Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 49: A Twisted Problem Is The Solution

I stood there frozen for a moment, but there was really no time to be standing around frozen.

Marcel had already broken into action. He moved with that spear, spinning it awkwardly around his body as he charged. He staggered, almost tripping over his own steps, but did not stop. Instead he twisted his body through the faulted movement and lunged like he had springs on his legs. Mid-air, he wrenched away from the upward momentum and redirected it, converting the botched launch into something far more dangerous.

As the worm twisted its body for another powerful shot, Marcel came a beat earlier. His body bolted through the air and the spear slammed into the worm, tearing out a furious sound of flesh being ripped apart. The force of the assault launched the massive creature sideways and Marcel rode that storm of momentum, driving it further. The worm crumbled into the stone below.

I on the other hand... I knew I couldn’t stay there staring at where the wound had disappeared. I wasn’t sure if Marcel even saw the regeneration, but I could easily imagine him not caring one bit about it. He’d just go on tearing the abominable thing apart as many times as it took to stay dead.

But that was the thing about Undefineds. There were ranks where simply killing them wasn’t always the way to kill them.

I knew a little about the Twisted rank. The very nature of the power an Undefined embodied was written in its rank, and this thing was a Twisted Flesh literally.

That alone explained why it was freaking hard. Flesh usually should not be that hard, but because it was Twisted rank, everything about it most likely was twisted and reversed. The worm would be the complete opposite of what a Flesh could do.

And therein lay our problem. It would regenerate at an abnormal rate, which was impossible for a normal Flesh. It would move abnormally, which was impossible for a normal Flesh too.

However, where our problem lay was also where our solution was.

Three consecutive metal balls left my sling and punched into the flesh of the worm with a thin thunderous crack. But it was not enough to even make the creature flinch.

’Shit. I lack foresight!’

I had not exactly planned for my first Undefined to be a Twisted Flesh. Someone of my caliber should be around hunting Frayed, and what the hell did I mean hunting? There should be absolutely no reason for me to go after an Undefined unless it threatened my life.

Survival was low enough in this damn world already. Why would I want to go and make it lower when I could slowly and carefully get stronger?

I swallowed the complaint and loaded more metal balls. This time I improvised. It was not the way the sling was supposed to be used, but I set them in the cradle nonetheless and shot them with everything I had. All three followed one another, tracing one of the red lines and blasting into the same spot consecutively.

’Think, think...’

We couldn’t continue attacking the Undefined without a plan. It was only a matter of time before Marcel tired out. His stamina was not infinite, whatever rank he may be.

So it was left to me to find a way to kill this Twisted worm. And the answer really was not that difficult.

At the same time, it was.

Every Undefined was defined by its rank and affliction type. For a Twisted Flesh that embodied what the name implied, what we had to search for was a point where the concept it embodied worked against it.

I had found one.

Its teeth.

The way they had shattered earlier made it plain to me. This creature’s weakness was somewhere around its head, and it was not external but internal. The only way through was to enter its damn mouth and detonate its skull from within.

No matter how fleshy the Undefined was, it had bones. Flesh Affliction needed bones to make something Flesh. And bones were hard. Which meant that to kill this thing, we needed to target what was hard about it.

But how exactly do we get into the mouth of an abomination? The teeth were not as hard as the rest of it, but they were sharp and effective nonetheless, and there were rows of them. The creature simply had to use its coiling force and it would crush anything inside its mouth to smithereens.

’What do I do then?’

Frustration pulled at me, but that was not going to work in a situation like this.

And then something occurred to me. A crucial detail I had not been paying attention to the whole time.

But it was not a good idea.

Still thinking, I aimed more balls and released them into the air. Each one spread across the distance with far more fluid speed than the first volley. They burrowed into parts of the abomination’s flesh like stones dropping into water.

’I can’t do that...’

I found my opening and lunged toward Marcel. I pulled him back by his collar and leaped away several steps.

He glanced back at me with confusion, but I didn’t let him ask before speaking.

"Listen, I have a plan."

Marcel tilted his head.

"It will help us defeat it faster. Haven’t you noticed that it keeps healing instantaneously?"

Marcel still cocked his head like he had no idea what I was talking about.

"So what, I’m going to shred it apart until it can’t."

I frowned darkly at him.

"What if you’re the one who gets shredded first? Listen, combat is about mental capabilities as much as it is about physical capabilities. So hear me out, okay?"

Marcel finally fixed his eyes on me, clear and attentive.

I gave him a stern look back and said:

"First, the solution involves you entering its mouth."

Marcel was silent for a moment, then he glanced at the coiling worm and then threw his innocent face back to me.

"Bring it on."