Children of a Lesser God

Chapter 80: A Demon Beast

The now large wolf looked over at Laz and smiled, at least he thought it was a smile. After all, when a large wolf looks at you and smiles, it either means it is happy or it is about to eat you. Although the monster like creature was still roaring in pain a bit away from them, Laz just foolishly looked at Vivi who had suddenly grown massive.

Vivi, after smiling, just leaned over and rubbed her head against Laz's, as though she was telling him that yes, it was her. Laz, for his own part, reached up and petted the now huge head before smiling.

'Well, this is a surprise,' he thought to himself.

Vivi then turned back to look at the nightmarish creature before growling again. The creature, although in pain and angry, wasn't moving. Upon a closer look, Laz noticed the arm which Vivi had ripped off, was starting to regrow at a visible rate. In just a few breaths of time, the arm was back to normal. After looking over, Laz realized that the ripped off arm had noticeably withered and looked like a dead tree branch.

"Uh... ok," was the only thing Laz could think to say. The monster was now eyeing them with a bit more caution, but it didn't seem to show any fear. For the moment, no one was about to do anything. It was a classic style standoff.

"Demon beast??" Aqua muttered, almost to himself. Although he was really quiet, the surrounding atmosphere was so silent you could hear a pin drop, so everyone actually heard him. Vivi didn't show a reaction, but Laz turned back for a moment to look at the little sprite who actually had a sword drawn.

Looking closer, the sword looked at most to be about as long as Aqua was tall which couldn't have been more than five or six inches. Strangely though, Laz felt a bit weird about it. He had his sense going the whole time, so he could see that Aqua was a being made up of pure source essence while the sword seemed to be like a tiny black hole. There was absolutely no energy visible around it but it didn't look fake either.

At the same time, Laz looked back a Malene and noticed a similar item in her hand, except it was about a foot long. When he looked at the strange blade without his sense, he was startled to realize that it was invisible to the naked eye. This just lead him to questions that couldn't be asked right now.

"What are demon beasts?" Laz asked, turning around to face the monster.

"You have the sight, don't you? Look at the creature and focus on it." Aqua didn't say anything more but just hovered in front of Malene as though he was going to protect her.

Laz, once more facing the strange bear/tree like creature, focused in on it and noticed a strange purple glow coming from it's chest area. It looked like source energy, but the color was far different than anything else he had see. Most energy was greenish in color and floated along as though going with the breeze. Other energy, like the blue near the strangely cold lake and the gold that was around the weird plant, seemed vibrant and lively in nature. But the purple energy coming off of this demon beast looked sinister and a bit dirty, as though black specks were merged into the dark purple light.

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"What the hell is that?" Laz asked, after noticing it.

"It's the demon's core. As long as that thing still has energy, the creature won't die no matter how many times you rip it apart. It can regrow, basically from that tiny crystal. Any damage done to it will result in the core losing energy. Drain enough energy and it will shut down. Break or damage the core enough and it will also cause the creature to die," Aqua responded while basically telling everyone what they had to do.

"So, it's like a battery huh?" Laz said, trying to rationalize things.

Aqua looked at Laz like he was stupid.

"You know what? Sure kid. It's a battery. A glowing evil battery that makes the damn thing immortal. Battery is definitely the right term for it."

Despite the heavy sarcasm, Laz didn't respond back. He knew he was just dumbing things down, but he did't care. He was just trying to get things to a point he understood. No matter how profound this core was, it was just a battery. Once you took out the battery or caused too much of a drain, the thing would stop working.

'Why not just call a spade a spade?' Laz thought to himself.

"By the way midget, how do you know all this?" Laz finally asked what was on his mind.

"Tell you later, if we live that long," Aqua promised.

The demon beast that looked like a wendigo had finally had enough and decided it would make a move. Crouching back, it suddenly rushed forward while running at Vivi as though it considered this other large creature to be it's biggest threat. Laz pulled the trigger twice more while the creature was running at them as he fell away from the rampaging demon beast. The first shot missed completely while the second shot hit it's shoulder. The creature tumbled over backwards before rushing forward again, unchanged in it's attack. Although the shot didn't blow it's arm off completely, it was still very close. The scary part was that the shoulder was repairing itself while it ran at a faster speed than before. It seemed like it had just learned that it could do that and became even more fearless..

