Affirmations were called out from behind, and he heard Gwenvair call out sharply for another bucket. With the confirmation of Gwenvair’s attention to that detail, all thought to anything except combat vanished from his thoughts. He stepped up beside a young man, sweat pouring from him as he sent forth bolts of lightning into the beast tide below. Joe stopped beside him and looked out over the monsters, the beasts all the way almost to the wall and Joe grimaced. He stepped forward further to look down and found the wall of guards holding off the few number of beasts that made it to the line. The guards fought while behind them a massive number of skinners, butchers, and other various peoples pulled dead monster bodies behind the line and butchered the beasts.
Joe looked back to find the lightning throwing man shouting at him, waving him to the side. Joe nodded and quickly jogged back to the man’s side.
“Apologies. I am your replacement. You may stay if you wish, but I am ready to fight.”
The man seemed irritated, but nodded when he realized Joe was here to replace him, “I am grateful. I may at least stay to watch, if that is possible?”
Joe nodded, “Certainly. I have no concern if you choose to stay. Please let me know if you wish to coordinate attacks if you wish to fight as well.”
The man nodded, and Joe put him out of his mind, pulling the bucket towards the front so he could clear the monsters at the base of the wall first. Joe fired the first arrow and grimaced when he saw the monster didn’t die, snarling at the pain but continuing to fight with the guards below. What? Why didn’t…oooh! Mana infusion!
Joe grimaced, biting off a meaningless expletive. He paused a moment, considering what the best use of his mana would be, and decided that he might start with his mana points today, then swap out to regular mana infusions with… Hhmm… can I distract them again for a bit? They haven’t been distracted for the whole night… maybe I can get them again…
Joe considered his plan, putting his mana points as a useful option for later and focused first on if he could instigate infighting in the beasts again. Returning to his fight, he picked out a rather large cat creature and aimed for a delicate location, sinking an arrow into its haunch. It leapt up and snarled at the pain, twisting to protect it. Its attempt proved useless as it was caught in the crush of the main fight and it quickly snarled in anger at the beast beside it after it was bumped a few too many times. Nice… working again!
Joe then fired nonfatal arrows across his front, tangling the entire area up in a rush of beasts rabidly striking at each other. The pressure quickly slacked for his line of guards below, and Joe stepped forward, taking a look over the edge at the last two or three monsters that were pinging his monster sense. But when he looked over, he found two perfectly contained by the guards, the beasts downed and under control, with the third still struggling but finally put down by the strike of a burly guard with a long spear. Seeing the line below now controlled, he looked back up at his section and found things decently under control, and decided to help out those on either side, his arrows, manaless, striking out once again targeting tender locations on the monsters Joe thought most likely to lash out at those around them. It only took another five or ten minutes for him to shoot out another several dozen arrows on either side of his area and had the field once again roiling in beasts snarling and killing one another. He had a headache by the time he was done and worried that it would get worse if he was already tense from fighting.
He stared out across the field with tight eyes, then narrowed them when he noticed that the mana fields in and around the monsters had grown wild, disturbed by something. He found most of the disturbance around the monsters that were fighting so looked closer and quickly noticed that some of the monsters seemed to have some form of mana attacks, the claws shifting subtly or glowing in a way that wasn’t exactly natural. Joe frowned and picked out another high level predator and gave it a muscle twinge in its side.
It shrieked wildly, a hooting owl like sound which was very odd coming from a massive bodied four legged creature that had the basic body shape of an elephant with a rather long sinuous snake like neck with a bird like head, beak and all included. This had to be one of the strangest creatures Joe had ever seen and he chose it partly because of how bizarre it was but also because it didn’t look like it would really use its feet to attack. This meant Joe could watch the beak carefully as Joe wasn’t certain how else it could attack.
A few moments later, a creature on its right slapped against the arrow and the owl giraffe elephant thing replied wildly with rage. Expecting a peck like a wood pecker or other bird creature pecking for food, Joe was completely shocked to see the thing whip its snake like head around and absolutely slice the offending creature’s back with a long scouring rip along its back. Joe frowned and looked closer. There’s… something… It reared back again, and Joe focused intently on the beak, this time able to catch it easier as it did do the peck he’d expected it, the beak slamming down into the spine of the creature.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
As the head whipped forward, Joe’s eyebrows knit tighter in concentration before quickly relaxing with understanding. Oooh… infusion. The thing is infusing its beak. That… OK. Gwenvair said that in the dungeon… that would make sense if… Joe blinked in shock when another pecking slam buried the beak into the enemy this time and it curled up and died shrieking in pain. Yup… infusion. A lot like mine.
