Chapter 44: Chapter 44: Death of the Titian Bear!
With the blood of the Snake King raining down from the sky and the roar of the ferocious bear echoing through the city, the Wolf King's army morale, that had started to rise under the massacre of the giant bear, began to crumble.
Lake, who was currently flying through the air, had just finished absorbing the Snake King's fate as another system notification appeared before him.
[Detected that the Host has come in contact with a Giant's fate. Beginning the absorption process…]
[Absorption complete.]
[+100 RP Points]
As Lake caught a glance at the large amount of fate he just absorbed, he was left dumbfounded and excited but his feelings didn't last for long as he began to feel the wind around him shifting.
Turning around, Lake could see the bear's massive paw coming at him, with a vortex of wind following in its wake.
In face of the bear's approaching attack, Lake kept his cool as he shifted his position in the air, using the power of the wind to push his body out of the way, allowing the bear's paw to just barely brush past him. As the paw whipped past him, Lake jabbed his sword into the wrist of the bear, generating a rotational force which he used to flip himself over and land on the arm of the bear.
With the assistance of the wind pushing his body down against the bear, Lake didn't have to worry about stability while standing on the bear's moving arm.
When the bear's arm came to a brief stop, Lake immediately dashed forward, running up its arm to dodge the bear's other paw that came crashing down where he previously stood.
"ROAR!"
Seeing Lake running up its arm, the bear was extremely irritated by the little 'ant' that escaped its attack.
Releasing a low growl, the bear continued to swing its massive paw all over its body, wanting to crush Lake under it. To Lake however, these rage fueled attacks were so slow and so telegraphed that he was able to read them like an open book, allowing him to easily dodge all of them.
This was another reason why Lake had wanted to send the bear into its rage state. When the bear was in its normal form, it was much smaller and agile, keeping Lake from going near it while it retained its intelligence as even one attack could be his end.
However, when the bear went into a rage, its attacks became far slower with the increase in size and far more predictable with the loss of its intelligence, allowing Lake to easily predict its movements and move ahead of time to dodge its attacks.
As Lake continued to maneuver up the bear's body, he repeatedly swung his sword, looking like a storm of blades moving up its body, leaving countless slash marks behind as the bear's blood began to flow.
The spiders who had previously been suppressed and crushed under the bear's attacks once again began to move while the bear was distracted with Lake.
Like mindless soldiers, the remaining spiders began to rush up the bear's legs, crawling all over its body as they began to bite and tear into the bear's flesh. Some of the spiders began to crawl up to the slash marks Lake had left behind as they opened them up and began to burrow their way inside, releasing their paralytic venom that was previously nullified under the bear's thick flesh into its blood stream.
With hundreds of spiders crawling both outside and inside its body, the bear felt itself slowly going further and further into its rage state under the disturbing feeling. Although the attacks of the spiders against its flesh weren't effective, the feeling of something crawling under its skin had greatly disturbed the bear's rage-filled mind.
With frantic movements, the bear began to smash and destroy the numerous spiders that covered its body.
Lake, who saw this only smiled as he made his way up towards the bear's shoulders.
The bear's remaining red eye turned to face Lake as he perched on its shoulder. In its rage filled state, the bear who saw Lake up close quickly recognized him. When Lake was previously running all over its body he looked like nothing more than a small dot to the bear so he didn't recognize him then.
However, now that Lake was so close to the bear's face, it could clearly see his body and recognize him as the creature that stabbed its right eye!
When the bear realized that it was the same creature that took its eyes that left the cuts on its body that spiders crawled in from, its rage only increased further. Right now, it wanted nothing more than to devour Lake whole!
With a loud roar, the giant bear swung its paw towards Lake once more.
Lake, who could already tell what the bear was up to, didn't waste time as he moved next to the bear's face.
Sheathing his sword, Lake quickly got into one of the punching forms of the Steel Body Martial Art. This form was currently Lake's strongest offensive form that he had learned and also the one that drained the most energy from him.
As Lake stood next to the bear's face, he stabilized his footwork against the bear's shoulder as he positioned himself in a strange punching stance. Power quickly began to gather inside Lake's body as it circulated through his veins like a powerful storm waiting to be released.
His bones began to make creaking and popping sounds as he continued to twist his body, positioning his fist further and further away from the bear's face. His muscles began to swell as the black coat he was wearing began to stretch from the increase in his muscles' size.
While Lake was gathering power, the bear paw was already rushing towards him. When he spotted the bear's paw in the sky, that was when Lake knew the time was now.
With a low roar, Lake twisted his waist as the power that was gathering up inside his body began to flow towards his fist as loud popping noise sounded from his bones. The wind in the surroundings sensed Lake's intent and immediately moved to assist him as it removed the air resistance in front of Lake's fist while pushing it forward from behind.
