Black Market Merchant

Chapter 154: Tentacles
Alan, the Bone Flayer, gulped heavily seeing the Twisted creature’s single blood red eye leering at him from the gate entrance. Its crackled Black and red underlined tentacles slowly continued to roll out from the gates dark center as if they were unending. Still grasping the gate on all sides, the eight black tentacles were kept spilling out of the gateway until its humongous body had appeared after nearly a full menacing minute. The Land Octopus’s entire length looked to take up one fifth of the entire fighting ground!

”Great! Just an easy monster to deal with. No biggie.” Alan mused to himself.

Alan’s feet shuffled sideways as he surveyed his new foe. His thin shoes filled up easily in the sandy pit and he could feel every odd bone, weapon and stone that was hidden within. Surrounding the Pit was the metal dome enclosure and the cheering sounded beyond it sound almost too muffled. Stealing a quick glance, he saw that in between the metal was smudged, clear bulletproof glass.

However, he didn’t have any time to waste looking away now. The Land Octopus emitted an unsettling gurgling grinding noise from below its body, where its mouth was, and the tips of its tentacles wriggled violently. It’s two massive red eyes, sticking out on the sides of its bulbus head, seemed to see every nook and cranny of the Pit. There was nowhere to hide.

Seeing Alan standing still and alone, its body lurched slowly forward towards the center of the Pit. Thinking it had easy prey, the Land Octopus sent out a single tentacle out towards the single human.

Alan sneered seeing the black coiling tentacle snaking towards him like spilled oil. Then he gripped his tactical hammer tightly and shouted, ”You’re underestimating me? I’ll show you that that’s a mistake!”

Taking the initiative, Alan took two steps forward and sent his hammer flying in a downward arcing swing at the creature’s arm. Sand flew up in every direction at the hammers impact, smashing the tentacle’s tip. Like someone stubbing their toe on a table leg, the Land Octopus reeled back and moaned as it waved its injured arm in the air.

”Ha! You didn’t like that, did you.” Alan said as he smirked at the creature.

However, all he ended up doing was enrage the creature! Making an angry sounding gurgle, the Twisted sent out four tentacles to attack Alan in unison. As they flew at the human, the tentacles turned ridged, and the tips grew visibly taught. The second special skill of this creature was being unleashed!

Alan saw these black and red edged ’spears’ coming at him with blurring speed and swung his hammer upward. The swing struck the fastest tentacle knocking it away and over his head. Then ricocheting off that tentacle, Alan flung the hammer down and sideways catching a tentacle aimed at his middle and sent it crashing into another aiming at his thigh. Both struck the ground harmlessly, yet the fourth tentacle stabbed right into Alan’s left shoulder!

Stumbling back from the attack, Alan quickly retreated to gain some distance and clutched at the wound. Meanwhile, the Land Octopus’s arms softened and wriggled back towards itself. Unlike Alan the Octopus was unharmed in the initial strikes. It then started to creep across the sandy ground towards its prey menacingly.

Alan touched the hole in his arm and muttered, ”My arm just finished healing there too. What a pain.”

Wiggling his fingers and lifting the hammer some, Alan found that the damage was not as bad as the pain. He could still fight just well enough. Then he noticed the creature’s advancing movement and saw that it was trying to corner him against the back wall of the Pit.

”Hmm, not all that dumb, are you?” Alan called out to the Twisted. ”Looks like four tentacles for attacking and four for supporting. It’s got to be hard holding all that weight.”

Dashing to the right, Alan made a break for safety along the wall and back out into the more open fighting grounds. Reacting swiftly, the Land Octopus sent out another barrage of hardened spear like tentacles. Ducking, weaving, and jumping, Alan nimbly avoided the repeated stabs from the creature. If he had tried blocking or countering, then he would probably have been blocked off from his escape route. The creatures size greatly affected how fast it truly moved, it was dangerously fast!

Getting a fair distance away at the opposite end of the Pit, Alan stopped to look over the creature. ”There just had to be a weakness and fighting off those tentacles is just not going to be enough.”

The Land Octopus has finished turning around and was now moving back towards him. Alan couldn’t see anything that looked like an obvious weakness, its body looked far too tough and arms just as impenetrable. Alan then felt his foot brush against something long and hard buried in the coarse sand. Looking down he saw that it was a half a spear shaft.

”Oh, duh. The answer is right here.” Alan said reaching down to scoop up the spear. ”Most everything has the same weakness, it’s eyes.”

The Land Octopus was past halfway across the Pit now and its two front tentacles were starting to raise up for another strike. Alan, however, wasn’t going to let it. Now it was his time to shine!

”Take this!” Alan shouted and chucked the spear right at the creatures right huge, bulging red eye.

The Twisted saw everything. It knew what this human was up to. Seeing the spear flying at it, the Land Octopus struck out at the weapon and effortlessly swatted it away!

”Uh, well that’s not good.” Alan said unable to believe what he just saw. He felt like a kid tossing a pillow at an adult. Completely powerless.

