CHAPTER 299 – HYDRA

Everyone was looking at Everlyn speculatively, and Tom’s mind raced as he tried to predict what changes she wanted them to make to their approach.

“The problem,” she continued after a slight pause and a grimace, “is that one or two ambushes, between each of our targets, would be manageable, but I doubt that’s all we’ll face.”

“Why?” Michael challenged immediately.

“Because of the pictures of the loaka on the tile.” She brushed her fringe away from her eyes in irritation. “Damn hair,” she muttered. “Toni, after this can you help me cut it back.”

“Of course.”

“You showed me the tile earlier,” Michael interrupted the girls in frustration. “I can’t see where you’re going with this.”

“There were no images of them existing this close to the zone doors.”

“So…” the healer shrugged. “This isn’t a surprise. We already know the tiles are misleading.”

“But not that much. They were represented as having a range closer to the centre. They weren’t supposed to be at the edges of the zone and the fact that not only were they out here, but in numbers large enough to launch an ambush is problematic. As we go deeper, there’s guaranteed to be more of them.” She turned to face Rahmat. “You say you were ambushed. How many. Six of them attacked me.”

“Around forty. But when we burnt the first wave so quickly, the second wave fled without striking.”

“Great!” she exclaimed sarcastically and with annoyance. “They’re not stupid. That’s spectacular news. I already knew they were ambush predators that only struck when they thought they had the advantage of numbers. But with them reacting so quickly.” She shook her head. “How long was the attack?”

Rahmat looked uncomfortable with the detailed questions. “About three seconds before they started the retreat.”

“Smart, quick to react. That’s a problem and to be honest, I’m not sure how we’ll cope with two hundred ambushing us at once.”

Michael laughed bitterly. “So, this was a bad choice, after all. I told you it was too risky and that the access to a treasure room wasn’t worth it blowing up in our face.”

“It was always about more than the treasure room,” Everlyn argued defensively. “It’s also a chance to get our full experience quota from the level.”

“Which doesn’t help if we’re dead before we can spend it. These loaka I assume you have some ideas on how to deal with them.”

“Yeah… Some ideas.” Her foot kicked the ground. “Can I get something to write on.”

Tom didn’t move. He was still regenerating his mana and had to recast his meteorites after he finished, so it would be better if he didn’t do it. Keikain stepped forward. They were standing on the vegetation, and there was a convenient area directly in front of Everlyn.

Keikain looked at it, and then his finger traced the edge.

The entire space flexed like magic was being funnelled into it with multiple bushes rustling. Then the ground rippled; the bushes got sucked downwards, and dirt boiled up to give her about a two metre section of smoothed surface to work with. Staring down at the patch of soil gave him chills. It reminded him very much of the bodies he had seen, laying on similar created earth and their features twisted by the agony of ritual sacrifice.

Everlyn’s mouth twisted in distaste, but she stepped forward and pulled out a knife that was as long as her forearm. “We all know the basic shape of the zone,” she was drawing as she spoke. “My assumptions is that we won’t be able to navigate the central area by foot easily.” She excluded an area in the centre, which added up to about half the total volume. “This area we’ll have to clear with the help of the chosen. They can safely fly us between encounters. Even if the loaka are sapient, this actually saves lives because we’ll be skipping battles.”

“If we’re relying on flying then are there any air threats we need to be aware of?” Michael asked.

She glanced up at him. “My scouting hasn’t revealed anything new. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any migrating swarm threats. The only thing to worry about are the bosses, like these birds,” she quietly started to mark out the various dangers. “If you’re flying, these monsters have an aggro range in the kilometres, as they’ll all be territorial, but honestly that’s a good outcome. We’ll use that against them. Basically get set and then taunt them into an ambush.”

Michael and Keikain had both moved to study the map and stood on either side of Everlyn.

