Phew, so it looks like there's no rest haha. Can you believe that in the past 50 chapters, nobody has killed anyone else yet? That's gonna change pretty soon. stuff is gonna get bloody... but first, more progression. 3 sections today because I wanna keep it short and sweet. gotta get to that good stuff.

"Get the fuck away from me! Don't touch me you coward bitch! Who the fuck do you think you are? What did you even accomplish!"

"Nurse, calm down. We-"

"I heal people, Dealer, and you're blowing them up outside my front door!? Fuck you! That little science experiment is gonna crawl back here to kill all of you! Good fucking luck!"

*SLAM*

She was livid, absolutely burning up. Her head was aching. She found her lip curled into an involuntary snarl as she clacked across the room, blood dribbling down the front of her silken night-clothes from the severed arm she was waving about like a club. She had just finished gnawing her way through another overcooked mushroom stew when what felt like a violent earthquake rattled the entire compound. She was splattered in scalding soup. Her potion bottles all fell and shattered on the floor. Her bookshelf collapsed and sent her medical journals flying. The chandelier snapped off and cracked her kitchen table in two. Indignant, she rushed outside to find her favorite patient to make him fix things. The Slayer had already remodeled her 'clinic' twice at her request (and the promise to be more gentle during surgeries), and would undoubtedly do anything she asked if she offered lidocaine.

She had kicked open her front door to yell for him...

But she couldn't make a sound.

Because she had just stumbled upon a miniaturized warzone. The Red-bricked patio - where The Slayer spent most of his time - had been reduced to an ugly crater. The man himself was collapsed in a pool of his own blood, missing two limbs, bleeding from his femoral artery, with likely a couple of shattered ribs and suffering acute brain trauma. Everything around him had been pulverized, it was a blessing he weighed so little and ended up being thrown by the blast, otherwise he would have certainly been turned to hamburger mash.

That… fuck!

As she stared speechlessly, a little shard of the past bloomed upon her mind's eye. Fire, gunpowder, smoke - the tang of coppery blood and a scene dyed in scarlet gore. Men lined up in cornrows, packed like sardines in the medical tents and bleeding through their cots, watering the thirsty ground with their rancid blood. Mighty and noble soldiers reduced to rotting, quivering lumps of flesh - weeping and sobbing for everything they could have had. Such was death. The destroyer that took all from you, even your hope. The Nurse had faced death her whole life, from her childhood until now. No matter what, she could not dislodge that constant stench from her nostrils. Even when she climbed to the upper echelons of the medical community, she could never escape the stink of destruction, a stink that her Tyrant seemed to relish.

But now, having fled, she had finally found some peace.

She still had patients, yes, and The Slayer regularly dragged himself home in terribly frightful states - but despite it all, neither of them actually feared he would die. Treating him became less of an exercise of frantic desperation and more of a foray into exploratory science. The Nurse quite enjoyed it (although he didn't). She didn't have any particular affection towards The Slayer save his usefulness as an experimental subject, but even the most cold-hearted scientist couldn't help but feel some sort of protectiveness over their prized specimens... and The Nurse was not cold hearted. She had seen every bit of The Slayer inside and out - but even while dissecting him, she had never heard him weep.

You bastard! I had so many plans for him!

Enraged, she searched for the one who had dared to damage her specimen in such a crass and unscientific manner, and who did she find? The Arms Dealer? That kind and gentle man who had once comforted her was now marching across the field, rifle in hand, with the clear intention of conducting and execution. The Nurse had screamed. A shot rang out. The Slayer had vanished… but not all of him.

His severed leg disappeared as he recalled, but his mangled arm had been blasted far off and lay (strangely) continued to twitch in the grass. The Nurse had gone to collect it. She would keep it as a replacement specimen and bargaining chip until it's host returned.

The Sea King couldn't say he was particularly disappointed when The Demolitionist's bomb failed to kill the Slayer. After all, there wasn't a single man in history who was proven to have successfully slain a Terrarian, although many have boasted such a thing. The Sea King had personally known two Terrarians during his 600 year tenure on this earth, and one had even confessed to having been ambushed and killed by a gaggle of bandits before… yet even so, nobody could prove they had killed them. There were no trophies with mounted Terrarian's heads. There were no graves which could be exhumed and identified. No severed limbs which had been collected for study.

