CHAPTER 278 - BACKSTABBED

Split strictly into two separate groups, they proceeded forward. They were re-entering an area populated by Zorca’s and the threats shifted from one they could all fight against to a semi-sapient race that was exclusively up to the humans to defeat.

“This version has a more physically orientated configuration.” Everlyn told them over the party chat. “We won’t need to worry about elemental attacks, but they’ll probably be harder to take down. Tom, you also need to be careful. They hit harder than the other versions. Your Living Rock might not be enough to stop them. I’m tracking one of their hunting parties…” There was a long pause. “Damn it!” Everlyn cursed. “They spotted me. I’m coming in hot. Two groups.”

The landscape of the zone was slightly hilly dotted with regular three metres tall, five to ten long and a couple of metre wide hedges. They alternated with much larger patches of grass covered ground. Tom suspected that there was some form of root war going on beneath his feet that stopped anything from growing near an established plant.

“Almost there,” Everlyn cautioned. “Hold your fire.” She came tearing around the hedge and sprinted into the group.

She pointed up, and Tom’s eyes went to the top of the hedge as a mass of insects boiled over them.

Crack.

An arrow slammed into the first one, knocking it off course. Magic spat up at the creatures and over the six chaos bolts were launched upwards. One of them started out a dull orange and during its flight the magic within it continued to intensify.

“A sizzler!” Thor whooped in delight.

Instinctively, Tom covered his eyes and then the missile struck one of the zorcas in the second row.

There was a boom and a blast of heat and when Tom pulled his arm away and readied his spear to fight, the mass of giant insects had been torn apart and their momentum had been completely arrested. Over ten burnt and broken bodies thumped into the ground. One of them hit by a different chaos bolt had its front half burn and its back half frozen solid. The survivors of the sizzler, many of them suffering damaged body parts landed awkwardly before charging to kill.

Tom met them a few metres clear of the others, his spear spinning ready to counter their attacks and if an option presented itself to sting back.

They closed, and he attracted their ire with two uses of Lightning Enrage, sending the apparently agonising worms of electricity through the monsters’ mouths and crackling on the sensitive antennae. They swamped him and he danced, dodged, and ducked his way out of danger. His spear lashing out when it could, but he never had a chance to properly set his feet to put power through the strikes. Mainly, they were probing attacks that stacked up the damage, and he did not try to exploit either of the two known weak pots.

With only ten to face him and most of them injured, he took the time to assess the monsters. They were larger than the previous ones, and the blows landed harder, but the changes were not material. On a fundamental level, they were still fighting the same monstrosities even if their preferred method of trying to kill humans had changed from having a bias for ranged attacks to exclusively attempting to rip their faces off from close range.

The last of them fell to Keikain’s earth spikes and a Thor hammer blow.

“Fourteen,” Thor said proudly, thrusting his hammer with entrails dripping off it into the air.

Michael chuckled at the over the top antics. “Welcome to the sizzler club.”

“At least Thor’s target was more than six metres away.” Toni reminded the healer, grinning.

Michael grimaced almost certainly remembering when he had used it against the goblin chieftain and almost killed himself by accident.

With the two parties eliminated, and with all of them comfortable with the new version of the monsters they continued on. The strategy was simple. Everlyn, as a scout, led them to their nesting grounds and then they would place their backs against a hedge and then draw the monsters to them.

The approach was the same as what they had used against the elemental versions and in theory, given they didn’t have to cope with ranged attacks the fights should have been easier. Yet, the pitched battles that resulted felt different. The ugly monsters died to their spells and physical weapons the same as before, but it seemed that more of the enemy’s blows landed than they had previously. He had grown used to a certain cadence of the shields being applied to protect him. It was one that with judicial use of his teleport ability and dodge skills he had been able to stay ahead of attacks for long enough for a shield to intercede a host of powerful strikes simultaneously. The arrangement had allowed him to do more offense. That almost transcendent merging of their abilities was gone.

The shields were still being cast, but not appearing with timing that was either useful or easy to predict. Sometimes three shields would be created over a five second period each of them blocking a mundane attack and then there would be none for over twenty seconds, which was an eternity in a pitched battle. The failure of the timely shield forced Intangible Avoidance to activate multiple times in quick succession.

If he had time he would have cursed at the chosen. Yelled at them to get their act together even if he knew such words were futile.

