Race!
Commiserations!
You have failed the Trial of Evolution 1: Kelpie
Commiserations!
You have failed the Trial of Evolution 1: Kelpie
Commiserations!
You have failed the Trial of Evolution 1: Kelpie
Elijah lost that race and the two subsequent ones. Although he had great stats for a level 9 Nimueh’s Successor, that didn’t mean much when up against a level 26 monster specialised in speed; he didn’t stand a chance.
If the Kelpie had a rank: A Class that was entirely focused on Agility, that would give it a theoretical maximum of 182, which made his 14 points seem piteous.
Elijah didn’t believe the disparity was quite that bad. Still, the monster left him in the dust every time. He wasn’t even able to make it to the lake before the lithe creature had ascended the mountain and ended the race.
Given how far he was able to run before the failure notification arrived to taunt him and the world was reset, he still estimated that the monster was only 7 times faster than him. That still meant it had nearly 100 points in Agility, assuming it was a linear scale, and that having four legs to his two had nothing to do with its impressive speed.
This meant there was no choice but to cheat. The teen had avoided doing so until this point because of some lingering notion of pride. He wanted to show up the Kelpie by beating its own game. He now knew that was impossible and his sin had cost him precious time, time that would have been better spent finding a way to get rid of the napping death-clock that was his ‘Familiar’.
The world reconstructed itself again, and Elijah didn’t hesitate. As soon as the colours snapped into place, he darted to the right, dodging the globule of spit the Kelpie always spat as the Trial began.
With more Strength than he thought he possessed, the teen tackled the horse-shaped creature about the neck, knocking it to the ground.
Using a blood blade or water blade would have been easier, but he no longer had control over his blood, which meant he no longer had any control over mana.
His Mana Heart, a gift from Nimeuh, was not his anymore; just like his true Familiar, it had been taken by the monster within.
His anger and frustration bubbled over, and before he knew it, his fists were stained blue with monster blood, and the majestic head of the noble animal had been turned into Kelpie paté.
He came back to his senses, shocked and horrified by what he had done. Elijah had only intended to knock the creature out so that he could win the race. He opened and closed his hands several times, not quite believing that this wasn’t all a dream.
This had never happened to him. One moment he was angry. It was more intense than he had ever felt before. There was a gap, a blip in which he didn’t recall anything, and then, the next thing he knew, he was covered in blood.
Commiserations!
You have failed the Trial of Evolution 1: Kelpie
The world started anew, and the teen was still staring at his now clean hands in disbelief. A wet splat to the face snapped him out of it. Now wasn’t the time to lose focus; he’d just have to repress his feelings until he could deal with them.
His body coiled and launched at the legs of the beast. It wasn’t expecting the attack and tried to prance aside, but to no avail. If killing the monster would fail the Trial, he’d just have to disable it.
Hooves kicked and stomped as the young man flailed and punched. He liked the pain; it reminded him that this was real, as real as anything could be.
He didn’t black out this time and was completely conscious of his actions as he punched the Kelpie’s knees over and over, with twice the force of any earthling.
By the end of a brutal fight, the Kelpie was left lame; all of its legs were broken. Elijah was battered and bruised and certainly had a few fractures of his own, but he could move, and the monster could not, and that was all that mattered.
He grinned in twisted glee as he extricated himself from the monster’s whinnying body. If he was the only one racing, there was no way that he could lose!
As soon as he was a couple of feet away, the Kelpie looked at him with disgusted eyes, rimmed with fear. It spat at him, but even in his damaged state it wasn’t hard for the teen to evade.
The purpose was distraction, however. In the few seconds it took for Elijah to step aside and recentre himself, a change came over the monster.
The legs which the young man had broken morphed before his very eyes. Before he could do a thing about it, they had changed. In their place were eight wriggling tentacles, covered in slick black skin which matched the fur that was still present on the not-horse’s top half.
The teen had forgotten; this was not an ordinary equus but a monster. He nearly didn’t react in time; the creature had surged upright and begun octopusing away on thick, clearly injured tentacles.
Appendages like these didn't have bones, so they couldn’t be broken, though it did appear that some of the damage remained in the transformation.
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Elijah, in the seconds he had before the crippled monster was out of his reach, had a choice: either tear off these new limbs and hope that the monster didn’t bleed to death or come up with, and execute, a new plan.
Elijah dove for the beast, gritting his teeth against the pain of his injured body. His naked torso glistened under the red sun, Slimy flesh shining like the wet body of a champion diver.
His wiry arms grasped onto one of the rear tentacles, and he pulled himself up, hand over hand, climbing towards the main horse body of the beast.
The beast did not like this, not one bit. It thrashed about like an aqua bronco, desperate to get rid of the tick that was Elijah. He held on; the increased Strength the blood monster had given him came in clutch once again.
He hated that he owed anything to that thing and actually growled as the thought crossed his mind.
He lost concentration for a moment, and his grip slipped as the tentacle he was attached to flicked into the air, in the same manner someone with arachnophobia jerks about if there is a spider on them.
Before he could be flung into the stratosphere, he shot out a hand, latching on to the mane of the horse-like monster. His body continued upward, but it was anchored to the octo-horse by an iron grip.
Some hairs were pulled out, but he managed to stay tethered to the beast. As he fell back down, he landed squarely on the thing’s back, legs clenching hard on the monster’s flanks and arms locked around its neck, careful not to suffocate it.
The Kelpie hated the sudden sharp pain on the back of its neck and despised the human trying to cling to its back. The monster’s movements became even more erratic as it struggled to free itself from Elijah’s clutches.
