Fully aware there was no way to dodge the attack, Min-ho held his ground and swung his dagger. The blade clashed with the Spector's hard face and sent a shock sizzling through Min-ho's arm.
His dagger bounced away, but he used the momentum to push himself a little further back.
The Spector's fangs missed him by a hair, as it fell an inch away from him.
Min-ho's Z-Eye watched carefully.
Once the Spector landed in front of him, it didn't give Min-ho a second to catch his breath or even recover from the pain in his arm before it swung its tentacle.
As it did so, spikes protruded from all sides of the tentacle.
Barely catching it in time, Min-ho bent backwards. The bulk of the spiked tentacle missed him, but he paid the price for his slow reaction time with the tears across his chest.
As his encounter with the creature thus far had foretold, it was much faster than him. So to combat this, Min-ho decided to watch it carefully and predict its next move before it acted. So he would have a better chance at evading it.
A tactic he had learned over a year ago.
Springing back to his feet, he ducked under another attack he managed to predict before arcing his dagger across the Spector's throat, in hopes it was a weakspot.
CLANK!
His heartbeat stopped when his dagger slid of the Spector, barely leaving a cut.
With that attack, he had left himself open, and at the corner of his eye, he could see a tentacle covered in armor plating swinging for him.
Just before it could connect, Sae-wee rushed in with her dagger and deflected the attack.
As she did so, a yelp escaped her when her arm felt like it would break apart.
She had successfully deflected the attack, but almost damaged her arm.
Not letting the pain distract her, she leaped to the side when she saw another tentacle coming for her.
Min-ho ducked as the tentacle flew overhead.
At this point, the Spector left no openings for them to capitalize on.
Min-ho and Sae-wee were left with no ither option but to evade its attacks and deflect whenever they could.
"This isn't working," Min-ho said as his arms began to burn and his wounds began to widen.
"We can't outrun it, and the two of us can't beat it," he added, his thoughts suddenly drifting to Jang-book in the distance, who was somehow taking down three of these Spectors at time.
Min-ho knew this much without even looking, because the notifications from his System was telling enough.
'Questions, so many questions.' Hs reserved these questions for now, as his immediate thoughts were on this Spector.
"Then what do we do?" Sae-wee asked, her voice becoming desparate.
Looking at the Spector, Min-ho tried to guess where its weakspot was, or if it even had any.
Its throat was definitely not it. He had likewise tried its tentacles, a single strike had yielded a small wound, but nothing major.
He had thought to take out its tentacles one at a time by repeatedly striking the same spot. But doing so would take them forever.
Thinking on this, Min-ho's gaze shifted to the timer overhead.
12:59
He bit his lip. They were running out of time.
Feeling their end creep up his neck, Min-ho didn't think too much on the idea he had and decided to act on it.
Sidestepping an attack, he dived the Spector like a madman and rammed his dagger into one of its red eyes.
"GGGAAAARRRRRR!" the Spector screamed. The sound was almost music to Min-ho's ears, had his dagger not gotten stuck on the Spector's eye. To make matters worse, it began to thrash around, almost sending him flying off or impaling him with its spiked tentacle.
Sae-wee almost stepped in to help had Min-ho not yelled at her to stay back.
Barely hanging on and evading the spikes, Min-ho felt trapped as his mind began to race.
All of a sudden, he realized something. His dagger was stuck to the Spector—not him.
"What the hell am I doing?!" Min-ho blurted and let go of the dagger with a leap backwards.
Now out of the Spector's range, Min-ho felt a sudden release, yet he could not dwell on the feeling.
"Now's our chance," he said to Sae-wee, who felt a little more than relief now that he was out of danger.
"Right," she said.
They both turned away from the Spector and made for the end of the massive hall. Closer to where Jang-book was.
As they ran, Min-ho dismissed his dagger. It disappeared in a cloud of smoke from the Spector's eye. Then he recalled it, so it formed from smoke in his hand.
Racing for the edge, Min-ho and Sae-wee had passed several groups of Z-Streamers that were in heated battles with a single Spector of their own.
The closer they got, the more the Spectors were, ramming down Z-Streamers and ripping into them. Blood spraying like geysers.
The ground was covered in it, which made running harder. Though he wanted to aid the other Z-Streamers, he knew that his task was far more important. Which was to find a way out of here for all of them.
Looking at all the entrails and blood on yhe ground made Min-ho's stomach twist in a knot, he felt like hurling food he had yet to eat.
'Focus God dammit,' he thought, shaking these feelings off as they got closer to the far end.
Finally near the enormous Spector in a forcefield, they could see Jang-book in the midst of half a dozen Spectors. He was doing his best to fend them off, occasionally putting two down before the bigger Spector would lay more eggs.
By the look of things, Jang-book was growing fatigued, which was reaffirmed by the lessened number of notifications Min-ho was getting.
Yet despite being tired, Jang-book made sure to take the bulk of the heat away from the others. Only letting a few Spectors slip by once he knew the other Z-Streamers had taken theirs down.
Ignoring him for now, Min-ho focused his gaze on the markings on the wall. There were two of them on each side of the enormous Spector.
They looked like cubes with writing inside of them, and they had lines that lead to the part of the forcefield where the massive sword floated.
He didn't know if it was true, but his gut told him that those markings symbolized a sort of mechanic that would release the sword and kill the massive Spector.
Immediately he thought this, he began to look for anything that would look like a gear to activate the symbols.
"What's going on?" Dok-su asked, finally catching up to them.
"I'm not sure," Savior said honestly, her gaze shifting to every corner, watching for any potential threat.
"Those symbols on the wall, look for…" Min-ho paused when he saw it.
One of the symbols beside the enormous Spector was on the western wall of the hall.
Acting on a whim, Min-ho kicked against the ground in a sprint for the symbol.
"Where are you go—"
BEEP!
All breaths caught.
BOOM!