CHAPTER 310 – THE IMPACT OF SHADOW POISON
More of the monsters appeared. Sometimes, as many as three snapped into existence without warning. They forced humans and chosen to dodge and weave to avoid being hurt while the elemental repeated its initial successful tactics. All it needed was for a shadow to stay still for an instant too long. Sometimes it got it after the first blink and other times after a couple. But every time it would burn its way inside the monster and then fry it from the inside. The whole time, a logical, calm personality directed its action with an aim to maximise efficiency.
It appreciated the beauty of its kills and the bonus it got with each death but there was no excitement, it seemed slightly detached from its emotions.
More shadows assaulted them.
“Ahh, I’m hit.” Thor cursed suddenly.
He stumbled backwards. One hand clutching at a shoulder.
Two shadows had caught Thor between them. Their presence had stopped him from leaping forward or back and being a hammer user… well lateral movement did not come naturally to him. He eventually attempted to dodge sideways, but that initial momentary hesitation had proven too much.
They struck at Thor with one of their spikes, landing a telling blow while the others missed.
There was a flash of motion. One of the monsters shuddered as its skin was torn open and the pale shining elemental pushed deep within it. Then four extra thin rays of light burst out from it.
The second blinked away as they often did right to the back of the party to open up space between them and the elemental’s new position. It materialised amongst the strike force of all the lesser elementals. At that point, it had no chance. Their simultaneous attack from multiple sides was enough to stop it blinking away and the bright lights of each wisp burnt deeper and deeper into the mass of shadow. It withered and tried to escape, but just like the one the full elemental was cooking from the inside it was doomed the moment it had been caught.
“It’s definitely poisoned.” Thor rumbled the moment it was clear both monsters had been taken care of.
Michael was instantly by his side.
“Harry ritual circle. Toni defences,” Everlyn snapped. She glanced at him. “The elemental’s got less than a minute, right?”
Tom nodded.
“Then send it to kill as many as possible.”
He had a permanent connection with it and he conveyed the requirement.
The elemental responded immediately and glided away without seeming to rush, yet it was still travelling at about the speed someone could sprint. Then it spotted an opponent and blurred forward.
Its light vanished momentarily before two sunbeams burst out. One hitting the floor and the other left wall as it became an incandescent sun within the shadow monster. Then it was out and continuing the hunt. It turned the corner and disappeared from sight. The others couldn’t see it but Tom could feel it coldly and logically cruising along calculating what speed would let it get the most kills given its mana and time constraints.
Then it shot forward and smacked into another of the enemies. Tom forced himself to ignore it. At this point, it was like an arrow released from the bow. A missile in mid flight and beyond his ability to manipulate and no longer his concern.
Both Michael and Clare were crouched down next to Harry.
“Do you need me?”
The healer shook his head. “Not for this Tom. Your technique I believe will work, but I can combat this directly. I’ll need only a minute.”
Clare stood up.
Tom arched an eyebrow in question.
“He can heal it. I can’t. It’s not responsive to me.”
“Do you think Michael’s right. Will I be able to save people?”
Michael was too distracted to respond.
Clare looked thoughtful. “Your barrier method can definitely stop the expansion and if it’s in a localised area, then I think you’ll also be able to push it out. But, if the infection has spread fully…” she shrugged. “I suspect we’ll be relying on Michael to save the lives in Vidja’s team.”
The other healer stood up abruptly. “Done. Thor you can get up. A single sting takes about a sixth of my mana to eliminate, providing I get to the wound within five minutes. After that, I’ll see, but it’s going to be harder.”
Everlyn nodded. “So as theorised this area isn’t deadly to us. We can deal with the venom.”
“Correct. But without my spells evolutions…”
“I understand and I wasn’t judging Vidja’s team, just stating facts.” She looked thoughtfully at the group and then at the dead shadows. “That elemental was pretty useful wasn’t it?”
“I told you so. Much stronger than the lesser versions.” Keikain crowed from where he stood, weapon at ready to protect them against any threats.
“It was,” Michael agreed.
“However, I don’t fancy waiting around half the time for Tom to regenerate his mana. I think it’ll be faster to push on without it.”
“But safer with.”
“Yes, it will be slightly safer, Keikain. But we have two people who can heal the wounds and the tunnel is not that dangerous. If we pace ourselves down here, I doubt we’ll ever have to fight more than two at once, which we’re more than capable of, especially if the chosen are jumping in to help.”