The earth mage knelt down beside her. “So if I understand what you’re suggesting the strategy is continue the current plan of two elimination squads in the outer regions and for the central space collapse to one group.” Everlyn nodded. “And for the outside, I would then assume that the humans take the area near the zone wall because the loaka’s are unlikely to be there.”

“Yep. We’ll need to rearrange our approach slightly. It’s not as black and white as you suggested.” She carved small S’s in the dirt. “Those are potential sapients based on the tile diagrams. Humans will have to take point on them.”

“Agreed,” Keikain said.

Everlyn continued to populate extra details mainly by scratching out locations of monsters. S for sapient, B for Bird and a cross for a mid-level boss, with dots for ones that were just standard.

“And that’s the hydra?” Keikain pointed at a cross.

She nodded.

“And us?”

“Yes.”

His fingers immediately traced two lines. They started combined against the hydra, split and then collapsed on the next boss. He made a point of making the human line deeper and it spent most of the time near the wall. It was clearly a route that avoided exposure to the loaka’s. There was only a single movement more centrally to wipe out an S that the chosen line had bypassed. “That’ll work,” Keikain said approvingly. “It gives us the same number of kills but avoids the dangerous ambush areas.”

She glanced up at Michael. “I’m happy with that. You?”

Michael snorted. “If I had a better idea, I would have expressed it.”

“Rahmat you got the new route?”

“Yes, but with the loaka’s lurking won’t you be staying with us?”

Everlyn shook her head. “No, they’re not a threat to me. I’ll continue with my previous role. Scout ahead and then double back to support where I can. One last thing.” She turned to face Tom. “Your meteorites just use them defensively for now.”

“Um… why?”

“The loaka’s are smart. I want you to keep the offensive capacity of that spell hidden. Then we’ll be able to use it against the main bosses.”

“Are you sure?”

Everlyn nodded. “The three primary bosses appear to be the leaders of the loaka. We’ll be on our own against them without the chosen’s help and they’re the main boss. They’re going to be tough to defeat, but if they’re not aware of the meteorites…”

“Then they won’t have created a counter,” Micheal concluded.

“Which should give us an easy victory.” She finished happily.

“Are you sure Everlyn?” Rahmat interrupted. “I know where you’re coming from. Saving the powerful spells to the final confrontation can make sense, but Harnessed Meteorite can trivialise most of these bosses. Fights that could be finished in minutes might take hours if we don’t use it.”

“Certain.” She huffed. “Certain? I’m never certain, but I’m confident that this is the right strategy. I’ve seen enough. You talk about bosses taking hours without Harnessed Meteorite, but we’re stronger and smarter than that. This is our fourth zone in this layer. We all understand how powerful the monsters are and we have finishers that can short circuit the fight if needed.”

She didn’t say it, but everyone knew she was referring to fate increasing the killing power of a chaos bolt.

“None of the bosses can stymie us for that long and the landscape excluding the areas the chosen need to ferry us is not that hostile either. It’s clear we can finish this on time. And yes,” she rounded on Michael before he could say anything. “We’ll be able to beat the inner bosses even without relying on the meteorite, but it might require us to rank up first. I’ll have to see them first to confirm, but that’s my fear. If they haven’t seen Harnessed Meteorite, then we’ll be able to beat them while at rank sixteen rather than twenty-two… but if they’ve seen it in advance.”

She left the rest unsaid.

“But I’ve used it once. They might already know.”

“I’m aware, and that was a mistake that we won’t make again.” Everlyn said immediately. “Michael, Kei what do you think?”

“I agree,” the earth mage answered without hesitation. “I’ve been thinking about suggesting it myself.”

The healer kicked the ground a thoughtful expression on his face before looking straight at Tom. “You’re also probably near your experience being capped aren’t you.”

Tom shrugged. They didn’t know what the cap was, but if it doubled as they speculated then, then yes he would be close to hitting the limit.

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“And Everlyn?” Michael looked at the scout. “Are you sure about the zone?”

She nodded. “The chosen can do a lot more than I had feared. We’ll finish this with days to spare.”

