Leonidas braced himself with a low guard when the Hive Tyrant charged, and mentally schooled himself to not flinch away with the immense, fifteen foot tall creature bearing down on him. His warplate’s sabatons seemed firm enough on the sand, which was mercifully compacted, and he waited as long as he dared for the immense monster to close distance—and then dived forward and to the left.
A scything claw whined through the air where he’d been only seconds earlier, and Leonidas came up from his roll with a ruffle of his hair from the overpassing appendage, and the wind force that followed it.
Leonidas attacked immediately when he came up from the combat dive, and sliced his [Archon’s Psiblade] in an arcing upward slash against the second-last of the Arachnid’s six immense bone-like legs on its right side.
When the sword impacted the protective chitin over the limb, it clanged off like the plating were made of stone, and Leonidas cursed under his breath at the vibrating shock of the impact. He’d suspected that the sword wouldn’t penetrate the chitin, but he had needed to be sure.
The Hive Tyrant was already turning by the time his blade ricocheted, and Leonidas chose discretion over valor in that moment.
He ran.
His legs carried him as far away from the Hive Tyrant as possible, as fast as possible. That was no more than perhaps fifteen miles an hour at best, which was already pushing the upper limits of what his effectively unmodified ‘peak’ human physique could output. On Elatra, 15MPH had been a light jog with his Hero’s body—but he’d clearly lost those benefits with his transmigration back to post-Incursion Terra.
Behind him, the Hive Tyrant trumpeted its fury to the skies and skittered after him with a tremble of the sand underfoot, its scythe-like pincers snapping together with audible clack-clack sounds of aggravation.
Leonidas chanced a glance over his shoulder, and cursed when he saw the massive arachnid steadily gaining on him. It wasn’t much faster than he was, which was a relief, but it traversed the sand with far greater dexterity. He momentarily wondered how in the hell a creature its size even remained above the sea of granules, but shelved the thought almost in the same moment.
He could analyze the physics of it after he avoided becoming lunch.
The crowd in the Arena above was screaming in approval of the match, with a fair few ‘boo’ noises mixed in for his running, and Leonidas almost laughed in derision.
Were it not for his Battle Meditation, the ambient noise might have distracted him. As it was, he was already trying to balance the growing force of his [Cataclysm Core] with his awareness of its effects, and the Battle Meditation steadying his mind.
Leonidas glanced to his right toward the ascending plane of the nearby sand dune, and then to his left toward a slight decline and consistently flatter plane of sand. In theory, the left was the best option—but that was a trap, he knew immediately. It seemed like the easier locale to fight in, but he’d be trapping himself against the arena wall eventually, and at that point he’d be no more capable of surviving than the goblin that had tried to flee to the portcullis.
Instead, he veered sharply to the right and with a thought, he did something perhaps slightly insane: he sprinted for the top of the dune with every iota of his strength and agility, and prepared to jump.
The moment he crested the sandy rise, and just before the Hive Tyrant could catch him; Leonidas launched himself off of the top of the dune and wind milled his arms at the surprising seconds of subsequent air time that his strengthened limbs granted him.
He hit the dune a quarter of the way down from its top, and the metal of his plate created a kind of light-friction slide not unlike a body-encasing toboggan.
The Hive Tyrant crossed the top of the dune behind him with a screech of fury at finding him gone, and Leonidas glanced back to see its scorpion-tail stinger waving in the air with agitation while he slid the fifteen feet down toward the base of the sand dune.
The size of the sand dune was shocking enough, and when he hit the bottom and found densely compacted sand beneath his feet, he thanked the System for its small mercies. The Hive Tyrant was already skitter-sliding down the dune behind him, and Leonidas sprinted forward until he gained a dozen or so feet on the creature, and then spun around to face it.
This time, he activated [Psikinetic Blade] and layered it over his sword.
His Psi dropped by 15 points immediately, and this time he could see the passive drain that followed immediately on its heels. Perhaps one point every three seconds or so. That gave him thirty seconds of usage before his Psi ran dry.
The psiforce swordforce—he really needed a better name for it—shimmered into existence with a ripple of air-warping visuals, and he took the humming [Archon’s Psiblade] in a two-handed grip at his side, with its tip pointed to the ground and behind him in what many might call a Samurai stance.
The stance settled him into an enhanced feeling of familiar focus, and the remembered discipline from hours of training for exactly moments of high-pressure and adrenal overflow like the one he was in. The [Cataclysm Core] in his body was boiling with the fury of a volcano within his solar plexus, and he could feel an almost palpable heat radiating out across him where its energy steadily proliferated throughout his body.
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With the acquisition of his Mana Sage title and its passive increase to his mana pool, the energy of his Core—which aspected his mana when it was unleashed—was even stronger and denser than the last time it had run rampant. It filled him with a primal and savage level of buoyed power, and Leonidas could feel it singing to be used. It was a siren song calling for him to surrender to its primordial hunger to consume, obliterate, and burn away everything in its path—and his path, by extension.
This time, however, it was something he was ready for; and the inherent need to destroy was tempered by the iron willed focus of his Battle Meditation. He breathed while he watched the Hive Tyrant, now reaching the bottom of the dune, regard him with each of its malevolent black eyes. Its maw, a drooling mess of serrated teeth and two clicking mandibles, released a low chitter of malignant intellect and it snapped its pincers together menacingly.
