novelzi 112- Is That Dangerous?
112- Is That Dangerous?
Vraxious—Forsaken Lands
Vrax sighed in relief as they trotted out of a particularly nasty patch of woodlands where every damn vine within a league was far grabbier than he would prefer. Ahead, the forest thinned out noticeably, and they only had another few hours of travel before they reached the rolling fields that led to the old busted mill and then the city itself.
Vrax still took the lead with the others in a loose line behind him. The terrain here was different than any Vrax had seen before. The trees all stood a half dozen strides apart as if giving each other room. They were stalwart, rising stories high with silvery thin bark that peeled around the edges. The branches were impressively uniform, each a near-perfect copy of the others. Slightly angled down with dense grey-green needles generously clumped in rows.
The ground itself was also blessedly clear by forsaken lands standards. Winding rows of flowers grew in almost starburst patterns around the bases of the trees. Starting at a deep silver and slowly shifting to a red-tinged metallic sheen the farther the flowers grew from the tree.
Fascinating... I wonder if they grow symbiotically or if this is just another one of those "miracle of life" moments. Now the real question is what very mundane-looking thing here inevitably wants to gobble one of us down the second we drop our guards.
As they continued forward at a slow trot, Vrax brought his hand up, slowing them down even further to an almost eerily quiet pace. Vrax looked from tree to tree, and his eyes scanned the few places the starbursts of flowers overlooked; he was looking for anything out of place.
Small lemur-like mammals with far too wide eyes and bladed tails scampered around in the trees, watching them quietly. A pair of them fought over an eagle corpse before freezing as Vrax passed by. One took the other’s momentary distraction to unhinge its jaw and slip most of the bird into its mouth, leaving the other holding nothing but a wingtip and some feathers.
The flowered patches had small turtle-like animals slowly meandering about within the flowers. There shells folded back briefly, and dozens of small tongues traced around themselves, lapping pollen from the flowers before folding closed again and ambling to the next patch.
Hmm, no, not those. Lily lurkers are harmless as long as you aren’t stupid...probably means the flowers are poisonous, though they always prefer the poisonous ones.
Another patch slightly farther along had a shape gently undulating just beneath the surface of the soil, causing an entire patch to ripple noticeably.
Edward noticed it first, pointing it out: “Is that something we need to worry about?”
Vrax smiled and edged the horses slightly farther away from that spot. “It’s a Flenderworm, omnivores; they nibble around at roots and stems, but if anything steps on them...” The Flenderworm suddenly spiraled from the ground in a spray of soil, exposing its thin manta-like body and eyeless face filled with jagged fangs. A field mouse squeaked in panic, and the Flenderworm contorted itself so its body funneled the poor thing into its mouth with a sudden gulp.
“Yeah, they do that. Not really too dangerous if you have armor or a combat class above level ten or so, though. Now that...that’s a fucking problem.” Vrax stopped and pointed to another tree ahead of them; it stood out from its neighbors. Its branches held long blade-shaped leaves, and the gnarled black bark had visible rivulets of red sap dripping down it in exaggerated slowness. The smell of copper and blood was noticeable even from a dozen strides away.
“It’s gonna get up and try and skin us or something, isn’t it...” Torvald said, hefting his hammer, obviously planning to not even give it the chance.
“Honestly, that would be simpler... It’s a Rot pine; its whole thing is attracting predators, scavengers, whatever, with the smell of blood and carcasses. There are legitimately always at least a handful of dangerous scavengers around these, and normally at least one big scary beast too stupid to realize the tree is what makes everything smell so appetizing, so guards up!” Vrax gave a mental nudge to Duchess, urging her to come back closer with adapt life and prepared to pull a mangler tree out if he needed to.
Vrax slowly edged them away from the clearing at a slow, steady pace, making sure he didn’t run them into anything else while they were trying to avoid whatever had made its home at the rot pine. He had circled nearly past it when a deep rumble echoed out from the foliage ahead. Past another pair of trees.
A mountain of rattling bone plates layered over thick scales dragging itself forward on its powerful front claws. Its limbless, overfull, snakelike body was dragging almost unhelpfully behind the gargantuan creature, tilling the earth as it went.
Ahh damn, that explains the tracks. I thought it was just field skimmers.
Torvald looked at the hulking thing as its narrow eyes focused on them and its mouthless face huffed with a pair of wide, slitted nostrils. “So, uhh, can we just outrun it? It seems slower than hell.”
Vrax frowned. “No, it’s too late. Everyone we are in its range, and it looks damned hungry. Watch the ground; we have to kill it if we want to escape.” The ground a dozen strides ahead of them roiled, and then to the left and right of it, the earth also churned.
A flesh slug, definitely, unlucky, but it fits for the kind of abomination that would set up its home near the tree.
The creature settled into the dirt a few dozen strides away, sending dozens of feeding grabbers into the soil to hunt for it. They began breaching from the roiling soul all around the party. Simple four-pronged claws on the ends of thin bundles of meat and muscle with a lidless bright white eye in the center of the palm.
