novelzi 122- Weapons Testing
122- Weapons Testing
Vraxious- The Forsaken lands
The creature that had oozed from its nest ahead of Vrax was still obscured by a veritable snowstorm of tiny red swirling crystal flakes as it armored itself in its very environment. He didn’t want to dive into the middle of that and still didn’t know what the hell he was fighting, so he prepped the battlefield a little more.
His cistern was nearly half empty, and he wanted to save at least some in case he needed to heal himself mid-battle. So he limited himself to pouring around half of what was left across the ground in a creeping green wave. The areas his stigmata had flensed blossomed back to life, already seeded with plants from the menagerie.
The cavern went from barren crystal with small dense patches of mushrooms to a small patch of the forsaken land's finest. A circle of glowing shrubs and twitching vines splayed across the floor in a circle around him. Radiant, evershifting grass grew wherever it could find purchase. Between that and the mushrooms and moss Vrax had spread earlier, he now at least had a fairly large patch of life in the dead center of the cave to work with.
He peeked out from behind his cover again; this time Predator’s gaze finally pierced through the dwindling haze of crystalline flakes and told him what he was up against. [Bedlam Guard Tier-1](lvl68) [Threat: High]
Alright, that’s doable! Come on, guys, let's get you some levels. Really don’t love that that is just a guard that has a lot of implications, the obvious one being there’s probably a whole lot more of them and this isn’t the heart of whatever eldritch hive I’ve stumbled on. It's probably just a damned entrance, and I've metaphorically poked the anthill hard enough for it to peek out.
Vrax quickly added Malice to his menagerie; he really didn’t want him to die. He doubted he would ever get another mount crazy enough to work this well for him. And he really didn’t think he would help much if this thing also didn’t have any damn eyes like its little siblings.
The haze around the creature finally dissipated as the last of its armor snapped into place with a resonating chime. It was a mean-looking bastard shaped the same as the smaller ones. Boneless spider limbs and a round, featureless body the size of a merchant's cart. But this one had melded the crystal all over its body, turning it into a damned war form.
Its legs were reinforced with a corkscrewing wrap of crystal that ended in needlelike points that could easily pierce a horse. The whole body was covered in much of the same spiraling wrap of crystal that bits of pasty flesh could be seen beneath. The formerly featureless face has a crimson mask attached now, complete with false eyes and a gnashing crystal maw that could fit Vrax’s torso.
That is fucking fascinating, but I'm still confused as to how the hell these things eat. And why it just turned itself into a nightmare crystal spider—but ehh, a thought for later.
Duchess hovered overhead, waiting for a moment to strike, and Lux circled around towards the rear of the monster while it faced down the mangler tree that had been destroying its nest.
The Mangler bless its single-minded existence, locked its single eye onto the massive monster and began shuffling towards it, eager to add it to its nutrients. The guard cocked its mask curiously towards the beast, the fake eyes on it shifting slightly before it lashed out with a single leg.
The strike was blindingly fast, piercing straight through the mangler's trunk in a shower of bark and glimmering sap. The mangler made a strange groaning sound and then just clamped onto the leg, immobilizing it with its dozens of grabbing branches. One colossal tearing heave later, the guard’s piercing tip had been ripped from the leg and still quivered in the trunk of the mangler.
Vrax exploded into motion when the guard struck out again towards the angry tree. He rushed low through the flicker grass, letting it swaddle his form in shifting shadows. Retrievers flew overhead as the Guard stepped in closer with fast steps that chimed loudly, crystalline legs striking a crystalline floor.
Vrax pulled a Smelter moss vial from his bandolier and threw it in a loose arc. The smelter moss exploded from its vial in a torrent of fire, wrapping around the guard and starting to ooze through the breaks in its armor with the sizzle of flesh.
The guard recoiled, skittering backwards eerily quickly. It almost fell as its legs were stopped short after just a few strides by retriever umbilical’s. It nearly stepped on Lux, who flung himself onto a leg desperately to avoid being impaled. The guard swirled with mana briefly, and more of the nest flew towards it in flakes to rebuild its broken limbs. There was a momentary lull as Vrax continued gliding forward, trying to get under the beast.
