Cavemonster vs. The Townspeople
A monster twice the height of a man and ten times the strength dwelled within the cave near the center of town. The cave was forbidden to the townspeople to keep them safe. The legend is that anyone that enters won't be seen anymore and once every generation the monster emerges to attack the town and kill anyone who dares challenge it.
Many times throughout history the townsfolk attempted to invade the cave and slaughter the monster and none of them ever returned to tell the tale. The cave was sealed off but the monster returned, unaffected with physical barriers. The townspeople could be kept out but the monster couldn't be kept in.
And so the people would try and please the monster through lavish offerings and sacrifices but no form of bribery seemed to sway him. The townspeople were doomed to live with the threat the monster brought them, oppressed in their morality, always watchful of the cave. Folk in search of safety would move away but the town would continue to live on, monster or no. The history of the town was deeper than the monster and the eldest of the towns blood felt dutiful to hold ground and find a way to defeat the monster.
Those that saw the monster in generations previous said that he passed through the cave barrier in a sticky plasma state, seeping through the cracks, becoming a disgusting yellow-green glob and then solidifying once again right outside of the cave. The monster could morph shape. Each generation told of a different appearance to the monster but his actions were always the same; kill.
The monster glowed with a neon incandescence and it hurt to look upon him as there was an invisible flash of harmful light that poured out of him continually. This invisible light felt like pulsing waves that accumulated through your flesh, increasing with intensity until they build into a crescendo of pain. Merely being in the presence of the monster could kill you if you watched him long enough.
But this monster was much more than an eyesore. He tore men apart with his bare hands. That was the most hideous thing about the monster. It didn't cut, it didn't slice, it didn't gouge, it didn't stab. This monster was all brute and would pick men up with their throats clenched in one hand and use the other hand to wrench the man’s arm off of his body. The monster loved tearing humans apart with brute force. He also killed men with one single fist to the chest. He would throw men onto rooftops and into trees, against brick walls. He would throw men straight up above and once they hit the ground he would crush their organs with the mighty stomp of his bulging monster legs.
Everyone feared the monster because there wasn't a chance that a man could survive against him. Seeing the monster was guaranteed death. He was too strong, too quick and too merciless to allow any man to escape his wrath. Men would try. The town's best warriors would take the courageous risk to become heroes, always practicing their weapons, planning new tactics. Ever on the ready to respond to the monster's attack. They would watch the cave without end all hours of the day.
Although the town's warriors kept their battle skills at a continuous all-time high and many of their weapons were legendary in fine craftsmanship, they were no match. They could do no better than warn the town as the monster returned, saving the lives of their loved ones, dying with honor as their futile defenses were beaten.
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The townspeople would be blessed when a traveler named Kritzen came to town. He heard the story of the monster and wanted to know the truth of it. He claimed to be a scientist and that he could devise of a method or a weapon that could kill the monster. He said that he would need plenty of time and some help and a laboratory. To prove that he wasn't a fraud he showed them how to harness the power of electricity using acids and metal wiring. He would say that there were new secrets that wait undiscovered and that any man can dare create godly power through the careful observance of the elements and measures of their effects. He said lie bare the mystery and see truth before you.
Kritzen was a welcome addition to the council against the monster. He was somewhat wealthy, depositing a savings at the city bank and paying a hefty sum to gain laboratory space in a prime location. He chose two laboratory technicians to help him with his research. They were both already versed in the sciences of their time and agreed to work his spontaneous schedules. He sent for laboratory equipment that he kept in storage at a distant town.
First order of scientific business concerning the monster was the existence of physical evidence. The city council produced three samples kept inside envelopes and locked away in a vault. Kritzen asked a large number of questions about the samples, determined to gain all of the information that there was to know. The key to killing the monster was some small overlooked fact that could prove to unveil a critical weakness, he told them.
