A Serpent's Tale-Chapter 364: Astral Dungeon Trial: Astral Helixion

"That was an Astral Helixion." Eric suddenly announced out of nowhere.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT FUCK!" I jumped away from him as he appeared to might right, falling on my still injured arm and causing my bones and flesh to scrape together. "AAGGHHH FUCK!!"

"Shit, sorry. Didn’t mean to surprise you there." He apologised, before going on about the creature, "But I must say I am also surprised. You managed to not quite tame such a beast, but you did manage to at least get on good terms with one. Not something just any old Astromancer can do. Can barely even comprehend how you did it yourself."

"Wh-Wha?" I just stared up at him in confusion as I tried to ignore the pain and wait for it to go away.

"Well, normally, those things have an immense sense of danger from even being that are non-violent but powerful. That’s why normal Astromancers have a hard time approaching those things. But for some reason, it didn’t use its usual tactics on you. How strange..." Eric pondered whilst pinching his beard.

I got up slowly, trying not to cause more pain from my arm as I did so. "Still. Ugh... I don’t really understand what happened. Or what that creature is."

"Well... I won’t tell you what you did, as you can probably figure it out. But I will tell you a little more about that Astral Helixion."

Eric then proceeded to tell me that they were some kind of Lion monster? Dunno what a Lion is, but whatever. Apparently, these things feed on corrupted spatial crystals, which is what the purple sparks are.

’That explains why it was trying to eat them.’ 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

This is incidentally what gives them their powers over space. But because they ingest these volatile form of astral energy as it’s called, they cannot really use said powers properly, as over usage of them would lead to them basically exploding and cause a spatial storm to happen where they died.

Not to mention that it was apparently quite rare to encounter one up here. They existed on lower floors, but to see one all the way up on this first floor was insane.

When I asked why they couldn’t just eat the nebula crystals when they were just pretty little sparks, he disappeared.

...

’...Great... Seems like I’m supposed to find that one out on my own...’

That said, all I had left to do was head into the portal thingy to continue this test.

So, with a heavy sigh and my left arm held in place by my right, I slithered on into the portal.

_

_

_

After what felt like ages, I was finally spat out of the other side of the portal and into a body of water from above.

"AAAAHHH!!! FUCK! SHIT!"

Before I could land in the water though, I was able to stop myself from falling by using my powers to suspend myself in the air with [Minor Spatial Manipulation]. But it was quickly draining me of my mana, so I just as quickly flew myself over to a nearby shore made of some kind of purple sand.

I landed with a thump, creating a small crater where I landed. Thankfully I didn’t land on this beach sideways or whatever and was able to keep my left arm to minimal movements.

Adjusting myself upright and looking around, I could tell that I was in some form of jungle. And it was all blue.

Literally, everything was blue, the water, the sky, the foliage, the animals. The only exception seemed to be the sand and the soil.

There was a loud rush of water and I turned back to see some kind of giant monster with a dark and scaly looking phallic flesh head with several tentacles coming from beneath it emerging not too far off the shore I was on.

"...What?" Was all I could say before I heard some kind of raged scream coming from the titanic monster.

"Shit." I immediately bolted for anywhere that wasn’t near the shore, but that didn’t look like it was going to work.

*BAM*

Not with how one of the giant tentacles with suckers created a wall in front of me. I was forced to stop lest I be caught stuck in one of the things.

Then it started to curl around me, intending the crush me.

"THIS IS NOT MY KIND OF TENTACLE!!!" I screamed as I tried to escape, soon realising that it had trapped me in a circle and was soon going to crush me into a bloody pulp if I didn’t do anything soon.

Thinking in panic, I hastily used [Spatial Shift] to move outside of my encirclement and began to make a run for it.

That only seemed to anger the gargantuan beast as it snapped its curled tentacle at me, flinging me more towards a forest nearby. I only slowed to a stop as my body skidded and skipped across the ground.

It broke nearly every bone in the process.

"KKHAAAACCKKK! HHHACKKK!"

Lying broken on the floor, I spat blood out by the mouthful every second as I writhed in an unmoving agony as I felt every single one of my bones shift painfully back into position thanks to my regeneration. My flesh and scaled also shattered and rended, bleeding profusely and causing me to lose even more blood.

I was now down to less than ten percent of my health left. I felt like I wasn’t going to make it.

As I lay there, a bleeding, all I could do was think, ’Why? Eric should’ve stopped this. Why didn’t he? Is he not here’

Before my conscious faded to black completely, I heard a thunderous and utterly outraged roar.

"GGGGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!"

The sounds of trees snapping as a similarly sized behemoth monster emerged suddenly from the forest line before disappearing for but a moment.

Thankfully I landed in a way that allowed me to look in the direction of the giant marine monster and see engage in battle with what looked like a much beefier version of the Astral Helixion if it was several tens of times bigger.

That was all I was able to see as I blacked out soon after they started fighting.