VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 12: A Beast Most Foul
Unrestrained bloodlust poured forth from its beady black eyes, which sucked in light like the darkest abyss’. Every twitch of its adorable button nose was a devilish cackle as it lauded its victory over her, stabbing her in the heart with the simplest of sniffles.
Its large fluffy body radiated absolute malice, malevolence and other such synonyms for something that was really just pure evil.
Belladonna narrowed her eyes, focusing on the true face of death as the beast twitched its nose again and flicked its floppy ears to get rid of some dust. Oh but it did so in such a menacing way and...
Ugh, okay. It was a rabbit. A big fluffy rabbit. How could it possibly look evil, never mind steal her kill?!
Belladonna let out a heavy sigh as she stood up from the wolf’s corpse, giving it a strange look before glancing back at the rabbit. However it had done it, the fact was it still had done it. It had been the one to kill the beast, and in a way that seemed dreadfully simple. That fact alone gave it the malevolent aura that its appearance did not.
Anything that could kill so easily deserved such an aura. Especially when what they killed was a magically armoured beast.
The harmless looking rabbit’s adorable little nose twitched a few times, before it turned its head and locked its beady little onto her. As soon as it focused its gaze on her, that malevolent aura increased ten-fold and slammed into her like a semi-truck trying to take her to the next world.
She immediately dropped to one knee, holding back the urge to puke. Her instincts were having a war within her body, her old ones urging her to run from the obvious death in front of her, while her new ones demanded that she face it head on.
Those new instincts insisted that she should rip its throat out and teach it who the real predator was.
Uncaring of her inner turmoil, the rabbit lowered its head and took a large bite out of the ground. Not picking something off of the ground, no it just bit a chunk out of the actual ground itself, and started to munch on the mixture of stone and dirt like it was lettuce.
The crunching of the stone sent shivers down Belladonna’s spine, as she could already picture it doing that to her bones. She had no idea why that image immediately popped into her head, but then again rabbits didn’t usually kill wolves so she gave her mind’s logic a break.
The entire time, she was frozen under its gaze, unable to do anything other than kneel there. That was mainly because just staying on her knees, instead of collapsing into a ruined pile of tears, was taking all of her energy.
After a few seconds, the rabbit stopped munching and was about to kill her the same way that it killed the wolf, when its ears perked up and its head snapped to the side.
As soon as its gaze was off of her, the bone crushing pressure lifted with it. Belladonna immediately moved, lunging towards her knife that rested on the ground. Her fingers wrapped around the knife’s hilt just as her hand exploded into a spectacular fire work of bones, flesh and blood.
Agonising pain erupted from her mangled hand as it was split in half, right down the palm, connected only by a few strings of tattered flesh and viscous blood. Her fingers were bending in all the wrong ways and definitely the wrong places. The ones that remained, at least, as her ring finger was completely missing.
The agony coursed through her arm like lightning and stabbed into her mind like the knife she had tried to grasp. That knife had been launched through the air from the force, flipping over and sinking itself into the flesh of the wolf corpse nearby.
The indomitable pressure slammed down onto her once more as she drew not just the rabbit’s focus, but its ire. However this time, perhaps with the help of the pain still pulsating from where her hand used to be, her instincts stopped fighting each other. They finally came together and decided that flight was the much superior option that fight, at least in this situation.
Despite the pressure shoving her down into the ground, Belladonna dove to the side, just in time it seemed. A brown blur whizzed passed her, as a hunk of stone cut through the air where her head used to be. It slammed into a tree behind her, causing the trunk to explode into a hail of splinters before the mighty oak fell with groans and creaks of pain.
Before the rabbit, which she now realised had to be a high level version of the Stonemuncher instead of the Juveniles she was used to. The butcher had told her that they spat rocks as weapons, but this thing was like an adorable little cannon.
Its ears perked up again, drawing its attention towards the forest once more. Apparently it didn’t see her as enough of a threat to care about leaving itself exposed to her, and she didn’t exactly blame it.
However this time, Belladonna could hear what the Stonemuncher was reacting to.
Twigs snapping, leaves rustling and most importantly, hushed voices exchanging a few pointed words.
"They have to be around her somewhere."
"This is definitely where the fight was coming from."
"It’s gonna be big too, did you hear the trees falling?"
Other players! They must have been lured this deep into the forest by the sounds of her fighting, just like the Stonemuncher had. But instead of feeling anxiety, fear or annoyance. Belladonna felt relieved, as a devious shark toothed smile spread across her face once more.
She quickly called up her stats while the Stonemuncher was distracted and immediately dumped all of her attribute points into Agility, shooting it up to 20. With the +10 Bonus from her Sanguine Essence, it currently sat at 30. She just hoped that would be enough.
Belladonna inhaled deeply, filling her lungs and desperately trying to suppress the throbbing pain, before putting on her most Oscar worthy performance of giddy excitement as she yelled,
"Yes! Just a few more hits and it will finally be dead! This must be a hidden boss or something!"
Her voice carried through the forest easily, and the sounds that the rabbit was listening to immediately silenced as it reached them. But that didn’t dissuade Belladonna, in fact it just told her that her plan was working. They were trying to be sneaky.
Even if she couldn’t hear them, it just mattered if the rabbit could. And it had much better senses than she did.
Its ears twitched and flickered as the players drew closer. Although they were trying to be stealthy, someone being a trained assassin in real life that also played video games was just something that didn’t actually happen. So even trying their best, they still made mistakes. Those mistakes were easily picked up by the prey animal refined by generations of instincts.
While it was distracted, Belladonna rushed over to the wolf. Her movements drew its attention, but thankfully her Agility points showed their prowess. It was just enough to turn those invisible, bullet speed rock shots into a visible blur.
The thought of actually catching or withstanding those blows was still impossible, but now she could see them, even slightly, dodging them became all the easier. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶
Belladonna dodged, dipped, ducked, dove, and dodged through the hail of stone bullets that were shot her way. She wasn’t perfect, some of them still nicking her leg or glancing off her armour, but it wasn’t as bad as before.
She dove into a roll, tossing her body over the wolf, so that her arms hooked underneath its legs as she did so. She quickly rose to her feet out of the roll, using her remaining hand to drag the wolf corpse up with her and hoofing it onto her shoulders, before she continued sprinting away with only a small pause to her momentum.
Darting towards a suspiciously rustling bush, Belladonna leapt over it like an Olympic hurdle jumping and couldn’t help but laugh maniacally at the shocked and confused expressions of the players huddled on the other side of it.
"Have fun guys! Thanks for the distraction!"
She shouted over her shoulder, weaving through the trees and dodging a few wayward sword slashes as she sprinted away as fast as her legs could carry her.
"Hey! Come back here! That’s my loot you’re running away with!"
A highly offended voice called after her, the voice in question belonging to a young man with flawless skin and silky blonde hair that split in the middle, forming perfect arches that framed his handsome face. The fairy tale prince charming if she ever saw one.
At least, it was a handsome face, before it exploded into a hail of meat chunks. His voice was cut off mid-shout and his weapon clattered to the ground, as his headless body collapsed like a sack of potatoes, with extra ketchup on top.
The poor sod never even got the chance to see what killed him. But his friends did.
Their shouts and horrified screams were like music to Belladonna’s ears as she ran through the forest, cackling like a madwoman to herself the entire time. That would teach them for trying to kill-steal from her.
All was fair in love and war, and boy did she love the sound of those screams. The only thing she was sad about was the loot being left behind, and the lost Exp the rabbit had stolen.
But once she was a high enough level, she was sure that it would pay her back with interest.
