Triple Threat

Chapter 5 of Book 1: Exploring the Stars...

The PopTop trifecta suddenly started to bum rush me. I glanced around the room briefly to assess how to respond. I'm not stranger to split second decisions, and sudden reflexes.

The room has plenty of breathing space, not my forte believe it or not. I would need to back up enough from their initial attack to draw my bow from my inventory. I don't have the time right now, and I don't trust this knife against the big one.

I jumped down and closed the gap at a much faster speed than the Poptops, zeroing in on my target. I came in swinging, and lunged straight at the smaller enemies. The blow was clean, striking it with deadly accuracy.

Like a video game enemy or something, the Poptop simply disappeared into the aether with a bubbly popping noise which followed. I'm not even sure how that works to be honest...

This leaves 2 more. The realization and small pause the remaining foes had taken gave me the perfect opportunity to draw my bow. I opened my HUD from my tinker tool here, and had it drawn as fast as I could manage. I nocked an arrow in one quick, simple movement and let it fly directly at the other small Poptop.

Just like that, it was a 1 on 1 sudden death. Me, versus “Big and Ugly” over there.

The beast had actually caught me off guard at first, and blitzed straight for me. I dodged right, tucking my body towards the flow of my movement. It did not help as much as I had hoped it would. I was thrown to the floor, attempting my very damndest to recover from my folly.

I managed to roll from the point of impact onto one knee, preparing for a second shot. I loosed it, but this one shot wasn't enough to take it down. With GOOD understandable reasoning, as well. It's HUUUUUGE!

So here's the good thing. Spoiler for ya, I'm telling you this story in the past tense right? This means I totally lived this encounter, so don't you worry your pretty little head off...

This hulking mass of a creature was definitely close enough to strike, but little does he know that close quarters is my absolute specialty. This is ESPECIALLY true with my bow.

It went for a right handed swipe. Child's play, my eyes were focused. My temperament, cool and prepared. I was in my element, calm and cool as can be. I dodged immediately in response as it followed up with another. I was simply too fast.

I love exploring, but a certain part of me loves to fight. The movements, steps, reactions. All of it combine to make some sort of deadly interpretive dance. It's all so very... invigorating!

I rolled into the next dodge, following up with another well placed arrow. This was followed by another one. It whittled the creature down, but this was still not enough to slay it. It then came in with another flurry of attacks. I charged it head on and did something that caught it quite off guard.

I pressed myself as low to the ground as I could manage, suddenly. Leaning backwards as I did so. If you can't already imagine it, this resulted in me sliding beneath his legs to avoid the oncoming s**t storm of claws I was about to receive to my face.

I rotated my torso so I could turn around and fire. By the time I had stopped sliding, I was able to shoot off 2 arrows into the beast's back.

It stopped moving, then started to fall forward. This then led up to the usual pop and disappearance into the 4^th dimension or something nonsensical.

On the ground beneath it was something very interesting...

Exactly 20 core fragments appeared to have been dropped by the gigantic beast that I had slain. There was only one thing that popped into my mind after I scanned it into my inventory:

“Did I just kill the boss?”

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