Chapter 371: Cruelty to Another (& Updates!) |
“How many prisoners?” I asked, glancing back at Grotto. His black octo eyes peeked over my shoulder as we flew, glinting with the reflection of Xim’s flames. “I told him to offer them the option to surrender when possible, but I wasn’t really expecting people to accept.”
[Shog has been very persuasive, it seems. He has refrained from killing anyone he has encountered, choosing to capture them all instead. Granted, he has been interpreting their uncontrolled screams as a sign of submission.]
“Classic.”
[You must also remember you left him in the company of Etja. She could likely convince someone that an unconditional surrender was superior to an outright victory.]
“Hmm. She could just tell them she’d be their friend if they gave up and think they were a doody head if they didn’t. That’d probably get the job done.”
[Her new captives are likely already turncoats, eager to betray their cause in exchange for her approval.]
“You know, I’m really not sure which of those two people is scarier.”
[The answer is Etja, and by a large margin. The fact that you even question it is further proof of how ruinous she could be if she so wished.]
“I don’t think you’d feel that way if you’d just let her give you a hug once in a while.”
“To each his own, I guess.”
The flight from where we’d found Two of Crowns to the entrance for the Chasm wasn’t far, but the shit Charl was throwing our way had gotten stronger as we went. We were moving slower than I’d like, and I was feeling a little useless. My style of tanking couldn’t accomplish much here, given the threat was more of a biological one. I wasn’t well equipped to defend people against tiny particulates, meaning that my role was being filled through pure offense. Xim, Vaulty, Ember, and Ishi were all unloading everything they could while Varrin, Joma, and I were forced to watch in relative impotence. Even though we three could kill the incoming mana monsters, our methods were messy.
Our allies finally burned through a Grade 24 Arevasaur that had slowed us down, which was more or less a flying black widow spider the size of a brontosaurus. It also had bird-like beaks for legs that would stab, inject venom, and bite chunks out of you all at the same time. The main thing that hindered us was that it carried an entire nest of thousands of baby versions of itself, which it shielded from attacks using its bristly fur. They sprang off their momma trying to get their own chomps in.
It also hadn’t stopped attacking after getting hit by Xim’s Infernal Judgment, meaning that if it had a Charl infection it hadn’t been bad enough to damage anything critical once removed. It was likely left free and driven towards us intentionally since Xim was hard countering the United’s normal methods.
Also, when I say it slowed us down I mean that my allies had to spend about three seconds reducing it to paste. Our combined firepower was pretty damned impressive. That was still a meaningful delay given our timeline, but didn’t keep us from getting to the forest’s center with 2 minutes left until the Labyrinth went through its ‘self-destruct’, although we still didn’t know what that looked like, exactly.
The scene we saw once we got there required some quick decisions from me and Ishi.
The Littan heavy Tomomaru was half-buried in the ground at the end of a trail of destruction left by his landing. The Specialist had presented as Level 26 initially, but later revealed himself to be much higher levelled than he appeared at 52. This wasn’t really a surprise since I’d given him the internal nickname Clown Car for having a weirdly compressed soul. What had been a surprise was that Specialist Rufio, the soon-to-be traitor, had called him an interrex.
That was a title meaning the man ‘ruled when the empress could not’. I was unclear on what that meant practically, but I was more clear on how important it made him. He was like the vice-emperor or something, although it seemed like there were multiple interreges so it was a kind of council thing, possibly. Either way, he was assuredly a Littan VIP.
He was also unconscious and about to become Charl’s next victim. The only thing keeping him safe was his iguana familiar, which had reduced its size from being a Godzilla competitor to being around that of a horse. The creature was repelling attackers and doing a good job of it, being Grade 52, but the familiar was also in a bad, bad way. It was missing two legs and half of its face, a quarter of its torso had been carved cleanly away, and dark veins covered its body, sprouting from fungus growing all over its skin. Clearly the effects of the spell suite wielded by Orexis.
Tomomaru and his familiar were the single scrap of forest that wasn’t completely buried beneath Charl flesh. Here, the creatures transitioned from being independent entities to being connected by fleshy tendrils. A little further ahead, they were a mass of bodies beginning to fuse, and a little further than that we had a full-on Akira-style flesh monster sucking every living thing towards itself. That gruesome, malformed central body wasn’t the largest thing we’d had to fight, but it was in the top ten. Counting all the animal mass still being dragged towards it, that would make it big enough to compete with the time we’d had to fight a living mountain called the Pit.
In an oddly similar twist of circumstances, that large mass of Charl was sitting directly over where our Labyrinth schematics had shown the entrance to the Chasm. That meant that to get to the Labyrinth’s exit, whatever form it took, we had to go through the near-mountain of flesh.
