't know if he is the one. If he was, why did we not know anything? Besides, we still have his carcass, right?"

"Then who could he be? Fine, even if he isn't, let's just put our name out a little. We finally have a potential backer, a face for our cult, if we can just get more followers, we can speed up the process of finding a potential host and revive Medulla faster."

"That's risky. If we are taken down before we can revive him, we are doomed. Our cult will end with us and he may never be revived again."

"Just a little. We'll put someone else as the fake leaders, give them a few powers like ours and get going."

"Fine. Let's do that and give them two objectives, to find the man I just fought and find the skeleton again."

While they spoke, many of their robed men who were captured earlier were now being held captive.

"I'll kill you!"

"Let me go!"

"You will regret this!"

"Our cult will end you!"

Alba stamped her wooden cane down, a wave of mana swept around them and they all went silent. She told the rest of them later that day, "I can't keep doing this. It will lose its effectiveness if I use it too much."

"What are we going to do with them?"

"Hopefully, control them and have them tell us everything they know. And then use them for physical labor."

Later that night Page told Zeeth, "the next portal will open soon. I just don't know where. I was never told in my past life. I just know it caused a kind of a mess somewhere with the monks who hid the issue very well. Even I hardly found out about it."

"Monks? Who are they? What do they do?"

"Monks are bald people who live in seclusion and seek silence and peace. They support a god, the only god I have almost no information on. It apparently stays in seclusion and is made for defense but I don't know much else."

"A god of defense sounds pretty overpowered."

"I wouldn't know. But I guess we'll just have to have someone else handle this, the monks should be strong enough this time as well."

Out of nowhere, magic ropes of red and blue grabbed his arms. Many of them were destroyed by the magic barrier they put up but enough got through to hold them down. They tore through the barrier and pulled them taut.

"Magic slingshots?" Page grunted while pulling his tendrils away. Before either of them could cut them all off they slung them both straight out the door and into the sky. He saw from above C.M. leading with him a robot. He was trying to get them to move forward when he looked up and saw Zeeth in the air staring down at him. They both stared at each other in shock and Zeeth noticed Elton and Cuddles were also in the air.

Four black tendrils shot at them and hit them in the chest. They were all punched back and Zeeth collided with Cuddles while Elton held onto Page. The tendrils split open and grabbed them, yanking them through the air. The wind slapped at them and they were tugged too hard to stop or move. Cuddles cooed and squawked, trying to get back to her babies that were left behind. Zeeth tried to calm himself down to also calm her down but she was too frightened.

"Cuddles, don't worry!" he yelled, "I promise to bring you back to your babies, don't worry!"

But Cuddles kept squawking and squirming around. He could tell Cuddles was more sad than angry but angry but it was all there. In his confusion, he found anger bubbling for whoever was pulling them away. He tried cutting at the tendrils, but they had let him go by themselves. The four of them fell through the sky and landed on the floor. Cuddles ran back to where they came from but she hit her head on an invisible forcefield.

"Cuddles, stop!" Page yelled, "this isn't a force field we can break. We have to escape through that stone entrance."

They looked at a small entrance just barely big enough for a person to walk through.

"Escape?" a cold voice said. It was their language, but it wasn't a human voice. She sounded like the personification of ice, her voice cut through the air and into their ears like icicles. "You are the first group to have fought my babies, right? And killed them all? Don't answer. You should save your energy for the afterlife."

The tendrils that dragged them here came from above. They came from a gap in the air, the same gap that they saw in the pit where the hell babies came from. It was another tear in the gate to hell and the voice was coming from there too. More hell babies came crawling out the gap, pushing it wider and falling down onto the hard ground. When they got too far from the portal they began gasping for air. Their skin dried up and cracked, their smiles and gleeful black eyes turned into snarls and suffering. One baby rolled down the hill it fell on and landed in front of them, lifeless.

One of the tendrils picked up the corpse and dragged it back into the portal. The woman's cold voice said, "babies, come back."

