Chapter 578: Not Easy
One group tore apart the three men who were still frozen in place while the other group pounced on the ones running at Laz. The feline like creatures were the fastest, but even they got out of the way when the bear like and elephant like creatures came close.
The other slaves were ripped apart, chewed up and swallowed, all while the crowd cheered on, laughed and took in the spectacle before them.
While there were 20 of the feline like beasts and 10 of the bear like ones, there were only 4 of the elephant sized beasts since they were massive and took up a lot of space. Once done with the seven humans, the beasts began to probe each other, obviously still hungry as the humans weren’t enough to feed them. As such, they began taking swipes at each other, sometimes forming groups with one another of the same species.
All the while this was happening, Laz looked on in quiet contemplation, knowing that there was no way things would end this easily for him. Instead, he was thinking the best way to take down each beast, knowing that his back would be a problem and trying to work that into the calculation.
The felines were tossed aside and backed off quickly, their quick speed not able to make up for their small size when attacking the other, much larger creatures. Due to this, they all backed off and began circling, clearly looking for an injured prey to attack.
It was because of this that two of them became aware of Laz and ran at him quickly, their speed almost too fast for a normal human to see.
This wasn’t a problem for Laz.
Standing as straight as he could with his spear at his side, he didn’t make a move or indicate in any way that he saw the two beasts getting closer, one from his left and the other from his right. Instead, he stood fast and focused on the ongoing fight between the bears and the elephants.
The crowd saw the whole thing though and cheered wildly at the thought that the last human was going to be slaughtered when an unthinkable thing happened.
Neither creature was stupid and seemed to understand one another, so only the one on the right jumped forward, looking to pounce on Laz. But he took a solid step back and whipped the spear downward, slamming it into the head of the charging beast. As it stayed dazed on the floor, Laz simply brought the butt of the spear down and smashed it into the beasts skull again, leaning his weight into it so that the head smashed like a watermelon.
Seeing this, the other cat like beast growled angerly and jumped forward, only to be met with the upward swing of Laz’s sword in his left hand, removing the head from the beast.
The entire time, Laz didn’t take his eyes off the battling beasts in the center. This wasn’t an act to look impressive, instead it was because he knew that only the ones in the center could cause him a sense of danger.
One of the other wild cats noticed the bloodshed and roared, getting the attention of the other cats who then began making their way over to the lone human. What’s more, while six of the bears were engaged with three of the elephants, one of the bears having already been killed, the seventh bear and fourth elephant noticed a lone standing human and began making their way towards him, causing the cats to back off.
It seemed like they hard reached an agreement to not fight until the human was dead, something Laz was confused about.
’They must have really trained these things to hate humans,’ Laz thought while standing still. He was currently just a few paces from the wall, in a position where nothing could get behind him without being noticed, but he had enough room to maneuver. Backing up more would have caused more problems than being helpful.
The crowd was going while at the death of the two cat beasts and since Laz was the only human left alive at this point, all eyes were on him, including the emperor and his two daughters.
"Oh... What’s this?" The emperor asked briefly while looking at the lone man.
"He’d be kind of handsome if he wasn’t bent over like an old woman..." The blonde haired beauty laughed.
As for the brunette, she was staying quiet as she watched on, interested for the first time today.
’Were those moves just reactions? They feel to stable to be something like that...’ She thought to herself, taking a drink of the cold wine that had been replaced several times but mostly ignored.
As for Laz, he was focused on the two without losing sight of the others.
’Just like that one time,’ Laz thought, his mind momentarily replaying a scene from his past.
***
Laz was laying face up while a sexy but laughing woman stood over him.
"I don’t see how this is necessary?" Laz said, feeling his whole body worn down with nothing left to give.
"How is is not, sack boy?" Kat said, laughing even more.
"I’ve got an this huge fucking pillow weight thingy draped across my shoulders and you want me to fight you with it on somehow? How the fuck does that help?" Laz asked, wanting to get up but being restrained on his back like a turtle.
"Imagine you’re trying to carry someone to safety? You going to drop them in the grass just so you can fight without issue? How will you protect them then? Or Let’s just say your injured or something? Body doesn’t move the way you’re used to? You’ve got to be able to adapt quickly if you want to survive. Whether is a wright on your shoulders, your left arm is broken or you went and got your leg chopped off... you need to learn how to balance your body and figure out the best way to fight with it’s limitations. You can’t just believe you’re going to stay uninjured the rest of your life, can you?" She said as het toned skin sparkled in the fading sunlight, giving her a halo of sunlight like she was a goddess made real.
It was only after Laz had been able to win one fight that he was able to remove the weight.
***
’If she could see me right now, I’m sure she’d be saying I told you so? Gods... do I miss her sometimes,’ Laz said as the two beasts approached.
Kat had been right. His fights had been easy, fighting things that either didn’t really want to kill him, or were too weak to kill him. While these beasts in front of him were strong, were he not injured, he could kill them with little trouble. But the fact was, he was injured. So these things were now very dangerous to him.
’Let’s see... black flame is consumed with fighting the fires, my energy is being used to feed it... the red ring, which I still don’t completely understand, is keeping the palaces safe... so all I have left is my body huh? I haven’t been doing this right...’ Laz thought as they approached.
’One spear, one sword, one knife... and me? Yeah... she’d be laughing her head off...’
The beasts were withing striking range while the horse sized felines stood in a half circle behind them, giving Laz no room for escape.
Using his senses, Laz could feel the blood within him start to boil, but then felt a roar inducing pain lash out as it seemed like the strange fires within him were growing stronger.
"FUCK!" Laz yelled, only barely able to avoid falling over.
The black flame battling within was almost pushed off the dead lands as the green flames roared to life, stronger than ever, but the black flame held on despite losing so much ground.
’So... nothing. That almost set me down for the count. Need to keep it under control,’ Laz thought as the beasts that had backed off at the roar then became enraged.
The spiked elephant charged, coming straight for Laz.
With a deep breath, Laz calmed his heart and swung to the side, barely missing getting skewed on one of it’s long tusks or the spikes jutting out from it’s back and sides.
Immediately, the horned bear with massive claws lunged forward as the elephant tried to stop from charging into the wall. Laz swung around to avoid it, but measured the distance wrong and the beasts one claw drew a line of blood across his upper thigh as he spun. Still, since he was within distance, Laz ignore the pain and lunged forward himself, driving the spear into the back of the bear’s neck and pushing hard, causing the bear to be lifted off the ground slightly while burying itself further up into it’s skull.
The recovered elephant circled around and seeing Laz’s back, charged forward.
Knowing what waited behind him, Laz used his left hand to swing the sword in an arc, cutting off the horned bear’s head before using his right to reposition the spear so that the butt end was buried in the ground.
Unable to halt it’s charge, the massive beast impaled itself on the well placed spear, burying half of the spear within it’s massive body before it broke off. Laz was sent flying in the face of the impact and hit the wall with a loud thud, knocking all of the air out of him while his head went dizzy.
He still kept his mind though and stood back up, using the wall and his one free hand to push himself into a standing position as the crowd stayed silent.
The elephant took two more steps before it stopped. Just as everyone was holding their breaths, the massive beast swayed left and right a couple of times before it ended up falling over on it’s side as streams of blood shot out from the hole in it’s chest.
Only once it’s breathing stopped did the crowd explode in applause.
