Savage Awakening 588. Boot Camp (IX)

He was champing at the bit to get a feel for that Law again.

Just then the Kaijuu shrieked—this time, triumphantly. Zane felt it in its soul, too, even from this far out.

It wanted to tell him it was bigger. It was putting a stamp on that tail-whack, like it wanted him to know it’d won that exchange.

It did put a grin on his face.

He wanted to get that one back now.

First he did another quick inspection of his body, this time a little more in-depth, just to check in on exactly what that blow had done. His initial impression was that it hadn’t been all that bad—an impression he found was mostly accurate.

From a distance it might’ve looked bad, since he’d gotten blasted pretty far. But that tail-whack was the inverse of his punch, in terms of its effect. While he’d socked the Kaijuu a good one but hadn’t budged it much, that thing had whacked him the length of several planets. But the most it had to show for it were a few crushed ribs.

Even those were healing pretty fast. He shook his hand out too, which was quickly mending. His Prime Blood regeneration was coming in handy.

Just twenty seconds later, he threw himself back into the fight.

The Sage was giving him fist pumps all the while—“Just keep hitting it, lad! You know damned well it can’t last like you can!”

This time he tried entering the same way, by gravity dive-bombing the Kaijuu. He didn’t really mind breaking the same hand if he could deliver the same damage… there was no way it could take too many of those.

The Kaijuu was a little wiser to it, though; it head-butted up so many walls he was forced to cut off the attack halfway through. He skidded to a hard stop mid-space.

Then the Kaijuu shrieked and charged him, that bulwark-head shining with force, laced with pure Destruction.

And the two of them got into a good old-fashioned slugfest.

A slugfest that featured Zane getting blasted several hundred miles quite a bit, though he did end up staggering it several times, too.

The Kaijuu had a few key skills. There was that force headbutt, which it used in two ways—a ranged attack where it headbutted up a wall of force. And a plain old headbutt, where it charged and hit him straight on. That one, Zane sensed, would do a lot more damage than the ranged attack, but it struggled landing it on him.

Then it had that giant tail lash, which it had a lot more success with.

It seemed to come out of nowhere—as much as something that big could come out of nowhere, anyway. Almost as soon as he felt it coming it’d be in full swing, and it was a speedy one, at least by planetary standards. The thing was so big that even though it didn’t move blindingly fast—he could track it just fine—it still covered an insane amount of ground. It also sped up like a lashing whip near the end, thickening with Pure Size, and he could see a layer of pure hardened Destruction-laden force coating it in the Astral Plane. Giving that extra oopmh.

There was also the fact that Zane had to fight up a waterfall of black hole gravity to get out of the way.

Even if it always felt like he had a two or three second window to make it out, which should’ve been plenty for a fight at this level, he still found himself getting whacked by it—just caught by that last chunk of tail, shattering a few small bones in the process.

He quite enjoyed the challenge it presented him.

Whether he was hitting or getting hit, he still got a little extra Pure Size out of it; inertia just felt clearer and clearer. It felt like a win-win for him.

And every time the Kaijuu landed that tail, it let out a shriek of triumph; he could feel how satisfying it was for it to thwack him like that. Not unlike whacking a baseball home run, he had to admit—it was kind of batting him.

It wasn’t that he liked being blasted… he actually couldn’t wait until he got inertia loaded into his body—ideally to the point a blow like that wouldn’t even budge him.But something about those triumphant shrieks just made him want to grin.

They exchanged blow after blow—Zane landing three or four times for every one time it landed on him. But that one time it did, it always blasted him out of the park.

He noticed one more odd thing about this Kaijuu. The more he punched it, the more the little seams between its scales would sear up a bright orange, like it was absorbing some chunk of the force. It kind of looked like a power bar lighting up its whole body, starting from its head. He could feel energy charging up within it too.

It was dormant for now. He wondered if it worked kind of like his ‘Wish Upon a Star’ did, back before it’d evolved. The mechanism felt kind of similar…

It was very obvious though what with the quite visible charging-up process. He doubted it’d be all that hard to avoid.

Granted, it was getting him quite a bit with that tail. So he figured he shouldn’t be too overconfident.

He stomped back in, gave the Kaijuu an uppercut that lifted its chin a good few dozen miles, cracking the scales there. Then he followed it up with a one-two-three that got it staggering and bellowing. This time he was quite pleased to get out of the way of the tail-slap counter—he felt it coming early, stomped in very close, almost getting behind the Kaijuu, and ‘followed’ it as it spun, before cracking it with another good punch.

He heard the Sage cheering high above—could just barely make out some fist-pumping going on. The old fellow was shouting something he couldn’t quite hear —“You—… blast— … don’t— … ’em up!”

He got the gist of it.

