Monster Hunting 401: A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure by Andrew Karevik (book suggestions .TXT) 📗

in my stomach. An interesting ability, though not one I had known about the creature. Perhaps this regeneration was how it was able to live outside of the water.

“Skin is too tough,” I mused. “And the regeneration effect on something that big makes our efforts pretty useless.” In the distance, I could hear the calls and cries of other monsters in the tunnels. No doubt the racket, combined with the scent of our blood was bringing in quite a bit of creatures from the outside. We had to fix this problem and fast!

“Well, should we…” Trig turned to face me and leapt back, eyes wide. “Holy crap, are you okay?” he gasped, pointing to the hole in my abdomen. It was sealing itself back up at this point and my health wasn’t dropping, so I didn’t pay it any mind.

“Focus, Trig, we need to solve this issue before one of two things happens. A: a swarm of more creatures come in and ruins our mission. Or B: something huge drops down on top of us and we’re now fighting two giant things at once,” I snapped.

Trig nodded, quickly turning his focus back to the creature. “My mana is burnt, and I’ve got one bomb left. They don’t seem to do much damage,” he said. The L’Gara hissed and swiped at us lethargically, still unable to do anything.

I let out a long, deep sigh. “Turn around,” I said, grabbing my tunic.

“Why?”

“Give me the bomb and turn around. I don’t want to get my clothes ruined. Don’t you dare peek, understood?”

Trig shrugged and obeyed, turning around while producing the small grenade. It wasn’t terribly big, but I knew those things packed a punch. “Just twist the center of it till it clicks,” he instructed. “Then you have about ten seconds.”

“Got it,” I replied, hastily disrobing. With the bomb in one hand, a knife in the other, I ran towards the beast, naked as the day I was born. My only regret was that I didn’t have something to cover my hair. From my previous experience inside of these beasts, digestive acid was murder on the roots.

Chapter 9

The beast was too lethargic to catch me as I leapt through the air and dove into its wide, open mouth. I prayed that it had some discernable weak point within, some organ responsible for its motor function or perhaps regeneration abilities.

The creature’s massive, razor sharp jaws tried to clamp down shut on me, but I was far too swift for it. I slid down its throat and into the gullet, fast as could be. I had learned my lesson from the first time I crawled inside a beast’s insides voluntarily: clothing and armor restricted movement. Time was of the essence within these things and I couldn’t afford to get hooked or snagged on anything.

What struck me first was the sheer frigidness of this creature’s interior. I had been expecting the standard warmth of digestive acids, but this beast seemed to have no digestive tract. The mouth led down into a relatively empty sack. My eyesight, still under the influence of the nighthawk potion, was unhindered and I could see nothing but blue intestinal lining.

“Here goes nothing,” I muttered, lifting my knife and cutting through the lining, hoping to find some organs. The anatomy of monsters was a crapshoot. Some had full organic systems, functioning just like a regular biological creature, while others were just empty husks, powered by cores or strange magics.

My knife tore a hole through the beast, causing it to shudder and shriek violently. Blood oozed everywhere as I cut wide enough for me to slide through. Something glowing greeted my vision. A core, perhaps?

A burst of stomach acid splashed across me, burning my skin, but I ignored the pain. It wasn’t strong enough to outright wound me, so I pushed through the lining, getting closer to the glowing source, slashing through dense tissue and stomach as if I were in a jungle of flesh. How strange my life had become, to go from helping Dr. Jace cut people open to heal them, to digging inside the bodies of monsters and cutting them apart from the inside out.

I made my way through this mix of blood, gastric acid and who knows what else to find the source of the glowing light. Lodged deep into the tissue of the beast was a blue gem no bigger than the size of my fist. A Masara gem! My memory flashed back to the Ligoran beast I had faced once. It wore a red gem atop its head, granting it extra power, power that other Ligorans did not necessarily have.

This gem must be giving the L’Gara regeneration abilities. Time for a little surgery then. I raised my knife high and slashed a few times, cutting through the tissue. The gem rapidly repaired the area around it, keeping itself lodged deep within. I tried to grasp and pull, but even with my enhanced strength, the thing was lodged in tightly. Almost as…almost as if this thing had been born with the gem inside of it.

The idea of blowing the gem up came to me, but I shook it away. The actual Masara might know what this gem was. It was blue, like them, right? So it must be related to them in some way. Or perhaps this was…maybe it was the Vessel? Nah, I couldn’t be that lucky, could I?

Either way, I needed to cut it out in the name of science. With a heft, I began to rapidly slash at different spots of the beast’s body, creating deep gashes for it to repair. The more cuts I made, the slower the regeneration became… until finally, I was able to just cut the gem out before it could resecure itself.

The moment the gem was removed from its resting place, the creature began to freak out. It let out a hideous scream and started to gasp and convulse. I felt the walls around me tumble