Chapter 56. The Centarian Monkey
"Charge."
They burst from the undergrowth the instant Elizabeth gave the word.
The team split fluidly, peeling off to either side of their target. Elizabeth swept left, Lyra broke right. Before they’d even cleared the brush, Joseph had already pushed a buff onto Elizabeth, a shimmer of pale light that settled over her and vanished.
The Centarian Monkey heard them coming.
It let out a thunderous roar and reared up on its hind legs, the horse half of its body surging upward as its enormous gorilla fists beat a rhythm against its chest. The sound rolled through the trees like a war drum.
Elizabeth didn’t slow down. She curved her approach into a wide arc, sword loose in one hand, keeping the creature at the center of her orbit. She wasn’t going in yet. She was circling, pulling its attention, making herself an irritant. A distraction.
Lyra looped around the opposite side and settled into position roughly ten meters off the creature’s flank. Elizabeth was already much closer. Her physical agility put Lyra’s to shame, but that was fine. That was the plan.
Behind them, Matthew stepped out from cover and raised his hand.
"Ruina."
From the bushes to his left, something leapt forward and landed in front of him. It looked like a deer sculpted from hardened earth, dull brown body, crimson spots scattered across its flanks, and a crown of long, jagged antlers that caught the light like cracked stone.
A few paces to Matthew’s left, Clien had already unslung his bow. He reached into his pack and drew an arrow. Not an ordinary one. Fitted to the tip was a small glass vial, sealed and faintly luminescent. Clien’s style was precise. Arrows as delivery systems, potions as warheads.
Lyra held her ground and went still.
She closed her eyes.
In a fight, that was borderline reckless. For anyone else, it would’ve been suicidal. But Lyra’s senses operated on a different level entirely. With her eyes shut, she could still map every movement in the clearing, read the shift in air pressure, feel the vibration of the Monkey’s weight through the soil beneath her feet. Darkness changed nothing for her.
She breathed in slowly. Steadied herself.
She ran back through everything she’d studied, the diagrams, the theory, the precise sequence of steps laid out in the texts she’d practically memorized. She assembled it all in her mind one more time, making sure each piece was exactly where it needed to be.
Then she turned her focus inward, toward her dantian.
It sat deep within her, brimming, filled nearly to the surface with a luminous green liquid that pulsed with slow, rhythmic warmth. She gathered her concentration and began to push. Gently at first, then with more intent. Urging the energy outward, toward the surface, through the channels that threaded her body like roots through soil.
The warmth spread immediately.
It moved through her chest, down her arms, into her fingertips, a current, powerful and alive, building with every breath.
Her eyes snapped open.
***
Across the clearing, the Centarian Monkey had finally had enough of Elizabeth.
It stopped responding to her circling and simply charged, all four legs driving forward with the full weight of its hybrid body, arms spread wide, fingers splayed. As it moved, something shifted in its hands. The small, blunt nails it had a moment ago began to lengthen, stretching and sharpening until each finger ended in a curved claw nearly six inches long.
It was going for Elizabeth’s throat.
Elizabeth had been waiting for exactly this.
She planted her feet, let it close the gap, then threw herself backward in a single sharp leap, gaining distance. It bought her a half-second, no more. The Monkey was fast, and it wasn’t stopping.
"Matthew. Now!"
Matthew’s arm dropped forward like a signal flag.
"Ruina. Earth Spear."
Ruina’s entire body ignited with light, every etched marking on its stone hide blazing white. It reared up, front legs high, then drove both hooves into the ground with a concussive thud.
The light poured down through its legs, into the earth, and vanished.
The earth answered.
Four massive spears of compacted soil erupted from the ground directly in the Centarian Monkey’s path. They were positioned perfectly, angled to punch straight into its gut and chest the moment its next stride carried it forward.
Matthew watched with quiet confidence.
That confidence lasted about half a second.
