The hunt had indeed begun.
Rui sprinted after the beast as it evacuated, reaching it immediately. Atop land, he was faster. He circled to the side of the beast.
BOOM
He launched a powerful strike to its side.
“ROOOAAAAR” The beast screeched in anger, as it turned to lash out at Rui with its mouth and limbs. Rui had no choice but to evade. There were several reasons for that.
The acidic saliva of the beast was too potent. None of his Apprentice-level techniques were enough to be able to withstand it, they were entirely far too removed from defending against corrosive attacks like that. He focused with all of his concentration as he evaded bites and tongue lashes of the creature, and claw swings
Thankfully, its offense was not complicated or convoluted. It had elementary attack patterns that it repeated over and over again. It never used any tactics or strategy, and was not flexible and versatile in its offense at all.
This was to be expected. It was, at the end of the day, a carnivorous beast with a voracious apetite. As cautious as it seemed at times, it was not an intelligent being, and was slave to its shortcoming and urges. Furthermore, right now, it was in a bad psychological state. Hunger, anger and fear clouded its already primitive judgement.
As far Rui, he fought cautiously despite this. This was because the VOID algorithm was not functioning to its normal level of effectivity in so far as predictive and counter-deductive capabilities.
The reason, of course, was no mystery. The VOID algorithm was built for humans, beasts were outside its intended utility and purview. Of course, it wasn’t like there was no overlap. It was just that the further apart the target of the VOID algorithm was from being human, the less effective it was.
Right now, the VOID algorithm was functioning at about thirty-nine percent effectivity. This was because the most elementary level of predictive and counter-deductive measures were quite universal. Distance and center of gravity were universal variables that undoubtedly tied back to combat for pretty much all lifeforms. But the higher levels that employed systems based on the more sophisticated data science research into humans specifically that Rui had conducted into the past, were not applicable.
These higher parts of the VOID algorithm were much harder for Rui to apply to combat, he was usually unable to apply it most of the times.
Still, Rui did have some advantages.
BLINK
BAM
He launched a combination of Flowing Canon and Outer Convergence. This was one of his most powerful attacks. The blow contained so much forced that it broke a set of scales on the creature, and struck the exposed flesh beneath.
“ROOOAAAR” the beast screeched in pain and anger, lashing out at Rui with an attack only to miss fully.
The creature had one big eye, which led to Rui to suspect that it largely relied on vision outside of seismic sensing. Meaning on land, it could only rely on vision.
Which further meant that Blink was its mortal enemy.
Furthermore, due to its primitive intelligence, it didn’t even understand what was happening. And even if it did, it was simply incapable of setting up traps using blinking.
Rui even doubted if it had any awareness of blinking, beasts lacked a lot of self-awareness, compared to humans.
Which meant Rui could fearlessly abuse and exploit Blink to the absolute maximum.
He had begun to grow more and more used to the beast’s combative tendencies, and was quite confident that he could take down the beast, something he wasn’t prior. He had placed the tracker on the beast, so that even if the beast was too strong for Rui, he could at the very least fulfill the first objective of its mission, but now he could take it one step further.
(‘Assuming I can force it to remain here.’) Rui noted. Eventually, the beast’s caution from the explosives that Rui had used to trick it would wear off, meaning it would undoubtedly escape via subterranean travel.
That was why Rui had to somehow force it to not go underground, and he had figured out the perfect way to go about it.
The scales
Rui had already suspected that the scales were meant to allow the beast to withstand the immense tearing force of high sub-terranean travel.
Under the scales, as he had just seen, was a much softer exposed hide and flesh. Rui had felt it and damaged it, so he was relatively certain that the exposed flesh would not be able to withstand high sub-terranean travel at all. In fact, it was quite likely that the scales it had were evolved to withstand high sub-terranean travel.
It also explained why the creature was so cautious despite having such uncontrollable anger. If it were a normal predator, some damage here and there would not be that big a deal. But this was not the case for this beast. If this beast endured significant damage to its scales, then its ability to travel underground was highly compromised. If it tried travelling underground with exposed flesh, then that flesh would be ripped and torn apart if travelled underground.
Its scales were also not something that would heal in a short time, if at all.
Thus, Rui’s plan to prevent it from travelling underground was simple; Expose more flesh, and attack already exposed flesh damaging it further.
BLINK
BOOM
BLINK
BAM
BLINK
POW POW POW
…
BLINK
WHAM
Time passed as the beast endured more and more damage.
The two had long moved away from the original location, the beast had been fighting back while continuously running away at top speed.
And Rui had been attacking while also running at top speed.
BLINK
JAB
“Yes!” Rui exclaimed as he managed to jab the creature’s eye with a heavy jab amped with Flowing Canon and Outer Convergence, used in combination with Blink. Unfortunately, the eye was rather, large and he had failed to rob it of its vision entirely.
This was the final straw.
“ROOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!” The creature had lost its mind as it abandoned escape and rushed towards Rui at top speed.
This was the final clash.
* * * * *
Author’s note: Shoutout to Ethan and Jyork for the many golden tickets. Thanks to you two the novel is in the top 200 for golden ticket rankings.