Most of the work detail chattered away merrily (if quietly) to each other, delighted to be away from the fortress for once. Not Gloe. The environment felt ominous to him, and since his intuition had improved he’d learned to pay attention to it.
Staying alert to his surroundings he tried to ascertain what was setting him off. The detail itself was an oddity. They’d never sent one out to gather lumber before. It had always been supplied by some external entity. What had changed?
Were they actually heading out for wood? Tranche was close to being out. He’d seen the stockpile himself. And they certainly had the equipment for gathering. There was a whole cart full of axes and saws, and over a dozen large flatbed wagons for hauling. Each of those had a team of six to ten pulling it. That seemed like an extreme commitment to maintain a ruse.
There were oddities though. Him being chosen for one. Oh certainly, he worked hard. Did the labor of quite a few unenhanced men. But he’d been minding the guards less and less as he’d become more powerful. He did what they said, in that he accomplished the tasks he was given. He more or less ignored commands that didn’t have to do with work though, or anything that micro-managed him. And he gave them verbal shit whenever he felt like it. The guards obviously didn’t like that, so why had they chosen to bring a recalcitrant person like him?
He wasn’t the only one either. Looking around he’d noticed quite a few known troublemakers among the prisoners. An abnormally high number of aberrations too. They usually tried to keep as few as possible in each work detail. Strange.
Quite the guard contingent too. Perhaps that simply reflected the risk of bringing so many prisoners so far from the fortress, but then why not simply send smaller details every day? Why this large expedition? He noted a number of aberrations and chosen among the guards, and even a couple of sojourners. Not all of them to be certain, but more than he would have expected.
All fully armed and armored too. They didn’t need that to control prisoners, and they normally were more lightly equipped inside the fortress. Surreptitiously observing them he realized they were all on high alert. They weren’t watching the prisoners though. They were keeping an eye on the perimeter. Especially to the east. Interesting.
Paying attention to the emotions he was eating it became apparent the guards were nervous and on edge. He focused. It was still hard to pick out individual flavors if they were in close proximity to other people. It helped if he could visually confirm the target, but he still needed to really concentrate, and even then it was elusive.
A bit easier this time though. A few of the guards were much more anxious than the others. Given their positions it seemed highly likely it was the aberrations, chosen, sojourners and high-ranking officers. Perhaps they knew something the other guards didn’t.
Gloe wasn’t incredibly excited by these vaguely unsettling revelations. He sharpened up his own senses, watching for something to go wrong. Half his attention he kept on the perimeter, while the other remained on the guards. He wasn’t taking any chances.
...
Chopping down trees was pretty fun now. He didn’t have a magical axe, but by imbuing it with shroud he could temporarily allow a normal one to withstand the amount of force he could wield now. It was like using a chainsaw, except it felt like (and hopefully looked like) the frenzies of a maniac axe murderer.
Chips and fragments flew everywhere. After a minute or so the other prisoners and the guards had silently but unanimously chosen to give Gloe some space. Some of those splinters were the size of swords, and they were moving fast enough to stab someone pretty good. Not Gloe of course. Given his shroud he didn’t even have to wear goggles. (Not that he would have anyway given his new regeneration speed.)
Carrying the fallen trees was good practice too. He chopped them into sections just a bit above what he could carry safely now, so that he could train at balancing large unwieldy objects. Picking them up was a bitch. If he didn’t grab them just right his handhold would simply rip free. Setting them down was even harder. Once he let go he had to withdraw his shroud imbue. He could maintain imbue on a released object for up to thirty-seven seconds currently, which was great if he wanted to hit someone with an imbued rock. Less useful if he was trying to disperse energy.
Spreading out force let him keep objects intact as he applied more concentrated force than was normally advisable, but it didn’t actually let him cheat mass. With objects this big he had to hold them near the center in order to balance them properly, which made letting them down dicey. If he just dropped one on a cart it would almost certainly knock the wheels off. So instead he had to lean it, gently nudging it down until one end came to rest on the ground near the cart. In order to keep it from digging into the ground he had to push his imbue into that a bit as well, then angle the trunk section over until it was partially on the cart. After that it was just a matter of wiggling it into proper position.
