CHAPTER 145: ROCK MONSTER

Jayden remained motionless in the treeline, his breath slow and controlled as he observed the battle unfolding before him. The Chthonix was unlike anything he’d ever seen... its movements were deliberate, its attacks calculated, as if the very earth itself were an extension of its will.

The first hunter, a wiry man... with a now slightly cracked armor, stood up and darted forward, his plasma whip hissing through the air like a striking serpent. The crackling energy lashed across the Chthonix’s flank, searing a blackened gash into its earthen hide. The beast roared, its massive head swinging toward its attacker, but the hunter was already rolling away, his movements fluid.

The second hunter, taller and bulkier, fired another sonic pulse from his rifle. The blast struck the Chthonix’s shoulder, the vibrations visibly rippling through its stony flesh. Cracks spiderwebbed across its armored plating, but the beast barely staggered. Instead, it slammed its front hooves into the ground... and the earth answered.

The ground beneath the hunters erupted instantly, cracks appearing in the soil as it opened up, swallowing the hunter like an earthquake. The first hunter leapt in time, propelling himself to a safe ground.

But the second hunter was too slow. His legs sunk into the quaking earth, as he got hit by several small boulders.

He cursed, struggling to free himself, but the Chthonix was already moving. Its tail whipped around, the massive stone orb at its tip hurtling toward him like a meteor.

He barely managed to activate a portable shield... a shimmering blue barrier flaring to life just as the tail struck. The impact shattered the shield, sending the man flying backward into a tree.

The second hunter was already moving, firing the sonic pulse at the beast’s chest, cracking it’s hide in the process. It roared in pain, thrashing wildly within the clearing.

The second hunter staggered to his feet, his plasma whip burning with energy. He dashed towards the beast, stretching his whip out to strike.

The whip lashed across its wounded chest, tearing deep into the fissures left by the sonic rifle. The Chthonix bellowed, its body lurching as a blackish fluid... something between blood and molten rock, oozed from the gashes.

The hunters came together, thinking of a strategy to finish the beast off. But the beast used that moment of distraction to act... Spotting a large boulder in the middle of the clearing, the beast dashed towards it.

Jayden saw the beast heading in a direction opposite it’s opponents. At he thought the beast was running away, but then he saw the giant rock sitting in it’s path. His eyes widened with a sudden realization.

"Shit, it’s going to change it’s matter." he clenched his fist, already thinking of stopping the beast.

At that moment, the hunters saw what the beast was up to and their eyes bulged in realization too. They moved, so did Jayden... but they were too late. The Beast had already reached the boulder.

The moment the Chthonix’s massive paw made contact with the boulder, its body rippled like liquid stone flowing beneath its hide. The transformation was instantaneous. Its earthen flesh darkened, hardening into jagged, mineralized plates. Its obsidian eyes turned the dull gray of weathered granite, its jagged teeth sharpening into crystalline shards. Even the spiked orb of its tail morphed, the rough stone surface smoothing into something denser, sharper—like the tip of a warhammer forged from mountain bedrock.

The hunters froze.

The first one, the wiry man with the plasma whip, swore under his breath. "Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me."

The second hunter didn’t waste time. He quickly raised his sonic rifle and fired. The pulse struck the Chthonix square in the chest,and shattered against its new hide like glass.

The beast didn’t even flinch.

Then it moved.

Jayden, who had stayed back after seeing that he was too late, slapped his forehead. "And this is why you don’t strategize on the battlefield." he murmured.

"You’ll give the beast a chance to recuperate and strike back." he added, and slipped from the treeline. His invisibility cloaked him as he blurred across the clearing, his claws unsheathing with a wet schlick.

The first hunter’s hands ignited, flames roaring to life around his fists. He lunged, hurling a concentrated fireball at the Chthonix’s face. The explosion washed over the beast’s stone skull, heat distorting the air—but when the smoke cleared, its granite eyes gleamed, unharmed.

The second hunter’s fingers glowed, thin red lasers slicing from his fingertips. He aimed for the cracks forming between the Chthonix’s stony plates, the beams searing into the fissures with precision. The beast hissed, a sound like grinding boulders, as tiny fractures spiderwebbed across its armored knees.

It was working.

Then the Chthonix shifted again, its horns, already massive, elongated in a grotesque surge of living rock, spearing forward like lances. The first hunter barely had time to scream before one horn pierced through his cracked chest plate, lifting him off the ground. His flames sputtered out as he gagged, blood bubbling past his lips. The beast shook its head, flinging him aside like a ragdoll. He hit a tree with a sickening crunch and passed out instantly.

The second hunter staggered back, his face pale beneath his helmet. His ribs were broken, Jayden could hear the ragged hitch in his breathing from the treeline. Still, the man raised his hands, lasers flickering weakly from his fingertips.

The Chthonix advanced, its stone tail dragging grooves in the earth.

From the shadows, Jayden’s mind raced. He thought about how to make his entrance.

Then he saw it.

A weakness.

The beast’s rocky hide was cracking under sustained heat. Lasers had carved hairline fractures into its joints. If only he could overload those fissures.

The remaining hunter fired again, his lasers glancing off the Chthonix’s shoulder plates. The beast swung its tail, the stone orb crushing into the man’s side. Armor crumpled. The hunter screamed, crumpling to his knees.

The Chthonix loomed over him, its granite maw splitting open in a silent roar.