Vrax spurred Malice onward he flashed forward almost faster than Torvald when he charged; he leveled his spear like a lance towards a cluster of claws turning his way. Malice warbled violently, its claws clacking in excitement.
To Vrax’s shock the claws that met Malice’s gaze went limp. The thresher's gaze utterly dominated their limited individual intellect. He leaned far forward, his arm wrapped around Malice's neck for support, and lined up his spear.
A wet series of pops preceded a shower of gore as Vrax speared claw after claw as they thundered forward. Channeling just enough into each smite to ensure the claws wouldn’t be able to retreat underground mangled but still functional and become a problem for later.
Malice sent his retrievers wide; they shot from his body in writhing streamers that trailed deadly umbilicals behind them, landing upon dozens of the claws. The retrievers wrapped around their prey just enough to entangle them before the umbilicals pulled tight. An entire swath of the field was suddenly coated in rot and diced claws.
Vrax continued forward, he and Malice carving a massive furrow through the entire field. Torvald and Jonathan stayed back along with Stereos, turning a circular patch of the once beautiful woodland into an utter charnel field.
The beautiful out-of-place note of a violin rang out above the grunts of effort and the sounds of cutting flesh. The Flesh Slug vibrated in angered response; the sound cascading from it washed over them like a physical thing, slowing their movements and making everyone feel like they were fighting through water.
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The claw nearest Torvald Dove down, snaking through the dirt towards him, and then stopping suddenly. A flare of dark earthy mana coursed through the earth under Torvald. The ground itself began to tremble and then shift like a running brook, slowly building in speed as the earth changed to mud and then a marshy slush.
Torvald spread his wings just in time, fighting through the waves of sound. The ground under him had descended into an ever-growing whirlpool dotted with dozens of hungering claws swimming through it, waiting on prey.
One locked its eye on him hovering just above the whirlpool and struck upwards. Torvald sent it back down in chunks with a heavy downward blow of his Warhammer. He continued to flutter above the whirlpool, forcing them to rise and meet him. Each was sent back in pieces. Torvalds's laughter boomed out across the battlefield; he looked like he was having a good time.
Vrax continued weaving through the ever-changing forest of foes nearly to the slug itself. Malice sprung from the ground over a particularly dense patch of enemies, its umbilicals shredding them in its wake as it landed on the side of a tree wrapping its taloned feet into the bark. Malice sprang from the tree, sailing through the air for ten strides before roughly landing on the thick bone plates of the slug.
Vrax leapt off, stumbling for a moment on the quivering thing as it tried to reach over its own shoulder at him. Vrax flung himself away from the massive hand and grabbed the edge of a bone plate to stop himself from sliding off the side of its bloated back.
Alright now, how the fuck do I kill it from here? I'll be damned if I'm going to get off or climb over to the dangerous end and try and stab it in the face.
Vrax braced his feet against a bone plate and grabbed another with his free hand. He used his solid perch to try and leverage his spear between the overlapping natural armor covering the top of the monster. He would manage to get the spear tip in slightly before the shifting body forced it out again.
Dammit, come on, you big fuck, stop squirming.
Vrax tentatively tried using smite against the bone plate, slapping his hand down and channeling a modest smite. The flash of green entropy worked, but poorly. At best it powdered off a handbreadth of bone. An almost laughable amount on a creature the size of a small cottage.
Fuck...well, how much mana do I have...?
[Mana 190/306]
Not bad. I was pretty damn conservative with the smites earlier. Guess it's time to see what happens if I really stack up priming marks on this guy with the new smite evolution. I might end up gooping myself with this if I'm not careful.
Vrax began slowly and rhythmically stabbing the creature in the same spot on its armor. Applying an ever-growing pustule of primed miasmic energy. He looked out over the battlefield from his perch while he worked.
Jonathan honestly looked like he was having fun; supported by his halberd in its doppelganger form, he was practically rushing from one grasping claw to the next, neatly cutting them down at the tentacle-like base with sweeping blows. He would dash past, carving in at one angle, and then Jonthan Jr. would dive by in his shadow, cutting down in a mirror of his own strike.
Stereos had retreated to the edges of the battlefield and was still mounted. He focused on any of the clusters that got near to him. They would seize up halfway through his utterances and then abruptly rupture into crystalline pillars of blood before he moved on to the next closest patch.
But none of that mattered to Vrax next to what had to be the single most bizarre and alarming sight he had ever seen in the forsaken lands, and that was saying something. His gaze stuck on Edward.
Edward was awkwardly sitting on Duchess’s shoulders, playing his heart out with an arm locked around one of the spiny protrusions on her shoulders. Duchess was floating above the battlefield, curled like a demonic shrimp and trilling in pure happiness, flicking her tail about madly at anything that came even remotely close to her.
They continue over the heart of the battlefield towards Vrax like this. Edwards song trailed mana down around in wavering lines that bolstered Jonathan and Torvald. Where the black sorrowful notes struck, the claws would recoil in horror briefly.
