Corvayne's spear was out before the body finished it's arc, trailing blood. He took a glance at the battlefield.
"It's in the ground! Move to the bridge! GO!"
He switched weapons in his mind, spear vanishing as he shuffled his collar into storage off his neck then back into his hand. He activated [Cross Skill: Grand Slam] downwards while the rest of the extra gravity out of the weapon as he could then on the downswing adding as much as possible, turning it into a handheld meteor. The ground broke and there was a pop as the wave of force kicked up dust as it ran up hills.
He could see something struggling underground a moment and so ran backwards towards the bridge, switching weapons and placing the collar in his hidden storage ring as he moved to the foot of the wood bridge over the ditch.
As he guessed, the monster had some sort of unburrowing attack, in an instant unfurling multiple black and white claws and taking a bit of boot before Corvayne sprang into the air, then forced a [Leap Strike] back down, only hitting loose dirt it had churned.
That was fine, Corvayne had also thrown a link.
“Bayou or anyone else, do you have something that can tell us how many there are?” He planted his feet on solid ground and felt the thing jerking like a fish on a string, darting in and out as it swam through the ground. Every now and then it would skim the surface, toppling one of the dusty shrubs. There was also wind picking up as the storm rolled in. Corvayne felt a vibration from a second monster and sensed it's hostile intent before it burst out of the ground.
He pivoted and used Juxtapose to pull the thing out of the ground, drawing a wiggling array of dirty fur and claws out of it's burrow. It smelled musty like a sock left in the rain, and the air around Corvayne was steamy. The monster looked like a cow stretched out and given weasel like features. It's hind legs were thrashing as it started burying itself. Corvayne strode forward and used [Cross Skill: Back Biter] causing his spear to expand into a black crystal mouth with jagged serrated teeth before he plunged it into the monster.
A huge hole opened on one of it's legs, but it's other leg pushed it into a new hole and it dove as the boss he had linked to rushed at Corvayne, leaping out of the ground with a razor sharp array of jaws and claws all spinning and snapping.
[[Understanding]] told him this thing was 'Big Ouch' and was a named Prairie Dire Wolf. Corvayne stopped himself from rolling forward and instead leapt back with gravity. He could see shredding claws rotating around the thing like some sort of impossible spring. It hit part of the wood bridge with a crunch and the structure wilted but didn't drop the people on it.
Bayou spoke up. “I can't charm it! But the rain could help, most burrowing monsters can't breath mud!”
Little Spur jumped off the bridge. “Brother, I can sense there are at least four of these, not including the big one who evades my senses.” His voice lowered. “Is your helper not here?”
[[Unity]] gave him a bunch of responses that suggested trouble. Someone else had made a move while he was away. “We are not the only ones getting attacked. She's doing what I'd want, which is to focus on keeping my family safe.” He sent the concept into his bond then focused on what his unity links told him about his enemies. The main one, he felt, had some aspect of sport about attacking them, though it wanted to eat them too.
One of the monsters made a move for Little Spur, who used his shovel to create a huge hole with a technique Corvayne thought of as [Dig]. The mole burst into a patch of open air and tried to dive, and Little Spur thrust his shovel down and drew blood, then was flicked the other direction as the monster basically used the shovel like a lever.
Corvayne used [Flows Like Water] to position himself between his ally and Big Ouch to once again slam the ground with his gravity enhanced collar, giving Little Spur a chance to get to his feet.
The shovel had not broken, which was a testament to how seriously the sect took things Corvayne had thought was just busywork like digging holes or shoveling shit. Still, Spur looked annoyed.
“I need a better tool!”
“Just aim to bleed and deal with the small fry and protect the bridge, I'm going to try to get the big one.”
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One of the other Cowtivators had a hammer and had moved to the other side of the bridge, and was producing ghostly spikes and hammering them into the ground. Bayou responded by creating a lasso and using it to reinforce the bridge itself. One of the Prairie Dire Wolves jumped, it's bucktooth going supersonic as it tried to hit the stake-driver. Little Spur flew into it, shovel making a wonderful metallic clang as it sent the creature flying into the ditch instead of mulching the bridge and everyone on it.
Corvayne felt danger and the boss on either side, so he stepped forward then used Juxtapose to throw Big Ouch in the way of his minion, crunching and clanging noises like when a stray bolt fell into a bandsaw and started bouncing around, than a snarl as the the bigger monster ripped the other apart, the heat from the brief clash of metallic claws causing parts of the meat to get cooked as the bigger monster dove back into the ground.
It smelled life beef. He hadn't had anything besides spiritual grits since getting captured. He used his spear to skewer a piece of cooked rodent and it tasted excellent. Mister I would have been proud, and he could feel the big monster was pissed.
Spur shouted and Corvayne lept as one of the monsters he wasn't tracking tried to take his legs off, then he used gravity control and his spear to try to hit the ground where he thought the monster was with [Leap Strike].