Jayden moved. His Invisibility still shrouded him as he sprinted across the clearing. The Chthonix’s head snapped up... it sensed him, but Jayden wasn’t aiming for its body.

He leapt, claws flashing, and dug into the beast’s fractured knee armour.

The Chthonix bucked, its stony hide grinding against his blades, but Jayden held on, driving his claws deeper into the cracks. Blackish fluid, thick like molten tar, oozed from the wounds.

The beast thrashed, its tail whipping around blindly. Jayden ducked, the spiked orb grazing his shoulder as he wrenched his claws sideways, and the Chthonix’s knee shattered.

The beast collapsed, its front leg giving way. It screeched, the sound like splitting stone, as it flailed to regain balance.

Jayden landed in a crouch, his golden eyes locked onto the beast as he played with a small, metallic detonator.

"Now, it begins."

...

Earlier,

Jayden watched the Chthonix’s stony hide glisten under the fractured sunlight as it advanced toward the wounded hunter. The beast moved with terrifying certainty, its massive, rock-reinforced body nearly impervious to conventional attacks. But Jayden had planned for this.

He reached into his inventory and summoned the special grenades he had prepared just for this moment. They appeared in his hands instantly, his fingers brushing against the smooth, cylindrical casings of the sonic grenades. Five in total, each one capable of emitting a concentrated pulse of disruptive energy. If the hunters’ sonic rifle had failed, it was only because the beast had been too mobile, too quick to evade sustained fire. But a ring of explosions? That would trap the creature in a storm of vibrations it couldn’t escape.

Jayden moved like a wraith, his steps silent as he skirted the edge of the clearing. He placed the first grenade near the shattered remains of a fallen tree, its bark stripped away by the Chthonix’s earlier rampage. He pressed the activation rune on its side, the device humming faintly as it armed itself.

The beast didn’t notice.

Its attention was locked onto the remaining hunter, who was desperately backpedaling, his laser fingers flickering weakly. Jayden used the distraction to his advantage.

The second grenade went behind a cluster of boulders.. positioned so the blast would ricochet off the stone, amplifying the sonic waves. The third, he wedged into the crook of a half-uprooted oak, ensuring its detonation would blanket the entire northern edge of the battlefield.

The Chthonix’s tail slammed into the ground, sending a tremor through the earth. Jayden didn’t flinch. He kept moving.

The fourth grenade found its home near the hunter’s discarded sonic rifle. The fifth and final one, he buried shallowly in the dirt at the clearing’s center, right where the beast now stood, looming over its prey.

"Perfect." Jayden muttered as he flexed his fingers, feeling the weight of the detonator in his palm. He exhaled once, then made his move, striking the beast’s knee to get it’s attention.

The Chthonix remained on a spot as it’s knee healed slowly. The armor protecting it had been shattered, leaving it exposed.

"Hey!" Jayden’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade.

The Chthonix’s massive head swung toward him, its granite eyes narrowing.

Jayden smirked. "Catch me if you can."

He turned and sprinted, not away, but around, leading the beast in a wide arc toward the center of the clearing. The Chthonix roared in anger, its stone-clad body lumbering after him, each footfall cracking the earth. It wanted retribution for it’s wounded knee.

Jayden counted the steps.

Three.

Two.

One.

Then... his thumb slammed down on the detonator.

BOOM!!!

The world erupted in sound.

Five simultaneous booms tore through the air, the shockwaves colliding in the center of the clearing like a converging storm. The ground rippled, the very air warping as the sonic pulses hammered into the Chthonix from all sides.

The beast staggered, its stone hide quivering as the vibrations tore through it. Cracks spiderwebbed across its body, chunks of rock sloughing away like dead skin. Its roar turned into a screech... high, pained, as its form reverted, the rocky armor melting back into brown, earthen flesh.

Jayden didn’t hesitate. As the Chthonix stumbled from the sonic grenades’ assault, its rocky hide crumbling back into earthen flesh, he moved.

His boots dug into the soft soil as he sprinted forward, muscles coiled like springs. The beast was disoriented, its massive head swinging blindly as it tried to regain its footing, but Jayden was already upon it. He leapt, his fingers closing around one of its jagged horns, his momentum carrying him up and over its back.

For a single, weightless moment, he hung in the air, then wrenched downward with all his augmented strength.

The Chthonix bellowed as its own horn became the lever of its downfall. Jayden’s muscles strained, his bones humming with the effort as he flipped the beast over his shoulder.

BOOM.

The ground shook as its massive form slammed into the dirt, roots snapping beneath its weight.

Jayden didn’t let up.

His telekinesis flared, and the shattered branches littering the clearing shot upward like spears, heading straight at the Chthonix.

One impaled the it’s already wounded knee, pinning it to the earth. Another lodged deep into its left eye, blackish fluid gushing forth. A third pierced its gut, the tip bursting from its back in a spray of dark blood.

The beast thrashed, its roars turning guttural, desperate.

Jayden didn’t give it the chance to recover.

He lunged upward, his knuckleclaws gleaming as he drove them straight into the beast’s exposed throat. Then he dragged the claws sideways, and...

SWISH.

In a brutal slash, the Chthonix’s roar gurgled into silence.

Blood erupted in a geyser, painting the grass in glistening black as the beast’s massive body seized, then collapsed.

[E-Rank Chthonix Defeated]

[+30 exp received]

[Requirements has been met...]