Because these were creatures born for battle. Even in the heat of a massacre, even when injured to the point of death, they fought with all the rabid fury they possessed at their peak. Although they sustained grave injuries during battle, no-one would ever know it - for A Terrarian's physiology was wholly different from that of a man. They were simply incapable of being maimed. Losing a limb? It had never happened before. Bleeding to death? Amidas' friend had scoffed as if such a thing were inconceivable.

Inconceivable indeed.

It was now that The Sea King plumbed the depths of his vast memory to ascertain exactly what The Slayer was. At one time, The Sea King had suspected The Slayer was the result of some aberrant foul play, some strange magic which sought to create something mimicking the Legendary Terrarians of old. He boasted many attributes unique to Terrarians, this could not be contested… but he was also defective in many ways - and today his deficiencies were put on display in the most gruesome fashion.

For as Amidas watched The Slayer splash about in his own blood like some useless, pathetic wretch, The Sea King came to a cold and rational conclusion. The Slayer might have some 'Terrarian' in him, but his healing was defective. His recovery was lacking… if slain, could he revive? If he could bleed, if he could have his limbs torn off like any other man, then surely he could die like any other man.

And what good was 'any man' against The Tyrant King?

Worthless.

The Sea King snorted as he lounged on his submerged throne, the water cool against his scales as the light from outside streamed in, granting him a view of the activities of The Compound. The Slayer… he had provided grand accommodations, and The Sea King (especially his aching back) was thankful to him, however, there was a war in the Northern Mountains. A war against the man Amidas hated with every ounce of his being. The struggle of the century, a battle that would surely determine the fate of the world.

Amidas knew he must make haste to join this fight. The Slayer was not yet strong enough to battle in any meaningful capacity, and he most likely lacked immortality. Although he was a mighty warrior in his own right, he was nothing but a hindrance in The Sea King's eyes. He was merely a liability, a chain which bound Amidas to this little backwater compound, a shackle that held him prisoner in this meaningless place where his vast stores of wisdom could not be weaponized against his enemy.

The Demolitionist had failed to break this shackle… but Amidas would not fail.

For his weapons were monsters.

Her spirit blinked awake; her spirit fluttered to life as a great victory rang out like a bell through the land's ley lines. That shock jolted her spirit, and for the first time in… fifty? A hundred years? The Dryad formed conscious thought.

The Eye… it's been slain?

Could it be? She reached out beneath the earth, spreading her tendrils to test the flow of nature's power. Yes! The Watcher was gone, no longer did she feel it's baleful gaze scourging the green earth. It had been killed, that great alien eye which wandered the land, seeking and destroying according to it's fallen host's will - slowly but surely hunting down and eliminating the scattered Dryad race in some twisted sort of revenge.

The Moon Lord's body…

Incredible! It had been five hundred years since The Dryads have lived in fear of that roaming, screeching eye. How long it had terrorized them, yet Chuthlu's eye wasn't always such a threat. In fact - while Sister Silva was still alive, while the Dryads' power was at its height, the eye was nothing but a nuisance. Yet the opiate of victory had gotten to their powerful but foolish sister and she had begun to meddle in human affairs. In a fit of hubris, she pit herself against the 'king-in-gold' and was slain, taking a great portion of The Dryads' strength into the watery abyss.

Silva… that foolish wench…

But that was all in the distant past. The Dryad had a mission to accomplish… the mission their creator had granted them. To defend the earth from The Moon Lord, and to cleanse it of his filth. Chuthlu's eye was slain at The Crimson Border, where The Dryad's blessing had halted that disgusting parasite's progression.

Her fight continued there.

Riiight, k Dryad got introduced. gotta catch up with Slayer, Guide and 3 musketeers next.

discord if you want to see a ton of shitposts about The slayer (This discord is working on a Calamity Manga, and I lent them The Slayer. :-,)

discord. gg

/pXZmcN9fkS