Keikain sighed. “I agree, two healers, lesser elementals, Toni and Rahmat’s upgrades and the chosen. We should be safe enough.”
“Very big of you,” Thor sniped… the earth mage thankfully chose not to react.
They took off at a quick jog and they were fighting continuously as they did so. They refused to slow down even when people got stung. Michael healed whoever was affected at the centre of the formation while the rest of them continued to fight with the new monsters that reached them.
It was hard to say what precisely was different about the tunnels. The monsters didn’t cluster differently and nor were they ranked higher. Rather, they were denser than elsewhere. When in the smaller passageways there would be one ever fifty metres, here there were four. But with the capacity to heal any lucky hits and the edge given by the light elemental’s their progress was safe enough.
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Five shadows descended on them simultaneously. The walls were not smooth but rather had dinner plate sized holes in them that were often deeper than an arm’s length. The shadows had learnt to hide in them, so they had no warning of the ambush.
One second there were no shadows and the next five surrounded them, which were more than they had fought to date.
Tom felt a flare of annoyance and his mind calculated odds and percentages. The humans were slower than a shadow, by rank alone they were thirty percent slower but they were talented and could fight a shadow to a standstill if the fight was one versus one… Against larger odds… And there were five of them… and they could only burn them down so fast.
Tom decided to be proactive. He couldn’t risk one of the other humans being caught between three of them. Two had scored a hit on Thor, three would be guaranteed to severely wound anyone of the others.
Lighting Enrage blasted out from him in a torrent of sparks and ignoring the formation they had put in place a thought made all the lesser elementals shoot toward him.
The shadows all blinked.
His Spark domain registered the new presences next to him. He was surrounded.
Four of them had hemmed him in. One above and the other three surrounding him like points of a triangle. There was a shift of reality as they all attacked somehow simultaneously. Their stingers were lunging at him from every where.
Time slowed down.
He threw himself in the air, twisting as he did so. His abilities tracked the various attacks. It was like he was being caught in a spear trap. The spikes were coming from all directions and there was no avoiding them. A mesh that completely filled the space that he was in. He teleported upwards to a location that had fewer of the spikes going through it.
A shield created by one of the chosen blocked three spines heading for his heart. His own skill stopped another aimed at his back. His traits were useless. This was not something he could phase through. His legs continued to twist. Living Rock snapped into position just before the spikes struck.
The magic attacks pierced the stone effortlessly.
Tom ignored the damage and focused on the entire battle. Power Strike and Enlarge let his spear gouge deep into one. Rahmat’s weapon similarly enhanced got the second. The light elementals trapped a third and Thor pounded another.
The three not caught by the light elemental blinked away, but they did not move far. They just shifted away from the current people attacking them and moved to a new position where they could continue their assault. A fire and ice storm tore apart one of them. His spear, without having to change trajectory slammed into another. Thor’s backswing caught the last. Spikes from the two came at Tom, and he was able to dodge all but one which punched through his calf.
Tom frowned that was five direct hits, and all had injected the deadly energy. That was an unlucky ratio. Usually, less than forty percent of the wounds were infected. There might be something systematic happening. Like possibly it was a special variant that infected them and they happened to hunt in packs.
He pushed that thought aside as something to discuss with Everlyn later.
They blinked away again, and he landed on the ground from his initial jump at the start of the fight. That meant they were two seconds in.
Spark domain tracked what was happening. One of the shadows had shifted to the open space right where the light elementals had burnt to a crisp their initial victim. The lesser elementals seemed collectively shocked by the concept that their prey had delivered itself so conveniently. It took the time required for him to bend his knees to fully absorb the force of his fall, for them to react. They blazed and dived forward, pinning it. The last shadow had landed between Tom, and Rahmat and the spearman had been ready. His weapon plunged into its mass and then a skill was triggered that made the shadow glow from the inside like what the elemental did.
Both, while not dead, would never blink again, and they would die in a few seconds. Which meant all four who had attacked him were taken care of. The question was where was the fifth. Tom spun until he spotted the last one. It was being consumed by chosen magic next Everlyn. Each flare of flames and ice tearing chunks of shadow away from it. .
The enemy was defeated. He finished his spin and was satisfied that no new threats were emerging. Then he folded his knees and sat with his senses focused inwards.