A ran a quick check on everyone’s positions. Etja, Shog, Nuralie, and Drift were making good time through the forest to converge with us, using various stealth skills to prevent Charl’s notice. This was made even more impressive by the presence of the ever-talking Savant and four other United prisoners. As for us, we were about as sneaky as a missile bombardment.
Reveal let my party members expect my next move and a quick psychic nudge to Ishi gave her the same information. I cast Shortcut to get outside the flaming death bubble that was our group, then flew at top speed towards the unconscious Tomomaru. I was the best suited for a solo mission through Charl-ville, while everyone else could avoid the detour and keep making progress towards our main objective. I was also fast enough to catch back up, given that their movement speed was throttled by Xim and Charl both.
My Shielding dipped as creatures flew or leapt into my path. Those dragged more behind them on their fleshy tendrils, creating a disgusting meat net trying to grab me. I separated Gracorvus into two, using one shield ahead of me to smash through my opponents while keeping the second on my arm to use traditionally. I was still somewhat low on mana, but I had resources prepped for situations like this. I dismissed Somncres and started pulling wands from inventory.
My main strategy was to plow through enemies with my body as a battering ram, using charges from my Wands of Explosion! to clear a path when something big got in my way. Those wands were basic, without any buffs or mana shapes, but they knocked stuff around pretty well regardless. My goal was extraction, not racking up kills. Once I got closer, I pulled a pair of Acacia Wands of Elemental Reservoir, letting me chain cast two Elemental Barriers and freeze a huge swath of land near Tomomaru and his familiar, taking some pressure off the lizard.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Fortunately, the iguana remembered me, meaning I didn’t get tail-whipped into atoms during my supersonic approach. I used Gravity Anchor to help me land without burying myself alongside Tomomaru, then used my Wand of Elemental Nullification, my most recent creation that combined spells from both me and Etja. It was best deployed against something I wanted to scour buffs from, but the feature I wanted from the combo spell inside it was the AoE size. It was more than double my ordinary Elemental Barrier, creating another swirling storm of cold and pressure waves scattering the assaulting animals.
While I came in and unloaded wand charges, Grotto had his animated shields scoop up Tomomaru from his crater. I pulled out my Clockwork Lifewarden staff, then used it as a focus for Explosion! The staff added Sonic penetration, just like the newest edition of Gracorvus did, but more importantly it added a stun to the attack. I cast the spell myself so I could mana shape it, burning some of my limited mana to ignore allies and also improve its AoE size. I dropped the spell on top of us, creating an instant of calm as every Charl-infected creature within 120 feet was either obliterated or had its cancer-laden brain rattled.
This brief reprieve allowed Tomomaru’s familiar to shrink further and hop onto the Littan’s chest, now adopting the size of an ordinary, if still large, iguana. Grotto encapsulated them in a shield sandwich which I grabbed with my feelers before rocketing back off at full speed. I used Aura of Persistence to give us all some Shielding while also handing out the Life Warded buff. I went ahead and cast Life Warden onto Tomomaru and his iguana directly as well, so that the skill would survive even if the Shielding I’d given them broke.
I swapped out my staff for Somncres, the dreamforged property on both letting it happen instantly, then started throwing hammers ahead of us. My Hammerdin aura allowed the projectiles to pierce through everything out to more than 80 feet. That helped create a channel to slip through with all the mana monsters still pushing in on us, and I started receiving supporting fire from Vaulty as I drew closer to our contingent.
I went ahead and dove directly through some of Xim’s flames on the way back in, grabbing a quick Cleanse for myself and my two charges. Xim was too busy to cast on the pair directly, meaning any healing would have to wait. Tomomaru was almost certainly immune to Charl’s infection given his level and focus on “survival” as he’d put it himself, but better safe than sorry. Both were also suffering from avatar-born Toxicity.
By the time I was back with the group, we were pulling up on the central mega-Charl flesh monstrosity. I also noticed a number of fresh arrivals fade into existence as our stealth group reconvened with us.
“Might have been better to stay hidden,” I said to Nuralie, who was now riding on my back.
“Savant wants to try something. I think it’s worth the risk.”
I turned and looked towards Shog, seeing that his feelers were filled with his captives. I wasn’t sure how the c’thon could fight like that, but I was sure he’d muddle through if needed. I glanced at Etja, seeing her still using an anti-magic Repulsion bubble to float Savant alongside her. The mage was also carrying Drift with her lower pair of arms, which I assumed was to save mana. I went ahead and sent one half of Gracorvus over to relieve her of the Ravvenblaq burden. Drift accepted the offer, planting his feet on the shield and balancing as it took over his flight. I kept him close to Etja since the pair looked deep in conversation.