Duchess let her tongue drape down nearly to the ground just so she could grasp the startled claws, amplifying and feeding upon their bestial fear. Her eldritch scrawlings lit so bright that even in the daylight she cast a pall of wrongness over the battlefield.
What the actual fuck...
Vrax stabbed his spear one last time into the same spot, leaving the last priming mark he could with his limited mana. It was now a bright swirling conflux of energies that flicked with dark potential. And the mark was nearly the size of Vrax’s torso.
I don’t want to be anywhere near this when it goes off.
Vrax clambered carefully to his feet. Malice was dancing back and forth on the back of the beast still. He had been helpfully fighting off the few claws that rose to try and pluck Vrax off, letting him work uninterrupted. Vrax chased Malice around for an embarrassingly long time, finally managing to catch up to the frenetic creature after a half dozen tumbles and nearly falling off again twice.
Vrax pulled himself on and directed Malice to leap off. He barely held on, wrapping his arm around its neck as it enthusiastically launched itself from the towering monster and alighted gracefully on the soil, already in a sprint again.
Here...we...go.
Vrax snapped his fingers, triggering the Smite. The world turned to a ghastly green and black for a moment. Sound became distorted, and the only thing he could hear for a heartbeat was the beast's panicked wails and the whump of displaced air. The smite roiled outwards into the sky and downward into the beast in a monolith of Vurunes power.
Nearby trees slumped to the ground, heavily cut in half by the blast. The greenery within ten strides of the monster was reduced to the wilted memory of beauty. The Slug itself had a hole of blackened gore big enough for Vrax to climb through bored through the top of it that bubbled as entrails tried to escape.
Its angry eyes turned towards Vrax, and it painfully shifted its body his way. “Uhh! Hey Duchess Duchess! Can you do the awful thing?” Vrax shouted out and summoned a mauler tree along with sunshine into the battle. The enemies were thinned enough that hopefully they would focus on the real threat.
Sunshine flung itself at the thing's face, ripping and tearing with abandon as the slug tried to rip it off of its face. The mauler ambled to a nearby patch of claws and proceeded to introduce them to the meaning of the word "overkill," shredding two of them before the ground under it swirled and it abruptly disappeared into a whirlpool of dirt and claws.
Ahh, shit, I'm not getting that one back, am I?
Duchess quickly floated over to Torvald, who was heading towards the slug's main body, and roughly handed him Edward. He was too stunned to do anything other than awkwardly hold the violinist in his arms as Duchess shot towards the slug.
She loomed above the gaping wound in its back for just a moment, almost like she was savoring the moment, and then dove down, tearing her way into the wound like an eel slithering into a sandy cave. The slug went rigid with fear, flailing its massive body side to side.
It withdrew all its few remaining claws back into its bulbous body so it could flee, but it was far too late. Clawed hands snaked out of its squat nostril, ripping it wide from the inside as Duchess’s head peeked out briefly. She made eye contact with the terrified monster from less than a stride from its dilated pupil. “Oh look! It wants to play!” She said in the voice of a small girl before turning around and going back into the creature.
It gave a few more weak shudders as Duchess crawled around near its face, her form stretching out the skin briefly, then with an audible crunch, she forced her way into its brain, and the beast instantly went still.
Vrax tried to ignore the fact that Duchess was still swimming around in the corpse as he went and re-added Sunshine to the menagerie. The wave of essence from that fight washed through him brutally; even shared among the party, it was a lot.
He opened the notification; for once he was pretty sure if he had killed it alone, which certainly was a questionable proposition. That would have been a worthy beast to present for his trial.
[Flesh Slug Tier-1](lvl97) slain
Essence Gained
Yep, we were lucky that one hadn’t quite hit the second tier. Even then we probably would have managed; their earth manipulation powers just get stronger, well, and they can get even fucking bigger. A dangerous massive foe but a poor matchup against this party and honestly too damned slow.
Edward surprised everyone by raising his arms triumphantly. “Ha, ha! Holy, that was a lot of essence!”
Torvald chuckled. “Well, yeah, man, that thing was, what, sixty levels above you?”
“Nearly!” Edward said with a smile, “It’s...really nice not feeling powerless all the time...I’m starting to feel genuinely helpful after that last skill I got at my first trial...I, yeah...” He trailed off almost sheepishly.
“Good job, everyone. Let’s... Get the fuck out of here before something else comes; we just made one hell of a racket.” Vrax said and already started forward on Malice.
“Are we going to the little cottage?” Torvald asked.
Vrax whipped his head around. “Little cottage?” He asked cautiously.
Edward chimed in. “Yeah, there’s a really homey little house with a garden in front of it just past the tree line; I saw it while I was flying...” He shuddered slightly at the memory.
Vrax frowned deeply. “Well, that’s not good.” He said in genuine concern. And he leveled his gaze forward, making sure he had jars of smelter moss within easy reach.