How was the rest of the battle going? He could still hear the shouts and clatter of fighting. He couldn’t differentiate real well with his primary ability, but it felt like there were noticeably fewer humans than they’d started with. It wasn’t depriving him of sustenance though. A large number of those remaining were in pain or the grips of powerful emotions. He would be able to continue to regenerate for the near future.
Speaking of which…he tried to assess his injuries and started in surprise. His regeneration had leveled up and changed. Previously regenerating had felt sort of like being a fire-fighter. The water came through the hose and all he could do was adjust the flow and shoot it at injuries. There was minimal feedback, so he just hosed down problem-areas until the fire seemed to be out.
Now it was more analogous to being an engineer on an old-fashioned ship, with labeled pipes running to his various body components and self-closing valves regulating flow. He had a vague sense of his internal systems and the scale of the damage. He could direct regeneration to, say, his circulatory system, and when it was repaired the regeneration would stop wasting energy there. He still couldn’t really control it directly, but it was a big improvement. Since he sort of knew where the damage was and what capabilities it affected triage was much easier. Avoiding too much waste was fantastic too.
For an indeterminate amount of time he played with his new regeneration, fixing himself up. He wasn’t quite one hundred percent, but he was getting close. Unfortunately events wouldn’t wait for him. He swallowed rapid sudden spikes of agony and despair. Something had gone wrong to the west. He took to the treetops and whipped over to investigate.
He arrived just in time to witness a sojourner’s head being twisted off. Well then. He could have lived two whole lifetimes without seeing that. Ick.
It looked like the guards and prisoners had fallen back to the wagons and built their formation around them. Wasn’t much, but it was reassuring to have something covering your back. The full wagons provided a platform for the ranged guards, while the empty ones gave a small bit of cover for any wounded who managed to pull back. The perimeter ran north-south, as they had lined the full loads up ready to head back south.
At some point, likely quite recently, a surprise attack had ripped the line in half. The trail of corpses made it look like the demonlings had come from the west, behind the line. Reinforcements perhaps, or an ambushing force held back until the humans were really embroiled. Casualties had been high on both sides, but the demonlings had broken through. Some survivors had obviously fled south, but there was a remnant surrounded to the north. They were dying in droves.
The guards had been clustered more to the south, preparing the wagons to head back, while the prisoners were still loading wagons to the north. Both the detail’s (previously) surviving sojourners had been in the north for some reason though. Not anymore.
Both had been sandy. Not every sojourner’s ‘brilliant’ build panned out. Sometimes they got too clever by half, or simply miscalculated. Not a few didn’t do their research or missed a crucial factor. In most cases this just left them permanently behind their peers, but once in a while a build was a complete miss- totally unworkable. Since they had no usable foundation people called them sandy sojourners.
Sandies still had better prospects than normal people, but they never reached the heights of the average chosen and sojourners, much less the elites. Like runt aberrations (those with useless abilities) they tended to get snatched up by the military. Kills would turn them into high-functioning soldiers, and if they happened to die before they reached that point it removed a potential embarrassment to the nobility.
Well, two down. Gloe had very little idea the abilities or life energy levels the two sandies had possessed, but they evidently hadn’t done them very much good. The demonlings’ foremost member had made a beeline for them and ripped both apart. Apparently this was what you got if you let a C-Type variant demonling get too many kills. Creepy.
In form it roughly resembled a gorilla, albeit one with much more developed and lengthy legs. It didn’t have fur, instead having chameleon-like scaly skin that vaguely blended into the background. The arms were what clinched the likeness. The shoulders were enormous, the arms thick and rippling with muscle. What a reach. Deadly too. Those spiked metal gauntlets probably allowed it to parry and grab at weapons while closing into a lethal grapple.
The way the lesser demonlings were reacting he suspected it might be fairly intelligent too. Probably able to command C-Types and below the way C-Types could organize vets. Had it orchestrated this attack, and if so to what degree had the element of surprise been planned on? This thing might be seriously dangerous.
Probably a good time to fade back to the periphery and start picking off vets again. He was mostly healed up, but he’d just finished a grueling fight not too long ago. Gorilla-demon wrestling didn’t sound like a good follow-up to that, and he wasn’t certain it was a fight he could currently win. Besides, he was too late to save anyone to the north, and the group to the south looked pretty solid.
They still had at least three chosen that he could see, and aberrations among both the guards and prisoners. Granted some of those were runts, but they could still probably handle long-arms over there.
Especially if he relieved some pressure around the edges. Yeah. Yeah right, that would help for sure. Was that damn overgrown monkey looking at him?
