Stratothrax
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Chapter 171
🕑 Added 2022-04-02 14:43:43 +0000 UTC◈ Chapter 171:
Opal shuffled through her notes, smol tongue poking from the corner of her mouth. There were rather a lot of notes. The dwarf who had told them about the gangs had gone into fairly extreme detail, even calling in a few dwarf friends to add to the information in excruciatingly more detail. It was a good thing that she had mostly mastered writing by this point, although Rain kept on about her perfectly awesome scratchy handwriting style. Hell it wasn't like he could talk, his hand— his pawwriting was unbelievably awful.
As it was they had more information about Florens gangs than Opal really knew what to do with. Well, that is apart from feeding all the gangs to Rain to make him grow bigger and more dominant and—
She finally came across the piece of paper she was after, a description of a particularly nasty ganglord who had a habit of abducting girls from the slums, a half-lamia half-lapine, the upper body of a rabbit-like species and the lower body of a snake, an unusual mix.
She looked at the crude doodle in the margin she had made of a snake with a regular rabbit on top then up at the ganglord they were overlooking. Her doodle wasn't very helpful in retrospect, but she was sure this was the one they were after, the black furred bun with the black snake scales. Given the imperious look of the half she wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if this one was some forgotten bastard of the incredibly promiscuous Wranvyre.
He sat coiled on his own enormous coils amongst a dozen of his followers, all half-lapine half-lamia like himself, related to him perhaps.
They were the second gang of the day, the first had been a collection of forty or so of what appeared to be mouse people, apparently called the Mus according to Lyra. Lethal, and loved to use poison dipped blades to make their victims suffer, but they hadn't lasted, and had been devoured by her Rain, as they should be.
The problem was that they weren't exactly filling due to their small stature. They had decided it better to find another gang rather than risk a hungry Rain, especially since he had been a little off balance since failing to kill and eat Eliza.
That left them standing in front of this ganglord, standing right in front of him in fact as Lyra held them in her invisibility. Confirming the identity of a target was pretty easy when you could stand literally right in front of them.
Which also made it more than easy to see what they were doing. The girls the gang had kidnapped and brought to the storehouse were crouched and blindfolded, huddling down in fear as the half lamia surrounded them, brandishing spears at any who even twitched. Most of them were battered and bruised, several of them had severe wounds and were openly bleeding.
Opal heard Lyra let out a hiss from above, clearly quite upset at the sight. She glanced up from where she was held in Rain's arms to see Lyra leaning over Rain's head, her breasts pressed down on his snout blocking his view.
"Those fiends! What are they even doing!"
"They're a gang Lyra, they take advantage of others, it's their entire purpose," gravelled Rain.
"So put a stop to them!"
"You want me to end them?"
"Sheepy wants to see them eaten?"
Lyra hesitated. "W-well, they're baddies right? They do awful terrible things to people! s-so you can, uhm, do what you do, and uh, eat them all… and get b-bigger."
Opal raised her arm and gave the sheep girl above her the thumbs up.
"Now you're starting to get it sheepy."
"You two are a terrible influence on me," muttered Lyra, then aloud. "Just get them Rain, save them, okay?"
Rain lifted a paw and dark spilled from his fur, a black tiger pouring onto the ground. As its paws hit stone the invisibility wobbled and then a second later shattered.
The gang startled as a nearing ten foot tall wolf monster suddenly appeared before them, a sheep girl on his shoulders, a goblin held in one arm, and a massive tiger forming in front of it just as more tigers pushed free the fur on its legs.
"What in the fuck is that!?"
To the gang's credit they reacted swiftly, launching themselves forward with a roar of anger, how dare this thing step into their domain!
Spears lashed out as Opal dropped from Rain's arm, plopping through the shadowed floor and out of sight just as a half lamia lunged over top of the forming tiger, their long body plus the length of the spear giving them impressive reach. The spear tip stabbed into Rain's midriff just where Opal had been… and managed only to go in about half an inch. The half lamia looked at the result in disbelief as a massive paw took hold of the spear and yanked it forward.