Duchess still loomed overhead like the coward she was, waiting for her perfect moment. Lux was surrounded in crackling green lightning as a long limb was forming frm his back, swirling pieces of bark snapping together and then melting into a single piece. It looked like a horrible, overly long scything limb with a very thin blade.
The whole time his limb was forming, he was using his claws to slowly climb farther up the monstrosity's leg and get next to the bulbous flesh peeking through the armor. Lux stopped next to an especially large gap, and the new limb speared down too fast to track, slipping between the armor and sinking a full stride into the beast.
Right when Vrax made it beneath the beast, the room shuddered with a sudden influx of mana as it seemed to seep from every single crystalline surface in the room. The mangler let out a confused creak a second before thousands of needlelike spires of crystal shot from every single nearby surface, leaving him hanging impaled from every direction, strides from the ground.
Vrax’s eyes went wide looking at the now very dead mangler, and he tossed another smelter vial before throwing himself straight between a pair of clattering legs. He pulled his arm back and rotated his whole body upward with a priming smite aimed right for a gap in its belly armor. The blow glanced off the armor and sank shallowly into the flesh beneath, leaving a hole the size of his fist with a pustulent green glow inside that dripped white ichor.
The magebane worm within his spear shot out with surprising gusto, practically swimming into the wound, a small trail of green burning poison trailing behind it where its secretions brushed the edges of the primed smite.
Vrax looked up; Lux was still stabbing with apparent glee, pulling back the fine-tipped weapon he had made and aiming for a different gap in the armor each time. The little monster was already coated head to toe in Bedlam Guard guts.
He took a quick, stuttered step forward to stay beneath the wound and made a careful one-handed upward stab, aiming to add more energy to the primed smite. The blow landed, sinking deeper and adding to the miasmic glow. But this time, the moment his blow landed, a shrapnel blast of bladed crystals flew down into him from the beast's armor.
The fragments rocked Vrax, smashing him to the ground. His armor's shield flared briefly, slowing some of them, but most dug deep, tearing gouges into his armor. A few made it through brutally into the meat of his arms and shoulders, one even slicing across his brow.
Vrax grunted in pain and did his best to roll away from another shower of deadly shrapnel that rained down on him. He made it to his feet and had to fling himself to the side again. The entire area under the beast was now filled with endless barrages of deadly projectiles.
With one last pained step, he leaped clear of the creature and snapped his fingers to detonate the primed smite. There was a dull green flash, and a massive flood of guts and rot began dripping through the beast's armor to drip onto the floor below its abdomen.
A half dozen shallow chunks blew out of its flesh a half second later with small flickers of green fire. When the smite’s detonation caused a small chain reaction of mage bane venom strewn shallowly throughout the beast.
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Well, I mean, the magebane works, but I didn’t give the angry little guy much time to work in there.
Lux went flying off the side of the beast when he caught a blast of shrapnel as well. Sliding across the smooth floor roughly. The only thing that saved Vrax and Lux from sudden impaling stabs of its limbs were the retrievers still bound around its legs. Deadly stabs were cut short as its bindings pulled taut just a stride from both of them.
Vrax carefully stepped back into his patch of the forsaken lands; the beast was looking rough. Very rough. Its abdomen was spilled open, its back had been stabbed over and over, and the smelter moss had burned through two legs and was working its way up the armor towards the head.
Duchess decided this was her time to shine. She did something Vrax had never considered before: she simply cut her flight ability and dropped like a boulder made of ill intent and suffering. She kept her bladed tail extended downward like a falling stalagmite. At this point Duchess was the size of two draft horses put together, so that was a vast amount of mass behind the impact.
Her tail hit first and dug deep, the bladed tips popping all the way out the bottom of its already ravaged belly, sending fragments of armor flying. Duchess trilled happily and simply started digging into its back from her literally entrenched position within the Bedlam Guard.
