Chapter 1144
Despite how he appeared on the surface, Tauno’s style wasn’t one of brute force. Or not solely brute force. He liked to use his power where it was applicable, taking advantage of weaponry and the force multipliers they provided while aiming for weak points on his targets. Everyone tried to do that to some extent, but Tauno took the best parts of his foes for future use.
With his spine spear gone, clearly it was time to upgrade his weaponry. He needed something with high offensive power and durability. From what he could see, about half of this beetle probably counted. Part of the problem was the scale it was acting at, and how hard it made it for it to assault him.
The mountain sized beetle wasn’t helpless, though. It had heaps of energy to batter him with, and the flexibility of its limbs was something that honestly didn’t even make much sense. The segments of its legs could bend around in such a way that it was able to attack him with some of its rear legs when he was on the front, and with its front legs when he was at its back. In the middle, he was subject to attack from both sides.
Tauno’s current efforts were all based around trying to get the creature tangled up in itself, which might require some physical repositioning on his part. Getting a grip on a giant leg was a bit difficult, however. The smooth surface of the beetle’s chitin didn’t provide much grip, and unsurprisingly his fingers weren’t long enough to fit around a tower sized appendage.
If he gathered his energy he could extend his grip, but the beetle very quickly shrugged off any hold he had on it. Thus, he had to get the timing just right before it beat him to a pulp. All of that was part of his training to reach Domination… but Tauno knew even if he defeated this creature it wouldn’t be enough. Still, it would bring him one step closer.
The middle was the most dangerous place, but also optimal for his plans. Tauno danced around crashing limbs, making his way to the center around the shockwaves and tornado force winds they generated. Once he was precisely between the middle pair of legs, Tauno prepared himself. The massive beetle could support itself on just two legs, attacking with its front and rear pairs, and it did so, blades angling in on Tauno.
His hands flicked out to the side, his energy grabbing the middle legs and twisting. He didn’t try to pull them into an impossible alignment. Snapping them off directly would have taken more force than he could reasonably generate with his power in Augmentation. But twisting them? The beetle was surprisingly flexible, which was an advantage for trying to deal with smaller foes on its back- for example- but a disadvantage in that it was easier to manipulate them. One twisted back and one forward. As the massive body dropped, the front and rear legs clashed with the middle pair, using the force of the creature against itself.
Massive chitin cracked, shattering the middle legs. Before the massive bulk of the beetle could impact the ground, pulled ponderously down by gravity, the other legs flickered back to their holding positions- but that too was part of Tauno’s strategy. During the moments it was catching its weight, Tauno rushed forward towards the base of its horn, twisting around them to go for the eyes.
Rather than attacking one of the most vulnerable parts of a creature, Taunto felt like he was trying to batter down the fortified walls of a keep, or he supposed that these days it would likely be akin to tearing an orbital platform in half. Or a number of smaller ones, perhaps, as the beetle’s compound eyes had their own weaknesses.