Not to be out done, Vivi also charged at it. As they closed in, the creature raised it arms and attempted to tackle and then latch on to Vivi. Vivi, being quite quick and smart, quickly dodged to the side while scrapping the beast with her claws. Because of the quick direction change on her part, she couldn't latch on to it with her jaws like she wanted and slightly missed her landing, causing her to tumble forward. She wanted to get it's attention to give Laz the chance to shoot it a few more times and hopefully waste it's energy, but it didn't give her a chance.

The creature, instead of turning around and charging at Vivi again, turned and started coming straight for Laz instead. Although having a large, crazed monster coming straight at him was a bit spine tingling, Laz didn't freeze up at all. He carefully took aim and fired twice more, attempting to blast away the demon's core. Sadly, with how fast it was going, Laz was only able to hit the side of it's abdomen and it's stomach causing it to fly backwards one way while Laz continued to back up the other way.

Vivi had regained her balance but didn't want to rush forward for fear of either getting in the way of or ruining Laz's shot. She could sense how powerful the gun was and didn't think she could take a shot nearly as well as the Wendigo.

At this point, no one noticed the slight problem. Originally, they had all been in a line with Vivi at the front and Laz close behind her, then Aqua was standing a bit back from him with Malene behind him. But now, since Vivi had to dodge and was kind of knocked aside, she ended up behind the creature. With Laz retreating off to the side while drawing the creature away from Aqua and Malene, his shot ended up knocking the creature back into the line. At this moment, they had formed a triangle around it with it trapped in the center. While that might had made sense in most cases, the problem was the one of the corners consisted of Aqua and Malene.

The creature, who's body had once again began to regenerate, switched it's attention right away and came charging at Malene and Aqua, almost like this had been it's plan all along.

SHIT.

Vivi and Laz come to the same conclusion at the same time as the Wendigo neared closer to Malene and Aqua. They both shot forward at the same time although Laz was closer.

The creature had approached Aqua and took a swipe with it's massive clawed hand. Aqua was able to fly out of the way in time while swinging his tiny sword, effectively hitting it's hand. The wind pressure sent Aqua off balance as the creature roared in pain before swiping it's other hand at him. This time, he wasn't quick enough and was flung away like a tennis ball.

The demon beast, still roaring in pain from Aqua's tiny cut swiftly approached a now unprotected Malene and swung it's hand in an effort to grab her. Apparently, it figured since she was the weakest and also it's main target for whatever reason, it would be safe once it got her. Malene froze on the spot with the dagger hanging uselessly by her side. Laz, seeing this and not wanting to fire for fear of hitting Malene, circulated his source essence energy to it's maximum level while his blood raged through his body. His eyes also turned a deep and eerie red at this point and he lunged forward with all his might, leaving deep foot prints in the dirt.

He was able to make it just in time as he crashed into Malene and sent her flying backwards. Angered by Laz's interference, the demon beast rammed it's claws straight at Laz. Due to the size of it's hands vs Laz's comparatively tiny build, of the four claws on it's hand, one missed entirely while two more just rammed into his padded jacket. The last claw proved to be the most unlucky for Laz as it hit directly on the zipper and ripped though, going into Laz's body and coming out the other side before catching on the back of his jacket, causing it to tent out.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment as Laz stood there with the claw stuck in him. Malene, who had gotten back up couldn't help but gasp at the sight. Vivi, who was still running at the creature from behind and had her vision blocked, sensed something was wrong and sped up, jumping into the air in an attempt to bite it's head off. Aqua, who had just regained his balance and was able to fly up, could clearly see the claw sticking through Laz and without a second thought, tried to fly over as fast as possible, knowing it would make no difference.

Laz was frozen in shock for just a minute as only one thought crossed his mind,

'Doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would.'

The demon beast tried to pull it's claw back after killing the tiny annoyance but found it to be stuck. It then tried lifting the tiny thing stuck on it only to find that it was incredibly heavy and wouldn't move.

Laz, shaking back and forth as the creature tried to struggle free, grabbed on to the massive hand with his free hand while pulling back the trigger on Last Rites.

"Goodbye, mother fucker."

The gun shot rang out like an explosion, tearing into the demon beast's chest and blasting it's core right out of it while it's body was also launched backwards. Laz's body finally unclenched which caused the claw to come loose and fall out.

Without the claw stuck in his abdomen, Laz fell down backwards as well as an impressive fountain of blood shot out into the air.

The last thing Laz saw as everything faded into darkness was the worried icy blue eyes above a soft black muzzle leaning closer to his head.