Chapter 202
Jingyi responded to the request by subtly angling them towards the walls. “Ambush predators are our only real chance of finding anything to fight… Everything else has been wiped out by the circular collapsing. In this sort of environment…if there’s any, they’ll be close to the cliff. Then hopefully they’ll be hungry enough for us to lure them into a favourable encounter. Five days without food…” Jingyi frowned. “Might not be enough.”
“It might be.” Michael said. “We’re ranked at a dismal average level of ten. That’ll make us look like a tasty-looking morsel.”
“True.” Jingyi agreed.
The underground canyon that they are running through was transitioning through a climate change. It was subtle, but both the temperature and humidity had been steadily increasing. Tom wiped the sweat away not fooled at all by what was happening. He was sure that would be picking their way through volcanic flats soon.
Even here, which was presumably a long way from wherever the lava flows were, the shift in the environment had altered the mix of vegetation. There was a noticeable shift from surface type plants towards what you’d see on the floor of a giant forest. Moss, fungus, and vines that grew like parasites on the other growths were all around them. The atmosphere had become claustrophobic.
Harry tripped on a vine and Tom with a teleport could get in position to catch him before he fell. He pulled him up, and they kept running.
After ten minutes of near sprinting down gloomy corridors, Jingyi slowed to a halt. It was like they were walking along the bottom of a river with the banks formed by giant boulders each of them stretching the size of a small tree. Moss covered most of the exposed area, but they could see the solid rock underneath.
“We fight here.” The scout said.
Tom groaned and looked both ways. They were standing at the narrowest point of the fake river bank. Lightning Enrage could stretch from one side to the other and the banks were steep enough that the antelopes wouldn’t easily be able to leap around him by going up them.
It was a good place to fight.
“Tom, there are two hunting packs that have combined. You need to taunt all of them, but if he misses any, Keikain and Toni, your job is to stop the antelopes closing on the rest of that and failing that kill them as fast as possible. Are we clear. We need to keep as much healing for Tom as possible.” The two ranged magic users both nodded acceptance. “Everyone, recover your breath.”
They all shuffled back, and Tom moved forward to stand in the narrowest point available. His mana was fully recharged, and the extra mana he had regenerated over their mad dash had gone into healing the rest of him. Except for the abscesses and digestive system, he was near peak functionality.
“I guess it’ll be interesting to see how the fight goes when I don’t have holes in me.”
No one answered him. He waited, and then suddenly the antelopes were bounding towards him. He spotted fifteen in total that told him that two packs had indeed combined. His battle trance calmed his nerves, and he held position till the first of them reached him and time slowed down.
Lightning Enrage exploded out from him in a torrent of sparks and at the same time he triggered his spell Decay Resistance.
The sparks went everywhere, filling the space between him and the walls with electricity. There was no way that anything could have avoided them.
Then he was caught amongst a frothing broth of flashing hooves and bouncing animals. He sent his spear to storage because there wasn’t room to move it and it was interfering with his dodge abilities. Time had slowed to the limit as he twisted and weaved between the monsters, accepting the resulting blows to his upper body while avoiding anything that would hit his legs.
Throats were briefly there for him to stab, but he had no way to take advantage of them. His knives were sharp but without skills to enhance their use he wouldn’t be able to pierce the fur, so instead he focused on his dodging and maintaining the protection of Decay Resistance.
Fate built up around him, helping to keep him ahead of the hooves, but the mass of creatures restricted him and meant that there was no opportunity to counter.
His skin tingled but had not deteriorated to the point of the agonising pain like what happened with the first encounter. They kicked him and he parried with elbows, knees and palms easily turning away the attempts of them trying to kill him.
There was a thundering crash to the side, but he was so busy avoiding the attacks and the antelopes were so close to him that he couldn’t see what had caused it.
There was a crack as a hoof slammed into his thigh. An abscesses burst. The pain was almost paralyzing, but Black Dodge and the ongoing battle did not care. Time slowed further and his battle trance allowed him to ignore the throbbing pain that was like a burning brand in order to lean away from a secondary barrage of hooves.
