Chapter 902: … don’t always work
The Martial Mimic Monkey knew damn well that its dragon roar technique was about to get mitigated, judging by all the sudden flare up of multiple unique aether signatures…which was exactly what it wanted.
Over its multiple decades of life, the Martial Monkey realized that it wasn’t always the biggest and flashiest moves that won the fight. Rather, it was the sneaky and underhanded one wants that immediately followed that did the most damage.
As such, while all of his opponents were curled up in their little balls and shields of safety, that were geared towards mitigating the blunt force trauma that came in the form of his roar, the Martial Mimic Monkey began to charge up aether and dragon force into his tail. As he did, little spike-like hairs and scales began to pop up.
Once a suitable number was erected, the monkey swung its tail three times in three different directions.
While the monkey had no idea if these spikes were actually going to be effective, he did know that he was going to catch them by surprise.
And being surprised, usually translates to being wide open.
‘If only I could be at three places at once…wait a minute…’
…
‘Gah! So loud!,’ Zhong Wei complained despite using his countermeasure method against the dragon roar.
A long time ago, Zhong Wei discovered that if he coated himself in a shell of uneven wood, it would dampen the sound component of the dragon’s roar and make the moment somewhat more bearable.
Did it do anything to mitigate the dragon force behind it?
No.
Did it at least make it so that he didn’t pass out from his eardrums being beaten like an old drum?
Mostly.
Unfortunately, this defensive measure did absolutely nothing against the dragon force itself, but that was a matter of using his aether and anima in coordination to overpower the assaulting energy bit by bit.
It wasn’t the most effective means of countering, but barring any unexpected surprises, he’d be able to-
Thunk, thunk.
“What the fuck?”
While in the act of maintaining the wooden barrier, several large black scales had suddenly appeared and pierced it and began to poke inwards directly at Zhong Wei.
“That’s…worrying.
Fortunately, the scales were on the wider side for longer, meaning that while they managed to lodge themselves into Zhong Wei’s wooden barrier, they weren’t able to get any deeper due to getting stuck in the wood.
‘Okay, so there are a couple more air holes, that’s not so bad-OW! What the fuck?!’
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just scales being tossed in his direction.
Turning his gaze downward, Zhong Wei noticed that a small, black needle had snuck right pass the gaps in his [Regalia] and embedded itself into his flesh. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was actually tiny black hair.
‘Oh shit.’
It only took him a half second after that to realize what was going to happen next, as several hundred tiny, aether infused hairs slipped through the gaps created by the dragon scales and pierced Zhong Wei’s body like the needles of an acupuncturist with shaky hands.
A majority of the needles ended up getting stuck in the more solid parts of the wooden shell, but the ones that managed to get in through the gaps were numerous enough that it didn’t really matter in the end.
‘Fuck! Can’t hold on…for much…longer!’
In other words, while the wounds being inflicted upon him weren’t life threatening, they were dangerous and annoying enough that his ability to concentrate was going to pot.
“Gah!”
It eventually led to the point that Zhong Wei actively chose to dismiss his shield in order to get out of the way of all the hair needles, and right into the swinging fist of the Martial Mimic Monkey.
In the exact moment he saw this fist coming towards his face, a pair of words went through his mind.
‘Oh crap.’
…
‘Well…this is more effective than I anticipated.’
Zhen Shi’s experience during this sound wave of pain was surprisingly peaceful, all things considered.
With some clever applications of his chains, and the Minor World Serpent instructing him on what to do, Zhen Shi managed to create a small fortress made of ice that not only allowed him to dampen the sound completely, but made it so that he could see what was going on in front of him…mostly.
The light was a little distorted to the pockets of air he had to create in the structure, but he could still see that Zhong Wei and Princess Jinju Ren were mostly safe.
All they had to do then was to weather or out this assault and then they could-
Tink, tink, tink!
“What the fuck?”
Much to Zhen Shi’s surprise, several black needle-like things had suddenly impacted his ice shell and ended up getting caught in the air pockets he had made to help dampen the sound.
“Are those…aether enhanced hairs?”
Unfortunately for him, this was just the start of something worse.
‘Okay…just a couple of hairs, no big deal. As long it isn’t anything big and heavy, I’m fairly certain that-‘
CRASH!
“I didn’t even say shit!”
Shortly after the hair had impacted, several large black scales the size of pucks pelted and smashed his ice shields one after the other into fine, meltable bits.
Unlike the aether enhanced hairs that ended up losing their momentum after impacting the first layer of ice and hitting the air pocket, the hardened scales just sailed past both layers and narrowly missed Zhen Shi.
‘Nope, gotta bail.’
Fortunately, Zhen Shi was smart enough to realize that he was in an indefensible position and needed to get out of the area before a stray scale took his head.
Unfortunately, he had just exited out of the ice dome and into the waiting foot of the Martial Monkey.
As Zhen Shi saw the encroaching foot, a single set of words went through his mind.
‘Oh shit.’
…
“A dragon’s roar, dragon force enhanced hair and scales…how the fuck is this thing supposed to be just a mimic?!”
[I think Logos and Pathos said that it might’ve mutated into an entirely new species.]
<
Shortly after Jinju Ren managed to stave off the dragon’s roar with her own, she found that her Crumbling Mountain Dragon’s defense was being subjected to an onslaught of attacks that weren’t necessarily fatal, but made things a bit more…dicey.
To be more specific, the onslaught of dragon force infused scales and hair had injured the Crumbling Mountain Dragon to the point that they could no longer be summoned for the rest of the day, other than to attack.
In other words, Jinju Ren had just lost her biggest shield.
While she wasn’t out of options by any means, she still had dragon familiars to call upon but a majority of them were attack or movement based.
And, if the stolen [Crimeon Draguar Strike] was anything to go off of it’s more than likely that if she tried to fight how she normally fought, this stupid monkey could easily copy and throw those exact same moves right back at her.
Then again, a vast majority of these move were melee based, so unless that monkey seeked to get up into her face on a more personal level, she should be-
[MISTRESS, LOOK OUT!]
“BASTARD!”
“OOKIE?!”
In a moment faster than the blink of an eye, the mutant Martial Monkey had rushed forward and had almost landed a kick right between Jinju Ren’s eyes.
Fortunately, Nepherage had recovered and reacted fast enough to grab the monkey by the literal tail and pulled hard enough to not only throw off the monkey’s aim, but also give Jinju Ren enough time and space to counterattack with her saber.
The [Dragon Dominator Saber] was quite literally designed by those with dragon blood in their veins to be able to defeat and dominate others with dragon blood.
In other words, out of everything in the arsenal of the entire group sent to subjugate this dragon monkey, this was the most effective weapon they had.
Unfortunately, the dragon-blooded Martial Monkey understood this on an instinctual level and rapidly came up with a way to counter it.
“OOKIE!”
[What the-bah!]
“Oof!”
Which came in the form of the monkey using its wings to propel himself with enough force to literally throw Nepherage into Jinju Ren and cause the two of them to go flying in the opposite direction.
Giving it time to charge up for another attack…
___________Meanwhile…_______________
‘So…to sum up, a crazy dragon monkey copycat asshole had just rocked my grandfather and my fiancee’s tutor, and is now in the process of dueling both my aforementioned fiancee and one of my trusted kaijin?’
<=More or less, yes.=>
‘…Spring Brawler? Do you remember that thing you did to help Razorstella get halfway across a city in a moment’s notice?’
[Yeah…]
‘Get ready for a repeat performance.’
[Oh no.]
‘Payload, me.’
[I don’t think that’s better.]