The elder moved forward, zooming to hover next to Michael. “Dedicated Healer my analysis agrees with the perceptive one. The chosen will be able to do enough to speed us up.”

“I agree with the plan, then.” Michael said finally. “It’s stupid using the meteorites before we understand the adaptive capacity of the enemy and where they’ll be best placed for maximum effect. We’ll have to keep that in mind from now on.”

“Agreed,” Everlyn jumped up. “We should—”

“Wait,” the healer interrupted. “We also need to up our magical game to fight the loaka. They’re going to attack us and do it en masse. We have to be ready for that and chaos bolt won’t cut it.”

“Area of effect spells that can hit through the vegetation,” Toni suggested.

“That and line destructive instant cast barrier spells like fire wall.” Michael continued.

“Or something a little more subtle,” Keikain proposed with a chuckle. “Firewall is a good spell to shape the battleground, but we should aim for lethal solutions.”

Everlyn nodded. “Good suggestions everyone. Michael, can you coordinate with everyone and get us specced to defeat an ambush of up to three hundred.”

Michael agreed, and then they headed off to fight their first mid-level boss. The chosen ferried them and they landed fifty metres away from a pond that had a huge shape swimming beneath its surface. Like everything in the zone, it was not natural, as it was clearly much too large for that small patch of water.

“It’s a hydra,” Everlyn told them simply.

“Like the type that you kill a head and it becomes two?” Clare asked, “Or is it one of the more regular varieties.”

“It’s a standard configuration. Sensing organs, brains, mouths and everything else is on the central body. The hydra part is its host of tentacles. Well, more like tentacle stingers rather than what you guys are thinking.”

“I’ve fought a hydra like that.” Clare agreed. “Sometimes the tentacle was like a snake and other times rigid like a scorpion stinger and just as fast.”

“Yes, one of those.” She pointed at the pond. “Currently it has exactly twenty functional tentacles.”

There was a whistle of appreciation from Thor.

“And I reckon if we’re clumsy it has body space to have up to a hundred of the bloody things active at one time. So please don’t let them multiply. Also, they’re venomous and not with the same type. I don’t know if every tentacle has a unique venom, but it’s close to that, so everyone needs to fight your own tentacles and don’t switch. Getting injected with a couple of different tentacles won’t be fatal anything like that, but too much may be difficult for even the chosen or Michael to treat. They compound each other and if you get too many types, the tier of the effect may be increased. Um… Tom no deliberately training your venom resistance mid battle. Once it’s dead, we’ll hack off the stingers, which should let you try it afterwards.” There were smiles at that. “I’m sure you’ve all fought something like this so you know what to do.”

“Disable tentacles,” Clare answered. “Without cutting them off and keep your main blows exclusively for the main body.”

“Yes, providing no one does anything stupid this should be an easy enough fight.”

At her signal, Tom ran forward, and the monster emerged from its pond.

It was huge.

Its central body was the size of five or six elephants. A blob that was moved by the host of tentacles acting like a form of legs. It was half out of the water. His instinct told him that battling it there, where it was caught in and out of the pond was the optimal strategy. If he attacked now, four or five tentacles would need to be permanently dedicated to keeping it from sliding backward, which would make his job that much easier.

Unfortunately, he was fighting with others and they needed solid ground to fight on too, so he forced himself to pause. It took almost fifty seconds to wiggle out and Tom resisted the temptation to charge while it was clearly impeded.

Finally, it got free and its tentacles bunched under it and it launched itself.

It flew almost three metres and crashed into the vegetation with a whomp which flattened the bushes.

It was better than it being on the pond shore, but it wasn’t quite enough.

Tom retreated further to force it to come at him.

It hurled itself forward and landed with another crash.

He ran backwards.

Another thunderous thud and then he spun to face it. Instantly, seven of the massive tentacles were waving in the air in a threatening manner. It was far enough away from the pond that the others would be able to ring it and it was a monster, so he didn’t need to worry about it retreating.