Joe began looking around the brawling monsters with a more informed eye and quickly began to notice the creatures that were dying with infusion. It hadn’t really clicked yesterday, what with hundreds of creatures all brawling and dying, most under the feet of other brawling beasts. But today, he could catch the telltale arch of a back, the fetal collapse of an infused strike, and the flinch of too much pain for too little of a strike.
Joe followed the fights a bit more, eyes scouring the monsters and quickly noticed that not all the monsters did fight with infusion, but it seemed that the ones that did were the ones that mostly won, their strikes much more deadly since they caused crippling pain even with a simple scratch. Killing was easy after that when the opponent was curled up in a fetal position in pain.
The monsters that didn’t infuse would do a lot of damage, but what usually happened was that the infusing monsters tore through the beasts around them until they met one another and then the one that had been hurt the most often was taken out by the nearest healthiest infusing monster. Huh… that makes it easy… look for the ones that infuse. They take out most of the monsters. Joe grinned at the thought then frowned when he realized that he had absolutely no idea which monster to even pick based on that criteria. He sighed with a frown and decided that it was an interesting piece of information, but not something exactly useful for now. But… maybe tell Kukurnal? The Matriarch? So they can plan and do things? Might be a good idea…
Joe looked on for a bit before returning and taking the moment to rest a bit. He made sure to keep an eye on things, but with the monsters preoccupied, he was able to focus a bit on what had been going on around him. He found that another bucket had been found for him, and he nodded, grateful. He also saw the rope was back, and Joe made sure to grab it and tie himself after measuring the distance to the wall. He then stepped back to his arrow bucket and looked out over the field of monsters. He did notice, as he did all this, the man he’d replaced was still standing there, looking on at everything.
“Well. I didn’t introduce myself before, but I’m Joe McConnell.”
“Ah.. uh… I am Galler of Clan Galgandar.”
Joe nodded his head, a half bow, “Good to meet you. Was the night OK?”
Galler offered a deeper bow in reply, “Yes, although not as well defended as you are doing.”
Joe shrugged, “I am not doing much. Mostly it is the beasts doing it to themselves.”
Joe kept an eye on the beasts while he spoke, not really looking at Galler but maintained a polite conversation.
“I have rarely seen beasts do this.”
Joe blinked in surprise at that, breaking his survey of the field to look over at Galler, “Really? Huh… that’s interesting.”
Joe really wanted to dig deeper, but considering they were in the middle of a massive battle, he didn’t feel he had the mental capacity to devote to it, dismissing it but making a note of it that he hoped to be able to think of later. When he turned back to look on the field, he heard a person walking up on him to his left and glanced over, seeing the Matriarch joining him.
“You return… as strongly as you did yesterday.”
Joe shrugged, chuckling, “Matriarch. It is good to see you again.”
She bowed but didn’t really say much, turning away to look out on the field of ravening monsters, “Good to see you as well. This break is… enjoyable.”
Joe nodded, “Though… it’s not likely to last long.”
The Matriarch glanced at him, and Joe saw the question in her eyes, replying, “Hmm… yesterday, someone… something? Something took command of the beasts and drove them forward. They will likely do so again to save their strength and not waste so much of their strength to infighting.”
“Yes. The tide master is Guiding the monsters” the Matriarch nodded firmly, staring at Joe.
Joe nodded, some concern on his face, “Yes… that should be obvious, especially with how the beasts acted yesterday. Is this normal for a beast tide? Monsters of all kinds attacking a city together?”
The Matriarch nodded, slowly, but certain, “Yes. The only unusual thing in this tide is your ability to control so many of them.”
Joe shook his head, “I am not controlling them. Nothing is really controlling them right now… thus the reason why their beast nature is revealed and they fight amongst themselves. But even that, it is unusual for many of these beasts to stand with beasts that would naturally eat them… so something is guiding the beasts to attack the city. You don’t see herbivores and carnivores… uh… a deer, rabbit, or cow fighting by the side of wolves, tigers, bears, and lions.”
The Matriarch stared at him for a bit before replying, “So you are not controlling them now?”
Joe looked out at where the Matriarch was pointing and shook his head, then waffled, “No… well… I guess if you mean much the same way a parent can control their child by simply forcing certain actions… like a mother controlling their child’s food by only offering specific foods to the child, then yes. But if you mean some kind of magical control, then no. They fight amongst themselves only because I have taunted them using natural means… uh, pain, to fight amongst themselves.”
“Hmm,” the Matriarch replied with some disbelief.
“I really haven’t done anything magical, Matriarch,” Joe replied honestly.
* * *