Normally when people built traps, they used bait. Something that the animals in question really wanted, and right now, Tristan hoped he was desirable enough to blindly jump into a ten foot deep hole in the ground. He used one of the spears to shove the hatch open. Before anything could jump down, Tristan hopped over the barrier he had set up and got ready to stab.
Nothing jumped down. Tristan waited, he could hear the wroughtwilers pacing and sniffing at the entrance. After ten minutes of waiting and no Mythical beasts jumping down, Tristan had to conclude that they weren’t as dumb as he had anticipated. Poking his head out of the gap in his barrier, Tristan looked up.
“Make a mirror next time,” Vulcan nitpicked, “No need to risk your head getting bitten off.”
When the wroughtwilers saw his head, they started growling. Tristan saw what he interpreted as anger in their eyes. However, none of them jumped down. He frowned, ten feet was not that far for tier two animals. The shaft was not large, but no hazards were visible to make the pack wary.
Tristan was not sure what to do. If it had been difficult to escape and fight before, it would be downright impossible now. He needed a way to set them off, a way to make them so angry that they would attack without thinking. Taunting would not work, but Tristan did remember how irritating Luke’s dodging was. Maybe a hit and run strategy would be sufficient.
None of this would have been necessary if he hadn’t killed the first wroughtwiler. If he had made a muzzle out of metal essence, he could have simply walked away. Tristan doubted they would have followed him for inconveniencing a pack member. Unfortunately, he would have to simply deal with the issues he had caused himself.
Tristan stepped over the barrier and into the rain of drool. He did not want to stay here any longer than he had to. Gripping one of his makeshift spears near the butt, Tristan thrust it straight up at the ring of barking maws. Several wroughtwilers snapped at the shaft of the spear, gouging lines in its metal surface.
Their aggression made it easy for Tristan to shove the tip right into a beast’s mouth. While their fur was hard, the back of the throat was not. Contrary to what Tristan expected, the stab was not instantly fatal. He managed to miss the spine and the cylindrical nature of the spear tip made it impossible to cut arteries unless they were directly hit.
Another wroughtwiler bit the shaft as Tristan pulled it back. Tristan pulled, but the dog did not let go. He pulled harder, but the wroughtwiler opted to get pulled over the edge instead of releasing its prize. Tristan scrambled out of the way, the ladder down was inset into the wall of a shaft that was a three foot semicircle. That fact made it impossible for Tristan to bring the spear to bear on the animal.
Tristan released his grip on the spear and abandoned it in the room. He doubted he would be getting it back during this skirmish. Before the wroughtwiler could hit the floor, Tristan jumped over the welded metal and into the main room of the outpost. He grabbed the metal sheet perpendicular to the welded one and started sliding it into place. He intended to block all but a small area of the entryway and then stab the beasts through the small gap that remained.
The wroughtwiler had different intentions. Before Tristan could block off the entryway, it had already landed and then jumped at him. The beast was heavy, but it could still get itself over the three foot partition. Tristan punched it in the muzzle as it scrambled over. It froze for a moment and whimpered.
He tried to shove the whining animal back, so its body was no longer keeping the makeshift door from closing. That was when dog two showed up. It landed, then took advantage of its packmate’s super durable fur to climb over its friend. Tristan was so focused on the door that he barely had time to lean back. Teeth snapped shut, inches from his nose, Tristan threw an uppercut into its lower jaw.
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The wroughtwiler’s head jerked upwards, and it whimpered for a moment before launching itself forward again. He gripped the fur on its neck to keep the scrabbling canine away from his throat. With his other hand, Tristan snatched up a second spear from beside the door.
Wire like fur needled into Tristan’s palm as the wroughtwiler thrashed. Unfortunately for the mythical beast, Tristan was closing in on the peak of tier five. Holding the spear about a foot away from the tip, he stabbed forward. The spear penetrated all the way to his hand, but the beast did not die. Tristan was starting to realize that kill shots on creatures he was unfamiliar with might be a weakness he needed to close.
Two stabs later the beast died, though not to the pointed metal rod. Introducing decay alloy to the chest cavity of any animal was a death sentence. The black festering blood dripped out of the wound and onto the first wroughtwiler. A creature that Tristan had completely forgotten about in the heat of the moment.
It bit him in the outer thigh. Tristan yelled in pain and reinforced his kern there just before the dog jerked back. The stupid animal wanted to drag him out of the outpost. He shoved the dead wroughtwiler off the top of its companion, then stabbed the second one in much the same way he had the first.
A third canine landed in the entryway and scrambled in as the first wroughtwiler expired. Tristan stepped back to bring his spear to bear, but the first wroughtwiler was still anchored to his leg. He did not have time to pry himself free, so he used his architect alloy to copy the gauntlet he had made with Drew. It lacked any of the force enhanced properties of the original, but it was still a solid piece of metal he could use as a shield.
The wroughtwiler's teeth sank into the metal, but not through it. Without the pain of a bite to mask it, Tristan could feel a click as the jaw locked into place. Then there was another click. The jaws tightened and the teeth sank in a little deeper. Tristan did not want to find out how much force could be exerted with the ratcheting nature of the bite.
Tristan dropped the spear and drew his knife, he sliced across the beast’s throat. He expected a fountain of blood, but the knife was unable to cut through both the metal fur and the hide beneath. ‘Click.’
The teeth punched through the armor but weren’t quite long enough to penetrate the skin. Tristan took another pass with his knife. This time he got the blood he had been expecting. The beast used the few seconds of life it had left before blood loss finished it off wisely. It pushed off the corpse of its pack mate.
At first, Tristan did not understand. Then his thigh erupted in pain. There was a contest between the strength of his metal enhanced flesh and the clamped jaws of the dead wroughtwiler as both the corpse and Tristan were shoved away from each other.
Tristan could not afford the loss of his leg’s functionality. He extended the arm the beast was locked to, to reduce its leverage while pushing more essence into the wound to stop it from tearing. Bringing his knife up to the dead wroughtwiler’s jaw, he severed the tendons holding it shut. That let him use the blade as a pry bar to get the jaws open and free himself.
The dead wroughtwiler was shoved back into the entryway by the top one’s hind legs. Without its leverage, the canine latched to his gauntlet gave one last valiant effort to make its death mean something. The hind legs that had once been pushing on the dead wroughtwiler landed on the lip of the welded plate.
Shoving with the last of its strength, it tackled Tristan. A dog this size was not particularly heavy, but it was covered in metal giving it enough mass to shove Tristan back. He winced as he put weight on his injured leg. The mythical beast likely thought it had made some sort of grand sacrifice by locking its jaws on his gauntlet. It would have worked if Tristan couldn’t simply take the gauntlet off.
After removing his hand, Tristan tossed the corpse into the empty space left by the disassembled bunk. Now onto the next wroughtwilers. Tristan felt like he was doing pretty well. Four were gone, the one he stabbed in the throat and the three that had jumped down. Almost half were gone and he had only taken a single bite.
Turning back to the entryway he cursed. Two wroughtwilers hopped the welded plate, uncontested. It had locked onto his gauntlet not to put it out of commission, but to get him away from the door.