63 Battling the Storm: Carl's Fight for Survival Against a Feline Foe
Carl's body suddenly went through a spasm as the lightning coursed through his body. He lost all control of his body thanks to the lightning and fell down before the cat weakly moved one of its paws and slammed it down on him.
The cat was seriously injured, not just that, it was dying from its injuries.
Many bones were broken, multiple large cuts could be seen on its body and even its forehead had been broken by the previous strike, which dealt damage to even its brain.
With all of that combined, the cat was destined to die soon.
But before it did so, it wanted to take the human that had done this to it down with it.
The paw slammed down as the cat pushed down with all of its might, doing its best to flatten Carl and break his body to pieces.
Carl's body stopped convulsing from the lightning, but he was now in even greater danger.
'I underestimated it, to think the horns allowed it to control lightning, dammit!' Carl thought as he clenched his teeth and placed his arms to the front, doing his best to push the paw away.
He pushed as hard as he could, but the cat was doing the same. Both were using all the remaining power they had, one in order to kill the enemy before dying, the other in order to survive.
'I was too hasty, I believed the fight was already over and did something that was too risky, dammit!' Carl thought as he started thinking of what he could do in order to save himself from the current situation.
'Lucius and Isabella will certainly notice this and try to help me, but I don't know how they are faring against their enemy right now, it's highly possible that they won't be able to make it on time because of the B-grade monsters they are fighting against.'
'I have no option but to rely on myself right now, I have to think, think of what I can do to get out of this mess!'
Carl's body started changing again.
The two hammers he had on his arms had already been broken previously, and right now, a bone was coming out of his elbow as he placed it on the ground.
The bone became wider and acted as a sort of platform that allowed Carl to place his arms on the paw and hold it more easily. His arms started changing as well as bones came out, many of them stabbing into the ground before going up and stabbing through the paw, which made the cat roar in anger, but it didn't stop pushing.
'Good, I don't need to push it away, I just need to make sure it can't push me down any further, this is a battle of endurance, the one that holds on for longer wins.' Carl thought as he continued using his ability to create more bones that stabbed through both the ground and the cat's paw until he suddenly felt dizzy and light-headed.
'Why … why am I suddenly feeling so weak?'
[ You have used up most of the flux in your body, I recommend you stop using your ability further, if you create more bones, you will pass out after spending all of your flux. ]
'Dammit.' Carl thought as his eyes turned hazy and lost focus. He felt as if he would fall asleep any moment now, but he knew he had to fight back against that feeling and stay awake and focused.
Right now, the cat was feeling a lot of pain from the bones that had penetrated its paw, and unfortunately for Carl, he couldn't use his ability to make them penetrate deeper and inflict even more damage on the cat.
The two were currently doing nothing.
The cat wasn't pushing anymore as the pain was overwhelming. About 18 bone spikes had penetrated its paw and a ton of blood was coming out, most of it falling on top of Carl who realized that if this continued, he might actually drown in the blood.
Luckily, the bones that had penetrated through the ground allowed the blood to slowly flow down.
Carl took a deep breath as he stared at the paw that was not moving. Suddenly, he felt the sound of something heavy falling as the ground shook slightly.
"What the hell is going on, is there another monster that appeared?!" Carl thought as he looked to the side, unfortunately, the paw was only a couple of inches away from his body, which made it very hard for him to see anything around him.
Suddenly, he felt as if the paw didn't possess the same strength it previously did, so he tried pushing and found that he was able to push it away.
His eyes widened as his muscles bulged and he did his best to push the paw away and free himself.
He pushed and pushed, and pushed, until he suddenly used his ability again, this time to fuse a couple of the bones around to hold the paw for a moment so that he could roll away, which he did.
The bones quickly broke after he rolled away and the paw slammed down to the ground, while Carl panted heavily as even though he barely used up any flux right then, it was enough to make him feel incredibly weak.
He even vomited a little before quickly looking to the side.
The cat had collapsed.
It was dead.
He sighed in relief before taking a couple of steps forward. His knees buckled as he fell on them before holding himself up with his hands. He pushed himself to the side and fell on his back. He stared at the cloudy sky as the sounds of battle were heard nearby.
'They're still fighting, huh?' Carl asked as his eyes were slowly closing.
'Sorry, I want to help, but I … I just don't … don't have the energy.' Carl's eyes closed as he fell asleep. Luckily for Carl, the existence of the cat, as well as the battle that had taken place and the green wind that claimed the lives of the weak monster made the monsters unwilling to get close.
The corpse of the cat was still emanating a bit of its aura, so no monster dared come close to it, and even if they did, the C-grades of the agency were doing their best to eliminate them.
Lucius was still fighting against the monster which only had one head now as the other one had been destroyed by him while Isabella was continuously launching her frost at the ape that barely had any flames left on its body.
It was obvious that they were winning. Even the A-grade monster was hard pressed against Markus who was wearing a battle suit created by a craftsman of the agency. The giant turtle was panting as the horn on its head had been broken.
That wasn't an easy thing to do since the horn allowed the turtle to control the flux around it, creating a powerful shield that was capable of tanking many attacks, as well as allowing it to use the flux offensively to deal high damage.
Markus had suffered an attack from a ray of pure flux right before breaking the horn, and if not for his suit, he might have been seriously injured by it.
The boulder on top of the turtle was still in perfect condition as Markus had no need for attacking it. It was simply a boulder, it wouldn't hurt the turtle at all, but it did use it as a defensive mechanism whenever it had the chance, which made Markus unable to use his most powerful attacks as they took a bit of time to be launched, during which the turtle would go inside the shell and use the boulder to defend against the attack.
The battle continued for about 25 minutes after Carl had lost consciousness, during which one of the C-grades was able to get to him and take his body, leaving it right in front of the agency that had a flux shield around it.
The weaker monsters wouldn't be able to get through the shield before being decimated by the defensive turrets, and there were already beds and some medical equipment placed in front of the agency in order for them to rest and heal up.
After the battle had ended, they all glanced around in order to confirm whether all the monsters were dead. They had managed to win without suffering any casualties, and the main reason for that was because Carl had taken care of the second most powerful monster, not to mention how his wind had taken out several monsters and weakened the rest, which gave them an even bigger advantage.
Buildings had been destroyed during the battle and even some civilians who believed they would be safer inside their homes had been killed by the fight.
The destruction had spread out all around them as a lake of blood had formed in the middle of the battlefield thanks to all the dead monsters.
