Meheret stood on his two legs, staring at the circular, bottomless hole.
His red eyes widened as his body crumbled into dust and billowed into a massive gray cloud. A silhouette of a muscular man fell to the ground as an eye-shaped red glow blasted through the cloud.
It was Meheret who ran out of it; his long red hair thrashed on the wind as an afterimage was left behind, and he was already halfway down the tunnel. He clenched his fist tightly and pushed with all his might. "Don't leave me here, you fool!" he shouted.
The tunnel began collapsing behind him inward, and soon the entire mountain range above it caved in.
Meheret kept his sight on the creature that he neared. "Come back, you monster! You will not outrun me!"
In the meantime, Mytri, who now found himself inside the monster's mouth, ricochetted off the meaty walls; he carefully avoided the thin and sharp teeth.
"If I had a sword with me, it would've been long over…" Mythri sighed,
He took a deep breath in and focused his mind on one punch he thought of; He clenched his fist and delivered a punch to the beast's upper mouth.
The monster writhed in pain as its trajectory changed upwards. The creature had broken through the snowy mountainside and flew midair.
Mytri gripped the creature's tooth, and he ripped the flesh apart and jumped away as it crashed with its mouth into another mountain, eating right through the ground. "So this is why mountains keep collapsing… now I have an answer to Theo's complaints"
The monster disappeared, and Mytri slowly began to fall down. He puffed his breath out and burst into laughter. "That's the first time seeing a monster like this—" As he spoke, the wormlike dug itself out from underneath Mytri and headed towards him. "— Theo will love this!"
He noticed immediately, driving his fist straight into the monster's mouth before grabbing onto it. The blow clearly hurt it, as it recoiled with a violent jolt and hurled Mytri into the side of a nearby mountain.
From the collapsing tunnel, Mehret jumped upwards towards the descending monster, and as he neared him, he shouted, "You fool! You think you could escape me? The mighty dragon—" He was interrupted mid-sentence as the worm transformed, its flesh wriggling and stretching and changing into a green and massive being.
The being, a troll, had an overly muscular build, standing naked with pointy ears jutting out to either side. He wielded a dwarven hammer sized appropriately for his massive frame, its thick, blockish head mounted on a long, slender wooden handle.
The hammer slammed into Meheret's side, sending him hurtling toward Theo. But Meheret flew through the mountain and past him, crashing and lodged himself deep into the mountain behind Theo.
As the dust settled in the air, a bluish glow escaped the curtains of grey. An intense and sparse mana light illuminated as a voice echoed through the monster, "It's one of his men! I remember you!"
As soon as the dust floated away, the bluish mana turned deep black; a vein popped out around his arms as he tightly squeezed them into a fist.
A fireball slowly manifested behind him, taking the shape of a bow. Its massive size towered six times over Meheret's own height.
Its fiery string stretched back, bending the handle, and as it reached its maximum capacity, an arrow formed. The moment it did, it shot forward with a thunderous boom.
It flew through the mountain's peak and towards the Troll.
It moved with horrifying speed; in a blink, it was through. The troll's right arm spun free in a spray of dark blood that splattered over the air.
But the troll did not even flinch. He absorbed the blow coldly, and as he did, he began to transform into a creature of old. His flesh twisted and mangled as his size doubled within seconds. His skin darkened into a deep crimson, with sharp, reflective scales spreading across his body. From his arms burst two long-spanned wings, while his limbs thickened into powerful legs and arms. A long neck shot upward, carrying a fearsome head as a dragon emerged.
A female red dragon, to be precise. Although they looked indistinguishable from the male red dragon, it was their pheromones that told them apart.
From afar, Meheret leaped from one mountainside to another, hastily making his way toward the monster. As the creature revealed itself beyond the mountain, his pupils shrank to pinpoints, and his face went cold. Then a cold fury overtook him, rage burning silently behind his eyes.