CHAPTER 18
SHOCK AND AWE
Lucas and Korah followed the direction the Clan Hunters had come from, keeping a low profile. They had only just set out when a thunderous crack had them to spin back around, weapons drawn. Two tall but slender pines were crashing to the ground, snapped like matchsticks by the Brawler’s Scythes as it barrelled through the forest to catch up. Before making it half way, it hit another cluster of trees too dense for its immense frame. Lucas winced as another crack resounded and the trees came crashing down.
It probably could have tried to manoeuvre around them, but it seemed to enjoy flexing its incredible strength.
“So much for stealth,” Lucas said, putting his dagger back into his Inventory.
“If the rest of the Clan hear us coming, will they run for it?” He asked Korah, trying to talk over the sound of the Brawler demolishing a path through the forest.
“They will probably try to hide unless we stumble directly into their camp. The forest does have some very large creatures and the Clan have been living among them since the dawn of time. They are clever about how they disguise their camps and they avoid conflict when possible.” Korah responded.
“Let’s go slowly then. The Scouts will find them if they have time to scan the area. If Brawler’s racket sends them all running back to their camp then we will have them all in one place.” Lucas said. Setting off again at a casual pace.
“That’s his name? Brawler?”
“Yea.”
“I like it.”
The little green dots representing the Scouts were crisscrossing the terrain ahead on Lucas Map. If he was still, the Scouts fanned out in a wide ring around his position. But while their Broodlord was on the move, they prioritised scanning the area he was moving into. This allowed Lucas to create a concentrated search field directly in front of him when he moved. Brawler picked up on the mood of his Broodlord and began to move more carefully. It still barged noisily through anything too small to hinder it, but refrained from outright deforestation when trees got in its path. It wasn't long before the Scouts picked up something. A tightly packed cluster of red dots appeared at the outermost point of their scouting range.
“Looks like we found them.” Lucas said, holding up a hand.
“How do you want to handle this one?” Korah inquired.
“Well, we have a lot of raw power on our side, so we could go ‘shock and awe’. How about this; we send Brawler in to wreak havoc. The chaos should create cover for us to get a read on the situation and pick our targets. Making a surprise entrance with that ‘Looming Wrath of Angry Gods’ trick might end the fight if Brawler gets to attack with impunity while they are all freaking out.”
“Looming wrath of.. What?” Korah said laughing.
“You know what I'm talking about.”
“Ok, sounds like a good plan to me,” Korah said, still smiling as she hefted her axe.
Lucas paused for Brawler to catch up. Something in his Aura made it clear enough what was going on, and Brawler’s Aura hummed with excitement. Feeling confident that the spider understood this was a hunting mission and not a murdering one, he pointed forwards and said “Charge!”
Brawler’s lumbering gait transformed into a barrelling headlong run, eight thick legs began to sound like rolling thunder as they built momentum. Lucas and Korah ran to keep up. The shattering and falling of trees made it feel like the world was crashing down around them.
Lucas and Korah struggled to keep up as Brawler burst out of the tree line into a clearing. There, arranged in a crescent formation was a group of Clan with spears at the ready. The idea of standing up to Brawler's charge with flint spears was laughable, but the tattoos began shifting on their skin. Brawler’s racket had given them all the time they needed to arrange a surprise for whatever burst into the clearing.
One of the Clan started screaming and a stream of flame erupted from his outstretched hands. The fire was white hot and struck Brawler directly in the face. Lucas’ eyes snapped shut reflexively, but it still scorched after images across his vision. It was so hot that Lucas was sure Brawler would boil from the inside within seconds, but nothing was going to stop its momentum at this point.
Unable or unwilling to move, the Clan warrior continuing to scream and spout white hot fire until impact. It was cut off abruptly by a Scythe strike carrying tons of momentum, sweeping low into the Clan warriors. Two spear wielders stood their ground, bracing their spears to protect the flame wielder, but most of them had the sense to dive out of the way before impact. Brawler came in like it was harvesting wheat, cleaving through the legs of all three. Torsos spun in the air like bloody pinwheels and half a dozen legs scattered like bowling pins. Brawler leaped and spun, turning mid air and bracing its legs to skid to a halt. Its face was cracked and bleeding, charred black, but a familiar blue-green energy was flooding its Aura and Lucas knew the damage would heal soon.
Five more Clan had fanned out around it. They tried closing in from different directions to shove spears between its plate joints, but Lucas had designed it for this moment. With shocking alacrity, Brawler launched himself suddenly forwards. The scythes fanned outwards in two wide arks. This created an area of impact that was impossible to get out of with so little warning. To Lucas’s great appreciation, Brawler struck with the blunt side of his Scythes. Even without the blades it was still an immense impact, cracking spears, limbs, and ribs alike as two more Clan were sent sprawling over the clearing. The remaining Clan were backing away, terror gripping their Auras. Two of them began muttering a guttural chant simultaneously while the other placed himself in front, shaking with fear but refusing to give ground.
Korah and Lucas made it to the fight, but nobody was paying any attention to them. The remaining Clan were fixated on the monster that had laid waste to their comrades in less than ten seconds. Korah was faster than Lucas, and had almost reached them. Brawler launched forward again, the brave Clan warrior who stood alone was pummelled into the ground. Korah shoulder charged into one of the Clan chanting up a spell, activating Empower at the last second to send him rag-dolling across the clearing. To the other she delivered an open palm slap to the side of the head that flattened him immediately.