The beast whirled, straining to free itself of the horror trying to hollow it out. Duchess didn’t even budge, simply scooping more white ichor out over her shoulders. The spiders’ whirl abruptly ended when its retriever tangled legs couldn’t move any farther. It fell roughly, trying to stop its fall with smoldering stubs that were no longer there.
Vrax stepped a bit farther back as the beast flailed in dramatic death throes, knowing its end was near. A vast amount of mana began gathering under it again as it prepared to unleash a last-ditch skill to dislodge Duchess.
Whatever it had planned looked catastrophic; the crystal in the room visibly dimmed as it drew vast amounts of mana power from it. It gathered in a roiling cloud that swirled for a moment before suffusing into the beast's skin. The moment that happened, the Guard exploded in a series of small crackling fireballs that cascaded through its body, splitting the damn thing in half from its head to abdomen.
Duchess grumpily slurped onto the ground, slightly singed by the Magebane worm explosions that were still rattling unevenly through the creature.
Well hot damn. Vrax looked at his spear. He thought only one of the worms he had put in it had made it inside the wound, but there were three in his spear when he started out and none now, so apparently the eager little bastards had all piled in on the first good stab he just hadn’t seen it. Even with there being three of them tunneling around in the monster, that was a damn good result for a test run.
“Hunt!” Lux creaked out slightly painfully as he loped over to the steaming guts of their fallen foe. Lux was still utterly riddled in bright red shards, but as he dived into his feast, they began pushing free from his bark one after the other, the wounds healing at an astonishing pace.
Vrax slowly suffused himself with healing energy from the cistern jealously. “Man, you lucky little shit, that healing is unfair as hell.” Vrax flinched as an extra-large shard slowly worked its way free from his shoulder, and the healing energy partially scabbed it over before sputtering out as his cistern ran dry.
Lux cackled in amusement and frolicked his way deeper into the guard's guts with hearty handfuls and bites. Duchess angrily poked at the limp body, obviously unhappy that her fun had ended so fast. “Alright guys, a quick loot pass, then let’s get the hell out of here before the rest of the family come to say hi.”
The inside of the nest didn’t hold much other than extra dense crystal formations and scattered bones from beasts. It did have a tunnel that led farther underground, but if the level 68 guard was any indication, that seemed like a great way to get killed.
The thought of exploring a barren crystalline tunnel system with no vegetation and probably a swarm of foes starting at that high of a level was a hard no even for Vrax. He had never heard of Bedlams before, and there was a very real possibility, with how aberrant zones worked, that this was the only spot on the planet that held them.
The guards could be the worst thing down here, but Vrax doubted it. There was probably a mid-tier two monstrosity a hundred strides down in a lair of evil and malice, churning out dozens of babies a minute.
Duchess and Lux ate their fill of the bizarre blubbery creature's remains while Vrax finished his looting; the only thing of note was a mostly hidden sideways staircase on the very edge of the cavern that looked like it led to another underground chamber. This one is swirling with nearly transparent tentacles so for once in his life Vrax chose to not poke the mystery monsters.
Vrax decided this was sufficient for a test run; they had killed a nearly level seventy enemy in very suboptimal surroundings and barely used his menagerie. They still had a few kinks to work out but he was batting well above his level.
The trip out of the aberrant zone was mostly without issue; something large and hunched followed them for a short while in the mists, but the moment they fled into clear air again, it abandoned its pursuit to settle back into the darkness.
Vrax recalled the devourers bobbing overhead and headed back to the Grove; hopefully Stereos had found out something more concrete by now. He was running off ancient hints and half-translated scrolls, so Vrax would settle for anything approaching an actionable hint of where a worthy beast might be. He pulled up his trial again and sighed as he read the small addition it had gained.