It wasn’t as if there was much else up in this tree to stare at. Somewhat belatedly Gloe began to wonder if it had been a coincidence that big G had gone straight for the sojourners. Sandies or not they probably had been fed a fair number of kills by their families. Was it possible that monster could see shroud or something similar? And was picking off its enemies by descending strength? No. No, he was pretty sure some of the chosen still had more shroud than he did. Or…at least they had…before he killed two C-Types and a ton of vets. Shoot.
Double shoot. Grappler’s raw strength was crazy. The thing had launched off the ground in an explosive leap that had sent it flying in Gloe’s direction. Fortunately it was far enough away he could afford to watch it for a few moments. In terms of power it far exceeded him, but he seemed to have something of an edge in technique. It didn’t know how to imbue the ground before launching, so a fair bit of its energy end up being expended in crushing the launch site. Made it a bit wobbly too. Still fast as hell though. He’d better get going.
The tree shattered behind him as the grappler landed where Gloe had just been. Unlike his pursuer he wasn’t launching, instead he was running along the branches, frequently changing altitude and heading. The idea was to use his agility to his advantage.
No dice. The grappler was just bulling forward, crushing trunks behind it as it launched off them, crashing through branches as it charged. Cutting the corners on all his fancy maneuvers. Getting closer.
Gloe began launching himself. He had a definite edge in launch velocity, likely due to lesser mass and superior technique. Still, he lost a bit of ground every time he paused to imbue. Still had to do it though. If he put his foot through a tree trunk and got his ankle hooked things could go very wrong.
This wasn’t working. He was slowly losing his lead. He flipped around and tried for a surprise attack, plummeting blade first at the grappler’s head.
Its response was almost instantaneous. Damn those arms were fast. It blocked with one spiked gauntlet while reaching out to snare him with the other. Gloe sacrificed his left hand to the spikes, pushing off hard and sending the pair flying away from each other. Then he resumed fleeing.
That had been close. He hadn’t expected that kind of speed from something so big and strong. If it had grabbed him he probably wouldn’t have survived. Look at the shoulders on that thing!
What then? He wasn’t faster, he wasn’t stronger, and his agility was not much help. No time to set up anything. Hmm.
The grappler was gaining, but apparently not fast enough. It roared something. Huh. That sounded familiar. In fact, with his enhanced memory he was willing to venture that it was pretty close to identical, allowing for variability in vocal cords.
The result was the same too. A group of vets began forming a perimeter sphere. Interesting. Was it possible he’d overestimated the higher-level demonlings’ intelligence? Could all this be canned responses?
In that case…he continued to flee, looking for something that would let him test that theory. There. He landed at the base of a dead tree, leaning against it for a second to catch his breath. Then he was off again.
Up. Left off the branch. Down from the trunk. Up off the ground. Twenty-eight seconds.
A tiny wispy branch was in his flight path. He reached out with one hand to absorb the impact. Then he pushed. Hard.
The branch should have snapped instantaneously, but it was still imbued. He couldn’t imbue living beings, but a dead tree was manageable. His agility let him balance the impact, and his durability let him absorb it, albeit with substantial damage to the hand and arm. Acceptable. Given his upgraded strength he very implausibly reversed direction.
The grappler failed to notice his more deliberate movements, and it was caught completely off-guard. Its reflexes were still spot-on though, and it reached out to snatch him. Gloe had tucked himself into a ball, and he sailed just out of the demonling’s reach. In mid-air there wasn’t much the monster could do about it. As he flew over the beast’s back he began drawing and throwing forcibly requisitioned demonling daggers as fast as he could manage one-handed. He only managed to hit his target with three.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Which was better than it sounded. The blades had been ad hoc strapped to his body, so he’d been able to pre-imbue them. Necessary, because he hurled them with all the strength he could muster. He hadn’t gotten incredible penetration, but at least they’d stuck.
When the grappler landed and paused to extract the weapons Gloe grinned. As he’d hoped. The monster wasn’t very flexible or nimble. Those giant shoulders restricted his arms’ range of movement to the rear too. Gloe’s target zone had been low between the shoulder blades. The grappler couldn’t reach them to pull them out.
And while it was distracted…Gloe zipped up a tree and went about acquiring some more blades. It took the grappler a minute to realize it was raining vet corpses. Gloe was still mostly intact at the moment, and he’d leveled up substantially since the last cordon attempt. The way the vets had spread out now just made killing them easier.
The grappler resumed his chase, and Gloe went back to fleeing. It was moving faster now, with even less abandon. Probably trying to keep the pressure on so he couldn’t set another trap. Frankly, it was working. Gloe had a really good idea of a way to kill the thing, but he didn’t have the time to set it up. It required fairly specific terrain, so the angles needed to be just right. He needed some breathing room to make that happen.
