When the vision concluded, Ander sat there for some time. He felt the tiny wind spirit in his skill stir at his worry. Had his soul been damaged to give him Way of the Wind? He certainly didn’t feel any sort of damage. With effort he could sense his soul around his skills, but never could find any spot where damage might have been done. This meshed with what he had felt from the wind spirit. His prior examination of the wind spirit gave him the exact feeling as before, that it was a part of a greater whole, but just not part of him. He supposed that would change as this soul fragment healed. It would graft itself to his soul fully, becoming a simple extension of him.
It was all too weird. His grandparents had always gone on about things like the sanctity of the soul. It had all been part of their christian mumbo jumbo. But now he not only found out that he had a soul (what else could it be that he was sensing?) But he now had a foreign entity being grafted onto it. He truly wondered what they would think of all of this. Of course, they probably knew he was dead. Who knew how much time had actually passed since he died. He could have spent years in the void and not known it. He wondered what they thought when they learned it was him who had blown up so many buildings…
Ander shook his head. There was no point in dwelling on such things. But it was rather hard when he was stuck with little to do while recuperating. He supposed he could dive back into Walker of Memories, but what that man, Gadreel, had said made him leary of the skill. Still, as the minutes, and then hours passed by, Ander found that the potential consequences were of less and less concern to him as boredom worked its way into his mind. Eventually He decided that a quick perusal of memories, and none associated directly with magic would be safe enough. He did live in a big new world, and he needed to know as much as he could about it.
And so as Ander rested for the next several days, he perused the memories of his Exodarian ancestors. He learned a great many things, but very few that were useful to him at the present moment. But that was ok, as he had come up with a bit of a plan to deal with the mutated mariners down below. It wasn’t complicated, but he had a great many corpses not far from his cave. They were getting rancid from their days long exposure, but he doubted those creatures would care overly much. He would simply take the corpses down to the laboratory he had found the first time he had delved into the ruins, and throw them off the 11th story balcony. In Ander’s mind, that would be more than enough to get the Mariner’s attention for long enough for him to rush down to the bottom floor and make the crossing to the ship. Once he gets there, he should be fine. For whatever reason, all of the mariners were on the ground, with very few ever approaching the boat itself.
And so on the third day after his big fight, Ander started his grisly work. At first he simply dragged the bodies one by one down to the cafeteria area by the laboratories. But very soon after managed to locate a tarp that had been used to cover a particularly large piece of lab equipment. It did quite well as a multiple body bag, allowing him to drag five at a time. It was hard work, requiring the better part of four hours, but he got it done.
When he had gotten everything staged, he found the crack in the wall that lead to the hangar room and checked on the horde below. To Ander’s delight it was visibly diminished. He supposed that he had managed to kill around a tenth of the visible horde. Of course that was in addition to the number that was out hunting, and then however many might be within the bowels of the giant ship. Still, with three hundred corpses to tempt them, he figured his plan would probably work. Before he put his plan into motion however, he had one last thing he had to do.
Ander opened his stat sheet.
Ander
Level 20
Race: Exodari
Subrace: Oritol
HP: 380
MP: 1080
SP: 1325
Strength 150
Dexterity 20
Agility 95
Toughness 45
Constitution 38
Perception 36
Intelligence 35
Memory 35
Conductivity 54
Wisdom 54
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Regeneration 54
Beauty 31
Presence 54
You have one hundred twenty free stat points, would you like to distribute them now?
Yes/No
Ander chose yes. He felt like he had quite enough strength, at least for the moment. The mariners were still just a bit faster than him, and so he bumped his agility up to a hundred. He thenset toughness and constitution to sixty. He brought up perception as well, and then dumped the rest of his points into strength.
Ander
Level 20
Race: Exodari
Subrace: Oritol
HP: 600
MP: 1080
SP: 1520
Strength 184
Dexterity 20
Agility 100
Toughness 60
Constitution 60
Perception 60
Intelligence 35
Memory 35
Conductivity 54
Wisdom 54
Regeneration 54
Beauty 31
Presence 54
With that, Ander was as ready as he could be. Then, moving as quickly as he could manage, he started throwing corpses down into the hangar room.