Despite what Thor had said, the pain wasn’t that bad. It was barely worse than a normal deep cut. It throbbed a little, but that was to be expected from any injury.
He triggered Healing Tranquillity and his mind immediately checked on the six sources of infection or curse or whatever it was. The dense foreign magic was pooling in the wounds and spreading slowly. Unlike the wasp venom, it was not getting into the bloodstream. Instead, it was a more traditional affliction.
After a moment, he picked the shallowest wound to experiment on. With his conscious mind, he created walls to pin the curse in and then to push it out. Freezing it in place was easy, but shifting it was far more difficult. Some of the energy moved, but even the small amount of purifying he managed cost too much mana.
Tom paused to consider the problem, his mind quickly chewing through the various scenarios and options. To push the energy out like he had with the sleep magic would take over half his mana pool, and this was for the smallest and shallowest of the wounds. If it was all he had available, it would work, but he had other choices.
While he pinned the curse in place, he mentally started to sever the flesh a millimetre from the wall. He started in one spot and spread out in an oval shape, infected skin on one side and none on the other. Even in a state of Healing Tranquillity, this stung more than the combination of all the wounds and afflictions.
None of his discomfort reached his face, and he twisted his arm so the top faced the ground and the chunk of poisoned flesh, flopped out, leaving a sizable ugly red wound in his arm. Tom frowned as it splattered onto the floor. Without his magic restricting it the evil energy immediately consumed the remaining living tissue and turned it black.
Then it sizzled like each of the shadows had when they had been dying. The flesh even shrunk as it did so.
Nasty stuff.
His eyes focused on the hole left by the surgery. The ugly throbbing red left by his magical cuts.
Tom scowled.
It was something he had to take care of. He blinked and commanded his body to change. That bright vibrant warning colour faded to grey as the area including centimetres on either side of the injury, turned into Living Rock.
With a frown, his fingers of the other hand dug into the rocky ground and extracted a pebble the size of a golf ball, which he pressed into the depression in his arm. The stone fused and then, with a flick of his mind he deactivated Living Rock and his skin returned to its normal colour. There was no ugly red throbbing wound and he could see his arm hairs, regrown in the spot he had gouged out.
It was like nothing had happened to it.
“Not the standard method,” Michael said amused. “What was the price?”
“Forty mana end to end.”
The healer’s eyebrows rose at that. “Wow, that’s more efficient than what my spells can do.”
“It’s not that spectacular. It was the easiest to operate on and by volume by far the smallest. . The others will cost more.” He raised a finger to indicate one second and entered Healing Tranquillity to do it again. This time he focused on the deepest wound and repeated the process. More rock was shoved in the large divot left. “That was eighty-five.”
“Still better than my healing. I’m seeing more and more of why you lasted forty years.”
Tom decided he was not comfortable with compliments and chose to ignore it. “Have you tried cutting out and restoring the flesh afterwards?”
“We have and it doesn’t work,” Clare interrupted. “The one time we attempted it the infection moved en masse to a new area. It was a like it was semi-sapient and reacted to our actions. There was no way to cut it out. Amputating the limb maybe but nothing you can do if the damage was upper thigh, arm or on the torso.”
“Makes sense,” Tom agreed. After all, if it was possible, then Vidja’s group would have used the technique to save themselves. He was sure they would have healers capable of restoring limbs and cutting off arms to save them from gangrene was something done in medieval times. “But I can stop it moving so for us,” he indicated the two of them. “We can use that technique. That means if our group suffers too many afflictions, then we’re not just reliant on Michael. Extracting the infected flesh, even in others, isn’t that difficult and your restoration spell is super-efficient. I think together we can do a better job than him.”
Clare nodded. In agreement.
“Believe what you will, but I’m not the one relying on brute force to fix the issue.”
Tom focused on his next wound and was surprised to find that Michael had already made significant progress healing it. He focused instead on the fourth.
He repeated his isolate, remove and then heal by taking advantage of his Living Rock skill. By the time he had finished so had Michael.
He was fully healed. He stood and looked at the dead corpses. “I really don’t like these shadows.” He kicked one of the bodies and almost stubbed his foot. In their reduced state, they were surprisingly dense.
“None of us do.” Everlyn told him. “But if we’re healthy let’s keep moving. The exit to the main passage is only a hundred metres ahead and we’ll reach Vidja ten minutes after that.”
“Providing the directions are accurate,” Keikain said grimly.