Vets were mostly leaving him alone now, just trying to hem him in. That was less successful. With his current reaction speeds one vet couldn’t land a blow if he was keeping an eye on it. He tried mercing a few and hucking them at the grappler, but that didn’t slow it down at all. It just caught them with one hand while striking a defensive pose with the other. No opening.
Oh well. Gloe hadn’t really wanted to fight the damn thing in the first place. He would just keep running. It wasn’t as if he was going to get tired any time soon.
Time passed indeterminably. The grappler was slowing slightly, but not enough to give Gloe a chance. So he kept going. As for the rest of the battle, he didn’t really have a chance to keep an eye on things, but the humans seemed to be holding out still. So he just focused on his own problem.
A chorus of shrieks brought him out of his quasi-fugue state. The demonlings attacking the remaining human perimeter were calling for help, and it seemed for good reason. A decent portion of the west perimeter was now lined with wicked entangling brambles. It wasn’t an enormous stretch, but only a few people were required to watch that area and dispatch any demonlings that tried to force their way through. The rest of the defense line had been consequently reinforced. The guards had placed a makeshift aid-station in the relatively safety of the hedge’s shadow, and the ranged combatants were focusing fire a bit more now that the enemy was deprived of one avenue of approach.
Demonling casualties were rising as a result. Their numbers and stealth were less effective now that the surviving humans had grouped up and gotten a bit organized. They needed new tactics of their own. So they’d called for aid.
A mark of a solid leader is the continual prioritization of troop welfare. A good leader can be recognized by his additional ability to keep all key concerns in mind at all times. On top of that a great leader adds being able to at least somewhat get inside his opponents’ heads and predict their actions and responses.
On that scale the grappler was an okay leader. Caught off-guard by the reversal of momentum it spun to survey the situation and began barking orders. Its roars were staggering in volume, echoing throughout the entire battlefield. All other sounds nearby were drowned out.
Despite its carelessness the grappler had truly splendid instincts. In the last fraction of a second it somehow sensed it was in danger and spun around, lashing out defensively. Its speed and strength were also quite impressive. Gloe’s outstretched hand was hit square on. His shroud gave him some protection, but he was still sent flying, hurtling back before smashing into a tree trunk. His wrist was shattered, several other bones in his right arm were broken and his collarbone was probably cracked. He also had some internal hemorrhaging from the impact with the tree.
Oh, and he’d lost a knife. The one he’d been holding. The same titanic force that had sent him flying had driven the blade home. The vets’ knives didn’t have crossguards, so even most of the hilt was buried in the grappler’s arm. The blood rushing out was making it slippery, and the grappler was struggling to get a grip on it.
Not that he had a lot of time. Gloe was back. Regeneration was diverted to critical injuries, ignoring the crippled arm, and he was attacking. There still wasn’t an opening, but that wasn’t stopping him. He kept moving in for a strike and the grappler kept lashing out to smash or grab him.
As they became more powerful the demonlings seemed to get tougher, stronger, faster and more aggressive. Perhaps more intelligent too, although Gloe was wondering more and more how much these were just preset responses. They didn’t get all that much more agile though, so Gloe was able to dodge, even if just barely. Their pain threshold must go up too, because the grappler was still using both arms, while Gloe was down to just one.
Technically he could have used his right arm if he had really needed to. He ate excess pain, so he could have moved it to the extent it was still functional. The key there was the word excess though. Gloe removed debilitating pain, not all of it. His arm still hurt, and he wasn’t ignoring that. It had taken him years to recalibrate his responses, but he’d finally learned how to gauge damage based on pain (both eaten and felt.) Pain was oftentimes maddeningly overwhelming but it never happened for no reason. There was always a cause, no matter how elusive. Gloe was able to generally ascertain that cause because he wasn’t distracted by fear or agony. In this case he knew that the arm was in bad shape, and he wasn’t going to use it unless it was a matter of survival.
By contrast the grappler’s instincts told it to eliminate the threat. Gloe was right there, almost in reach. One blow, one grab and it would be over. Adrenaline flooded its system, and it pushed itself to the limits, ignoring pain.
The knife was still in there though, and all that vigorous movement was agitating it considerably. In the middle of one swing there was a sickening snap and the arm suddenly hung loose at the elbow. Too many tendons had been cut, too much blood lost. The grappler was tough and it could keep going, but that limb was out of the fight.
So they were down to one arm each. Gloe had just barely been able to dodge dual-strikes, but with only one happening at a time he was able to counter-attack. The grappler kept trying to land a body blow, and it still had substantial reach. But Gloe’s new target was the grappler’s still-functioning arm.
Now the grappler’s choice of weapons began to work against it. Spiked gauntlets gave the monster versatility, allowing for a wide range of strikes and grapples. If an opponent became too focused on dodging or parrying the beast could just switch from one method to the other. Anyone who moved in closer to attack vitals risked being wrapped up in the grappler’s deadly arms. With only one arm though grapples were much less viable, and every strike of necessity at least partially exposed the arm behind the gauntlet.