The tendrils curled out, grasped onto the top of the hill, and pulled its owner out. It was a woman with five horns growing from her head. Her five blue fingers tipped with five, long, black claws. Her black tail whipped around and four thick tendrils cam from her back, holding her up in the air. She wore what looked like long black boots, black tops, and elbow spikes over blue skin. "You guys killed my babies? This knick-knack worthless group dares to anger me."

He threw an icicle at her and summoned walls of greystone between them as they ran away. Tendrils hit the walls and demolished them before they could run.

A bald man in yellow robes ran through the force field, "what the hell? Why are you guys in here? What's that, you guys better get out of here!"

A tendril whipped over to him and almost hit his head but he activated a skill, held his arms up, and blocked the attack. The tendril tore off his arm, which now looked like a metal arm, and made a loud screeching noise.

"AAAAAGgghh!!" he screamed, holding his missing arm.

"You blocked that? Hah." She said in her slicing voice as she flew down to him and jabbed her finger into his face. It turned white and soggy when her finger pierced his skin and his entire body began exploding from his face all the way down and across his body. His eye flew off, a piece of his arm exploding into splatters of bones until nothing was left except for a bloody, gross skeleton.

"Holy shit." Page said, "how? But this shouldn't be."

"What? What is it?"

"No one should be able to directly inject water into every cell like that, she has to be one of the awakened Demons, her water affinity is even greater than yours. No one this powerful should've come so soon. Also, I recognize this place. I wonder why..."

Elton kept looking between them and asked, "what?"

"We have to run, she will kill us all!" Page yelled.

Zeeth remembered, life-threatening situation, this is what the shield was for! He pulled the blue shield out from his slime armor and held it in front of him. She narrowed her eyes at the shield.

'That thing… what is it? It's dangerous.'

She launched a volley of water balls at the shield which was soaked in and fired back at her.

"?!?" she looked frightened at the shield's power, "Where did you get that shield?"

But they were already running away. Monks were rushing in through the barrier but her black tendrils swept them back.

A massive black tendril protruded from the ground to block the entrance.

"You're scared of this shield, aren't you?" Zeeth asked.

She simply stared back at him, not moving. To all of their surprise, the hill that they stood on heaved a little and moved up. Six thick elephant-like legs stomped the ground that shook with every step. Tremors shook the ground and loud rumbling noise caused tremors in their chests.

"What the hell…" the demon said.

"I… just remembered where this is." Page told them. "This is where the monks keep the mountain of the east, Rah."

"But why is it waking up? Don't we have another year or so?"

"I… I don't know, but this must be what caused the monks so much trouble."

"Then we have to leave!"

"Yeah, thanks for the news!"

Rah opened a yellow eye with black pupils and stared at them. To his surprise, a second pupil swiveled out from behind the eye and followed others. Its mouth cracked open like a sharp boulder, opening for the first time in nearly a century. Hot steam erupted from its mouth and shiny, metal coated its skin and pooled on the ground. A second, then a third eye opened up. Three pupils swiveled out of each one to stare all around in nine locations. A massive tail, thicker than its legs, swung around. It tore through the ground like it was clay.

Zeeth grabbed onto the still squirming Cuddles to pull her out with them. For the first time ever, his slimes were acting on their own. They sensed the danger they were in and tremored, trying to escape as fast as possible. A hundred of his slimes sprung out on their own, ready to attack, and huddled themselves as far away from the beast as they could, against the invisible barriers.

"Babies, come out!" the demon yelled. Her babies rushed out from the gap and latched onto the beast. More than thirty of them held onto its back and were tearing at the shell but there was no damage on it. It simply yelled an even louder screech and the hell babies nearly fell off. She rushed down followed by powerful streams of water. Tendrils grabbed its legs and tugged at it but nothing was able to move it. The jets of water splashed against its shell and carved away some moss and dirt, but the remaining water simply hit the floor and pierced it away.

The beast stretched out three long tongues. One after another, they charged at her. She narrowly dodged the first two but the last one hit her face. She fell to the ground and caught herself with a bubble of water. Another tongue crashed down at her but she jumped aside and the bubble of water exploded.