It smelled bad when he was dragging all of the corpses down here. However, he had seen enough death and rot in the past several weeks that he was able to mostly ignore it. However when the rotting corpses splattered on the floor, an ungodly stench rode up that made him glad he was nearly a dozen floors away. Of course, his opinion was not shared by the mariners below, who seemed to go crazy from the first body that fell to the floor. Ander finished his task quickly and bolted off. He flew down the staircase, and when he got to the bottom he raced towards the door to the hangar.
When he got there he found that as he had wanted, nearly the entire horde of mariners were bathing in the pile of gore. However, what he had not wanted was to find a group of some thirty mariners milling around between him and the ship. A quick round of identifies put each of them at level 25, and one of them at level 27. Still, this was the best time to get across without having to resort to killing every last one of the disgusting creatures. With a little bit of hesitation, he connected to the little wind spirit. Techniques and tactics great for this exact situation flowed into his mind. As they did, he felt their bond grow a little deeper, the wind spirit a little bit more integrated into his soul.
The idea for dealing with the group in front of him was simple in concept. Take out the weaker enemies while they are still scattered. Harass them from the edge of the group. Employ disorientation tactics to keep them from moving as a group. It was simple in concept, but it would take every bit of skill he could take from the little wind spirit. Still he had no better plan, and every other idea he came up with was considerably worse. Ander looked around, snatching up a variety of rocks about the size of his palm. He stowed them in a crude sack he had made while waiting in recovery. He had made clothes too, and while they kept him more or less covered, they weren’t something he would ever wear in public. They consisted of a rough leather poncho, and what he was generously calling a kilt.
Ander took a deep breath, and charged out of his hiding place beyond the doors and into the open hangar. He dashed toward the nearest mariner and made a two handed slash to decapitate it as he passed. With its head falling to the floor, Ander sprinted toward the next one, dispatching it with a swift stab to the heart. By that point the group had noticed. Still, Ander had time to take out one more mariner before they started to swarm him. As the group converged, Ander pulled several rocks from his sack and started throwing them in the faces of several of the more dangerous members as he saw it. This helped to stymie the group’s momentum as Ander took potshots from the edge of the group.
Not every swing or thrust of his blade killed one of the mariners, but enough did that before long, Ander was left with the five most dangerous of the mutated mariners. One of them, the one who was level twenty seven, seemed to have rather minimal external mutations, though he still acted like a rabid animal. Each of the others had one or more mutations that, contrary to normal, were actually useful. One had three arms, all working just fine. One had a dozen eyes in his forehead, each of which moved independently of each other. Another looked like an odd sort of centaur, with two pairs of human legs. One was bulbous and covered in hard sections of skin that looked like thick calluses. The last was tall and willowy, having minimal random mutations and a shocking speed. None of them had shown any extra powers or abilities, but the variation in their forms was annoying in the extreme. They nearly had a standard party in the way they each shored up the other’s weakness.
Still, it wasn’t like they actually worked together. They actually had a tendency to leave the slow moving tank creature behind. Its thick skin would take a lot for ander to get through, but he led them away from it time and time again. The one that was level 27, and still claimed the most human characteristics was the smartest, and tried to attack when Ander was occupied by one of the other mariners. At first it caught Ander off guard, but after a bit, it was not difficult to bait it in and catch it between his stab and the willowy one’s whip attack. The whip attack drove the humanoid mariner onto Ander’s blade far harder than what Ander would have been able to do on his own. That itself was a problem, as Ander started to get pulled to the ground.
Ander quickly released his longsword and pulled his shortsword and his knife to continue the battle. It was for the best as he closed in on the willowy mariner, allowing him to block and parry long enough for him to get close and dispatch the monster. From that point on, the centaur, eyes, and the tank were easily dealt with, and ander ended the fight within the next minute.
Of course by then he had gained the attention of the main group. Without hesitation, he ran and scurried up the side of the ship to collapse heavily on the deck next to the rail. He had made it. He could hear the outrage of the mariners below him, but none tried to climb up to meet him.