Before long a dark red webbing of slashes formed on the grapplers arm. The cuts weren’t deep, but there were a lot of them. It was still bleeding from its right arm and back too. Exsanguination was beginning to take its toll. The demonling leader was still a formidable opponent, but it was beginning to slow a bit.
Gloe was not. In fact the longer he went without getting hit again the more it allowed his regeneration to work. He was slowly getting stronger and faster. Dodging was becoming easier, and he had slightly larger windows to pick target areas and land blows.
Roars called the vets in to swarm him from behind. They came in fast but haphazardly. The first one took a knife to the chest. Gloe left it there and seized the dying demonling by the throat, pivoting and hurling it at the grappler at point-blank range. Reflexively the monster caught and parried, like before. Only one arm responded though, and the caught corpse momentarily obscured its sight.
It was the same maneuver Gloe had used on the C-Types. The grappler was far superior to them, worthy foes though they had been. At the same time, Gloe was much closer and substantially faster than in the previous fight.
The grappler caught just a glimpse of him in peripheral vision. Gloe had rolled under the beast’s left arm and come back up to the left. He snatched the knife from the vet corpse’s chest and buried it in the demonling leader’s left eye. Then he kicked off, staggering the monster while launching himself away from the pursuing wave of vets.
Regaining equilibrium the grappler began to cast about. Losing half its field of vision was a real problem. Its antagonist had proven shockingly persistent and was almost certain to come back for another try. The newly created blind spot was the obvious avenue of approach, but the grappler had a solution. Its hearing was still quite sharp. It stilled itself, preparing for a deadly counter-attack.
When it saw Gloe rocketing back it was momentarily confused. He was making no attempt at stealth, instead having launched himself at top speed off a tree, flying forward in full view. The demonling focused, timing its response. If it got everything right it could end this with one grapple. Gloe was airborne, skimming along the ground at a stable speed. Hard to dodge or maneuver like that.
The move was obvious, both in terms of being the natural response and the demonling’s preparations being clear. Gloe could see it coming, but trying to kick off the ground with the necessary force would have unpredictable results given the unknown composition of the soil here. And he couldn’t successfully imbue at this speed.
But he could unsuccessfully imbue. He reached out with one foot, brushed it across the ground and tried to imbue. He jerked in mid-air, shedding momentum as he connected his shroud to the ground, but he couldn’t do it fast enough. His force couldn’t spread across a large enough area in time, and the ground shredded beneath him. His leg had lagged behind for a second and was now released, so he fell forward, tumbling and rolling forward. Slowed significantly, but still moving fast.
Fast reflexes were one thing, but the grappler wasn’t ready for the abrupt change in vector and momentum. It snatched at Gloe as he rolled past, but its center of gravity was too high and its arm was out of position. Its finger made contact but it couldn’t get a grip.
The bruising roll had done a fair bit of damage, but Gloe had known it was coming. He’d experienced it while practicing imbuing on the move. His right arm and left leg had taken the brunt of it. The former was still non-functioning, while the latter was sprained. Acceptable.
Because one of the consequences of starting his maneuver in plain sight was that he had ended it back in the grappler’s blind spot. And he was still the more agile of the two, even with an injured leg.
He sprang to his foot and hopped to his right, winding up behind his oversized enemy. He had a clear shot at the spine, but the demonling was frighteningly tough, with a hide that was practically armor and shroud on top of it. None of his knives had gone fully home except for the one in the arm, and that had been driven by the grappler’s own titanic strength. There was no way of knowing how much force would be needed to sever the spinal cord. If he’d had a broad-bladed weapon it would have been different, especially if it gave him leverage and he had the use of both arms. Like an axe. He missed his old axe.
As it stood though, going for a kill shot seemed like a foolish risk. So instead he put two knives in grappler’s left shoulder, taking care to place them just below the shoulder blade. Then he dashed away before the vets caught up.
It turned out to be the right move. The grappler was unbelievably tough. Even down an arm and a half plus an eye it took over two dozen more hit and run passes to finally kill the thing. He had to degrade all its limbs substantially before he could get in close enough to land a mortal blow, and even then he hadn’t been able to punch through its hide deep enough to destroy a vital internal organ. The grappler had defended its head to the last, so he’d been forced to go for veins and arteries until it had succumbed to exsanguination.
There was no mistaking when the monster expired though. The surge of life energy was enormous. It made the C-Types look like vets (which made sense, all things considered.) And speaking of vets…Gloe grinned and whipped around, diving blade-first towards the horde of vets following him. There was no danger of the grappler ambushing him now, and he had two functional legs at the moment. He could afford to dance with them.