Running across the forest, Arad looked behind him, "Can you keep up?"
"No problems," Lydia replied. Even in her heavy-plate armor, she could still run for a long while.
"I don't think I have a problem," Jack replied, a drop of sweat trailing across his slowly paling face.
Aella and Eris didn't seem to have a problem, and Zephyr was chilling out on his head. Nina was the last thing he worried about. He would get exhausted before her.
CRACKLE! As they ran, the ground started violently shaking. "An earthquake?" Aella gasped.
"No, it's the great one!" Nina shouted as the ground cracked, a foul gust of blood stench rushed out.
"The hell is this?" Jack muffled his mouth with his arm, "It's foul!"
"Blood!" Lydia growled, "That thing must be injured." She immediately assumed it was the tarrasque's blood.
"It can't be the great one. With her regenerative ability, she won't bleed for long," Nina added.
"Hold to the trees. The shaking should stop soon." Arad said, "She's probably feeding underground on monsters."
"Hulking cockroaches or something?" Eris stared at him.
"I don't know. It's just a theory." As he said that, the shaking stopped.
Nina's eyes opened wide, "JUMP!" She screamed, and everyone lunged away, with Zephyr carrying Jack and Lydia away.
The ground shattered, and blood started gushing out like a gyzar. Two massive crocodile-like eyes the size of melons popped out.
The massive creature swam in the bloodied dirt, its massive tail knocking trees down.
Thud! Arad caught Eris between his legs, and Nina and Aella in each arm as he expanded his wings and started flying. "What's that? A massive gator?"
"I have never seen such a thing in the guild's monster manual," Nina replied.
"Doesn't matter if we kill it," Eris pointed her hand at the monster. [Plasma spear]
PEW! She fired a blazing spear in the blink of an eye.
PING! The moment it hit the creature's head, the spear bounced back toward Zephyr.
"Be careful!" Zephyr cried, dodging the spear at the last moment.
The plasma spear flew to the sky, exploding in a massive blast.
The monster glared at them, roaring, its voice gargling in the blood before it dived back to the ground, swinging its massive deformed tail up, almost hitting Arad.
"What was that?" Lydia gasped.
"That deformed tail, is this it's blood?" Jack looked at the blood-filled forest. It had become like a swamp.
Arad looked at Zephyr, "Let's find another place to land. That massive boulder there." He pointed at a small stone peak.
After landing, everyone stared at the forest. "I'm barefoot," Nina gasped.
"You didn't sense it with your tremor sense?" Arad stared at her, "But you warned us."
"I only felt the liquid gargling beneath the ground at the last moment. Now we knew that was blood. I didn't sense it digging up." She stared at him.
"Even I can't dig that quietly, let alone that thing," Arad scratched his head, "Its intelligence was even lower than that of a turkey."
"A turkey is 2, so that must be a 1." Nina scratched her head.
Lydia stared at Arad, "One intelligent monster only understands two things. Eat and survive."
"They can sometimes eat themselves to death." Eris added, "As Lydia said, they keep eating until they fall asleep from exhaustion and then repeat."
Jack looked at Arad, "Can you eat that thing? It has a lot of blood at least."
"Don't you smell that?" Arad stared at him.
Eris nodded, "I feel like throwing up just from the blood stench. That thing is inedible."
"Wait here," Arad lifted Eris, "Let's give it a try,"
"Put me down! I'm not drinking that!" She cried as he flew with her to the blood swamp.
Thud! They landed on a dry patch of land, closing their noses from the horrid stench.
"It's disgusting. Can we leave?" Eris squatted at the blood side, extending her finger to touch it.
Dip, the moment her finger touched the blood, it swelled into a red-bloodied tumor. In a panic, she instantly severed her wrist and burned the hand to ask with her plasma.
"The hell was that?" She cried as her hand regenerated.
"Let me try," Arad approached the blood and extended one finger, touching the surface. It took a second, but his finger quickly swelled into a red tumor, and it was quickly spreading to his palm.
With a quick swing from his sword, he cut the hand and burned it with flames. "It took longer to affect me," He said.
^[Parasites,]^ Doma said inside his head.
"Parasites? Like worms?" As Arad asked, a mouth appeared on his hand. "[No, the blood itself. The cells are parasites. The moment you touched them they started infecting your sales and transforming them. Your pure draconic blood is quite sturdy, and your vampiric and lycanthropic curse also showed resistance to protect you. That is why it affected you slower than Eris. She only has half dragon blood and pure vampire blood.]"
"What if the blood touched a human? Like Lydia or Jack?"
"[The parasites would spread across their bodies through the bloodstream in one heartbeat, and they would become a deformed mass of flesh in the blink of an eye.]"
"We should get them away from here then," Arad growled.
"[I didn't count that holy blood flows in Lydia's body, or that artificial liver that Cain gave to Jack. Aella has Zephyr inside her body as well. It might not be one hit kill for them. But I don't know about Nina. She's a human.]"
Arad stood, thinking about it.
CRACK! A massive jaw emerged from the ground, and Arad and Eris were in the middle of it.
"Huh?" Eris cried, seeing the maw closing on them.
Thud! Arad grabbed her hand and pulled her closer, opening his jaw and blasting the monster with a fire breath down its throat. ZON! He then teleported away.
ZON! Arad and Eris appeared on the stone beside the rest. "Are you all right?" Nina stared at them, but they were fine.
Arad smiled, "It isn't fine," He pointed at the monster. His breath had blown its throat open. "It will die soon,"
But that didn't last. The monster immediately started regenerating, and what's more, its jaw looked bigger than before.
"I can survive that?" Aella gasped.
"At least we know, the inside of its mouth can't reflect magic," Arad sighed. This isn't going to be easy.