Letting out a mocking gurgle, the Twisted launched another attack. Again, four tentacles stabbed out at Alan. However, this time Alan had more distance to react. Jumping to one side he deflected one tentacle with his hammer and the other three smashed into the metal framework of the Pit’s stone hued walls.

Then in response to its failed strike the Land Octopus tugged angrily at the metal it had struck. With a loud metallic crack, the metal framing broke and came flying back at the creature.

Then Alan noticed something from this odd moment. The tentacles had first struck at him in a solid state, but now, because the tentacles had become soft to pull on the metal, they became elastic. The metal flew right at the creature’s body and struck it squarely in between the eyes. However, the Land Octopus knew this was going to happen and had hardened its body to take the blow. As expected, the metal fragments bounced off and there was no damage done to the imposing monster.

When it did this, Alan also noted that the creature’s movements stopped entirely. It couldn’t solidify its body completely independently like its arms could. A solid defense in exchange for a lack of mobility. An idea started to form in Alan mind upon this discovery.

Looking around at his feet he spotted another spear. This time the shaft was in better condition and its tip looked very sharp. Only it was now closer to the Twisted.

”Alright, round two it is!”

This time Alan decided to use his Inducement! The feeling of its power quickly coursed through his body and his confidence also boosted. Feeling this way made him feel like he could do anything and no one or thing could stop him in this state!

Throwing caution to the wind, Alan made a desperate charge for the spear. The Twisted saw this and reacted by sending out two tentacles to intercept Alan. They struck out from above like whips to smash this human to bits.

Alan threw himself forward into a roll, dodging the first swing and sending a shower of sand splashing about from his impact. Then jumping up onto one knee and raising his hammer, Alan blocked the second blow. Gasping for breath, it felt to Alan like a car had just tried to run him over as he took the blow head on. His body was pushed back, leaving deep skid marks in the blood-stained sand. However, he did not fall or feel threatened.

The two tentacles softened and pulled back up into the air above him, readying for another strike. Forcing himself to move onwards Alan ran for the spear again. Just as he did, a third tentacle came flying straight at his chest!

Throwing up his tactical hammer, Alan smacked sideways at the tentacle which resulted in making contact with the weapons handle. Then pushing away from him, Alan forced the tentacle to miss him and the handle and tentacle ground against each other violently while he kept on running forwards.

The creature seemed confused as its strength failed to knock the human aside. The two tentacles above floated as if unsure how to move to attack the human fending off its other arm. It was all Alan needed.

Giving another hard shove, he pushed the hardened tentacle aside and grabbed the spear. Then he looked up at the creatures big red eyes and smiled. It was all over now. Gripping the spear and hammer tightly, Alan turned and ran away!

The onlooking crowd’s boos were obvious to him as Alan fled. The creature was also completely confused by this sudden change in attitude. Yet seeing its prey running made it confident. The two tentacles hovering above were sent crashing down to crush him and end this farce.

Alan saw this obvious attack coming and ran in a zig zag pattern. Each blow from the tentacles sent up huge plums of dust as they missed their target. This further frustrated the creature.

It gave another unhappy grinding noise and lashed out furiously at the human still fleeing. As if it truly was angry that its easy meal wasn’t going to be just an easy meal. Yet, Alan kept right on escaping.

Reaching the metal and stone wall, Alan stopped and turned to face the creature and shouted to egg-on the Twisted. ”Come on! Get me!”

It worked. Just like before the Twisted lashed out with four tentacles. Again, Alan jumped aside, and all four tentacles burrowed deeply into the wall. Grabbing onto another chunk of metal, the Land Octopus wrenched it free from the wall as its tentacle returned to its elastic state. The metal shot back at creature’s head once again and it braced itself for impact.

Just as Alan planned!

Frozen in place it was unable to react. Alan’s spear was already flying right at its ‘all-seeing’ eye! The Twisted was unable to move as it then watched the spear burrow into its own eye, and its vision turned black!

The Land Octopus screamed an awkward gurgling noise and lost its composure releasing its hardened skin technique fully. The metal smacked hard into its softened head, right between the eyes. The force of the impact knocked it backwards and its weight was too much to hold.

As the stunned Twisted crashed with a boom into the sand, Alan was already charging at it. He went straight for its wounded eye. Black blood gushed out from around the spear hole and the shaft was still sticking part way out from the eye. Tentacles flapped about uselessly as the creature continued writhing in pain, unable to react properly.

Then jumping up at the bleeding eye, that was still a few meters above the ground, Alan cocked back his hammer to swing. Giving a mighty surge of strength, he hammered smashing right at the butt end of the spear.

”Thunk, squish!”

The spear was sent burrowing deeper through the eye and it lodged deep within the creature’s brain. A fountain of black blood erupted from the once red eye and the creature let out one last screech. Then all tentacles flopped lifeless to the sandy ground in unison. He had nailed it to death!

Sucking in a huge breath, Alan raised is hammer high in triumph and yelled, ”For the Skull!”