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Korah and Lucas gathered the various dismembered or knocked out Clan into the centre of the clearing. Korah clobbered the senses out of the ones that were moving, and Lucas used the healing Nexus on the ones that were bleeding out, sealing the stumps of their legs with scar tissue. Brawler was trotting in laps around the area clearly impressed with itself. Lucas stopped it long enough to investigate the burn wounds, which had healed over with minimal scarring. He thanked it for a good fight with a slap on the flank, then let it get back to its noisy celebration.
Lucas checked his Map, and was shocked to see a cluster of red dots close by being watched by a Scout. With the Map glued to the top corner of his perspective he walked over to the place it indicated. He couldn't see his Scout, or the enemy. After looking around blankly for a while, Lucas began searching for entrances to a tunnel. Having figured out the ploy, it didn't take him long to find a hole just large enough for a grown man.
Rather than go in himself, he closed his eyes and used his Map to Scry with the Scout already in the tunnel. Through the strange colourscape of spider vision, Lucas saw a number of figures huddling in the darkness. Their Aura’s were shot through with terror. Mothers gripping their children's mouths, desperately trying to prevent them from making a sound. After a moment he withdrew his perspective and walked back to Korah.
“There is a group of women and young children in a tunnel underneath us.”
“What do you want to do with them?” Korah asked, her Aura taking on a hesitant quality.
“I don't want to kill them. But I made a promise, a promise that I would do whatever it took to win.”
“I understand,” She said, her voice and Aura solemn. “When you killed that girl, you were weak and did not have a choice. You have power now so maybe you do have a choice. Maybe you can afford to be kind. It is your decision, but how much would their weak little bodies give you anyway?”
Lucas nodded. “Yea, let them live.”
Korah smiled, clearly relieved.
He was going to add that it would also help to keep the population sustainable for future use, but felt somehow that she wouldn't appreciate that point. She was giving him a quizzical eyebrow anyway, possibly at the mere thought showing in his Aura, so he moved the conversation on before she said anything.
“These guys however,” He said, gesturing to the Clan and their scattered limbs. “they are contenders. Their strength will give us the power we need.”
Brawler did still possess the fangs and paralytic venom of the Cave Arachs, though its fangs were very small compared to its body now. They were useless in combat, but it was enough to allow Brawler to inject each Clan warrior with enough venom to keep them still.
“I have some work to do in my Nexus before we harvest these.” Lucas said, looking around for a comfortable spot to sit.
“Can you let me know if the Combat Spiders return?” Korah nodded, so he got out his Nexus and a handful of eggs. Sitting against the trunk of a tree, he extended his consciousness into the design interface.
This was likely the last big influx of Mana he was going to get before Caleb reached them, so he had to make the most of it. That meant digging a hole. Thankfully, the Deep Arach body plan was perfect for the task, and not far from the Cave Arachs in terms of speciation. That made the whole body plan easy to access from default templates without Lucas needing to try and create it from scratch. Its behaviour would differ significantly from a Cave Arach so it was unlikely to coordinate well with the others in a fight, but he only needed one. He granted The Deep Arach the Map ability, but not Stealth. It cost him only 6 Mana to hatch, an investment that was sure to pay off if the rest of his sacrifices could be done in a deep pit that focused the Mana released.
One dead Clan Warrior later a Deep Arach rolled out of its egg, looking to Lucas for direction.
“Dig!” Lucas said, getting down himself to start digging up handfuls of the soft earth.
‘Digger’ immediately started digging a hole on the spot. Its front two legs had large shields built into them, which turned out to be great shovels.
Great swathes of earth were being tossed out of the quickly deepening hole as Lucas looked on in amazement. Soon the hole was too deep for simply tossing the dirt out. Not to be slowed down, Digger began fitting his shield plates together in front to form a kind of spider powered wheelbarrow. The first of the Combat Spider hunting party returned while Lucas and Korah watched the spider digging. It was dragging something that looked like a large deer, except it had sharp teeth and a huge talon extending from the back of each hoof.
When the hole was about three metres deep and two wide, Lucas called a halt to the digging. They dragged the paralysed Clan Warriors over and tipped them into the pit. Combat Spider followed their lead and did the same with its deer, then scampered off to try and get hold of another prize.
Lucas sat at the edge of the pit and took out his Brood Nexus, projecting his awareness into its patterns. He had spent some time considering what might be the optimal composition for his forces. Between Brawler and Korah their heavy front line forces were looking strong. The Scouts remained sufficient to their intelligence needs. He would love to make a ‘Spy’ class that could be sent on long distance infiltration missions, but left that for another time.
What he needed now was to win the coming fight. The Combat Spiders provided the most killing power per point of Mana spent. If he was going to make a large number of them, he needed to start laying the groundwork for coordinating large forces, so he granted the Combat Spider template the Map skill. That increased their cost from 6 to 7. He experimented with increasing their size further, but the Mana cost reached 8 before he could make a significant difference, so he reverted it. They were already large enough to take on a human fighter, and keeping their cost down allowed him to produce larger numbers.
He withdrew himself from the Nexus just in time to hear Korah yelling, “Yaaaahhh.”
Leaping to his feet, Lucas withdrew his dagger from his inventory, only to slowly put it away again when he realised what was going on. Korah and Brawler were pushing against each other trying to drive each other back with raw strength. Korah had her hands on the blunt sides of Brawler’s scythes, her feet braced into the earth and her body glowing with her Empower skill.
Lucas knew from their character sheets that when Korah used Empower they both would have 8 Strength, but Korah also had to push against several tones of spider. Brawler could also brace multiple legs into the ground while it inched forward with one at a time. Korah was steadily getting pushed back, though she raged against it. Lucas stayed to watch, bemused, until Korah’s Empower ran out and she leaped back.
“Ok ok you win,” she said, breathing hard with a big smile on her face. Brawler proceeded to prance around in circles with its Scythes in the air.