The unprepared lamia came with it, hauled unexpectedly into Rain's claws where a great maw came down on his head incising through his neck in one bear trap like bite.
A fairly ill looking and green faced Lyra was given a front row and up close view of this and hurriedly took her chance to slip off Rain's back, vanishing as her invisibility took hold once more.
The half lamia who were desperately stabbing at the prowling tigers to keep them at bay looked down in horror at their headless comrade's corpse and then in even greater horror as Rain swallowed his head.
"That- It— it's gotta be what's causing the disappearances!"
The ganglord slithered forward, two cutlasses slipped from their sheaths with a metallic scrape, held in paw either side.
"I was wondering when my time would come. Unfortunately for this monster's master they have made a mistake, for I cannot be brought lo-
Rain lunged forward, the spears pointed at him to keep him back crashing into him before splintering and shattering along their shafts as they met an unstoppable force and buckled.
With a roar he mauled the nearest half lamia, his claws extending with dark as they flowed from his fur. The claws were stubby and only a few inches long compared to the paw scythes he tended to summon, but were far easier to wield. He ripped out the lamia's throat in the same motion he lunged for the ganglord.
The cutlasses came up aiming for his face, a defensive and instinctive motion to protect against the oncoming maw filled with teeth. It didn't make Rain hesitate for even a moment and he bit down, his teeth shearing into the steel blades with a shriek of metal.
The ganglord seemed startled by this, both blades trapped in Rain's mouth, but then the bridge of his nose wrinkled in a snarl and the tip of his tail whipped around with incredible force. The dagger attached to its tip drove into Rain's side with enough impact to make him grunt, plunging inches into his side in a spatter of blood.
"Ow." growled Rain around a mouthful of shattered steel.
The wide eyed lamia could do nothing as claws slashed across his front disembowelling him, then the other paw came up and split open his rib cage from bottom to top.
Rain turned as the ganglord died at his feet to find that the rest of the gang had discovered that there was a wiser option available to them. The lot of them were fleeing toward the exit, or backing toward it as best they could as they prodded the tigers away.
Fortunately Opal was waiting for precisely this moment, the goblin girl launched from the side of the open door, black talons in her hands. She slashed across the back of their tails, cutting through to the bone, the spinal column.
With a shriek the two at the front collapsed in a tangle of tail and those behind crashed into them becoming entwined.
Rain finished with those trying to keep the tigers back and advanced on the shouting and swearing pile of lamia. Reaching down and gathering up the tail tips of all eight he hauled them back inside the storehouse, the screaming lamia being dragged across the ground, frantically clawing the stone, trying to stop the inevitable.
A few moments later and Rain was happily devouring the bunny-lamia, nomming his way through snake tail from tip to upper body. It wasn't bad honestly, the mix of species somehow elevating the savoury lightly spiced flavour.
As he ate Rain watched Lyra untie the abducted girls and lead them away, they couldn't see him due to the blindfolds, but the sounds of his eating seemed to upset them quite a lot. As he was finishing up Lyra stumbled back in through the storehouse door, clearly in a panic.
She had a pair of cleaning potions in her hands and to his horror she smashed them down on the ground, potion exploding in every direction all over the remaining mess of gore and instantly vanishing it.
Before he could complain however she slapped a hand down on his thigh and he sensed her invisibility wash over him.
Just in time as a dozen guards poured through the door directly in front of him. Thankfully none of them were elves capable of sensing Lyra's magic and they seemingly had no idea that he was right in front of them.
Close. Very close. Rain noted Opal had seen the threat as he saw her drop into the shadows out of sight.
"We must have been heard and someone went to fetch them," whispered Lyra.
He carefully stepped around the guards using all his learned ability to avoid crowds as they fanned out around the storehouse, clearly searching for something.
It seemed they would get away without trouble however and Rain stepped into the doorway unnoticed, free to leave unhindered, yet another minor gang killed and eaten, his hunger temporarily sated.
