He did not sense it till the creature was barely a foot away. Not enough time to get more than his hand up to help protected against the reaching jaws even as long claws took him to the ground. At twice his size and about four times his weight, the black furred tiger - a real tiger, not a puma - knocked him over with ease as it slammed into him.
Arthur crashed into the ground, the earth shaking, all breath driven from his body. One paw reaching for his neck was deflected by gorget and pauldrons, so that the claws only tore at the armour that protected him and not the tender flesh beneath. The other claw on the other hand found flesh, piercing in the gap between his rerebrace and pauldron and breastplate before being caught as it came down, snagging hard against the bindings that kept the entire thing together.
One hand extended to keep the lunging open-mouthed, raor sharp and surprisingly sweet smelling breath-filled jaws of death from him, the other caught by the claws, Arthur had no limbs to throw the creature off. Not while scrambling to the side, trying to avoid the backlegs from hooking into his lower body and tearing him apart.
Of course, considering how powerful the creature was, when it settled down for a moment to lunge with its face, he couldn’t hold him off. All he could do was shift away so that it mostly tore into the ground and parts of his jaw and neck instead.
“My turn,” Arthur growled, waiting for the head to retract. Mouth still open, it was the perfect timing for him to release the Refined Exploding Energy Dart, right down the barrel of its exposed throat. The resulting explosion shook him, leaving his ears ringing, eyes tearing and dazed.
The harimau hitam on the other hand had fared even worse, the entirety of its back of its throat and neck blown away. A large gaping hole the size of a closed fit poured out blood, allowing him to see the still cloudy sky above.
Then, the creature slumped over, its body bereft of control entirely. Leaving Arthur to struggle to get body and creature off him, eve as he winced at the numerous bruises.
Was it the third or fourth level where he had fought the damn tiger? When it had nearly killed him with a surprise attack just like this, but you know, with more success this time. Yet, he had managed to end it, by being strong enough and tough enough to take the full strike head-on before he’d dropped his hidden technique on it.
The Pocket Simpanan was, as its name implied, really saving his fragrant durian ass again and again.
He let the adrenaline surge run through him for a few more moments, feeling his shortened breathing relax, feeling the fingers that were trembling a little slow, still and stop. He unclenched his body, grateful that he hadn't eaten anything solid in ages because his body was sending urgent signals for him to take a dump.
All normal things after an adrenaline dump.
He noted them, accepted all of it, including the slight shakiness in his breathing and mind and then forced himself to finish pushing the harimau off his body. No guarantee after all, that there weren't other predators searching for him in the rain.
More importantly, the fact that these creatures were coming out was a signal that the floor was ticking up in difficulty.
Joy.
***
Traversing the rest of the trail after the rain lightened up enough that walking was viable - and no more landslides was happening - had Arthur on edge a little. He unhooked his water flask from his side, sipped on the water and swirled it around his throat before spitting out blood and dirt that had gotten in while fighting.
Then, he took a bigger mouthful, grimacing as he noted how empty it had gotten. Water was one of the few things you generally needed, even as a Climber. Oh, you could substitute for Tower energy, but it cost a significant amount more.
Kind of made it weird, really, that a Climber could exist entirely on energy but… it was what it was. The physicists of course were all kinds of excited, pointing out how matter and energy were all the same anyway so Tower cultivation and cores were just a more efficient process of transferring one kind of energy to another.
There were always this kind of discussion. For the most part, Arthur ignored it for the eggheads to theorise. He just knew that keeping hydrated was good - which was a minor problem when he was nearly out and it was raining.
Now, mind you, he could try to collect the water. Nothing wrong with rainwater, so long as what you collected was clean. Wouldn’t want the first rush, but if you were taking water from rivers or streams, you were pretty much drinking rainwater anyway. So long as there wasn’t acid rain or the like, you were good.
Problem was, he was moving and not set-up to collect anything.
As for the numerous streams around, even if the Tower was cleaner than real life, and random garbage and animal scat wasn’t being washed into the water as usual, it was never a good idea to drink or wade through water during a rainstorm or the hour after.
All of which meant he was going to have to stick to being thirsty, ration his water and hope he came across a spring in the next few hours.
In the meantime, he had a lot of obstacles to avoid. The mud and streams of water and never-ending rain made footing treacherous. Overturned stones, the occasional still functioning pea-shooter trap that decided that it really wanted a piece of him. And, most importantly, the landslides.
“Run across or wait?” Arthur muttered to himself, seeing the massive muddy slope before him that had washed away the trail before him. He had no way backward, but this entire section - a good few hundred feet - was just boulders, mud and streams of water. He tried to remember if he ever heard of anyone having to traverse such ground, how long before a landslide became stable, if it did.
Came up empty.
Not as though he had expected to know any of this, and worse, full out landslides and rockalls like this had not been reported often beyond a few lines. No one had mentioned or discussed how they got across other than a reliance on qinggong or movement techniques.
The water skimmers probably would be fine. Or air walkers. Or someone like Rick with his Gun Slinging movement technique that used Tower power to shunt him as though he was sliding on rails. The Seven Cloud Stepping technique - Cloud Steps - was more limited in that sense.
Arthur sighed, prodded at the flowing earth, noticed how much give there was. Grimaced and took a took step and then another half-dozen more, finding a comfortable spot in the middle of the trail to sit. Wasn’t particularly great with the rain still coming down, but his body didn’t feel the cold and hiding under the leaves when he was already completely soaked made little sense.
Best to wait it out, and then cross the ground. Hope that the ground dried up enough to make a quick run across stable enough, without pulling him into the earth or sliding him away. He couldn’t wait for the days it would take for it to completely dry, but the one thing about heavy rains in a tropical country?
They always ended. Eventually.
Unless it was monsoon season. Then he was hanging off the end of the Petronas Towers without a rope.