They were inflicting payback.

Another charge of his precious phasing ability was consumed, and he was running on fumes. He dodged between attacks. Twisting and contorting in ways his body wasn’t supposed to be exposed to.

Another alarm went off.

Shit, he thought. A special attack analogous to a Power Strike but delivered with one of its legs was heading at his chest. That was fine. A teleport would deal with it. He would still get skewered but not fatally. Of course, if the sanatios did their job there would be no risk, but he doubted it would bother doing things properly now that his get out of jail cards were used up.

The whole point of their actions was to ensure he felt pain, and he was now vulnerable.

His skills screamed louder.

The zorca behind him was launching an attack that was aimed at his lower back.

Oh God. He thought in alarm as the envelope of places he could teleport to avoid material damage shrunk alarmingly. One had been a slight problem. Two escalated that to significant. The coordinated attacks would blast through even his Living Stone and with Intangible Avoidance charges depleted there was no way to escape them.

Stolen novel; please report.

A third attack registered, and Tom realised in alarm that these champion guards had coordinated their attack. There was a fourth one above him and when he focused, he could see it starting the same strike.

Fuck. This did not look good.

His mind searched for angles that he could use. There was no way to avoid the damage. He had to sacrifice an arm. Any of the decision trees that avoided that, resulted in a claw going through either his head or heart. Both outcomes were unacceptable. So, give up the arm… and then if he twisted and teleported just like that… and if his calculations were right, he would have one of limbs punch through his kidney and the other a shoulder. That would minimise the critical damage.

Tom twisted and teleported.

A magic shield blocked the strike on his arm but nothing materialised to stop the other two attacks.

Bastards! he screamed in his head. It had deliberately chosen to let these two blows land. Tom knew it had an entire body shield spell that would have stopped all three blows. The fact it was deflecting one strike, but not the others meant it knew what was happening. Then instead of protecting him it was deliberately allowing him to be hurt.

The strikes landed.

Tom gasped as they punched all the way through him. His living rock torso groaning like an earthquake was occurring.

He was in a fight, and he forced his eyes to stay open. Battle instincts confirmed there were no incoming threats and that the enemies’ coordinated offense had left the one in front of him open. Despite the pain that he was in, his feet were grounded and his magic spear positioned perfectly as the monster in front of him removed its bloody red arm from his upper right chest.

Tom thrust infusing the quarter dosage of Power Strike into his weapon. That was what was required to pierce even the weak spot of the monster’s armour. The spear slid through the air and landed on the point unimpeded. The awkward open posture it had been forced to enter had left it vulnerable. There was no hesitation as he sought to exploit that fact.

The carapace or skin or whatever the correct name gave way, and the weapon penetrated almost half a meter into the creature.

And through the brain stem, Tom thought with a smile, right before he yanked the weapon free.

A second of the four died as some type of chaos bolt consumed it. There was probably a small amount of fate invested to avoid collateral damage, or at least that’s what he chose to believe. None of them would be stupid enough to risk a sizzler striking that close to him… or at least Tom was pretty sure that was the case.

The legs withdrew. Living stone or not it was hard to move with three centimetre holes punched through him. Belated healing struck him as a chosen fixed his injuries and the holes almost snapped shut in response to the powerful spell.

The two remaining tried another coordinated attack. He dodged one, and a chosen’s shield stopped another. Tom’s counterattack took out one of them and a short time later the last of the four monsters over extended itself and had its head crushed by a panting Thor

The current battle was coming to an end and the leader of the current mini-swarm a rank twenty leader joined the battle and charged him.

Tom triggered Lightning Enrage, and it screamed in outrage as the electricity dug into all of its sensitive points. While it was distracted, Tom danced forward and shoved a spear into its face. The monster battered the weapon aside easily and then they entered the standard battle rhythm. The dumb creature thinking it was winning while Tom was just buying time for the others to be freed up so they could help him. He dodged the blows while hammering it with his spear so it would continue to think of him as a major threat. Surprisingly he realised that he was doing damage to it and not taking wounds in return. Give him half an hour and he would get an easy victory. Despite its impressive rank and corresponding speed and strength, it couldn’t hurt him. His dodge levels countered the physical advantage, and it seemed to lack a trick that would allow it to counterattack,

A smile played on his lips. He had this. He danced, dodged, and weaved while his spear left scratches in set spots. Every chance he got he hammered the same point. The aim was to create areas of growing weakness. Eventually, the skin would give way and then Tom could slowly bleed it to death.

