Chapter 382: Violent Hugs |
Thousands of insectoid souls sparkled in my spiritual sight, swirling in constant motion like a hive of angry diamonds. Their bright souls were so numerous I felt like we were being swallowed up by some kind of glitterbomb vortex as they closed on us. Their dark carapaces struck a stark contrast when they burst through the floor, walls, and ceiling, absorbing what little light there was in the tunnel. There was an inconsistency there; something my Soul-Sight was picking up on that hadn’t worked its way through my conscious mind, but there was little time to consider it while the swarm was about to fall upon us, diving through stone and metal like it was air.
That they could do that at all was casually terrifying. We’d never stopped passing mana weaves, all of which slowly ramped up in power as we continued deeper. The tunnel itself was now hot enough to start a grease fire, but the stone beyond it was hot enough to melt. At least, I was fairly confident that was the case.
Honestly, I was mostly guessing by this point. I wasn’t a geologist. The heat and pressure offsets were high enough that I was starting to lose my frame of reference for what the numbers translated to. Granted, all of my examples consisted of things I learned in middle school, but while my seventh grade Earth & Space Science class may have been failing me right then, it had been a perfectly serviceable measuring stick for really hot things throughout all of my life prior.
What I knew for certain was that the closest mana weaves were designed to offset a temperature that was hotter than volcanic lava but colder than the surface of the sun. Yes, that was a pretty massive range, but I still felt safe concluding that whatever was beyond these tunnel walls should by all rights be liquid. I also remembered something about how rock at a certain depth was under so much pressure that it would remain solid despite being liquid. Physics did weird things, and that was before System shenanigans got involved.
The point is, the fact these beetles were swimming through this stuff only got more impressive the more I thought about it. Those thoughts fled when hundreds of beetles erupted from every visible surface, going into a frenzy as they swarmed me, Varrin, and Xim. The creatures weren’t very strong individually, but their hooked claws pierced through my armor with an alarming ease. These weren’t creatures designed to be killers; they were built for construction and demolition. Crucially, they were made for demolishing magical shit, and every piece of gear we had on qualified.
I also experienced a moment of dread as I noticed that the dogpile of dark iron-coated insects played hell with all the nearby mana weaves, including the ones that allowed the tunnel to exist. I had no idea how many the tunnel could lose before it collapsed, or whether it would remain stable for any length of time without them, but I didn’t want to stress test it. The rest of the party was already aware that we wanted to avoid as much collateral damage as possible. This just made it an even more delicate situation.
To compound the problems we faced, the lone United ignored our durable front-line trio and instead blasted past us on a course for Etja, a few hundred feet behind us. It never emerged from the stone, possibly trying to sneak past while using the beetles as a distraction. I left Xim and Varrin to handle the bugs while I zipped up the tunnel to intercept, shaking them from my armor as I went.
The United was quick, but Therianthropy gave me the speed to outpace it. Etja rolled and dropped low when I got close, nearly laying down as she floated an inch off the floor. I came to a quick stop just above her with Gracorvus positioned to block, activating Gravity Anchor as the ceiling rippled and the humanoid monstrosity lunged out of it in a spray of molten stone. The material thunked off my shield, followed by a louder clang as the United landed on me.
I let out a choked breath as my arms crumpled under the creature’s weight and the air inside my mostly redundant lungs was involuntarily squished out from the force of impact. The thing was heavy, impossibly so. Gravity Anchor alone kept me from collapsing down on top of Etja, who floated out from beneath us soon after I’d made contact. The United was also hot, spiking the tunnel’s temperature enough that my underclothes began to smolder. Those undies were damn durable, too, but they apparently hit their limit just above a thousand degrees. My Shielding protected me from any damage, although the experience was still very uncomfortable.
“Uh-oh!” Etja said, ending the ineffective move to adjust her tactics.
I felt my perception of time slow as she granted me Haste. Now, Haste was great. I loved it to pieces, but in the current circumstances it didn’t help me at all. In fact, it only extended my subjective experience of the one-sided beat down that immediately followed.
The United spent a moment wrestling with Gracorvus, its long limbs reaching around to try and strip the shield from me, but the plates clacked open and shut, keeping it from getting a good hold. Instead, the thing managed to snag my upper arm with a pair of hooked claws, then tumbled off my right side. I tried to keep Gracorvus between us, but my angle was awkward and my foe was extraordinarily nimble despite its weight.
It maneuvered so that my weapon arm was forced to extend out to the side, then it moved its legs up around my neck while its upper body held onto my outstretched limb. It bent me over backwards and twisted at the same time, causing my arm to groan as the bone amalgam within it complained about the force it was under. My Shielding flared, and I was certain that its rapidly depleting value was the only thing keeping my arm attached.
I’d been facing the ceiling, entire body floating horizontal to the ground, but now my cervical spine was at an unnaturally sharp angle as my head and shoulders were pointed directly down while the rest of me refused to come along for the ride. Gravity Anchor kept the area around my center of balance locked in place. That prevented most of the stuff around my belly and waist from moving, but didn’t have a profound effect on the rest of me. Otherwise I couldn’t do things like turn my head, throw hammers, or maneuver my shield. External forces couldn’t throw me around while Gravity Anchor was active, but they could still manipulate my limbs.
This was suddenly a much bigger problem than it had ever been before.
I cast Shortcut to teleport out of this thing’s hold and cancelled Gravity Anchor to give me a chance to reorient. My head immediately slammed into the ground. I flipped ass over end and landed hard on my stomach, then felt the force on my arm double as the United rolled onto my back. My teleport had gone off without a hitch, so I was momentarily confused as to why I was still being wrestled into pieces. It didn’t take me long to realize what had happened.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The fucking thing had teleported with me.
