33.

The fort was an utter mess. We had marched out after just a few hours of rest, healing draughts having been liberally used. Most of our group was exhausted, black rings around their eyes. Recent points from leveling had been put into endurance just so they could stay on their feet. All so we could make it to the rendezvous point in time to launch our coordinated attack with Dan’s teams. The fort in question that we were going to assault lay in a pile of broken stone. A giant tortoise looked to have been the primary culprit in the destruction.

I was having a hard time gauging the creature's size, half of it being lost underneath the black, oily stone of the collapsed walls. Dead spiders were littered around and on it. It looked like they had tried to swarm the creature and had paid the price in blood. A single leg was visible, long as a big rig trailer, blue-green skin covered in hundreds of small wounds.

All around the fort were the remnants of the fight. The smell of burnt stone and ozone clungto the salty air enough to make me wince. Last night's fight hadn’t been talked about, but I had seen a few people looking at me and snickering. Surviving that attack had been impressive, my regeneration miraculous but, I had still ended up naked and that was enough to cause giggle fits whenever I walked by. Miguel was sticking close to Mia and Lisa, the three of them chortling every time I saw them. Miguel was infatuated with the two girls, who couldn’t be more than a few years older than him. I had a feeling he was using my embarrassing episode to hang out with them. Traitor.

“You think you could have killed it?” I throw out to Luke. He had been attached to my hip since the fight, his emerald eyes sparkling with curiosity as he looked at me. There was something quietly terrifying about having his undivided attention. The huge power boost and then surviving the lightning elemental had been enough to have him glue himself to me.

“Maybe. Matters how tough the skin is. Tools might break if it’s constitution is too high.”

“I don’t think it’s a constitution based monster. Look at the wounds, they're already clotting. It couldn’t have died more than a few hours into the fight. I’m willing to bet it’s vitality based. Huge health pool.”

“Sure it’s not strength? It bashed in the walls of their fort.”

“It might be, but once we cut it up, I’m betting it has the biggest vitality heart we’ve ever seen inside of it.”

“What are you willing to bet?”

“If I’m right, you’ll spar me.” I laid my trap with deceptive ease. Luke had loosened up over the last day and night. My display of power somehow made sense to him, making me a real person in his eyes. An equal, someone he wanted to fight. He wanted to test himself, I knew it because that desire rested in my own heart. The frustration of last night's battle still lingered, the ease in which I had dispatched my foes. The lack of the challenge. If I was this irritated with it, being relatively new to my strength, how must Luke feel?

“If you’re wrong, I want a spar as well,” there was a smugness to his voice, as if he didn’t know he had just signed his death certificate. I had watched him first hand, there was no way I would allow him to grow to his potential. Already he was growing too fast and strong. I didn’t know if my tentative plan would work.

“Deal.” I stuck out my hand and he shook it, a faint smile haunting his face. It was the only time I had seen even the faintest glimmer of happiness without bloodshed being involved.

“Should we wait for Dan, or go down and see if there are any survivors in that mess?”

“Fuck Dan,” Luke drawled as he started toward the fort. We were on a small hill, barely more than a lump of earth that gave the faintest hints of being higher than its surroundings. Just enough of a height that it was a gentle walk down toward the ruined fort. It took only minutes, the long prairie grass brushing against our legs as we crept closer. The sprawled turtle was growing larger and larger, its body soon taking up most of our vision.

Luke was moving forward with a nonchalance, the rest of the team far behind us and looking at the corpse nervously. I couldn’t blame them, it was the biggest thing I had ever seen. It was hard to make an estimate how tall it would be if it was standing and not laying through a wall, but I had to guess it would be nearly twenty feet tall. Luke was jumping over scattered rocks, spear held loosely in his hand, as I looked at the dead monster more closely.

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Something was off about it. The size and stillness of it was throwing me off. The corpses of the dead were piled up in mounds around its legs, fishmen and bugs intermingled in a pile of carnage. Blood pulsed slowly from the cuts on its legs, slowly coating all of the dead beneath it. Wait. Pulsing? I stopped and stared, eyes locked on the longest and deepest cut on its exposed leg.

Blood trickled slowly, rolling down in head size drop of crimson. Then, a new wave gently bubbled up and over the cut. Five seconds later, another wave of blood. The damn thing was still alive and Luke was only feet away from it. I could leave him here to the beast, let them fight and kill each other hopefully. There were too many witnesses though, I couldn’t be seen as cowardly. Also, what if he managed to kill it? It had to be worth enough to gain levels. I couldn’t let Luke keep pulling ahead of me now that my stats were too high to use mana hearts on and my leveling would be slowing. All of this flowed through my mind in the time it took to blink my eyes. A blessing of higher intelligence.

