Chapter 51: The Gumiho (2)

"Boring..." Kate whispered to herself.

The canopy of black wings still refused her a view of Maeve, and her shadow attacking her kept arriving without the courtesy to approach.

The whole thing was beginning to feel repetitive, as if Maeve was trying to tire her out in any way she could.

Empty air, then mass. A black humanoid bulk tore into existence at her front. The same shadow she’d now seen multiple times. Thrice any ordinary man’s size, muscles packed into a frame and oddly, the movement of a martial artist.

The fist came on a hard straight line for her skull, but Kate’s beet barely shifted.

*Kaank!*

Her nunchaku moved, the chain snapped into a short defensive arc, changing it’s fist direction, while the other touched the brute’s forearm as it went by, in a neat reprimand.

King disappeared again.

"..." Kate exhaled.

She wasn’t smiling as before now.

She lowered her nunchaku to her side, and rolled her shoulders once, and looked at the dome of feathers at the far end of the arena.

"Okay," she said. "No more warm-up."

She turned her wrists, and the tiny chrome spheres lifted off her forearms in the air.

She raised her hand, and all two hundred and sixteen of those beads formed a grid in her background.

With just a slightest gesture of a finger pointed at the canopy of wings, she sent twelve.

They moved in a tight spiral, curved wide of the canopy, and drove into the stone floor around its base.

Each one sank to the depth of a knuckle and stayed there, humming of vibration.

Forming a ring of six meters across, with Maeve at the center.

Kate did not look at them long. She flicked her fingers outward, and the rest of the chrome beads left her control in a wider bloom.

More than a hundred spheres peeled away from the grid behind her, and started raining across the arena in hard, precise, and powerful throws.

*Thuck*-*Thuck**Thuck*-*Thuck**Thuck*-*Thuck*

They struck the white cement floor in a spreading lattice. They rained everywhere, even at the barriers, along the approach lanes, in the broken constellations between Kate and Winged dome of Maeve.

In seconds, arena was turned into a board.

Kate’s black eyes narrowed ionce. Current woke along the nunchaku chain first.

*Izzzt*

The thin white filament crawled the metal with fine sizzle as the environmental field came under hand. The air around her wrists sharpened.

Again, the bull-headed bulk tore into existence. King’s fist were already driving for her face.

*KR-BOOM!*

Its upper torso blew apart from the inside.

Not a single punch landed.

A shockwave detonated through the shadow’s chest and shoulders, it’s black mass ruptured in a violent bloom as electrical charge flooded the contruct.

Grey eyes went out in an instant, and the giant’s remaining shape shredded sideways, and came apart before it’s fist could even finish the swing.

In the very same instant.

Kate was gone.

Attraction snapped her toward the beads that she had anchored throughout the arena, repulsion kicked her off the one under her heel.

To the stands, it was less of a run, but more of a super speed.

*VWWP-*

She reappeared at the canopy’s edge; her nunchaku swung in horizontal attack.

It blazed with running current as it carved for the black wing-wall as its violet arc dragged through the air.

*Crrack-Kzzzt!*

Feathers of pure shadow created by manifestation of force, met electrified wood and steel moving at tremendous speed and power.

The canopy shuddered, the Grey eyes of the eagle flared wide above the fold of its wings.

"{Juggernaut}" Maeve called out once, in low voice.

*Kzzzt---Flick!*

The arena lights blinked once.

A head arrived beside Kate before she could continue her assault on the canopy.

It was enormous, black, close enough that its breathless mass displaced the air against her cheek.

Rhino-thick-bone=structure under shadow flesh, a starved, hound-wide mouth that was completely open, and moving in that fraction of a moment.

It was large enough that one clean bite would have taken her at the waist and ended the battle.

But Kate stepped back once.

The jaws slammed shut once on where she had been.

*CLANG---KRRRK!*

She had driven the nunchaku up between the mouth of the Juggernaut like a pole.

Both sticks locked against upper and lower jaw. The chain went rigid in a magnetized solid line, current screamed along it in a tight white sizzle as the creature’s bite tried to finish and found itself propped open on electrified steel.

The head shook once in violent frenzy, as if it was offended. The cement cracked under Kate’s rear foot from the transferred force of it’s aggression.

She looked down once, and then at the Juggeraut.

"...That’s impressive," she scoffed, and snapped her fingers.

The remaining chrome beads that suspended in the air did not spiral this time, they surrounded the body of Juggernaut.

*Tnk-tnk-tnk-tnk-tnk...*

She just closed her fist as they surrounded the creature, and that was enough.

They collapsed inward.

Beads hammered onto the massive head, and the emerging bulk behind it from every open angle.

The shadow’s skull deformed with a deep ugly cranky noise, as tiny beads crushed it all alike.

*Boom-hiss*

Empty air remained where the Juggernaut had been.

"You cannot hope to defeat me without using your Severan Force Control, love." Kate leaned onto the wings, and said out a loud.

"You’re going to run out of big animals like this~"

Behind Dios’s wings, Maeve watched the empty space where Juggernaut had been moments ago.

It didn’t even take much effort for Kate to defeat it.

Her fingers tightened against each other.

Kate had already dealt with King, summoning it again would just be tiring for Maeve’s core.

Maeve’s eyes lowered toward the floor in the complete darkness of the dome.

Her lips pressed together.

’This one will take another toll on my core,’ she thought.

If it failed, she would have very little left to work with.

Maeve closed her eyes for a moment, and brought her hands to her chest.

"{Chupacabra}" she called it out.

*Kzzzt---Flick!*

The arena lights blinked once again.

"..." Kate sighed once. "Another one?"

The shadow beneath Dios moved.

At first, it was only a change in its shape. A section of darkness spread across the white cement, extending beyond the protection of eagle’s wings.

Then the floor split.

A black claw emerged from the darkness.

Its curved fingers struck the cement and dug in.

*Crrackk---*

The sound of stone cracking reached the nearest rows of spectators.

Something pulled from the shadow. It’s claws tightened. A second claw appeared beside it.

Then the shadow began to rise.

Kate’s head turned toward the sound, she stopped playing with her nunchaku.

The black shape struggled against the floor. Its claws scraped across the cement, dragging its body forward inch by inch.

The ground beneath it remained dark, but the creature was clearly trying to pull itself out of something just refused to release it.

A head pushed through.

It’s jaws opened.

*KAK-KAK-KAK-KAK-KAK---*

The teeth snapped repeatedly, striking the empty air. The head twisted from side to side, its mouth opened wider each time.

The creature pulled again.

Its neck emerged, followed by a broad, heavily muscled body covered in thick spikes. Its forelimbs dragged it forward while the rest of its body struggled to come out of the shadows.

It slammed on of its claws into the cement, and its head struck the floor, and then lifted himself up from the shadows.

It struck the ground on all fours. It was smaller than previous summons, but its weight cracked the cement beneath its claws.

For a moment, it remained hunched over.

Then its head turned, and fixed on Kate.

The jaws opened and they stayed open, looking at Kate. She could see the rows of teeth extending deep into its mouth, its neck was thick, its shoulders were heavy, and the spikes ran along its back in uneven angles.

Black shadow saliva-like strands stretched between its teeth before disappearing into the ground.

"Oh...kay..." Kate watched it without moving.