His body was slammed, shaken, and shook, all of it worsening the pain of his bruises and broken bones, but despite this, he held on. This plan of his was the only way for him to pass the Trial, and passing the Trial was the only hope he had for a blood-free future.
Elijah had never broken a horse before, but he imagined it must be simple compared to this. Giant tentacles instead of legs meant it could perform a wide array of bucking movements which a normal horse simply couldn’t imitate.
He was shaken sideways, hung upside down, slammed into the ground, jiggled about, twisted, and contorted by sudden changes in speed. His grip slackened over time; he couldn’t help it. But, thankfully, the Kelpie also grew tired, eventually stopping to rest.
The pair stayed there for a goodly moment, sweating under the unmoving sun and panting, desperately sucking down air.
Now was the time for the teen to act. He dug his heels into the monster’s flanks. The Kelpie reacted unconsciously, walk-slithering forward. It tried to stop the involuntary action, but it was simply too exhausted to fight any more.
Elijah’s plan was simple, he was taking inspiration from the story of the Zodiac; he was ratting it up.
The Kelpie moved slowly through fields of green with resignation. Elijah felt like a towel that had been completely wrung out, and he appreciated the change of pace. His body was sore, but his turbulent heart had healed some from the vigorous exercise.
The teen didn’t know what to expect when he made it to the lake, but as it turned out, having the limbs of an octopus made swimming a lot easier.
Even in its tired state, the Kelpie was able to glide across the dark waters, whose depths were beyond reckoning, with effortless ease.
Soon enough, they were on the far side, and it was time for the mountainous ascent. Elijah had expected the creature to have gotten some of its fight back by this point, but that wasn’t the case. With its head hanging low, the Kelpie began to climb the rocky face.
Tentacles weren't just good at swimming. Even bruised and swollen as they were from Elijah’s attacks, they could still latch onto rocks, jam themselves into crevices, and sucker onto the rock directly, all at the same time.
That made climbing almost as fast as walking for the monster and nearly as simple.
When they drew near to the peak, within a hundred meters, Elijah relaxed the squeeze his knees had on the Kelpie’s sides.
The beast, which had been biding its time, acted immediately. Releasing its front four tentacles, it peeled backwards, dangling bodily off the crumbling stone surface.
A smile donned the Kelpie’s features as it stared down the mountain, expecting to see the presumptuous human tumbling to its death. It took the creature too long for its blood to slosh around and its brain to write the upside-down image before it.
There was no screaming tumbling biped; the monster was confused. Elijah was already pulling himself further up the mountain, determined to win this race.
The loosening of his legs had been a ploy. Elijah didn’t think for one moment a creature with so much spirit would give up until it was dead; it was just waiting for a chance to strike, so he gave it that chance.
Elijah was slippery by nature, and in combination with his Slimy Trait, it was child’s play for him to slide off the monster’s back unnoticed. By the time the Kelpie realised its gambit had failed, the teen was already fifty metres closer to the finish line.
The cairn loomed above him, a towering monument of rock. Below him, the whining cry of the Kelpie’s blue-balled anger spurred him and the monster on in equal measure.
Unfortunately for the tired Elijah, the Kelpie was faster. There were two metres left when something wrapped around his leg. He tried to yank the appendage free, but even though his leg was covered in slime, the suckers of the tentacle coiled around it stopped the leg from going anywhere.
The adversaries locked eyes. Glee filled the malicious monster’s large black orbs; it was about to get its revenge on the tiny animal that had been so brazen as to ride it!
There was a mixture of determination and pity in Elijah’s eyes; had he the time, he would have loved to race this magnificent creature a thousand times until he finally won the right way, but he did not have that luxury.
The Kelpie was confused by the teen’s lack of fear. It had intended to take a moment to revel in the display of emotion the two-legged one would surely show at being thwarted within tentacle’s reach of the goal.
Elijah didn’t hesitate; now that he had set his heart on something, there was no stopping him.
The young man summoned the king’s blade. It plummeted, severing his trapped leg with no resistance. He was barely able to touch the sword with the toe of his other foot as it continued to fall, storing it back in his Inventory.
It would be a shame to lose such a powerful weapon before he ever got to use it, though he was willing to make the sacrifice should it be necessary. Nothing would stop him; his life was truly on the line for the first time!
The Kelpie stayed there, frozen, unable to understand what had happened. It had never seen anything as crazy as this human. By the time it realised it was holding nothing more than the leg of its prey, Elijah was already pulling his much lighter body up onto the peak.
As one final act of defiance, the Kelpie hurled the severed limb at its foe’s exposed back.
Elijah was facing the cairn. He only had to hop once, and he would touch the finish line.
As it turned out, he didn’t even need to do that much; something smacked hard into his rear, causing him to crash through the pile of stones.
He winced as his bloodless stump came into contact with the rocks. He flew out the other side of the monument, pain and panic staining his features.
As he fell down the vertical drop on the other side of the mountain, miles of green fields and occasional locks sprawling before him, wind rushing past his ears, and a churning sensation running riot in his stomach, he thought he had failed. That he had fallen at the final hurdle.
How am I going to do any better than that?
Congratulations!
You have completed the Trial of Evolution 1: Kelpie
Grade: F
Objectives:
- Beat the Evolved Kelpie on the first try: ?
- Win without foul play: ?
- Finish the race 60 seconds ahead of the Evolved Kelpie: ?
Rewards:
You have earned the right (if barely) to Evolve from a Kelpie into 1 of 1 Kelpie Evolutions:
- Highland Kelpie
Choose Now!
patrons: