The moment Darian killed the huge plushie in front of him, Liro and the others were getting more and more tired. "It seems like we're the only ones getting tired…" pointed out Vane, his vision had just become blurry. Lily and Liro's bodies next to him had started to bleed too.
"It doesn't matter how many of them we kill…" whispered Lily, annoyed. "…they just keep coming," added Liro on his knees next to her while breathing heavily.
"We need to reach for the important one…" Vane, now in his buffalo form, tried to rush towards the Seamstress, but multiple plushies stopped him as they started to bite his legs. "Damn!" Vane turned into an eagle while his whole body was crying out in pain.
"We need to resist… the more we keep going, the worse it becomes…" pointed out Darian next to Catripple. In front of them were two huge bird plushies; between them was the Seamstress, who was looking at Darian and Catripple in a very threatening way.
The Seamstress held its hands up, pointing towards the humans, and more plushies emerged from the ground. "When will these damn plushies stop coming!" shouted Catripple as she grabbed another feather from behind her and threw it towards the plushies.
Currently, her body wasn't regenerating the feathers as fast as before. In fact, now that she had removed this feather, it took longer to regenerate and her whole body had started to bleed. Darian, on the other hand, was in much worse condition; after that last fight, his reflexes were becoming slower and the shards weren't as strong as the previous ones.
"If we keep fighting for longer, we might not be able to win… we should try to escape," proposed Darian as he looked down at his legs, wondering if they would still be able to hold him.
"It's out of the question… now it's too late to escape." Catripple, looking around, realized that none of them would be able to escape from this creature, who, even though it had fought non-stop, was still doing extremely well and didn't have any problems.
"But how can we keep surviving this…" Darian noticed that some plushies would rush all over his body in a few seconds. "Ice armor!" Realizing that he would be able to kill only some of them with his shards, he decided to create a small armor over his body.
This armor wasn't as strong as the last one. In fact, once six plushies jumped to bite him, the armor exploded, but the shards weren't able to kill the plushies, only to throw them away and create a safer distance between them and Darian.
"Feather burst!" shouted Catripple. While flying, she grabbed two feathers from her back and was able to make them explode mid-air after they hit the flying plushies.
"Don't you find it strange?" said Darian on his knees while breathing heavily. Catripple landed next to him and nodded. "It isn't sending all of its plushies towards us…" answered Catripple, noticing that the two biggest ones were still near the Seamstress.
Near the creature, more plushies kept appearing, while only a few were rushing towards Darian and Catripple, the others were just remaining next to the enemy. "It is definitely about to do something…" whispered Catripple. Suddenly, she spread her wings wider and started to float exactly on top of Darian.
"Solar Scatter!" Suddenly, Catripple's wings began to vibrate. Extremely small microfragments of her wings scattered into the air; the air around Catripple turned hotter, and even Darian under her understood the sudden heat.
These fragments remained floating next to Catripple for a moment before she, with a serious expression, moved her hand and pointed it toward all the Seamstress's plushies. "Now!" she shouted. The microfragments rushed at extreme speed towards the enemy.
"Grand stitch…" Darian was sure that he heard these exact words coming from the creature while the fragments were rushing towards it. The voice seemed like that of a small child, but Darian couldn't be sure because the fragments exploded while the sentence was being said.
After the explosion, a huge cloud of smoke appeared near the Seamstress. Neither Catripple nor Darian were able to see what was happening there. "Did you kill the—" While Darian was speaking and breathing heavily, the smoke disappeared in front of them, and all around the Seamstress, its plushies seemed stronger.
From the enemy, there were countless red strings coming out of its body, each of them connected to a plushie. Even the ones next to Vane and the others had these strings. "Eh? What happened?" said Vane, confused, while glancing around just to see these red strings coming from the Seamstress.
"Guess it's the end…" Lily tried to smash one of the plushies with her roots, but using the same strength as before, she couldn't smash them. The plushie emitted a strong cry and was able to destroy the root without any problem.
"No way…" whispered Darian as he noticed the plushie not being destroyed by Lily's roots. 'Is this the end?' thought Darian, hoping that Snowy would answer him, but the creature remained silent. Darian gritted his teeth and clenched his fists together in anger.
Near the Seamstress, there were around 100 plushies. It felt like the smaller ones had become as strong as the bigger ones, and the biggest plushies had become even stronger.
"Feather burst!!!" shouted Catripple. She grabbed exactly four feathers from her wings and threw them together towards the plushies. After the feathers crashed against the enemies, nothing happened.
The explosion created by the feathers produced some fire, but even though it was on the smaller ones, the flames extinguished almost immediately, not being able to do anything; the plushies were still there unharmed.
Catripple couldn't believe her eyes and she returned to the ground, falling on her knees. "What…?" Catripple didn't know what to do. She had never fought against the Seamstress; she had only heard some legends about it. She could have never imagined that this creature was this strong.
"ICE SHARD!" Darian created multiple shards towards some of the enemies rushing towards them. Now, even though the shards were shot extremely fast, all the plushies dodged them until one shard crashed against the body of a small plushie. 'I'll kill at least one!' thought Darian, sure that these plushies weren't invincible.
But what he saw made him lose every single hope: the moment the shard shattered against the plushie, it wasn't even able to create a single scratch on its body. Darian, who couldn't believe his eyes, closed them and fell to his knees.
It felt as if Darian had accepted his end. Around five plushies were about to jump both on him and on Catripple. Suddenly, Darian heard a voice coming from his mind. 'It's not the end yet…' said Snowy, but Darian now couldn't trust him anymore, as he realized everything was over.
Vane had just returned to his human form and had fallen on the ground next to Lily and Liro. While Vane was unconscious and his whole body was bleeding, Lily and Liro were scared, as they didn't know what to do either. In front of them, the plushies were about to jump towards them again; now nothing could stop them anymore.
Lily tried to create a root from the ground to block at least one of them, but the mere pressure of the creature was able to destroy the root.
Right before the plushies were about to jump on the humans, heavy steps could be heard coming towards them. "Don't kill them," said a voice behind the Seamstress. Suddenly, all the plushies stopped mid-air and were recalled.
Darian, with his eyes still closed, realized that he was alive. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw this huge creature in front of him.
Ashikunz stood in front of Darian with his beautiful red and black spear; his armor, of the same color, covered all of his body. On his hands, he had extremely sharp claws, one for each of his fingers. The Krukin looked at Darian with an expression impossible to read, as the helmet covered his face.
The Krukin had what seemed like a small flag over his head that was totally black, with the same color as the Black Planet.
Darian remained speechless, as he didn't know what he could say. Ashikunz kneeled down in front of him and slowly touched Darian's face with his long claws. "Mhmm… I was sure that you would return with some other humans…" said Ashikunz to Catripple, who was shaking violently.
Darian's body remained in complete fear, as he didn't know what he could do. "Mphh, interesting." Ashikunz returned to his feet and glanced around at the other humans who were looking at him, except for Vane, who was already unconscious.
With an extremely fast rush, he arrived next to Liro and Lily and knocked them unconscious with minimal effort.
"Take these bodies," ordered Ashikunz with a serious tone to the Seamstress, who nodded its head and ordered the plushies to bring the bodies to the city. Then the Krukin swung his spear for a moment and arrived next to Darian and Catripple, who had horrified looks on their faces.
"Look at you… even if I killed that stupid human, you've returned just as planned."
Hearing these words, Catripple realized that she had fallen right into Ashikunz's trap. 'He knew that I would find humans and bring them with me…' thought Catripple as she looked up at him, terrified. Her whole body was shaking in fear; she knew that she couldn't do anything anymore now that the worst one had arrived.
"I just didn't think you would have arrived this early." Ashikunz then gave a hard kick to Catripple's stomach, making her fall unconscious, and then pointed his spear towards Darian, who gulped in fear.
The spear was exactly next to Darian's neck; his heart had begun to beat faster. "And I've never seen an Alterid like you…" pointed out Ashikunz, surprised by Darian's body, which looked totally different from that of a human.
Ashikunz moved the spear over Darian's arm and started to pierce his weapon into the skin very slowly, just to see Darian's blood being blue due to the trasformation. "Interesting…" As Ashikunz kept moving his spear, Darian's body was in pain, so he moved his arm quickly. Ashikunz was surprised to see this reaction.
Darian looked at Ashikunz above him while his arm kept bleeding. Ashikunz was looking at Darian with a surprised and scary expression. 'Shit… let's hope he doesn't kill me…' thought Darian as he suddenly passed out because of the pressure.
Snowy could no longer hold on to his arm and was expelled. Ashikunz, surprised by Darian's sudden reaction, was about to cut his body in half with the spear. 'I already have enough of them… I don't need another one.' Right as Ashikunz was about to split Darian's head open, he noticed Darian's body returning to normal in front of his eyes.
Snowy landed exactly next to the Krukin, and the creature could barely stand on its feet. "Oh?" Ashikunz stopped the spear right before it was about to hit Darian and moved his head towards the creature, grabbing it in his hands.
"I've never seen anything like this…" Ashikunz took Snowy carefully in his hand and looked at it with curiosity in his eyes. "I'm sure that Zrelekai will love to make experiments on you…" Ashikunz glanced around and noticed that the Seamstress had already carried away the other corpses.
"I'll bring this one." While keeping Snowy in his hand, he started to head away. One of the plushies grabbed Darian and started to carry him towards the city.