Second order of scientific business was creating a record of witness accounts and cataloguing them into an easy-to-reference almanac. Kritzen wanted every single account to the earliest recollection. The council tracked witnesses of the previous two monster attacks with a new questionnaire that Kritzen and his technicians carefully wrote.
All of this research would take months. When the scientists finished their information and evidence retrieval they went about writing up a central thesis that could paint the most complete picture of the monster that there was.
The eyewitness accounts were valuable to determining the monster's actions and physical abilities but it was the samples that were critical in developing an effective weapon.
The story is that many generations before the record books a warrior successfully wounded the monster with a knife, stabbing it inside the mouth and cutting deep. The monster was said to be unpierceable on the skin while the monsters mouth became the only known weakness. The warrior was killed but his knife was saved. The handle of the knife was made of wood and rotted away but the sharp metal point was the same, with stains of blood left on it. This was the eldest evidence, kept in envelope number one. The council said the true year couldn't be identified but that this knife was at least three hundred years old. This blood stain was green-yellow and much thicker than a similar blood stain would be of a human.
The second sample was a flask of plasma taken up at the last appearance of the monster. It is well known that the residue traces of the monster at the cave entrance will not disappear if kept sealed in a container. The plasma will disappear when left out in the open and cannot be used in a solution as some housewives would attempt to create strength potions with samples. Samples would simply harden quickly and the neon glow of the plasma would cease, leaving the potions like bubbly tar, more suited as an adhesive than as a potion. This sample of the monster's plasma was generous, being more than a standard weight worth, plenty enough for the scientists to test.
The last and third sample was the key receptacle to the lock that held the previous door into the cave in place. Upon the most recent of the monster's attacks he entered through the cracks around the door and through the keyhole. The day following the attack the receptacle was found damaged and was ordered to be removed. The wooden wall and door was taken down and a much thicker brick and stone wall cemented thoroughly now closed the cave entrance. The mechanisms and pins of the lock receptacle were melted and fused together. The key couldn't be fully inserted and the mechanism no longer functioned. Where fusion occurred to meld the parts the metal became dull and covered in sand sized lumps, an abrasive texture.
Kritzen was fascinated with the monster, hearing many intriguing legends over the years but without actually seeing that those legends were real nor finding that any believable evidences about them were true. This cavemonster legend was an actual reality though and that made him all the more motivated to help these townspeople because he knew there was a chance. Not a chance to become a hero but a chance to vanquish evil.
The scientists tested all of the samples with their chemistry finding the monster's blood to be of a highly acidified nature, easily affected with chlorides. The plasmatic residue was nullified with modified sodiums and a particular gradient of fluoride only known to be found in one mineral location. The lock receptacle was determined to be fused through a chemical reaction with the monster's plasma as it morphed shape, which was theorized to be bursting with electrical currents that kept the monster alive through the slow shape shifting phase.
Eyewitness accounts proved that as the monster became a pile of wet plasma clots, the more heat and light would escape out of it. As the monster brought itself together into a single solid form all glowing light and heat would lessen in intensity. There seemed a power source that the monster used to increase his strength and physical attributes, a chemical source not natural inside of his body. An enhancement.
Months of testing and discussion between the scientists were very productive. They went on to develop a plan that could stop the monster or severely wound it. Once they were fully confident on their research they took their results and theorums to the city council and offered a likely defense.
Kritzen and his technicians used non-technical language and diagrams to outline what they learned and how they could design an ambush using the science of elements against the monster. They advised that coating the wall at the cave entrance and the immediate area surrounding the entrance with a carefully blended paint of specified chemicals along with posting large iron posts outside of the cave that were connected to a newly conceived machine made for bleeding out electricity from a source could either greatly weaken the monster or kill the monster before it could morph out of a plasma state. What effective strength their method would pose against the monster was determined with the size of the electricity bleeding machine and the amount of a specific rare fluoride they could find. The council put their trust in the scientists and approved what funds were needed to build the scientific defense.