“LUKE! IT'S ALIVE!” I roared at him as I started to scrabble backwards. If he died in collapsing rubble, well that would be just so tragic.

Luke bounded away in an explosion of sandy soil. The great monster groaned, its exhalation sounding like the trumpeting cry of an elephant. Enormous legs bent, gathering underneath it, crushing bodies into paste in the process. It leveraged itself up, rock sliding off its leathery brown shell to fall in a cascade of obsidian stone. It rose and rose and rose, towering above the edges of the remaining walls of the fort. My estimates of its height were wildly off. It was at least thirty five feet tall. Maybe forty.

Ponderously it began to turn, it’s broad shoulders demolishing much of the remaining wall. Its head finally revealed. A long craggy beak of tan, hooked and cruel, it looked like it could snap stone with ease. Pitiless black orbs, ridiculously small for its size, were on the side of its triangular head. It snorted, nostrils flaring, creating a gust of wind that swept over the plain, flattening the grass and sending some of the lower leveled fighters stumbling.

There was no way in hell we were going to fight this thing. I turned and started to run back, quickly reaching the top of the hill we had just left minutes ago. I outpaced everyone aside from Miguel, and watched in mounting horror as the giant started to follow us. Each step an earthquake, stealing sure footing from our people as they tried to race away. The turtle was slow, but each stride was thirty or forty feet. Then I heard the laugh, barely audible over the walking cataclysm.

Luke was racing up its leg. Which was insane. How can you run up a leg? He was doing it though, hand over hand, his fingers grabbing at torn skin and using that to fling himself up and up. He was certifiably insane. Who did that? I started back down the hill, heart beating a drumbeat of war in my chest. When did I become like this? Had I always been an idiot?

I sprinted past my fleeing people, abandoning my shield in the grass. It would be useless against this. My spear I kept in one hand as I started to really push my dexterity stat. The ground blurred around me, my heightened perception and intelligence allowing me to move at a full sprint without careening into a hole or off of one of the staggered retreating warriors. Would I have to use my mana to kill it, or would a strategically placed eight foot long infused spear be enough?

Its foot landed only feet away from me. Thick dusty toenails dug into the earth as it flattened the sandy soil. The lurch of the world threw me up into the air, losing control for just a moment as I fell against its hot appendage. The thing was a furnace, boiling hot against the cold of the North Sea Region. I leapt up, using all my newfound strength to throw myself.

A third of the way up its leg I flew, just as gravity started to reassert its dominance, I lashed out with my spear. The blade bit easily, sinking in two feet with little problem. My descent halted before it could begin, I held myself there, dangling with one hand ten feet above the ground as the turtle huffed in annoyance again. A laugh was burbling up as I wiggled my way closer to the trunk of the leg, grabbing the thick leathery skin. Searing heat burned my palms, but compared to what the elementals had unleashed on me last night, it was gentle.

The spiders and wasps that had defended their fort had left the legs of the turtle a veritable sea of wounds. It was easy to find the next one to use as a grip, my boots finding purchase quickly as I started to haul myself up. Right hand holding my spear, choked half way up to, stab above my head. Haul up and use my left hand to wedge into an open wound before scrunching my legs up behind me. Rinse and repeat.

I lost track of time as I climbed up the great leg, minutes maybe or possibly it was hours. It definitely wasn’t hours, but my brain wasn’t working properly at the moment. The rush of endorphins and general lack of sleep were causing severe issues.

It’s leathery shell appeared above me and I grasped it with my blood slicked left hand and started to climb it. The shell had no wounds to use and it was too tough to stab, but the texture and ridges of it allowed me to slowly inchworm my way up. Finally, the climb stopped as I reached the top of its rounded shell and I gingerly stood up to look down on the world.

Air whistled around me, the scattered remnants of my people little more than dots as they raced around and away from the lumbering giant. To the South, I could see Dan and his people, clustered around in defensive formation just watching as the turtle bumbled around ineffectively chasing my people. Luke was in front of me some feet, staring at me with a wide deranged smile.

“I knew you were like me!” Luke shouted over the wind of our passage.

“Like you how?”

“You feel alive here! For the first time! In the fight, when life and death are balanced out. When the blood is flowing and the dead are falling and you stand supreme!”

That was almost poetic. Had I underestimated Luke? I thought he was just a muscle headed idiot.

“Yes!” I let him know the truth. I finally did feel alive. The false trappings of modern life were gone. I didn’t have to hide who I was, didn’t have to keep that murderous intent locked down in fear of how I would be treated. I could let it out and finally be free.