It would have been exhausting work, but since that wasn’t a factor for him the whole thing was actually something of an engaging puzzle. Where was the exact center of gravity for this trunk? This one was a bit crooked, so how far did he need to lean it? Could he safely plop half the weight on at once? No, that was making the wheels creak ominously.
He was enjoying himself far more than he had expected to, and certainly far more than the other prisoners. The movements required for digging trenches and building walls were just different enough from those needed here to ruin the day for most. Gloe was eating quite a bit of pain and frustration. And…a sudden spike of fear and agony?
Looking up he ate another. Then a third. Something was wrong. Should he warn the guards? It would partially give away a secret he was most loathe to disclose. Alarm horns cut off his internal debate. The guards already knew more than he did. They were under attack.
The game up, their attackers erupted from the underbrush all around. Impressive that they hadn’t been detected sooner. They had gotten quite close. Another few minutes and they would have been able to hit everyone unprepared.
But perhaps that was to be expected. These were not the same demonlings he had fought previously. Whereas those were a dirty purple color these were green with brown camouflage patterns. Rather than the solid almost blocky build of the others these were lean and even more agile. Their prehensile tail didn’t have the poisonous stinger of their brethren either, instead being utilized for more rapid traversal through trees and scrubs.
Gloe wondered how this stealth variant came into being. Were the changes imposed by their master, or did the method of their kills affect how they leveled up? Or was it something else completely?
Pondering the matter didn’t keep him out of the action. Variants or not, neither baseline demonlings nor vets presented much of a threat to him anymore unless they came in large groups. He was able to easily slaughter those around him using a basic axe. Imbuing it with shroud allowed it to weather all the force he could muster, and the demonlings didn’t have much mass to begin with. The stealth variants even less. He didn’t even need to use the sharp end. He could launch them into trees like he was playing baseball, and they were not equipped to survive impacts at that velocity.
For a few minutes he experimented with using them as projectiles. They weren’t terribly aerodynamic, so they were hard to aim. Also, they tended to try to dodge as he swung. Futilely of course, but it made predicting exactly where his blow would land tricky. It didn’t seem to be a productive exercise.
Huh. In the distance he noticed vets pinning down a prisoner and allowing a baseline to cut the throat. Scanning the fight he saw it happen twice more. Were they deliberately trying to create more vets? Were these variants more intelligent as well as stealthier? Now that he looked the few C-Type variants seemed to be operating in pairs as well, and they were utilizing hit and run tactics. They faded into stealth whenever a chosen or sojourner came near, emerging to ambush normal prisoners and the occasional weak aberration.
The prisoners weren’t going to last long at this rate. Gloe didn’t feel responsible for that, but that didn’t mean he consented to it either. Perhaps he should take steps.
Given everything going on most of the guards were adequately distracted. He waited for an opportune moment and sprinted for the periphery of the fight, then pulled out away from the guards and prisoners. The demonlings were forming a rough crescent to the east, utilizing the underbrush to prevent continuous battle lines from forming. Wounded or tired demonlings could retreat back to recuperate. Groups that were hard pressed could fall back and regroup, then launch an ambush if prisoners or guards pushed forward. Clever tactics. He was stealing them.
Taking position to the east of the crescent Gloe expanded his ability, eating the edge off of human pain, anxiety and fear in as wide a radius as possible. The demonlings were of limited sapience, so their emotions and such tasted very different. It wasn’t hard to distinguish and exclude them, although it did take a certain degree of focus.
Which could be a problem, because he was trying something new. He currently couldn’t draw more energy than he could use, either directly or for regeneration. As such he needed to use as much energy as possible if he wanted to pull enough pain and emotion to help the prisoners. His solution was to try to dial up everything simultaneously.
Put all his being into sprinting as fast as he possibly could. At the same time be hyper-vigilant, maintaining complete situational awareness. Identify, analyze and attack vulnerable targets. Keep the enemy horde overall from realizing what he was doing and reacting. Keep his form. Strike true, with exactly the amount of force needed to kill his target with minimum noise and mess. Focus on everything, all at once.
It was impossible. The amount of concentration needed to perform even one of his tasks at such a high level was close to the normal human limit. To do two put one at the upper levels of human output. And so forth. Humans just weren’t capable of that degree of multi-tasking. Gloe couldn’t do it, not even for a second.
