Book 8: Chapter 78: Luck
“SCREECH!” The Inferno Hound Cerberus’s sharp fangs clamped onto the undead Centaur’s body. It felt like biting into ice, producing an unpleasant grating sound. Cerberus had now reached the peak of the Sixth Tier. Its size was like a small elephant’s. Despite its incredible bite force, it was completely ineffective against the undead Centaur.
The Centaur kept using both fists to smash falling rocks from the ceiling, but it still reacted to the Inferno Hound’s attack. It lifted a pair of thick front hooves and viciously slammed them into Cerberus’s jaw.
“BOOM!” Cerberus was instantly kicked flying. It crashed to the ground like a giant meteorite, shaking the entire hall.
“What creature is that?” Everyone was momentarily stunned by the terrifying sight of Cerberus’s two snarling dog heads.
“It’s Firal! He said his summon was an Abyssal creature!” Iristin’s eyes lit up, overjoyed. She grabbed Milleras’s arm and looked up at the gap in the ceiling. Her vision blurred as she stared at the faint figure above, a mix of grief and joy overwhelming her as she whispered, “He’s back. He’s finally back!”
“That’s no ordinary Abyssal creature. It seems to have Flame Demon ancestry,” Milleras said, his expression cautious as he saw faint flames flickering beneath Cerberus’s skin. Yet, he looked puzzled. “I haven’t heard of any Space-Time Rift directly connecting Faerûn to the Abyssal plane. Firal, where did you capture this summon?”
Cerberus wobbled to its feet, shook its head violently, and bared its fangs at the undead Centaur. The Inferno Hound had thick skin and incredible recovery powers. An impact that would have pulped other creatures meant little to it.
By this point in the battle, the undead Centaur’s movements had become slicker, as if the combat instinct deeply engraved in its body was awakening. The soul-fire in its eyes flickered. It bent its elbow slightly, stopping its rock-shattering punches. Instead, it opened its fist and cupped an obsidian rock the size of a washbasin, readying to hurl it at the grounded Cerberus.
“No conscious mind, yet it has such strong instinctive reactions!”