[Second Trial Available]
[Predator’s Recognition]
Slay a worthy Apex Predator of the Forsaken Lands. By the might of your hand and with the aid of your adapted entities. Your kill must be presented to one of the last of Vurune’s original holy beasts still stalking the lands. The Serpent of Bloom, the Everchanging Spider, the Dragon of Decay, or the Mycelium of Death. If it judges your prey as worthy, you will pass the trial; if not. Your trial will change to defeat [the Serpent of Bloom Tier-2, the](Lvl88) least of Vurune’s Holy Beasts. Kingdom Colossus may not be used in this trial.
The second he had gained the ability to make a colossus, the description had changed. The system always had been good at closing loopholes, and since the colossus technically was an adapted creature, it had gone and just flatly let him know that wouldn’t fly.
Honestly smart... otherwise I won’t lie, that’s exactly what I would have done if I could have found something worthy nearby. Id have made the scariest colossus I could and then just lured my hunt target to my building-sized horror's waiting arms.
***
Vrax trailed back into the grove, still coated in an unhealthy sheen of whitish offal. He headed straight towards Stereos’ research chamber without bothering to clean off. Lux and Duchess were still trailing goop everywhere anyway, and he was too damned impatient; he needed to know if Stereos had found something.
His excited entrance faltered at the utter chaos the room had descended to in the few days he had been busy. There were at least thirty scrolls hanging from randomly arranged clotheslines, all open and lightly fluttering in the breeze of an open window. The tables had tomes also open with an almost unfathomable amount of notes written into margins.
The tomes were just piled on top of each other for easy access, like he needed all of them at any given moment. Stereos himself was standing at a pulpit-like stone desk; God knew where he had even gotten it. He was darkly muttering to himself and frantically scribbling notes in a blank book.
He would stop suddenly and run to one of the scrolls in the room, reading feverishly out loud in a language Vrax didn’t even begin to recognize, before dashing back to his pulpit and scribbling more frantic notes.
Vrax watched this go on for about ten minutes in growing discomfort and a bit of concern. Stereos didn’t even notice him standing in the doorway glowing gently and occasionally dipping Bedlam guts onto the floor with a light plop noise.
Vrax cleared his throat. “Uhh, hey buddy, do you, uhh, have anything for me?” Stereos rounded on him, his quill hovering inches from his hand; his eyes were red-rimmed and crazed. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Vrax backed up slightly. “You know what? I can come back a little later...”
Stereos advanced towards him. “No, no, not at all, have a seat. I have discovered so much!” He whirled around a bit frantically before grabbing a notepad from a seemingly random spot on the wall where he had it hanging from a coat hook. “So, so much...” He added darkly.
Vrax looked around; there wasn’t a single damn chair in the room not covered in research materials, so he just shuffled closer to the pulpit at the center of this organized chaos and stood politely waiting for Stereos to either snap or give him an update.
Stereos seemed to gather himself for a moment and took a big drink of a glass of water, at least looking like he was trying to pull his shit together before he talked to Vrax more. “Alright, I will admit some of the revelations I have uncovered I am reticent to tell you because it will almost certainly hasten your entirely predictable but untimely demise.”
Vrax sighed. “Just, just tell me where the monsters are, man.”
Stereos set a book down on the pulpit over the top of his main notepad and opened it to a very detailed hand-drawn map of the Forsaken Lands. “I have found where I believe the wonderous Blood Drakes reside, or at least the region that they haunted a millennia ago.” He paused and begrudgingly kept going. “I also...believe I know the rough location of the almost certain death promised by the unknown plant aligned draconic beast that handily slew one of your predecessors...” Vrax lit up like it was his birthday and his pappy had finally gotten him the pony he had been asking for for years.
Stereos sighed darkly and shook his head. “Please don’t make the Ravenous Grove the shortest-lived kingdom in history... unfortunately the Blood Drakes are quite a trek, nearly on the other side of the forsaken lands themselves. The...mysterious assailant, however, was located just on the outskirts of a game preserve of sorts, the Grove Of Vurune tended as part of their duties. It is roughly northeast of the ancient grove your ancient Spriggan friend resides in.”