"Keep back, Lumy! Don't let it touch you!" Armen shouted, his voice cracking from the strain.
The mosquito beast was no longer a precise predator; it had become a living wrecking ball of chitin and fury. It thrashed through the undergrowth, its newly regrown, jagged needle whipping through the air like a harpoon. Armen scrambled to his feet, his muscles screaming, and began to sprint deeper into the dense thicket, gesturing for Lumy to follow.
They didn't just run; they led the monster on a desperate chase. The forest was filled with the sounds of destruction. CRACK-BOOM. A pine tree, easily six inches thick, was sheared in half by the mosquito's sheer momentum as it lunged blindly toward them. Armen glanced over his shoulder, dodging a spray of splinters. He noticed the beast's movements were becoming erratic. Its wings were no longer a steady drone but a series of wet, struggling flaps.
"It's burning out," Armen wheezed, clutching his side. "It's using everything it has just to stay standing. Look at it, Lumy! It barely even uses its blood abilities anymore. It's just muscle and rage."
For several minutes, they played a deadly game of hide and seek. Lumy was magnificent, her low profile allowing her to slip under fallen logs while the rampaging insect slammed into them. Armen guided her with frantic hand signals, directing her to weave between the oldest, thickest trees. Every time the mosquito slammed into an ancient oak, the impact jarred its entire frame, and Armen could see the vibrant crimson glow of its body fading into a dull, bruised purple.
Finally, the beast slowed. It stood in a small depression, its legs splayed out, its head hanging low. The needle was dripping with a mixture of its own fluids and tree sap.
"Now!" Armen yelled, sensing the shift in the air. "It's slow! Lumy, left flank! Get in close and finish it!"
Armen didn't just watch; he paced the perimeter, guiding Lumy's positioning. "Wait for it... wait for the wing to drop... Now! Strike!"
Lumy gathered the last of her strength. Her Light Spikes flared with a final, desperate burst of energy, and her Voidlit Ravage wreathed her claws in that terrifying, white-edged shadow. She lunged, not for the legs this time, but for the joint where the thorax met the abdomen. Her teeth sank deep into the cracked exoskeleton, and she twisted her entire body with a guttural snarl.
The mosquito beast didn't even scream this time. It simply buckled. The dark energy of Lumy's bite surged through its overtaxed system, snuffing out the artificial life that rage had provided. It crashed into the dirt, stone-dead, its blank compound eyes staring at nothing.
Armen collapsed onto the grass, his chest heaving. The adrenaline was leaving his system, replaced by a cold, hollow exhaustion. He looked over at Lumy, who was covered in the mosquito's foul-smelling, multi-colored gore.
"You alright, girl?" he asked, his voice a rasp.
Lumy churred in response, a low vibration of victory. She didn't wait for an invitation. She immediately began to use her claws to rip open the mosquito's toughened belly, tearing away chunks of the rubbery meat and swallowing them whole.
[Notification: Enemy Defeated]
[Reward: 1 Point]
Armen stared at the screen and let out a long, weary sigh. "I guess I only get one point from killing Rank F. But freaking shit, this Rank F mosquito was something else. That was a nightmare."
He leaned back, staring up at the canopy. His mind drifted back to their very first kill. "Why was the first battle so easy then?" he wondered aloud. "That plant beast... it felt like it barely fought back compared to this thing. Is it just the element? Lumy's dark element is just so effective on plant elements? Or was that mosquito just a freak of nature?"
He was pulled out of his thoughts by a sharp clink sound. Lumy had reached the center of the insect's thorax. She nudged something toward Armen with her snout, her eyes bright with curiosity.
It was a core. But it wasn't like the one from the plant beast.
Armen's jaw dropped as he crawled forward to pick it up. It was a complete core. Not a single crack marred its surface. It was a perfect, translucent sphere of deep crimson, so dark it looked like a solidified drop of ancient blood. Within the orb, a thick, swirling mist of energy moved slowly, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic heat.
"A perfect core?" Armen was completely shocked. He immediately grabbed the orb, pulling it close to his chest. "Lumy, I need this. This is... this is gold. This is the reward I need."
Lumy didn't seem to mind. She was too busy gorging herself on the mosquito's remains, eating at a great speed as if she hadn't tasted food in days. The gore was everywhere, the smell of the insect's internal fluids thick and cloying in the air.
Armen inspected the crimson core, mesmerized by its beauty. "I expected a rampaging beast would definitely have a cracked core," he muttered, turning it over in his hands. "The way it was smashing into trees and burning its mana... it should have shattered. But instead, it's the one to have a perfect core. Does the beast being unable to think have anything to do with it? Maybe it didn't have the sense to draw from the core's shell for defense?"
It was a mystery for another time. For now, he had something he could actually sell, something that might get him more than eighty percent of a reward.
He sat there for a while, the silence of the woods returning as Lumy finished her meal, licking the last of the blood from her obsidian scales. Armen continued to stare at the orb, feeling the strange, thrumming power within it.
Then, the silence was shattered.
A loud, piercing scream rang through the forest, a sound of absolute terror, agony and rage.
Armen stood up, his heart freezing in his chest. He looked back in the direction they had come from, toward the place where they had killed their very first beast.
Armen looked at the place where they killed their first beast.