Leonidas didn’t react to its primitive taunting, and instead let his experience and focus settle on him like a mentally grounding cloak of forced calm. His limbs faintly trembled with the need to move that came from his Cataclysm Mana’s surging fury, and his fingers tightened on the hilt of his [Archon’s Psiblade] while he continued to take steady, and measured breaths in and out.
When the Hive Tyrant finally started to advance, first cautiously and then with renewed vigor and fury, Leonidas narrowed his eyes in focus and took a hold of the Cataclysm Mana flowing through his body. With a mix of disciplined focus, remembered mana control from his time on Elatra, and sheer force of will; Leonidas wrested control of his Core’s energy and forced it into the gems of his blade.
The moment he did, the swordforce around the blade’s edges ignited with arcing flashes of scarlet lightning, and he felt the drain on his Psi slow to half of its previous amount. Instead, his mana started to drain alongside it, and the two resources seemed to share the burden of his swordforce.
The [Archon’s Psiblade] in his hands shook with the power of the [Cataclysm Core] surging through it, and he mentally felt the synergy of the sword ratchet up by several percentage points instantly. The Hive Tyrant continued to close, now just over a dozen feet away, and Leonidas bent his knees to stabilize his stance as much as possible.
He breathed out, and a memory came to him while he focused.
> “Swordforce is just the ghost of power, Leonidas. It isn’t the secret to the Hero’s strength, it’s just a tool that allows you to bring it out.”
>
> “Then what’s the secret?” he’d asked, after wiping the sweat from his brow after another round of duels.
>
> “The Sword Arts,” Miranda had said from where she stood, arms folded under her breasts and eyes locked on him with calculating intensity. “Swordforce and Sword Arts. Those, Leonidas, are what take a good warrior, and make them terrifying.”
>
> “And only the Hero can learn them?”
>
> “Perhaps,” she’d said with the ghost of a smile. “If you can handle the training.”
Leonidas’ lips quirked into a smile, and he breathed out slowly when the Hive Tyrant crossed within eight feet of being in range with its pincers.
“Second Sword Art…” he began with ritualistic adherence to ancient protocol, and a remembered discipline that sharpened his focus like a razor.
The Hive Tyrant’s right claw raised to swipe at him.
“...Shatter the Earth!”
The Hive Tyrant’s pincer descended.
Leonidas smoothly stepped to the left of the descending claw, and sliced his psiblade upward with a scream of motion and blistering crackle of scarlet lightning. His weapon’s psiforce-enhanced edge met the claw’s thick outer half when it passed by and the energy of his swordforce first sheared through the chitin like paper, and then with a sound like a high-pitched whine of sudden pressure; caused it to detonate in a thunderous BOOM.
Leonidas barely managed to shield his face with his arms before he was blown off his feet by an explosion of chitinous shell, flesh, and viscera—and the Hive Tyrant screamed in agony and reared backward in shock while Leonidas was sent rolling across the sand with a chain of expletives. His sword had been blasted from his grip, and he heard a high-pitched ringing in his ears.
A glance at his HUD told him he’d lost 18 points of Health, and Leonidas rolled onto his back with a groan. His eyes searched for the Hive Tyrant while he forced himself up onto his elbows, and he saw the creature screeching—muted to his damaged eardrums, which he loosely realized had been overtaxed—while frantically waving its grotesquely deformed remnant of a pincer in the air.
Leonidas’ eyes widened, and he realized why the Hive Tyrant was still screeching. Its claw was not simply damaged, it was actively being devoured by a layer of blood-red flames and crackles of lightning that were catalyzing further explosions across its limb.
A glance at his mana confirmed it was still draining, and the realization rocked him. He was actively damaging the Hive Tyrant without even realizing it.
While he watched, the Hive Tyrant reared up and, in an act of desperation, sliced off its own limb to stop the spread of what Leonidas recognized as rampant Cataclysm Mana. The moment it did, and the limb fell away; the energy devouring it seemed to detect that it was no longer connected to a life force and simply vanished.
Leonidas slowly pushed himself to his feet, and with a wince for his wounded head, glanced down at his [Archon’s Warplate]. His entire breastplate had been scorched along its surface, and subtle cracks had appeared where he assumed chitin had impacted the metal. Had he not been wearing armor, the claw’s detonation would likely have had the same effect as a fragmentation grenade.
His eyes turned back to the arachnid and, while fully aware of the fact he probably had facial injuries, he extended his hand to the side and—with a further expenditure of 15 Mana—summoned his [Archon’s Psiblade] in a flash of red lightning.
Leonidas took a steadying breath, and focused on regaining his Battle Meditation. While he did, he let his mana regeneration take care of itself, and kept an awareness on his slowly recovering Psi as well. Around him, the Arena was going mad with cheers, but he ignored them even when his hearing started to return.
He had no time for them.
Leonidas’ eyes narrowed on the Hive Tyrant, and then he turned and promptly started to put more distance between himself and the arachnid while it was distracted; pushing his body as fast as it would go toward the next dune. The same trick wouldn’t work twice, and he needed time to think of what his next move was. He knew the creature wouldn’t give him long to plan, but at least he’d confirmed some critical information: he had a weapon, at least, that could not only hurt it—but slay it, and that only meant one thing.
He had a bug to kill.