Abruptly, there was the option to teleport. The press of monster bodies around him had lessoned and with a thought the spear was in his hand.
Time slowed.
He teleported to the side only needing to twist his neck slightly to make it work. It let him completely avoid another hoof aimed for his leg.
He started taking advantage of the multitude of opportunities that presented themselves. His spear kissed the arteries of the monster’s necks. Then one tripped and while it was scrambling to get its balance, he thrust the spear through an open eye. He didn’t go for extravagant blows like pushing the point straight through the antelope’s ribs instead he tried to kill by hitting weak spots that would let him minimise his Power Strike use.
His mana bottomed out, and the tingling immediately intensified, but for Tom that changed nothing. He continued his systematic killing of the injured animals. With each death, the prickling decreased and it was down to almost non-existent. He looked around to understand what had happened.
They had won!
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The contribution of his team members was obvious. Over a dozen arrows had been fired, and the two ranged magic casters had unleashed their own barrage of attacks. Keikain had caused a boulder on the edge of the path to split in half and convert itself into a rain of stone javelins thicker and longer than his spear. That single attack had taken out seven of the antelopes and now that the battle was over he remembered hearing it.
It had been what had shifted the fight back in their favour because after that he had gotten kills with his spear.
There was a twang, and an arrow embedded itself in the final antelope left alive. It died and the immediate cessation of tingling signified that they all were exterminated.
Tom winced as he relaxed and the built up pain smashed into him.
It was like he had been roasted alive. When he raised his arm, he could see the sores on it. The sort of welts you would expect to see after severe sunburn. By listening to his body’s complaints, it was clear his arms were not the only spots afflicted. His stomach, legs, the soles of his feet they all burned. Every inch of his skin was covered with welts and it went beyond his skin too. His breathing was laboured because of the holes the decay aura had put into his lungs.
Everything hurt, and he half sunk to his knees before he could help himself.
It’s superficial, he reminded himself. Once he regenerated a small amount of mana, he could fix this up quickly. The damage was nothing like what it had been after the first encounter.
Healing washed over him and all the blisters faded to leave unblemished skin. It magicked away even the residual pain.
Tom sighed despondently. This was another fight that had been too close for comfort. His mana had bottomed out and a few more seconds and the skin damage would have been extended inside his body. “These things are brutal.”
“Stop complaining,” Jingyi snapped. “If you are fit, process the bodies.”
Tom shot him a glare but pulled out his butchering knives. The scout might have been rude, but he had a point. They needed to reach the pack that Everlyn was hunting down if they were going to beat the main herd. They couldn’t afford to waste time because if the decay antelopes caught them… Tom shuddered even the memory of those burns was awful.
The others had experience processing the bodies, so he focused on duplicating the cuts Clare was making next to him. She was basically separating fur, meat, hooves, teeth, heart, and some weird black organ from the bones and entrails which were tossed aside. He matched her careful slices. Six of them were doing the butchering with Toni, Harry and Thor, acting in a support role to pile the useful components in the right location. He managed to process two, which was slower than the others, but it was his first time. Then, as he finished, there was a crackle of energy as everything they had gathered got sent to the auction house, and then Jingyi was off running again.
“That didn’t go well,” Tom said to Michael. “Thoughts?”
“When you can afford it, then upgrade your skill to tier three. I can’t think of anything else working, apart from maybe artefacts…”
“Is that an option?”
“Everything is an option if you have the experience, but…”
“So no. These monsters are bullshit. Their aura’s are too powerful.”
“Of course they are, Tom. They have to be for something like them to survive down here.”
Tom thought for a moment and then agreed with Michael’s reasoning. Given the antelopes’ lack of any decent battle modifications all they had was their aura. It was not like those kicks would do anything against most opponents. The aura had to be ridiculous just to let them live. “I still need to be able to survive it.”
The healer shrugged. “Get the two barrier skills, that and levels are our only hope.”
Tom checked his experience and was short. He would aim to get the tier three upgrade first and then grab the barrier skills if he had the funds to do so.
Ahead of Tom Jingyi had slowed to the stop. “What’s happening?” he asked the scout, glancing back the way they had come anxiously. He couldn’t see any antelopes, but the terrain was almost jungle like at this point, so that wasn’t a surprise. “More antelopes?”