The spears connected, and shattered. All four of them. The creature barely flinched, absorbing the impact like it was an inconvenience. One of the spears managed to rake a shallow gash across its abdomen, but that was it. Skin deep. The Monkey didn’t even slow down.
Matthew’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t believe that the attack did almost nothing.
It was already back on Elizabeth.
Six inches of curved claw came sweeping at her throat, a single strike that carried enough force to take her head clean off. Elizabeth didn’t panic. She brought her sword up in one sharp motion and caught the blow, steel meeting keratin with a sound like two blades clashing, a clean, ringing tang that cut through the noise of the clearing.
The impact nearly took her off her feet.
She held. Legs driving into the ground, heels digging in, she absorbed the force and stayed upright, but only just.
The Monkey immediately swung with its other hand.
Elizabeth was still locked against the first. No time to reset her guard, no room to dodge cleanly. Instead, she did something smaller and considerably more precise. She angled her blade. Just slightly. Just enough.
The claws hit the tilted steel and slid, momentum carrying them wide and harmlessly past her guard. The instant the contact broke, she shoved herself backward with everything she had.
The second hand passed so close to her face she felt the air move.
She landed in a low stance, breathing hard, and checked herself. No blood on her hands. No wound she could feel. She was intact.
The Monkey stared at her, apparently surprised by the same fact, and then let out a deafening shriek, beating its fists against its chest in outrage.
From Elizabeth’s right, Clien moved.
He had his bow up, arrow nocked, the tip already aimed at the creature’s center mass. He exhaled slowly and pushed his mana forward, threading it down his arm, into the shaft, into the arrowhead. The small glass vial fitted to the tip began to glow, the pale green liquid inside responding to the energy like a struck match.
He drew the string back to his jaw and held.
Then Clien released the arrow.
The arrow crossed the clearing in a heartbeat. Halfway to its target, the vial at its tip gave way, glass splitting apart, the pale green liquid catching the air and transforming in an instant into a crescent of compressed wind, razor-thin and spinning.
Wind Cutter.
It caught the Centarian Monkey square in the waist.
The creature’s roar shook the trees. The wound was deep, a real one. Dark blood welling freely from the gash, matting the blue fur around its midsection. It stumbled, just slightly, its rhythm broken.
Clien watched the result with a quiet, satisfied smile.
Then he glanced across the clearing toward Lyra, standing alone on the opposite flank.
He clicked his tongue.
Lyra heard it. She was far enough away that she shouldn’t have, but she did. She let it pass without acknowledgment. She’d already pieced together that Clien disliked her, for reasons she hadn’t figured out yet. It wasn’t worth her attention right now.
Elizabeth had already moved.
The moment she saw the wound open, she closed the distance without hesitation. Both hands found her sword’s grip. She drew back, centered herself, and released the strike in one fluid horizontal motion.
Imperial Style, Third Form. Mountain-Severing Divine Slash.
The blade traced a clean line across the Monkey’s abdomen. It bit deep, carving a wound that made the creature stagger backward with a sound somewhere between a scream and a snarl.
Elizabeth stepped back and turned her head. She looked at Lyra, who was standing on the opposite side.
"Lyra. Finish this."
Lyra heard Elizabeth’s voice.
She pulled in a long, slow breath and let everything go quiet. The noise of the fight, the blood, the creature’s ragged screaming, all of it receded. She extended both arms in front of her, palms open, and began to move her Qi.
She drew it up from her dantian, carefully, the way she’d practiced it in her mind a hundred times, and guided it outward through her channels, letting it pool in her palms.
The moment it arrived, her body lit up.
Lightning crawled across her skin. Not a flicker. A current, alive and restless, coiling around her arms, threading between her fingers, visible to anyone watching. The air around her hands crackled. The smell of ozone cut through the forest’s damp green scent.
The Centarian Monkey turned toward her.
Lyra looked at it with calm, steady eyes.
"Thunderbolt."