On the other hand his failure was far from complete. Despite his enhanced capabilities he could feel the effort stretching him, trying to burn out and overwhelm him. He couldn’t keep up, but continual energy was flowing in, and any damage he did to himself began regenerating. He couldn’t keep everything at maximum, but he was able to turn in a reasonable performance. Everything was better than the best he’d been capable of back in the deep wyld.
Most of the baselines died without even knowing they were in danger. He wasn’t particularly stealthy, but he was fast, and he was able to close the distance if they were even momentarily distracted. The vets had better situational awareness, but his new offensive capabilities outclassed their defenses by too much. They couldn’t parry, and they didn’t live long enough to figure that out.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
When the ambush came, it was almost perfectly executed. The two C-Types were extremely well concealed along his path. He only had about a second’s warning that something was off up ahead. Then they rose in unison and struck out, one swinging to hobble him, one going for a decapitation. He was moving too fast to stop, so he concentrated all the shroud he could forward and parried the high blow.
The axe haft shattered under the machete blow, but it altered the trajectory enough that he was able to lean back and evade. The lower attack struck true. Shroud kept it from severing his left leg entirely, but it still bit deep. A quick breath let Gloe know that the C-Types had shroud as well. Not a ton, but enough. No wonder they were so tough.
The left leg was essentially offline. His regeneration was faster now, but not that fast. He just had to hope shroud would keep it from ripping off completely as he tried to survive. A one-legged hop backwards bought him space for a few seconds. He really need to start carrying bandages or something, so he could try to secure damaged body parts until they regenerated.
The C-Types charged. He hopped again, trying to evade. Huh. Their ambush had proven that they were still stronger than him, and obviously better at hiding than he was at detecting, but these C-Type variants were not much faster than the one he’d fought at Tranche. He couldn’t outrun them with only one functioning leg, but there were only two of them. There was always a direction he could leap to avoid both their charges, especially if he double-vectored off a tree mid-air.
They kept charging, waiting for him to get tired. He was fine with that. Eventually an opportunity would present itself, and if it didn’t he’d just dodge until his leg had healed enough to use it. The C-Types were monstrously powerful, but they weren’t particularly creative.
Or patient. Once they realized he wasn’t going to get tired they began screeching at the top of their lungs. A small mob of vets answered, swarming in and encircling the area in an attempt to cut off all possible escape routes. A neat little tactical problem. Gloe grinned.
The vets needed some time to shake out and actually cover all angles. Gloe’s movements weren’t exactly typical. So he had time to do a little trajectory calculating of his own. The C-Types charged again. The vets moved to block escape. Instead of dodging, Gloe did a small sideways hop. While in mid-air he lashed out, punting a vet into the nearest C-Type.
It didn’t do any damage to C-Type, although the vet didn’t fare too well. It did tangle them up for a few seconds though, blocking movement and vision. When the C-Type finally got clear Gloe was standing above, and the long knives appropriated from the fallen vet were already falling.
The thing was a tough son of a bitch, even after he punched through shroud, so he wasn’t able to kill it in the brief window he had. Hadn’t been able to take an eye but he’d gotten one hit in on the head and another couple on the shoulders. Its left arm wasn’t moving quite right anymore, and its right seemed to pain it somewhat.
It was still in the fight though, so Gloe backed off. The demonlings hesitated for a moment, then attacked again. Gloe went back to dodging. Every couple charges he would kick a vet at the unwounded C-Type. It was on its guard now, so it would either duck or carefully catch its younger cousin.
It had the pattern. It was very surprised when it came back up from ducking and found Gloe had kicked off a tree towards it. Knives first.
With an even smaller window he couldn’t kill that one either, but he got two solid stabs in. The demonlings seemed to have quite the tolerance for pain, but they couldn’t ignore physical damage. It slowed, just a bit.
More shrieking. The vets formed groups of three and stationed themselves in a rough sphere to keep him from escaping. The C-Types began moving more deliberately, trying to pin him against the outer cordon. Whenever his back was turned the vets drew the perimeter in a bit. Clever. It avoided chaotic motion that allowed him to catch the vets off-guard. Now if he charged them they would at least get a chance to lash out.