Savant was still talking without end, as usual, but had started to raise her voice. It became evident she was trying to talk to Charl directly, not simply narrating all of her innermost thoughts and feelings. A lot of that stuff still made it into the message, of course.
“Charl!” shouted Savant. “I’m not aware of your exact orders but I think it’s probably to delay people from following us down into the Chasm and while you’re obviously in a great position to do that where you are I also think you’ve done more than enough to stop people since this whole place is going to self-destruct in about one minute.”
A hundred of Charl’s malformed faces appeared on the outside of the mountainous flesh monster. Their bloodshot eyes rolled up towards us as they replied in unison.
“Savant, why does any of that matter? This biological material is unimportant to me. There is no reason for me not to use it to delay these heretics further.” His many eyes glanced over at Etja. “No offense, dearest.”
“No worries!” Etja replied.
“Sure,” said Savant, “but if you stay where you are they’re going to fight their way past you and if you guys fight then I’ll probably definitely die from it and there’s also four other United who’ve been captured here with me and I don’t like their odds of surviving that fight either since I know you’ve got Teslampre and Phantom with you and nobody can do much to protect themselves from Teslampre he’s really scary not that Phantom isn’t scary but honestly she’s kind of on the weaker end compared to him.”
[Thirty seconds. There is no time for this, you should punch through.]
I considered the point Savant was making. Not only were she and our other prisoners at risk, but Tomomaru was absolutely wrecked. The toxic fungus afflicting his iguana had begun to corrode its soul in addition to its body. Since the pair had a powerful soul connection, that had started to spread to the interrex himself. Xim’s mana was running on fumes, as was everyone else who relied on the resource. A fight with super Charl would cost both sides and put half of us at serious risk of a Charl infection.
Charl seemed to be considering the same, albeit at a much more mortal pace. A distant explosion rattled many of Charl’s thousand teeth. A mushroom cloud sprouted back in the direction we’d come from. One of the skyscraper-sized cacti began to fall.
“We’ll release our prisoners once we’ve entered the Chasm,” I offered, turning away from the approaching avatars and back to the United. My heart rate was rising as I tried to give this man one last out to prevent needless deaths. “Retreat now and you can save some of your people.”
Charl initially scowled, his own eyes studying the distance. As a second enormous explosion sounded, another sentence from Savant cooled his expression.
“Cruelty to another is cruelty to oneself,” she said. For whatever reason, this seemed to shake the cancerous man.
“Fine,” he said. “There is no need for me to retreat though.”
Charl’s body parted, revealing a circular platform deep beneath him. It was large enough to serve as a valley between the mountainous hills of his flesh, although it wasn’t what I would describe as a ‘chasm’. This wasn’t a surprise to me, however, given that what Grotto and I had seen on our maps was another wormhole connection, not a direct physical entrance to the Chasm.
“If this is a deception,” said Charl, “you will find I am willing to subject myself to much cruelty.”
Our group quickly flew down to land on the platform. I checked the System notification, seeing that we were in the right place, then activated the device while keeping a wary eye on the dozens more Charl faces that had emerged to watch us. I was having flashbacks to The Mimic, although his body didn’t seem to morph as much as peel back to reveal faces already there.
“Ready, Ishi?” I asked. Having made so many wormhole transitions I had a good idea of how they functioned. My Dimensional focus was on Planar magicks, however, whereas the wormholes were Spatial. That just so happened to be the princess’s specialty. I’d psychically coordinated with her on this next tactic.
The platform was so large that there was plenty of room for Ishi’s transformation into her draconic form. Her body changed in an instant, growing to well over a hundred feet in length. Space began to fold within her toothy maw, filling it with a rapidly-darkening orb. As the dome of compressed space formed around our valley, she fired a line that fractured the material universe, momentarily breaching the compression created by the platform. The magic of the wormhole was too robust to be broken by something like that, but what it did do was create a pinhole breach in the shell, allowing me to open a Closet portal outside of its dome.
After all, I didn’t want what was on the other side of that portal to get to me once it came through. If one of these domes of compressed space was enough to slow an avatar down, it would be enough to slow her down as well.
I did this a fraction of a second before the wormhole fully activated. The last thing I saw in that brief moment before we were swept away into a bottomless abyss was another mushroom cloud rising from just beyond Charl’s flesh mountain, and the liquid blue form of Cerulean leaping out into the Labyrinth. I immediately closed the Closet portal behind her ass.
I’d ended up giving the woman exactly what she’d asked for. My only regret was that I wouldn’t get to see how that worked out for her.
Not well, I imagined.