“Stop doing that your shaking the damn bridge!” Bayou called out. She stumbled a little and Corvayne saw her jade tablet tumble out of her pack. She bent over and the plate start to fall between planks on the bridge. She dove for it, and Corvayne could see the ground bulging under the bridge.
Corvayne's other moves would be too slow. He used [Juxtapose] to swap with Bayou. He tucked himself into a ball and used [[Vitality]] and lowered his gravity as much as possible. A moment later he was rocketed into the sky, one of his legs mangled into uselessness just from a moment of touching the monsters deadly claws. He fell back down to the ground and could feel tremors of his enemies honing in on him now that he was far from the bridge and alone.
“Shit.” He slammed his spear into the ground, feeling the drain as he kept himself at low gravity as well as a painful jolt from his mangled leg. The spear did what he wanted, shoot him away from a spot where the monsters convened, their claws churning a bus-sized chunk of dirt where he had just been. The boss, on the other hand, was moving to try to guess where he was going to land.
It was a few feet off, but it managed to clip him with a spinning claw and pull part of his ribcage open for a moment and send him flying, blood leaking for a moment before [[Vitality]] started pulling him back together. He used his spear to bounce once more, avoiding another furious drill dive.
It was fast enough to keep guessing where he was going to land, this time overshooting a little. Corvayne thought about going closer to the bridge, then changed his mind. He pushed himself towards a small hill.
His next bounce the monster threw a rock at him, clipping him in the head. He slapped his spear on the ground as soon as he hit, barely getting out of the way from the drill. He used [[Cross Skill: Back Biter]] but the monster made it impossible to hit what the system considered its back, and instead he was flung upwards. He used gravity to get back to the ground a little quicker, then angled himself towards the mound before pulling out his neck piece and pulling every bit of weight into it before storing it again and leaping.
Instead of a fifty or a hundred feet, he went flying into the sky.
“Lets see if I can use the same trick twice.”
Using unity as his guide, he switched to his neck and activated [Cross Skill: Orbital Bombardment], throwing ten copies of the collar down at the mound as the monster surfaced. There was an explosion of dirt as each one hit weighing as much as a mountain, but Corvayne could feel the monster recoil after the first strike, take some damage from two more, then go deep. However, it was still waiting right where Corvayne was falling.
“It knows where I am huh?”
His weapon was starting to drag him downwards, it's upwards momentum while being pulled out of his ring now turning into gravity's rainbow.
He equalized his gravity with the blue loop, and dropped with it, turning and giving his collar a gentle nudge to get them a few feet apart. The boss was starting to surface, no doubt to strike a final blow against him. Corvayne's idea was going to hurt, but it was the best way to be sure he really got 'Big Ouch' or whatever the overgrown cow-rodent-drill was called.
As the ground rushed up and he felt the boss surge at him, Corvayne at the last moment pulled his spear out and used [Cross Skill: Juxtapose] while dumping all his gravity into the collar. He tapped it with the tip of his spear as what looked like a thousand claws and maws opened up, the monster under him using some sort of monster weapon skill.
Corvayne hit the dirt and bounced, which was still like getting clubbed by a planet given the speed he was going, but he could feel the link with the monster shatter as his prison collar fell through it like a bowling ball through jello, splattering Corvayne with bits of monster and claws and fur as the thing was spinning at thousands of RPMs, flinging itself out like something pulled from the worst sort of shop safety videos that Spaces-Torn-Asunder watched during breaks.
The things death embedded a few parts that were either teeth or claws into him, but at the same time Corvayne felt a rush of power from the monster. He had to drop gravity as he bounced into the ground again, the strain from staying in [[Vitality]] the entire time starting to cause sloshing and hinting that he was near another blowout. He rolled downhill and felt tremors as the two remaining monsters honed in on him.
He tried to stand and was reminded not only had he mangled his leg, but his other foot had broken at some point from landing at terminal velocity. He could stand, but there was nothing left in the tank to help him jump as piles of dirt came flying at him. He landed on his butt and braced his spear as best he could to hopefully impale one. He could hear the whirl of claws as the moved to the surface, twin blenders a few seconds from turning him into pieces of meat just like he had done to their fellows.
He couldn't quite process what happened as a bright yellow line slammed into the ground, dimming his vision as the bar outshone everything. There was a clap like thunder, then the ground erupted into lava, a wall of liquid rock flinging two spinning burning monsters against the dark sky, screaming as they were flung over Corvayne and landed in a cloud of dust and embers.
Looking back, he saw a tall alien woman, skin a throbbing glowing green camo pattern from both leaves growing out of her then dying and her own pigment announcing that she was in extreme pain, threaded with hints of gold suggested triumph. Instead of clothes, she was trailing bloody vines and what looked like bed sheets and part of a medical tent. Instead of titillated, Corvayne had a feeling of Deja Vu looking at her. That and appreciation for her coming through for him, admiration for seeing a move she hadn't used before, and pure joy to see one of his family again, probably to an embarrassing degree through [[Unity]].
Lady Blood Claw smiled for a moment, no doubt feeling what he was as she lifted her chin. “Saved your ass.”
Then she fell over from blood loss.