It also simplified things on Gloe’s end though. Fewer moving parts to keep track of. He waited for the right moment and counter-charged the less wounded C-Type. He ducked the machete blow and sank his knives into the shank as he slid past. The moment he was past he kicked off the ground and came back. The C-Type was so used to his hit-and-run rhythm that it was slow to react. He got the knives in again, and this time he was able to hit critical points in the right arm. He left them there, and as the machete dropped he caught it.
The C-Type was still extremely dangerous even without a weapon. It reached out to grapple. Gloe hacked at its outstretched arms, then at its neck with the backstrike. Even for a C-Type that was a tremendous amount of damage to take, especially since he could punch through shroud by imbuing his weapon. The monster slumped down, fighting to control its damaged body. The other C-Type swooped in on the pair, but Gloe dropped the machete and grabbed the fallen demonling by the throat. Then he threw it right at its incoming compatriot.
Catching the hurtling body without injuring it further was the matter of a mere moment. Gloe hadn’t thrown it out of spite though. He had a little technique he hadn’t shown yet in this fight. Imbuing shroud from his feet into the ground allowed him to disperse force in order to overcome some of the practical difficulties of superhuman strength. One day when he’d been pulling the stone cart he’d thought about how he was sort of bypassing the limited friction between his feet and the ground, allowing him to pull a much bigger load than he should have been able to without using deep stakes or something. He’d wondered then how else he could utilize this.
Experimentation had shown that he could use it to perform explosive leaps by fortifying his launch surface. His full leg strength could send his body hurtling. He’d used this repeatedly during the fight, launching off of the ground straight up or off tree trunks vertically. It was a useful if limited move. He couldn’t use it in rapid succession. Once he was moving above a certain speed he had difficulty imbuing rapidly. He could normally manage a somewhat controlled landing (although there was still some surface damage) or one relaunch, but after that he got moving so fast that his imbue scattered.
Trick was, since he was mostly bypassing friction during the initial launch, the amount of his foot in contact with the ground didn’t really matter. More importantly, the angle was much less limited. He didn’t have to be pushing directly away from the launch point. He could lean over on the ball of one foot and push off at a right angle, hurtling parallel and skimming along a surface.
In this case the ground, right behind the thrown body. When the C-Type lowered its wounded brethren it had only lost sight of him for a moment, but he had closed the distance in that time. He cannoned in and the three went rolling. The C-Type hadn’t known this was coming, and it lost its machete. Gloe had, and when the dust settled he came up with both.
The demonling was tough. Gloe went at him like a maniac trying to clear the underbrush. The C-Type responded like a wrestler trying to grapple a lawn mower. The results were predictable.
Wow, that still was a lot of life energy. It had been extremely dicey, but the gains were impressive. Perhaps he should reconsider his targeting. He wondered how many vet kills it took to equal one C-Type?
Thinking of vets helped him refocus. They were still there. They didn’t seem too happy about the fall of the C-Types. Fortunately he thought faster now, so he’d regained situational awareness while the bodies were still falling. He rapidly searched his memory. During the fight he’d considered and rejected various tactical gambits. The risk/reward ratio against the C-Types was adverse, but against vets things were different. He launched himself.
Shrieks of rage echoed from all directions. The vets were pissed, and there were no C-Types nearby to restrain them or impose discipline. They swarmed forward en masse, and there were a lot of them.
Outrunning them was possible. Perhaps. His explosive launch far exceeded the vets’ normal charge in terms of speed, but with only one fully functional leg he couldn’t capitalize on that lead effectively. There would be a pause in between each leap, and changing direction would be clunky. He’d have to jump as quickly as possible to stay ahead of the vets, and that came with risks. What if he blundered into another C-Type ambush, or the vets’ shrieks drew even more demonlings down on him? At least here he was on the periphery of the fight. It was likely that most of the demonlings who had heard the call had already responded.
So instead he took shelter under an old tree. Age had given it mass but also deformed it somewhat, so he was able to nestle in an indent in its trunk. While looking straight ahead his peripheral vison could see the tree coming up over him and to the right and left. The demonlings could still swarm over him here, but they couldn’t sneak up on him or stab him in the back. It was the best shelter available given the circumstances.