This was fine, and it was going to be fun.

With a grin, he sprinted forward.

Tentacles flashed at him.

They blurred toward him too fast for his unaugmented speed to follow. He reacted immediately, dropping into a slide and throwing himself to the side.

Time slowed down, and he laughed out loud. It was glorious the blurring tentacles were now easily perceivable. Three went through the spot he had just occupied, but the creature showed it rank twenty two rating by reacting. A fourth was instantly coming from the side and a fifth at his head.

A teleport lifted himself off his back and his spear let him borrow the momentum of the one aimed at his face. His torso became stone as he briefly got squeezed between four of the thigh sized limbs. Because it was a hydra, he hadn’t recast his meteorite spell because he didn’t want to cause the tentacles to multiply, so he only had his own body to use to evade attacks. As they withered and twisted, they momentarily created space. He was only free for a moment, but he used it to slither out of the knot of moving limbs. The last two stingers were coming at him, but he was able to move with the wonderful enhanced speed of his skill.

Temporarily, he was running along the top of one of the tentacles. They felt like scaled skin with solid muscle beneath them and then he teleported as no less than four of the limbs tried to punish him for his audacity. Eight of them were focusing on him, which was great because it meant the others would hopefully only be fighting two at once, which they should have the battle nonce to deal with.

Out of the corner of his eyes. Harry went flying. Blood was running down from a wound in his shoulder but seeming unperturbed he got up and ran forward. He did a diving roll. There was a spark of energy and a chaotically powerful double enhanced bolt shot from his hand and slammed into the monster’s body. There was the impression of burrowing flowers for a fraction of a second and then a hole large enough to fit a washing machine appeared on the creature’s flesh.

Its healing immediately started closing the damage, but another dozen hits like that and Tom knew the monster would be in trouble.

Harry was smiling, especially as the tentacles he was fighting retreated to take up a defensive position around him. It was always better when enemies went on the defensive instead of offensive.

Tom’s alarms blared at him, and he teleported over a stabbing attack.

He was in the zone, slipping through gaps that were barely large enough for his dimensions. A chosen shield snapped into place and the tentacle almost cracked as it smashed home. Other minor wounds opened up as his dodging did not allow him to avoid all attacks. Four different venoms had tagged him as without actively tracking which stinger was which his fate had made that only those four had struck him. He still had over a dozen slashes covering him and the venom wasn’t a problem as he had got instant immunity to two of them. The number of wounds and only two active venoms in him clearly underlined the importance of the fate his dodge skill created to protect him.

He was in a good place.

Tom landed hard on the ground and saw flickers of light that were failed chaos bolts striking the torso of the creature. Then as he dived to the side once more another of Harry’s sparkled with extra energy. This created an explosion that lifted the monster up and moved it a metre from the impact point.

“Woo hoo. That’s two.” Harry yelled as he fled even as two of the tentacles fighting Tom switched to target the more dangerous ritualist. It didn’t matter… Harry having recognised the likelihood of getting extra attention had retreated to safety. The tentacles wanted to kill him but he was outside their range and with the rest of them harassing the hydra it couldn’t commit enough tentacles to move.

The ritualist laughed and just stood there wisely, refusing to take on four at once and the hydra was unwilling to withdraw them. It was happy to waste four of them to defend against the creature that was clearly the most dangerous here.

Another of the tentacles attacking Tom vanished, probably to respond to someone else’s enhanced chaos bolt. That left only five harassing him, and fate had by this time built up to ridiculous levels.

He slipped between attacks, and the creature’s undefended body was metres from him. The aura was useless because there was too much chance it could cause extra tentacles to grow, so he shot a chaos bolt.

It fizzled away and did nothing, and then he was forced to dodge more strikes. Then once more, the torso was exposed. More chaos bolts were launched.

It was simple to evade the five that were trying to murder him. The fight against a mid-level boss was as easy as they had expected, and it was sort of nice to be forced to dodge so much.