They kept on slugging back and forth. Another thing Zane was noticing—the more damage he did to those scales, and especially the big plate on its head, the more the gravity currents seemed to affect the Kaijuu. Which made sense, given they were what gave it that anti-gravity effect. Ten minutes into the fight, slugging it out at around 1200 miles deep, and it was having to work a bit too—though nowhere near as much as Zane did.

After getting a feel for it, Zane was starting to get the sense this Kaijuu just wasn’t on his level physically, except for that one area of having Pure Size. It was looking shabbier and shabbier as the fight went on. Nearly half the scales on its body had shattered by now. It even started to sink a few miles every second, huffing and puffing.

It was still managing to land hard, though. Just as he was thinking that it cracked him with a tail-whip that sent him straight through a knot of heavy gravity. He hit it back-first and grunted; it felt like he’d struck a sphere of solid force.

The Kaijuu gave him yet another screech—and despite being the more beat-up party, it still seemed to think it was getting the better of him. That shriek felt kind of smug. It was enjoying the hell out of itself, even now—every time it got a thwack in, it did a little celebration.

…The Sage was right, honestly. He definitely felt it’d be a shame to kill this Monster; he really didn’t want to. The thing just wanted to fight, just like he did.

As the exchanges piled up, though, Zane got more and more used to its patterns. Almost as importantly, he was getting more and more used to this terrain. Those first few exchanges he’d been caught by surprise by several gravity knots and even run into a few. And he’d underestimated just how much he’d have to Red Giant step to stay upright; at first he’d fallen way faster than he was expecting. Especially as the battleground extended past 1500 miles. He’d had to stomp more and much harder to compensate—but he was starting to get the hang of it.

He was still far from moving efficiently down here. He felt it’d take a while to fully get a handle on this heavy gravity terrain. But still, compared to the kind of careening and herky-jerky movements he was doing at the start, he was starting to feel kind of slick, if he did say so himself. He was also pretty sure he’d find he’d leveled up Red Giant Steps at least once at the end of this fight—spamming it under this kind of force was proving quite the workout. He was kind of surprised how much his legs were burning.

Compared to the clumsy Kaijuu, at least, he was starting to look downright nimble. After twenty minutes of solid fighting he was just zipping around the beast, whacking it and barely taking anything in return—landing his punches and blasting right out of the way.

The Kaijuu was starting to get a bit irritated.

It was an irritation he could empathize with, actually, now that he thought about it.

Now, Zane would never be a bird or approve of such lifestyles. But he could kind of see the appeal of being this nimble. He wondered if this was how birds felt fighting him.

Actually… scratch that. He wouldn’t admit to being anything like a bird. Birds were lightweights, for one, while he was clearly packing a punch here. And more—the bird way was to hit-and-run, while he was staying in close quarters the entire time. He’d argue he was the one taking it to this Kaijuu, in fact.

On the Law side, after eight or nine tail-whacks and dozens of punches, he felt he was starting to get a handle on this Inertia thing; every single impact gave him a little spark of new insight. Clarifying—that was the word for it.

He even started shifting his focus after a bit, switching back to feeling for Pure Size’s pure magnitude-enhancing effects, just to vary up his Size knowledge. He took note of the way it moved through the Kaijuu’s body and flared briefly in that tail-whack…

There was much to learn.

Unfortunately, though, the fight looked to be coming to an end, and fast.

The Kaijuu still had plenty of vitality to spare. But its scale situation was looking dire. Its size was starting to work against it; so much black hole gravity was latching onto it now that it was pretty much a sinking ship, and it wasn’t regenerating those scales anywhere close to fast enough. It looked quite annoyed with its situation, but there it was. Zane almost wished he could donate some Health to the cause so they could keep on going.

There was another slightly unfortunate thing—that ‘force bar’ charging up in its body, what he assumed to be its ‘Wish Upon a Star’ equivalent, was around 80% full. But with how shattered its scales were, if he kept whacking it, Zane was pretty sure it’d sink all the way down before it even managed to fill that meter.

…Actually—he’d gotten so much out of this fight Law-wise, and enjoyment wise, he felt it’d be a shame for it to end this way. With him pitter-pattering it until the deeper Gravity currents took it.

After all that, he felt it deserved to go out with a bang.

And he was also kind of curious just what attack it had in store. If he could maybe bum some extra Pure Size Law off of it, if it featured that.

So with that in mind, he decided to give it a hand.

He blasted up to it and started thwacking all of its most protected bits. Not at its scales, which were still keeping it upright, but at the thicker chunks of its skull and its bony chestplate. Just donating some force to help fill up that ultimate power meter.

***

“That’s the stuff!" roared the Sage. "You go and finish out strong, lad! Just give it a little more—”

A pause. “What the…”

Another pause.

Then the Sage just burst out laughing. “…This godsdamned brat!”