The vets washed forward like a wave. As many as nine of them could attack him at once if they packed together. He lashed out at those targeting vital spots, easily swatting them aside. In the openings left in between strikes he suffered several minor but damaging stabs. This wasn’t a good rate of exchange.
His mind raced and experimented as he swung, trying to find the best form of defense. Keeping his blades moving in dual alternating infinity patterns was the most efficient. He could always have a blade in front of him and minimize openings without using too much energy. He didn’t need efficiency though, not while he had emotion and pain to eat.
Reflexively hacking with all his might at any enemy that came within range was a bit better. It sped up his attacks and gave the vets pause. Recovering from each blow used up a great deal of energy and strained his arms, but that was okay short-term. Better to use more energy on swinging and less on regeneration if it meant fewer wounds to fix long-term.
Still not enough. He had the strength and energy to abruptly halt and pull back his blows after they over-penetrated, but he was losing a fraction of a second each time. With this many foes that was too many openings. They were still getting stabs in. Quick shallow stabs, but there were too many foes. Eventually they were going to hit an organ he really needed to keep this up. If his defense faltered for even a few moments they would swarm him over, and he wouldn’t be able to regenerate that. They were really upset about the C-Types. He didn’t think they’d leave his body intact.
A normal person had no chance of surviving this, so he needed to stop thinking like one. He was still substantially bigger and stronger than the vets individually. How much force did he really need to use to repel each one? He tried flicking his blades at them with small sharp motions driven primarily by his wrists and involving his elbows only when necessary. That was better. It still had enough force to kill, and if they were able to dodge or parry once in a while that was fine. The diminished recovery time for each hit was worth it. He could afford to go for a battle of attrition.
Still couldn’t cover his whole body at once though. His blades weren’t long enough. When he bent down to cover his legs he left parts of his arms, back and head vulnerable from above. When he maintained a normal guard they could crawl in and stab at his working leg. He weighed the pros and cons for a second, then dropped to his knees. It wasn’t good for his injuries, but now he could cover his reduced displayed surface area. The continual pressure on his legs was popping his wounds open, but it was better to regenerate that then try to deal with a steady supply of new damage.
His focus narrowed, his whole world shrinking down to the immediate fight. Two left. One low-crawling. Two coming down the tree trunk above. Running charge from the right. Thrown knife. Three across the front. Two leaping. One trying to pull the half-ring of corpses away.
They just kept coming. They hadn’t completely lost their minds, but they were committed to killing him. Pulling off and reassessing didn’t seem to be an option. They coordinated loose simultaneous charges, but anything more seemed beyond them. So it was the same types of attacks over and over again. Each one got a strike or two in, and they had the numbers to keep on the offensive relentlessly. He had to tire and bleed out eventually, right?
Gloe would have chuckled to himself, but he was too focused. He was refining his blade movements and techniques. Empirical evidence was rolling in continually. How long could he delay a parry before it was too late? How narrow was the window for a fatal counter-slash? Was it possible to deflect a demonling’s blade into its neighbor’s throat? (Yes, but it really wasn’t worth all the stabs you took trying to get it just right.) With every pass his expertise in utilizing his enhanced body increased incrementally. With every exchange his practical knowledge of demonling physiology and weapon on weapon physics grew a bit. Being durable enough to be able to afford first-timer mistakes was great, as was enhanced processing ability and memory that allowed him to capitalize on the opportunity.
The demonlings were also focused. On murdering him. It kept them from noticing that fewer blows were landing home. Not only was he getting more skillful, but given that he was scoring regular kills he was also getting incrementally more powerful. And of course, the longer he was able to go without incurring new injuries the more his regeneration could work on his earlier damage. So as the fight dragged on he was actually getting slightly more healthy rather than less.
It was fairly anti-climactic when the end came. The vets just ran out of bodies to throw at him. He killed the last charge and no one else came at him. None of the vets cut and ran. They died to the last one.
He pulled himself up to his functioning leg and surveyed his situation. No active enemies in sight. Lots of corpses though. Wow, now that he stopped to do a quick estimate that was a lot of vets. Kind of impressive. He looked down to his machetes. Even with shroud they’d taken quite a beating. He needed to improve his imbue. They were basically just battered pieces of metal now. He dropped them and secured some knives from the fallen.