He triggered Lightning Enrage. The number of tentacles targeting him returned to eight and then nine. He might not be doing more damage than others, but he was causing more pain, so got a disproportionate amount of attention.

One of the tentacles which he was immune to impaled him and threw him backwards. Five plunged like stingers through the spot he had been standing in. Then he was free and five mana healed the wound.

That was his fate skill working.

He kept fighting.

One of his chaos bolts upgraded to a tier three impact. It caused an icy patch the size of a table. His spear slammed into the weakened skin with all of his powers engaged. The ice shattered and his weapon plunged almost a metre and a half into the creature so that his hands still gripping the shaft were pressed against the creature’s flesh.

He wrenched backwards and dematerialised his spear to get it out of the wound the moment it was free enough to do so. Despite the fact he had added spear damage to the chaos bolt, he had done less harm than either of Harry’s attacks.

That was fine by Tom.

His job was to get as many tentacles trying to kill him as possible without creating more, which is exactly what he had managed.

Two more vanished to harass the rest of his team.

He fought a seemingly choreographed battle against seven and despite them doing everything they could barely tag him. The fury of the strikes pushed him backwards and he let himself go with the flow. He got a glimpse of the left side of the monster and smiled. It’s healing was starting to struggle and there were significant unhealed wounds present now.

Time remained slowed, and he dodged through the tentacles that to him were moving extraordinarily sluggishly. Nevertheless, one still punched through the living rock of his stomach and injected its pay load.

It was one of the two varieties he was already immune to.

Tom kept fighting, and then the monster collapsed limply.

He stepped back for a moment to examine the wider battlefield. Even if he had not ever really been in danger an average of eight tentacles trying to kill him had not allowed him to observe the battle in any detail. It was hard to count with its powerful healing how many chaos bolts had struck. That initial nasty strike by Harry for example was barely visible but if he was to estimate Tom would have guessed that up to fifteen fully empowered versions of the missiles had hurt the torso during the battle and because no one should have been using fate that meant that over a hundred chaos bolts would have been launched.

They had also done a good job working around the multiplying tentacles. He quickly counted and got up to twenty-two. The battle must have lasted almost ten minutes, and they had only accidentally severed two of the appendages during the fight. It was an impressive disciplined result especially with chaos bolt. Tom was only too aware of how badly wrong a chaos bolt could go when they enhanced too far and got an unexpected effect.

His critical eye found the spot where the extra tentacles come from. There were two ugly splits where one had become two and there was a nearby dreadful scar. It was the area that Michael had been standing.

“Michael!” Thor roared in amusement, having probably noticed Tom’s attention. “You’re not supposed to cut off tentacles.”

The healer laughed as he bent down to remove a stinger. “You saw what happened.”

Tom knelt to copy the healer after all they were doing it for him and started to cut the tip off a nearby tentacle.

“I didn’t. Two tentacles looks careless to me.”

“Me to.” Rahmat agreed.

“And me three,” Toni agreed gleefully.

Thor laughed louder. “Yes. Careless. He launched a sword storm at a hydra. Can you believe it?”

“I didn’t know you had that spell,” Rahmat said with a smirk.

Michael moved onto a second tentacle. “I don’t and Thor knows it. He saw, it was a misfired chaos bolt.”

“Nope, I know nothing of the type. I just turned around and saw a sword storm and thought there goes Michael being Michael again.”

Tom appreciated the banter, and he knew it was a bit late to do anything, but he searched his companions, assessing each of them in turn. He was happy to see by how freely they moved that they were clearly healed up and uninjured after the fight. His eyes swept over everyone gathered to assess their state. Harry had some blood on him, but he was the only one.

It had been a very good fight.

“Three!” Harry yelled, laughing. “Three natural procs that has to be a record.”

“We have more to do.” Everlyn said flatly. “Have you all got the stingers.” She looked around and then collapsed her hands. The monster disappeared and was replaced by a loot portal.