The Voracious Stalker

Right after we had captured one of the five-pointed Nemeses, Andrew lead the charge in our escape.

But there was one major issue.

Leyn tripped.

Or perhaps tripped wasn't the right word? He stumbled and fell without any discernible reason to do so.

The other villagers didn't even notice, and even if they did, they were definitely too far away to help him now.

I suppose that means he'll die...

It's fine right?

Death is fine... I've killed lots of champions and Nemeses, why should a regular inhabitant be different?

I glanced back at Leyn, the moment becoming an eternity.

Damn it.

Damn it!

DAMN IT!

Why does the thought of a single being dying upset me so much?

He's a single sickly child who was so brain-dead, he decided that talking to an obvious danger was a good idea.

I turned, causing my hindlegs to skid and sprinted toward him.

I used [Plate Flesh] and bulldozed through all of the Nemeses, picked Leyn off of the ground, and threw him up onto my back as I continued running.

"What happened?! Why were you on the ground?!" I yelled over the erupting din.

"I'm sorry, I just have sudden bouts of weakness sometimes... it has to do with my illness." He replied weakly, making it very hard to hear.

"Well, either way, it'd be pathetic to die here, so let's keep you alive a bit longer shall we?!"

Leyn simply gripped me as tightly as his arms could manage at that moment.

I found myself in an awkward position.

Leyn and I were safe because I was able to outrun the horde with pure persistence.

My [Regeneration] makes me practically unable to become tired, so running constantly was an option... and one I took at that.

But now I have a small frail creature that I need to keep safe... and I have no idea how to do that.

My only saving grace is that he can tell me; I'm not even certain what I would do if he couldn't somehow.

"Thank you Stalker."

"Um... you're welcome I suppose..."

Leyn became contemplative. "You need a name."

"I have a name, I'm The Voracious Stalker."

"That's not a name, it's a title. All of the Nemesis Fifskae have those, but they're not their names."

I thought about it. "Huh... it would seem you're correct. What would you suggest?"

Leyn looked embarrassed. "How about 'Aesos'?"

I liked the sound of it, but I wanted to know more before committing to it. "What does it mean?"

He got even more embarrassed. "It's a portmanteau of the word 'unbreakable' which means 'unbreakable', and the name 'Aesfi' which means 'brave'."

I blinked, unsure of what to make of the blatant compliment.

"Oh, if you don't like it, I can just think of something el-!"

"Leyn, I like it." I interrupted.

Leyn's eyes widened as his smile did.

Despite myself, I smiled too.

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Yuluulth

"This is completely out of hand!" Our [Worldbinder] announced, as if we didn't already know. "I'm going to make sure this is banned if it's the last thing I do!" She said, looking pointedly at Seliel and Vindicost.

"What so bad about it?" Vindicost asked.

Our [Worldbinder] glared at him. "You've essentially tripled my workload! Do you have any idea how much work it is to administrate for so many beings at once?! Why do you think that each gamemaster has a champion, instead of the [Worldbinder] doing everything?"

He put up his hands placatingly. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry."

Our [Worldbinder] sighed. "No, I'm sorry for yelling. I had a little trouble when everyone decided that they'd all make a Nemesis at once, but it's nothing in comparison to this."

We all looked at her in surprise.

Vindicost was the one to represent our cumulative concerns. "What? How many of them are there?"

"I have no idea, the system only counts it as one, with a really long and sprawling set of arms essentially."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"That's so much worse than if it was a bunch of things." I empathized.

"Don't I know it?" Our [Worldbinder] replied.

"Wait, why is it worse?" Seliel asked.

Our [Worldbinder] struggled to find the words to explain. "Imagine... actually, here's a good example! Imagine holding your viewer out as far as you can with a single hand."

"But they're so heavy, why would I do that?"

"Even doing with both hands illustrates my point... it's kinda like the extra torque on your arms when you have something far away from your body, that's how it feels to administrate over something that's really big, like even bigger than Polimus."

"Oh wow... yeah I never liked gamemastering for big stuff."

"What can I even do about this whole debacle?" Our [Worldbinder] asked idly, to no one in particular.

I stood. "I have an idea if you're willing to listen."

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Andrew

[A new waypoint, "Kill all test1s!", has been added to your list of waypoints.]

A bunch of waypoints appeared around me all at once.

It was frankly distracting me from my task.

I swat at the air as though there was a fly instead of a HUD element in my face. "Dismiss! Piss off! go away!"

Juohen looked at me with concern. "Andrew... are you okay?"

The waypoints finally collapsed, allowing me to see without a million arrows pointing in every direction.

"Oh there we go. Yeah, I'm fine, it seems that Lviyr added something to my HUD... or I assume it was him, I guess it could be someone else..."

"I'm glad?" He gestured to the bag with a starfish in it. "So, are we ready to start?"

"Oh yeah, definitely."

Over the course of the next couple hours, we discovered a great many things.

For example, you can just pull the starfish's arms off with your bare hands, but you can't tear the arm in half easily.

This got me thinking about why that might be, so after we killed that arm by stomping it to death, we tried cutting an arm off about midway down.

It didn't spawn another starfish.

Next, I called Hund and together we live-autopsied a starfish.

We found that all of the arms had a full set of lungs, a heart, a brain, and a digestive tract.

Just those things, aside from the eye and mouth each one had that we had noted earlier.

This gave me a thought.

We killed that clone and pulled another arm.

We tried an incredibly weak poison, and sure enough, it relied on its [Regeneration] to defend against poisons, which only worked to mixed success.