“Might need some help over here,” I thought to the group as Somncres was torn from my grip. I immediately dismissed the compact battle hammer and resummoned it in one of the tentacles my Therianthropy transformation gave me. I could use it to throw almost as well as my mainhand, and I chucked the hammer full force into the United’s side.
Despite being a point blank shot, I layered Homing Weapon to add extra speed and force. I pumped out seven copies of the hammer, the upper limit on how many I could make with my current INT of 70. The hammers had Penetration, the attack was double buffed from my Blunt skill and my Dimensional skill, and each was tipped with an Oblivion Orb payload, the spell attack also getting a double buff from Dimensional.
Somncres Prime struck with a thunderous clang that jolted through the United and shook my entire body alongside it. The creature made a harsh rasping noise that would have been lost under the sound of tortured metal had it not been right next to my ear. The copies collided with machine-gun speed, but none of the followups seemed nearly as effective as the initial hit.
I summoned Somncres back to my feeler, but before I could make another throw the United seized the tentacle with the talons on one of its legs. It stomped on my face with an elaborate fan kick, wrappinged up my other feeler in its knee joint before I could even think of transferring the hammer again, then shoved another pair of legs between my own, restricting what meager ability I had left to maneuver.
My vision was suddenly filled with shark-like teeth as the United split down the middle to try chomping down on my head from the back. My Shielding was the only thing keeping my head from being gobbled and if it weren’t for Body of Theseus, the pressure on my neck would have had me passing out in seconds.
The thing was stronger than me, was armored to the hells, and had massive resistance to my spells. Another quick cast of Shortcut confirmed that it stuck to me through the teleportation, and I couldn’t fly due to its sheer weight. I wasn’t anywhere close to matching Xim or Varrin for raw might, but I still had a 10,000 pound lift. It wasn’t even budging this guy an inch.
Despite all the exotic bullshit I’d survived, something as basic as a rear naked chokehold was uncomfortably close to taking me out.
Of course, my main job wasn’t to kill the enemy. It was to hold their attention, and in that regard I was absolutely dominating. A few seconds after I’d been reduced to a glorified chew toy, a group of tentacles that dwarfed my own swallowed me up. I was lifted with ease, along with the United on my back, and we were pulled into a dizzying spin as the Herculean feelers began to pry off the limbs holding me in place. I was unceremoniously dumped out onto the ground, catching myself and swinging around in time to see that Shog had tagged in to my wrestling match.
The c’thon was larger than the United, with many more limbs despite the creature’s six. His prey struggled and twisted, trying to wrangle the tentacles binding it like it had my arms, but it was a fruitless struggle. While Shog normally floated, he took the thing to ground and tumbled with it in his grip, twisting its legs into dangerous angles before rolling, using the floor to bend them until they screeched and snapped.
The floor shook beneath the superpowered grappling and I realized Shog was doing something to increase his own weight as well. It felt like a pair of boulders were engaged in a body slam competition, and Shog was coming out as the definite winner.
A few moments later, the United was letting out a pitiful rasp as all of its legs had been broken and torn off its body. Its carapace cracked as Shog twisted until the thing was wrung into pieces, molten blood splattering all across the tunnel. He shook his feelers out with enough force that the rapidly cooling material was jettisoned before it could harden. He lost some feathers with the move, but otherwise showed no wounds from the encounter.
“Thanks,” I said. My breaths were coming fast and heavy, mostly from adrenaline, although the full body tussle had taken a lot more exertion than I’d have expected despite its brevity. My stamina had even taken a small, but noticeable, hit.
Shog’s feelers undulated. “You are terrible at ground fighting.”
“I have one martial intrinsic, and it’s Blunt Weapons,” I replied. “Not exactly a grappling skill.”
“Depends on how you use your weapon,” said Varrin. The big guy was striding up the tunnel towards us, flicking away the cooling blood of the beetles from his armor. It came away with ease, despite making best efforts to turn into a substance harder than rock. This was partially because Varrin could probably flick a pebble into orbit and partially because his armor was immutable. It naturally resisted becoming soiled.
I, on the other hand, was scorched and dusty, with smoke wafting out from my armor in several places, one of which was my groin.
Before I let that distract me, I sent a psychic query to Nuralie. “Do we have any more incoming?”
“Not that I can see,” she answered. “Give me another minute.”
That done, I turned back to Varrin to get derailed by my smoldering crotch. “Can your undergarments withstand temperatures hot enough to melt steel?”
“Of course,” he answered easily. “They would be useless otherwise.”
I wasn’t sure if I agreed with that sentiment, but had to admit it was true in our current circumstances. “I’m gonna need you to send me those mana weave designs.”
“I could, but their temperature resistance has nothing to do with their durability weaves. They are made from salamander hide.”
I coughed. “Are you telling me that you wear leather undies?”
“As part of my combat loadout, yes.”
“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”
[The Banesilk used in our Zng combat suits would make for resilient, yet breathable briefs with little modification. I will have my underlings tailor a few pairs for you within the hour.]
“We’re not calling the artisans of Closetland your underlings.”
[Very well. I will have the… ‘help’ produce them.]
“Why can’t you just call them tailors?”
[Their skillset is too narrow to serve as qualified tailors. Do you want the briefs or not?]
“Yes, please,” I said, deciding that securing the goods was more important than questioning Grotto’s language for the moment. I did a quick check of my gear to see whether any other items had inappropriate tolerances for the current environment. My armor was holding up well, although some of the straps on my arming doublet were looking a little cooked. They should have been well up to the challenge, telling me that the heat produced by the United likely involved some magic shenanigans.
I frowned, but the best I could do for the moment was keep an eye on the wear. We didn’t have time to modify my gear, even if we somehow still had the element of surprise.
Nuralie’s psychic presence returned, and the report she gave us made it clear that what we’d just dealt with was only the warmup.