“No,” Jingyi gestured at the area in front of them. “You wanted experience for the rest of us. This is it.”
Tom pulled up next to him and frowned. There was a stretch of dirt a hundred metres wide and half a kilometre long where the jungle was gone. Instead, there were a series of suspicious mounds of earth each being slightly taller than he was. “What lives there?”
Jingyi cleared his throat and checked to make sure everyone was listening. “I haven’t spotted one yet, but this looks like earth maggot territory. They’re non migratory ambush predators and if they catch you by surprise, they’re deadly. I’m hoping they see us as weak and are hungry enough to come out of their burrows. If they do… even with the rank discrepancy, we should be able to fight them. Importantly, the melee guys and healers can be part of the fight unlike against the antelopes. Also,” Jingyi paused. “When we fight, they get the killing blows. Tom, Keikain and Toni you need to watch yourselves so you don’t accidentally kill them. Now, everyone, this is the maggots’ home and they’re dangerous. You will need to walk exactly where I do because if they get the jump on you and land an ambush they’ll kill you before we can do anything.”
Jingyi jogged forward, and they followed in an obedient line. The dirt crunched under his feet and when he sunk his senses into it he could feel that it was broken up chunks of the underground. While it would respond to his magic, it would do so lethargically.
There was a crashing noise to his right, and Tom spun to face it.
A monster had propelled itself from the base of the one of the mounds and landed with a thump on packed dirt, two body lengths clear of the exit hole. It was focused on them and looked like a maggot, only a dark brown and over three metres long.
“Kill it.” Jingyi yelled.
The creature opened its jaws, and they were large enough to swallow a human and lined with serrated teeth. It humped forward, moving fast but uncoordinated. It was clearly designed for that initial spring launched attack and or to borrow through the ground and out here on the surface it was vulnerable.
However, it was hungry and made straight for Harry.
Tom couldn’t allow that. While they were here to get the other’s experience, this was rank twenty, and he was the only one here with the skills to evade it. He charged it and then used Lightning Enrage from less than a metre away to grab its attention.
Its focus switched to him, but he was already backing away.
Time slowed down, and he was forced to teleport, but despite that the monster’s lips smacked into his hip and sent him rolling clear.
Tom was on his feet leaning backwards as its mouth tried to swallow him whole as it lurched forward. It was cathartic to fight without his skin tingling.
The rest of the team was attacking the maggot from its sides and back, but it was a hundred percent focused on Tom.
“Watch the other mounds.” Jingyi screamed at him.
The maggot launched another attack. He rolled backwards and avoided it.
Too easy, he thought.
He stepped forward and around it. The creature spun. He retreated and leapt backwards as its teeth slammed shut in front of his face.
This was great. He laughed as he danced away from it. Everyone else was hitting it with everything they could, sweat running down their face while he was in full control of the battle and light on his feet.
The edges of the maggot glowed white.
Tom’s eyes widened and as time slowed, he threw himself backwards. He knew he had made a mistake and that he should have rolled to the side rather than retreating like he had, but now he had made the error. His only option was to outdistance the attack. Tom’s spear was in his hand, held in front of him. It was longer than the creature’s mouth was wide, so all he had to do was keep it in the right spot and it wouldn’t be able to swallow him. Its jaws rotated, and Tom spun the spear. The slowed time of Black Dodge and the fate around him let him position the weapon perpendicular to the mouth slit and ensured it couldn’t bite him.
The maggot slammed into the shaft and sent him flying backwards, its full momentum transferred to him, but he kept balance even as he was thrown airborne. He shouldn’t have let himself be knocked in the air but despite that he would land on his feet able to continue the fight.
Next time, if it glowed white he would dodge to the side and avoid this situation. He had been slopping.
There was a blazing white light.
CRACK.
It sounded like the universe broke apart.
LIGHTNING encased him. It was all over him, and it was all that he could see. The world wrenched more violently than he had ever experienced. Energy crackled in his head, causing a splitting headache.
Then he felt himself falling.