This meant we could use just about any poison with a high enough dose.

We checked what each dose should be, and then I made an announcement.

"Alright everybody! It's time to start coating bolts!"

"Leyn, we're gonna need your help with this one!" Juohen added proudly.

When nobody said anything, both Juohen and I looked at each other.

"Wait, where is Leyn?"

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Aesos

"All I can do is this." Leyn said, pouring a toxin of some kind from his finger into a bottle. "It's not exactly helpful in a fight."

"Well no, not during one, but that's the power of preparation Leyn." I replied.

"That's what Andrew and Juohen always say too... it just hurts not to be able to help out, you know?"

"I'll be frank, I have no idea how to begin to empathize with that position."

Leyn frowned. "At least you're honest..."

That made me feel extraordinarily awkward, so I said the next thing that came to mind. "Why don't we try to find the others?"

"How?"

"We could signal to them somehow."

Leyn looked at the ground. "That wouldn't work."

"Why wouldn't it?"

Leyn inhaled deeply, and let out a long sigh. "Because it would just show all of our enemies our position, and because of that, nobody would come for us."

I mulled that over. "Andrew might."

"But what if he's somewhere he couldn't see it?"

I rested my body against the ground and pondered.

A very stupid idea popped into my head.

"If we make a big enough scene, he'll have to see it."

"What do you mean?" Leyn asked warily.

I grinned. "I'll show you."

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Andrew

At some point while we coated our bolts as best as we could with what we had, there was a sudden burst of movement from just about every champion nearby.

I put down the bolt I was working on and turned on the test1 waypoint.

A huge number of them were moving in a single direction.

What could cause such a huge shift?

Then it dawned on me.

"Hund, how was our headcount?"

"As I said before, we're just missing Leyn."

"What about The Stalker?"

Hund thought for a moment. "You're right, he's not here either."

I clapped my hands to get everyone's attention. "It's time for a rescue mission everyone!"

Polyu popped out of a temporary hole we made and flew above the treeline.

We then closed the hole as quickly as we could.

"Shreddy, could you ask her how she's doing real quick?"

'Sure thing.' He paused for a moment, and then relayed her message. 'She says she's fine.'

This was probably my most genius idea after the original waterwheel lathe, and I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it earlier.

You see, Shreddy Mercury has telepathic abilities, just like any item with [Full Sapience], but he also can split himself into multiple pieces.

It turns out that if you give a piece to another person, you can reduce the range he can communicate on one end and create a small space where he can communicate elsewhere.

To top it all off, the information travels instantly, or at least as fast as the speed of light... but then again that hasn't come up yet, so we aren't sure.

"So Polyu, from your position, what do you see?"

'She says that there's a lot of the starfish thingies, specifically, there's a lot of them going in a particular direction.'

"Follow cautiously, we don't know the situation yet."

'She says and I quote: "What are you, my dad?"'

I snickered. "We can talk about cleaning your room when you get back."

'She says to piss off.'

"In all seriousness, make sure she reports every so often, and let us know immediately if she's in trouble."

'Will do Andrew.'

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Aesos

What I was doing went counter to every single survival impulse I have in my entire being.

But I was having a great time!

"Aesos! This is insane!" Leyn protested from my back.

"Isn't it?!" I called back, catching a glance of the horde of test1s who were chasing me.

At this point, there was so many that they were crawling over each other in an attempt to get to me, almost making a sort of living tsunami that constantly sought to crash down on my passenger and I.

We passed yet another champion, which caused an amount of test1s to split off and attack instead.

"If you survive this, let's work together to kill these things!" I yelled to him.

The champion did a double-take before screaming at me. "If you want my help, then clean this mess you've made!"

"Sorry, I'm in a hurry at the moment! By the way, don't try to cut the test1s, they'll split!"

He turned his sword around so that the back faced toward his enemies as he began a fighting retreat. "Thanks for the tip you asshole!"

"Hey Leyn, do you think we've made enough of a problem yet?"

"I think we're going to die before it matters!"

Something caught my eye in the air. "Oh yeah? Look up there!"

Leyn followed my gaze and saw the villager girl who flies, whatever her name was.

"Polyu!" Leyn called out.

Oh yeah, that was it.

She gestured for us to follow.

She didn't have to tell me twice.

I ran as fast as I could, chasing after her shadow so to speak.

Eventually, I saw the villager with the scars on his face directly ahead of us.

I jumped up into what was left of the canopy in this area, bypassing his sphere of influence.

He looked up at me in surprise, but that was quickly replaced by a smile.

He shifted into a lower stance, and called out without turning. "Andrew! Hit it!"

The scarred one burst into flame just as he did the previous couple of times, and began his localized extinction event.

The flying girl recollected my attention and pointed out a hole in the ground. "Everyone's down in there."

"Thank you so much Polyu, if you hadn't come for us, I don't know what would have happened." Leyn said, smiling warmly.

"Oh, uh... you're welcome."

'I hate to rain on the parade here, but we have to go before Rahyu's minute is up or else things'll get messy.'

I nodded. "You're right, I'll see you both again in a moment."

"Yep, see ya."

I jumped down and entered the hole, almost smacking directly into Andrew in the process.

"Oh hey there you two, it's nice to see you- wait a second, did you get a name?"

I cocked my head to the side. "Yes, how did you know?"

"Your name-blurb-thing changed..." He paused. "Nice to meet you mister ah-saus."

"It's pronounced 'Aesos'." I replied, far more proud than I expected to feel. "But thank you all the same."