*BOOM!!!*
With a deafening explosion, Lake's fist came in contact with the bear's jaw, greatly deforming its face as its entire body was tilted to the side by the explosive force of the punch.
*Crack!* *Pop!*
A loud cracking and popping sound was heard emanating from the bear's jaw. The punch had both dislocated and fractured the bear's jaw causing it to lose its balances as its senses were sent into a disarray.
Another popping noise was heard soon after however, this one much softer than the bear's and sounding from Lake's shoulder. The punch just now had also dislocated Lake's shoulder as he had exerted more force than his body could currently handle.
However, Lake still managed to achieve his goals as the bear's massive body came toppling down. Just now he had carefully aimed his attack towards the bear's weak points using one of his least used skills ever since he had acquired the master assassin role.
[Assassinate lv. 1 - To assassinate is an art and as a Master Assassin, you are a master of it. At the current level you can assassinate your target as easy as breathing without them even knowing. (This skills scales with the host's stats)]
The Assassinate skill was one of the skills Lake used both on and off in battle. Whenever he got the jump on the enemy he would use it without hesitation as it allowed for a swift and quick kill, however, sometimes he would have to face multiple enemies head on or an opponent that his assassination didn't work on so it doesn't get used as much as his other skills.
However, in the case of the earlier attack, Lake used one of the Assassinate skill's hidden effects, weakness detection.
To assassinate your target, one must have a thorough understanding of the opponent's weakness and strength. In this case, Lake found the bear's weak point on the jaw that would allow him to exert the most force and struck it viciously under the guidance of the assassinate skill.
This allowed him to do far more damage than he would have normally been capable of compared to if he were to just randomly attack the bear's jaw. If this was a game, his attack just now could be described as having done 'critical damage'.
As the bear's giant body fell, it crashed into one of the buildings below causing rubble and debris to go flying everywhere as the city shook under the weight of the titanic bear.
*BOOM!*
With another loud explosion, the bear's body collapsed onto the ground, destroying several buildings in its path.
Lake had long jumped off the shoulder of the bear while it fell and now stood straight on top of its head. The bear didn't seem to notice Lake at that time as its head was currently spinning from the impact of the punch.
While the bear was disorientated, hundreds of spiders swarmed the bear's body as they began to dig into the bear's flesh, crawling into its veins and under its skin as they flooded his veins with their venom.
As time went on, although the bear's body was strong and full of vitality, it couldn't keep up with the sheer amount of the venom that entered its body causing it to gradually be paralyzed which only allowed the spiders to attack him even more viciously.
After a while, the bear's eyelid slowly began to droop as a deep sense of sleepiness and exhaustion took over it. Its allies had long ago fled the battlefield, including the ash deer after the bear had fallen in the battle.
The spiders that had crawled under his flesh had made their way to his internal organs and began to ravage it causing the bear to die even faster. As its life was escaping its eyes, the bear could see the human that had caused all this pain walk in front of its eye as it looked down at him.
Looking at the human's figure the bear that was originally dying and weak suddenly felt a burst of anger in its heart again. It was extremely unwilling and indignant to lose at the hands of the weak human before him.
The bear had killed countless humans like the one before him, all of them weak and powerless before his invincible strength. He thought it would be the same for this human as well, but he somehow found himself being looked down on by the very same creature he had previously looked down on. This feeling was suffocating and filled the bear with undying rage.
It wanted to stand up, it wanted to raise its paw just one more time to kill the man before it, it wanted to live. All of these emotions filled the bear's eye as it stared ferociously at Lake's figure.
However, it was at that time that the bear's gaze met Lake's eyes. Suddenly it felt like a river of ice was flowing down its back as a chill went down the bear's spine.
The human's eyes were extremely cold. The bear felt no warmth or emotion from it. It couldn't see fear, happiness, sadness or anger in those eyes.
There was no care for life or desires to live, only the vast nothingness of void. The bear felt like looking into those icy blue eyes was like staring into the deep abyss of the ocean as fear gripped its heart.
An unnerving feeling suddenly filled its heart as a thought appeared in its mind.
It was going to die.
Not by the hands of a stronger predator or the sickness of old age but by the hands of the human before it. This thought had completely filled the bear's mind with fear.
Under the bear's terrified gaze, Lake unsheathed his sword as he raised it high into the sky. With a swift swing, the sword pierce deep into the bear's eyes, reaching all the way to its brain.
As the bear's life faded from its body, it suddenly had one more thought as realization came to it.
Those weren't the eyes of a living creature, but the eyes of a "Monster".
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