The scientists gladly built the defense and instructed hired operators how to maintain it. The only thing they could do at that time onward was to wait. They now waited with a renewed sense of enthusiasm, that they could defeat the monster and bring eternal safety to their town. A year later a second machine was finished and added to double the power of the electric-bleeder as it became known. Warriors coated their weapons with the same chemicals used in the paint and created baubles of liquids that they could throw at the monster and they would fantasize about what would happen, that the monster would blast apart or return to a plasma state.
Kritzen continued to live there, performing scientific work for whomever wanted help or was interested in discovering something new. He wanted to be there when the monster emerged once again. And he was.
There was no moon when the monster returned and the people were slow to respond. When someone finally noticed that the cave entrance and the area surrounding it were glowing the towns warriors were retrieved. There was an intense silence with the townspeople, most of whom were evacuated. Everyone that stayed behind, the warriors and guards, the electric-bleeder operators and Kritzen along with a few others, they were all silent and carefully watching and waiting as the cave entrance glowed brighter and brighter with a neon fluorescence.
The plasma appeared unable to pass through the coating of chemicals and the paint started bubbling. Around the outside of the cave entrance where the paint was coated, bubbles churned stones and dirt out from underneath the coating and would pop, letting off skinny sprays of glowing steam. The plasma seemed to be evaporating as the chemicals nullified it's physical properties.
The wall of brick and stone started to press outward and crack, throwing more sprays of glowing steam through the openings, the paint melting over and bubbling once again. As the cave entrance was bulging out slowly a large burst of force shot small holes through the cemented wall and surges of plasmas pop-fizzled through.
Boulders, stones, dirt, clay and mud were pulling apart and contracting like a heart made of chewing gum filled with random hard solids. The plasma turned into an evaporating tar, much like what the housewives tales let on about, a pale greenish tar that lost the neon glow. A second surge of new plasma followed and pressed the cave apart, constructing itself into a pulsing ugly statue brought alive.
The half glowing tarrish neon plasma circulated between the animated stones and boulders like snakes rubbing together. Rising upward, the Earthen material, slick and lumpy, formed into the shape of a man without a face, a greenish neon chemical spraying out randomly. A cloudy fluorescent mist clung to the ground at the new monster’s feet, swirling and spreading.
The earth continued to rumble as the cave morphed into a monster and solidified, synthesized with the chemicals the scientists created and the actual cave itself, becoming a titan made of glowing stone. Taller than any tree in the countryside and thicker than any palace wall, a featureless shape of greater power and strength than it ever possessed before.
The electricity-bleeder machines were activated and set running full force. Large electric charges burst out of the monster and into the iron posts at his feet, effectively bleeding out all electric power within him. The machine operators kept pushing their machines to the limit. Electricity flowing out of the monster was converted into a corrosive acid inside waist high buckets made of sealed wood. The sapping of the monster's electric power was immense and the glow of the plasmatic tar that held him together started to die. Stones detached off the monster and he started to crumble. He tried to take a step backward but was weakened and his leg broke off causing him to crash sideways onto the nearest building, a small horse stable. The stable was demolished and the horses were killed with a small hill of boulders literally falling onto them. One last earthquake and the electricity ceased flowing out of the monster. The machine operators slowed to a stop and everyone went to see the mess. The monster was defeated.
A landmark was made to celebrate the killing of the monster and the area was cleaned and the land given new shape, leveling the hill that the cave protruded from and reducing the cave entrance to a vertical opening, covered with an iron plate weighing more than three men.
The townspeople waited another generation, fearing that the monster would return although he was defeated once. Once that full generation of time went and gone the city council sent spelunkers to map the cave and take careful inventory of the contents therein. There was a hunch that the monster wasn’t born with supernatural powers and that the synthesis of animal and elements deep under the surface with optimum conditions created the amphibious-like shapeshifting mutations. The cave was enormous and it took many years to prove themselves correct in their theories. Both the cave research and Kritzen’s laboratory work led to the advancements of the chemical and elemental sciences.