It blurred toward him.

Everyone of his alarms went off.

His entire torso turned to the hardest stone he had at a thought.

He teleported backwards to try to escape its reach. The extra five centimetres, while sometimes enough to avoid an attack did nothing. His mind fixated on escape… Intangible Avoidance was on cool down. His danger sense was telling him he was going to be chopped into pieces. One claw from above would start at his head and then slice all the way to his groin. Three more were going to slice him into pieces. All of them going horizontal through him targeting hip, chest, neck.

There was a chance of a shield being cast to protect him… but… his gut told him that it wasn’t going to happen.

Electricity unexpectedly wreathed him. It felt like it was bright enough to sear out his eye balls.

There was a boom of thunder and he found himself falling weightless through the air. For a moment, he panicked as his mind attempted to understand what had happened. Then the visual information resolved itself into useable detail. He was twenty metres above the creature that he had been fighting and plummeting toward it. Instinctively, he repositioned himself and stopped the spinning fall.

What? he screamed inside of his head.

He was plunging down, and the enemy was right under him and hopefully hadn’t noticed him. Given the rest of the battle he wasn’t sure how that was possible, but the lack of movement suggested that Tom might be in luck. If it didn’t move, then there was a chance he could land a mortal blow on it. His weight and momentum increased as he triggered the skills he needed.

As he fell, his mind finally resolved what had happened. Lightning Dodge had activated to save his life. The bastards hadn’t protected him, and there was no way that the team had bitten off more than they could chew. The zorcas swarm they had challenged had only possessed four bodyguards and a champion. That was nothing, and they had easily defeated far more dire threats previously. Tom wouldn’t have even put this battle in the five most challenging on the floor.

That blow from the leader getting through had been the result of a deliberate pre-mediated effort.

The chosen had betrayed him. It caused a bitter taste in his mouth.

Gravity took him the rest of the distance down to the monster, which still hadn’t moved. He drove his spear at the weak point in the centre of their back. Power Strike wreathed his spear and Enlarge triggered at the same time. The target he was driving for was so small that lightning spears would not be helpful, so he just went with the single physical attack, admittedly enhanced.

The monster was still frozen in place. Tom had been expecting to have to dodge or abandon the strike at the last moment, but the creature remained static beneath him. Even its antenna had drooped. He figured it was exhaustion from the attack where it had blurred forward to try to kill him.

It was its loss.

If it had a danger sense ability, it must have been screaming at it, but nothing at all happened. His weapon plunged home. Smashing through the weakened spot of shell and penetrating all the way to the centre of its torso where its brain was.

They had dissected one of the earlier Zorca’s and so he knew that was a mortal blow.

Furiously, he yanked the weapon out and assessed the battlefield. There were still three lesser Zorca’s surviving, but they were all wounded and in the process of being killed. Thor was smashing one to bits, another was twenty metres from the nearest human and pinned to a tree with arrows and the last was surrounded by the rest of the team bleeding out from dozens of spear wounds and immobilised by its injuries.

All of his friends were upright and without major wounds, but he remembered the entirety of the battle and the number of material blows that had slipped through without being blocked by magic. He had not been the only one who had been struggling with erratic shielding. With the anger simmering, barely restrained from becoming action he spun to face the sanatio’s chosen.

Everyone of them had lowered themselves to rest in the dirt. Tom knew that being low meant unhappiness, but touching the ground? That had to be worse.

Then he spotted one that was almost hidden behind the Elder. It was thrashing on the ground with the chains of Tom’s contracting skill, tearing into it and burrowing towards the centre of its mass. A glow of healing encased it and the wounds being generated were closing just after they had been torn open.

He recalled the shield not appearing to protect him when he needed it. They hadn’t known of Lightning Dodge. It must have thought Tom’s protective ability was expended. After all, in hindsight, its strategy was clear. It had been letting blows slip through until Intangible Awareness had been exhausted. In the context of their skill in other battles, there was only a single explanation.

They collectively or it alone had tried to kill him.

If he hadn’t had the escape skill in his back pocket.

Like slugs, the rest of the sanatios chosen were inching away from the one currently suffering contract backlash. Tom stared at it and then at them.

They had tried to kill him.