NOVEL NEXT Chapter 100: At Least I Didn't Have to Hunt
The gigantic dinosaur almost scraped its brow against the canopy as it sprinted erratically between the trees. It ran mostly on its rear two legs but pounded its strangely long front arms into the ground as it ran, jerking its entire torso with every bound. Three jaguars clung onto the beast's scaly hide, clawing and biting into the giant lizard as it desperately tried to shake them off.
Jay flared Eye of the Storm as hard as he could, carving out a sliver of time to react. The dinosaur was at least fifty metres away, although that didn't mean much to a creature that big and that fast.
It was running towards Jay, although he couldn't be certain where the juggernaut would turn. The dinosaur twisted its entire body as it ran, and Jay watched one of the jaguars crumple into the dirt.
The two remaining jaguars weren't alone. A pack of at least ten raced after the dinosaur, hounding at its heels.
If the big guy doesn't find me, then one of them will.
Jay dove backwards, emerging from the bush in a flutter of falling leaves. He kept his eyes trained on the onrushing horde, refusing to even blink as he backpedalled away.
Two streaks of yellow fur ripped through the trees. One slammed into a jagged branch, skewering itself before slumping into the dirt. The other collapsed into a heap of broken bone and crimson against a gigantic root.
The chasing jaguars unleashed roars of sorrow for their fallen brothers, warbling growls that reverberated through Jay's core.
Luckily, they didn't seem to care much for him, Jay couldn't even tell if he'd been spotted. The jaguars barrelled after the dinosaur with reckless fury. One jumped up to gnaw at its rugged hide. Another fell off, collapsing into a pile of limbs before the oblivious dinosaur crushed it beneath its foot.
Left!
Jay spun. Ping reacted before he did. The gaping jaws of a once hidden jaguar pounced towards Jay. They met a mouthful of blue steel mid-air.
The jaguar shrugged off Ping's defence, but she'd earned Jay enough time to defend himself.
Jay raised his fists. The jaguar kept advancing, landing prematurely before leaping at Jay again.
Jay held his left out in front of him, the jaguar's off-white canines pressed into the clockwork bracer. Its slitted eyes almost widened in shock as they couldn't pierce through Jay's armour.
He grinned.
He pulled his trapped left arm closer. Electrical tingles coursed through Jay's spine, down his arms, and into the denatured steel knuckles that wrapped around his fists.
The jaguar released its bite. It slid its paws across the damp, trodden leaves and tried to turn around.
Jay wouldn't let it.
He jerked his freed left arm downwards, fast enough to activate the Quicksnatch, and clasped onto the predator's ankle.
Got you now.
Jay dropped to a knee, pounding his left palm into the ground and locking the jaguar down with him. Ping returned. She pressed her front face into the beast's head and pinned it into the ground.
The jaguar's unrestrained limbs flailed in every direction. Jay twisted around the downed creature, avoiding the errant thrashing claws. He brought his right fist forward, careful not to cut into the jaguar, and sank his knuckles into the jaguar's paw.
Jay never usually led with electricity. He preferred to use it to supplement his close range combat instead.
But he didn't want a leaky corpse this time.
Invisible snakes of electricity weaved in between the jaguar's muscle fibres, debilitating every cell they ran through. They sent each muscle into a writhing spasm. Ping lifted off from the jaguar's head, instead guarding Jay from the swinging limbs that whipped through the air around him.
Eventually, the convulsions stopped.
Jay eased off the electricity once the smell of burnt fur hit his nose. The jaguar's paw had charred entirely black.
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He checked the animal's pulse.
Still alive.
The jaguar's glossy eyes stared up at Jay. He broke its gaze and looked out towards the jungle.
The dinosaur and its chasing pack were all but gone. Jay saw a flicker of movement as its swinging tail slammed into a tree, leaving behind a smear of spotted fur stained red.
The beast's trodden aftermath cut a trail of destruction through the jungle. The brutalised carcasses of once mighty creatures now lay smushed beside trampled forest flora. Jay watched the dinosaur sprint further away. Hopefully, it'd draw the other gladiators towards itself and away from him.
He picked up the unconscious jaguar by his feet, checking it for any cuts before flinging it over his shoulder.
Well… at least I didn't have to hunt.
The orb's faint white glow glimmered through the lake's gently rippling surface. Spilling its subtle glow onto the stalactites looming over Jay. They cast fluttering shadows that drifted around the cave.
Surrounding it.