A figure stepped into the door blocking Rain's way.
Rain blinked down at them. They were tall, over seven foot, and wore a black hooded cloak from which a red snout protruded. To either side of the figure were two blonde elf girls who were looking up at him in surprise, clearly somehow aware of his invisibility.
The frozen moment broke and the black cloaked figure Moved.
A twisting motion, a gauntleted fist flinging out from beneath a sleeve, a hammer blow strike that smashed into Rain's solar plexus.
The blow felt like being hit by a thrown anvil and the air was blown out of Rain's lungs as he was launched off his feet, the invisibility breaking as he smashed through a wooden pillar behind.
Thankfully Lyra hadn't been on his shoulders, only touching his side, and so she wasn't in the line of attack.
Rain struggled up as the cries of surprised guards came from around him. Before he made it to his feet however the black cloaked figure lunged toward him with a metallic snarl, leaping into a flying tackle.
They collided and went rolling head over heels, snarling and snapping at each other.
Rain, genuinely angered now, roared and slammed his paw into the figure's side catapulting them off. In the same motion a tiger lunged from his fur to go after the cloaked figure.
He slid across the floor before controlling his tumbling, arresting his motion then rising, his eyes locked onto his opponent as they were mauled by the tiger, an arm coming up to take the tiger's bite. The tiger bit down but there was no cry of pain and the other gauntleted hand came up and grabbed the tiger's jaw and with one jerked motion it tore the jaw off. The rest of the tiger started to break down into black mist as the instability spread.
Rain looked on in surprise but before he could react the two elves landed on him, grabbing hold of his fur with one hand as they punched down with daggers in the other, stabbing over and over. He twisted with a snarl, trying to reach for them as they crawled over him, their blades making dotted lines of knife wounds over his body in a rhythmic beat of stinging pain.
Increasingly enraged, dark claws and teeth began emerging from his fur, and with a yelp one of the elves was touched, skin coming apart as she brushed by a sharp black talon. He took his chance and grabbed hold of her as she flinched back. Dragging her leg into his maw he bit down, amputating it from her thigh causing her to scream in pain.
The taste of fresh blood washed into his mouth, and then the surprise of what he was tasting made him freeze and the legless elf managed to escape, dropping from his paws.
"Erin!?" he choked out in shock. "…No, it's different, but not the same."
The elf's leg tasted very much like Erin's arm after he had ripped it off. It had taken him a while to decide whether to eat that thing. The taste had definitely not been worth it. Succubus arm tasted like awful salty sulfur, bleh, and apparently so did succubus leg as it became obvious to him that these weren't actually elves.
The other still whole elf who had already leapt off scowled up at him. Pulling a second dagger from her belt she was about to lunge when a flash of green dropped from the ceiling.
The blonde elf held her knives with both arms raised one moment, and then the next moment something black and talon like struck her shoulders and both her arms were falling.
The elf screamed, twisting to try and see who had attacked her, as though to strike them down. But with her arms lying limp on the floor that seemed fairly unlikely.
"Not normal…" hissed the legless elf hopping over. "Worse than he said."
The legless elf and the armless elf backed away, one hanging off the other's shoulder, now clearly a lot more wary of Rain and unwilling to attack him.
Out of the corner of his eye Rain spotted a meters long chrome metal lance suddenly snap from beneath the figure's sleeve aiming for his heart as he had been stealthy prowling by his side. A sudden attack from an unexpected angle, the elves had provided the distraction the cloaked figure needed for a killing blow.
Rain grabbed hold of it with both paws just before it rammed home, the tip piercing through a paw and out the other side as he gripped savagely down and brought it to a halt, sacrificing a wound to prevent it piercing his ribs. He then torqued around, twisting violently. The figure was ripped off his feet as if attached to the end of a whip as Rain spun, his sheer overwhelming strength used to brute force control, smashing the figure into supporting pillar after supporting pillar, through walls and anything within reach.
The building came down as the guards screamed.
