Chapter 38 - Run
Hearing another scream from Pan, the aspirant dropped his hammer upside down and turned his body to the left in a powerful side kick. Again the blow that seemed to attack nothingness suddenly stopped and then came back with a strange noise like clay being kneaded. But soon the sound of something falling into the filthy waters of the sewer was heard.
'Good, that's four wounded.' Thought Pan.
Siaks were strong and dangerous creatures. Their greatest ability was turning invisible, which would normally make them a fallen soldier of the night rank. However, this skill had a glaring weakness. The moment a Siak's gelatinous skin was injured, it lost the ability to remain invisible.
"We have to back off!" Exclaimed a muscular aspirant in the middle of the group, as she took the eighth aspirant that was drained by the Siak right after the first. He looked like he was still alive. But in a critical state of dehydration.
"On top!!!" Pan yelled at her. The wannabe acted fast and threw herself in a random direction along with the other wounded. Only to hear a "buzz" fifteen feet above her head, followed by a roar of agony.
The moment Pan screamed, he put some essence on his leg and waist to balance his axis and turn. Then he put a huge amount on his arm and hurled his sword towards the ceiling, that's where the fifth Siak was. The sword sliced through the beast's belly creating a meter-wide gash, then angled down a little and flew to the end of the group's line.
'Damn, too much essence, I can't exhaust myself that much. Well, at least they're all visible now.' Thought Pan.
He wasn't brown, so his ability to use essence for the purpose of strengthening the body was poor at best. At least that's what he thought.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity created by Pan. The woman left the wounded aspirant on the floor and pointed her spear at the ceiling where the beast writhed. A moment later the Siak could no longer hold its own against the damage from the wound and gravity demanded its fall.
Twisting in agony the evil fell from the ceiling onto the spear slanting upward and diagonally, already the woman threw herself to the side at just the right moment, letting the beast's weight do the rest of the work.
As he fell, the fallen gave another horrendous scream and stopped moving shortly after. One was dead! But one of them was also left without a weapon.
'She is fast.' Thought Pan.
Not only did the woman manage to get out of the way before the beast fell, but she used the few seconds between her scream and the fall to kill the vile being.
"Double up and deal with One!! You carry him!" Said Pan to the woman who would now be of little use in the fight without her spear, as he cut off the first Siak's other leg.
Pan was dealing with two Siaks at the same time and left two for the seven still healthy aspirants as he tried to drag the whole thing back the way they came.
But the Siaks didn't seem to be in the mood to let them go.
Being enraged by the loss of two limbs, the first Siak went into a mindless frenzy and started attacking Pan anyway, as if he wanted him dead at any cost.
Normally this "beserk" attitude would be a danger to anyone else. But Pan could see everything in detail.
Soon, he calmly watched the bending the fallen made with his arms, then when determining that the attack would be tilted to the left, Pan called out to Mavis.
Mavis ripped Pan's backpack on both sides and a thorn of chaos looped through his chest several times in an instant creating a makeshift armor, the other thorn of chaos replaced his missing arm with a blade.
Pan was already on the move, while Mavis prepared what he called "living armor". Throwing to the right as opposed to Siak's left throw. Pan synchronized time with Mavis and swung his body hard when the fallen one was two feet away and to the side. Having all done, Pan deactivated the state of clarity as it consumed a lot of essence, deciding to leave the rest to inertia.
What followed for those who saw it from the outside. It was Siak throwing himself in a right-to-left thrust and Pan masterfully dodging in a spin while creating a thorny blade of Chaos Roots. The fallen one passed straight through, fell to the ground and when trying to lift only the back half of its body went up, the front half fell to the ground, the beast's arms had been separated in two, along with its interiors.
"Run!!" Pan screamed at the top of his lungs.