The defiled Jaguar was still lashed to the far wall, heart still beating as vines crawled through its arteries, its metronomic pulse throbbing in time with the lake's surface ripples. The rest of its body languished with the same stillness that afflicted the stone it slumped on. Shrivelled organs sat as still as fossils, trapped within a cast-open ribcage.
On the journey back through the tunnel, Jay debated how best to use the carcass currently slung over his right shoulder. He considered butchering the jaguar into smaller pieces, and flinging them at whatever plants or vines swarmed him whenever he needed some time.
A few steps down the tunnel squashed that idea. Even though they were merely part of a plant, the vampiric vines didn't seem stupid. If he kept chucking meat out of his pockets, then they would certainly realise he was the source and concentrate more on him. Jay didn't know if the plant had a sense of smell, but it certainly had a way to detect blood.
Perhaps if Jay still had the spatial quiver, he could've stored chunks of the jaguar in there. Since he didn't, simplicity was king.
Not that that was a bad thing. More moving parts meant more complications, more things to think about that could distract him from the relic.
Jay heaved the jaguar off his shoulders, he patted its back before grabbing two legs in each hand.
Sorry buddy. Don't think this'll end well for you.
Jay took a few steps back from the lake shore. He wound back, swinging the unconscious jaguar back and forth in his arms.
He threw it into the lake and jumped in straight after it.
No time for second thoughts.
Frigid needles of cold nipped at Jay's skin the moment he pierced the lake's surface, crossing the icy veil that led to the relic below. The cave's cool, dry air had been a respite from the muggy jungle aboveground but the underground lake's numbing bite felt almost hostile.
Jay's eyes stung as he forced them open and on the glowing orb. He refused to let it out of his sight and hadn't even looked at the jaguar after tossing it into the lake. Jay's lungs strained from within as he descended deeper. They begged him to exhale, to release the carbon dioxide building up inside them, but underwater he couldn't waste even a single drop of oxygen.
After four powerful strokes, Jay finally touched the bottom. He grasped a craggy rock with his wrinkled hands. A surge of water pulsed at his back.
Jay spared himself a single glance upwards.
He didn't see the jaguar.
Since diving into the lake, the crystal clear waters had curdled into a murky haze. A turbid cloud of crimson hovered just beneath the lake's surface. Jay saw shadows surrounding it but wrenched his focus back onto the relic.
Don't lose focus now.
Jay half swam, half crawled, along the basin towards the orb. He almost sliced his fingertips on the jagged stone fragments and abrasive sands covering the lake bed, boots constantly slipping across the underwater scree.
Eventually, he reached the relic.
Another pulse from above, stronger this time, shoved Jay downwards.
He didn't look up.
He clasped his pruney hands onto the glowing orb and tried to heave it off the ground.
A rumble escaped the stones below. A bubble of trapped gas shot up. Jay barely dodged it.
He looked back at the orb. It hadn't moved an inch.
Jay sank into a deep squat, pushing his hips towards the ground. He dug both hands into the underside of the orb and used his entire weight to roll it forward.
Bubbles of spent air escaped Jay's lips and rolled up his cheeks, exertion forcing them from his lungs. He tipped the orb forward, but the relic slipped his grip and pulled itself back.
He pushed again. This time wedging his foot beneath the orb to keep his progress.
Another torrent of water buffeted Jay from above. He squinted his eyes and held firm, bracing himself against the glowing orb almost crushing his foot.
When the onslaught ended, Jay craned his neck and looked towards the surface.
The crimson cloud vanished, Jay now saw what had cast the shifting shadows behind it. Writhing red tendrils had crept out from the depths, entangling around each other into a single cable-like mass. The monstrosity of vines coiled over itself like an undersea leviathan leering at Jay.
Jay's eyes traced along its tangled spine until they reached the abyssal behemoth's head.
A familiar set of yellowing fangs gnashed down at Jay, but no bubbles escaped the growling jaguar's mouth as it unleashed an underwater roar. The vampiric vines had ripped the beast's body into two and invaded the jaguar's front half. Red vines coursed into the jaguar through its butchered torso, braiding themselves between loose intestines and surging further upwards.
The tendrils crept out from the jaguar's throat, lapping against its lifeless tongue and coiling around its fangs. They emerged from gashes around its face and neck like squirming ribbons of shredded flesh.
They crawled out from the jaguar's eye sockets, some wriggling in the lake water, others turning back and stabbing themselves into the dead animal's flesh.
The tendril-laced abomination lorded over Jay at the bottom of the lake, scrambling to move the relic even an inch.
It stopped moving for a second, almost to laugh at its prey before diving straight at him.