“Get up and fight me, human!” yelled the squirrel as the crushing blow to the back of Cal’s head had caused his vision to black out long enough for him to lose his footing and crash to the ground hard.
“Dammit Third, do we really have to do this again. Snap out of that monster’s control and think for yourself!” screamed Cal in return as he pushed himself back to his feet.
“He is all that I know, and despite what your kind may think, under his rule, the squirrel empire has spread, our access to the magicks of the caverns has grown to new heights, and even now, he is planning to make an alliance with the creatures above. Can you really challenge that?” Third Smasher danced backward out of Cal’s lightning-infused punch as he proclaimed the virtues of their leader.
“Enslaving groves of other beings and using his powers to alter the way you think isn’t something I particularly want to be part of. Add in the idea of any kind of Gryalth alliance and all you’ve done is make me want him dead even more than before. Do you have any idea what those invaders are doing on Earth?” Cal spat out in response. This information meant that there would always be a potential threat here in each loop, and it had to be something they dealt with.
“Earth abandoned us to these caves, and now you dare show up and threaten us?” Third Smasher cut across Cal with his claws, shredding part of his shirt and leaving behind fresh bloody lones.
Their words were answered from behind by a volley of wind from First Smasher. He threw himself to the side as fast as he could, managing to dodge the majority of the wind arrows, but he still sprouted several fresh piercing wounds on his shoulder, eliciting a small scream of pain from him.
Cal started to spin to fight them both just as Third Smasher leaped onto his back and bit down hard into the same injured shoulder. Cal answered the bite by lightly electrifying his own body, sending a surge of voltage through the much less resistant squirrel. Its arms briefly constricted with the force of the electricity and then released as it dropped off of Cal, whimpering in pain.
He followed up by electrifying the air around him in an attempt to disrupt any unseen wind arrows coming his way. His shoulder was killing him, and the arm was useful for channeling now, so he couldn’t afford many more of the arrows finding a home in his backside. The field worked as several wind shapes collapsed once they entered it, giving Cal some breathing room as he started moving mana away from his injured arm.
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He wasn’t sure his channels were ready to handle double the amount as usual, but he needed to end this fight, and First Smasher seemed to be able to dodge his attacks using the wind just as well as he could launch arrows with it.
First Smasher leaped into the field, slashing out with claws and finding Cal’s face with ease. Cal once again cried out in pain as they raked across his face, leaving deeply bleeding gashes in their wake. It wasn’t enough to break his concentration, though, and he followed up the painful assault by releasing a giant arcing blast of lightning, hoping to give First Smasher nowhere he could dodge.
He watched as the squirrel did his best, leaping about at a speed he could barely keep track of, but the wind wasn’t faster than light, and finally, the lightning caught him. It arced through his body, devastating over and over as the squirrelly charred corpse fell to the ground with a final scream.
Cal turned back to the leader, who was trying to escape yet again. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he screamed in rage at the lumbering monster. Blasting waves of force went off inside his head in answer. It was getting hard to think by milliseconds. He could feel the vine trying to compensate, but he doubted it would be enough and reached out with every bit of mana he could muster before his brain turned to jelly.
He used this mana to rip the ceiling down as hard and fast as he could. He tried to center it over the telepath, but he couldn’t be sure his vision was accurate enough for that. He opted instead just to rip down as much as possible. His survival be damned; he wanted this cave-in to be the end of it.
As the rock crashed down into the massive squirrel Cal felt his head return to clarity. Most of the pain still remained, but a raging headache was something he could deal with. He looked to Ethel’s fight and saw her restraining Second Smasher in the remains of her plant armor.
“Can you tie up Third Smasher when you’re done? I need to sit and bleed for a while.” Cal said as he looked down at his limp arm. His shirt was nearly destroyed. Despite his words, most of the bleeding had stopped, but that hadn’t done anything to restore any real function to it. He likely needed a medical professional or Melissa to repair it after everything he had been hit with.
“Yeah, I got it. Next time, don’t let the bad guy stab you so many times, and you won’t bleed as much,” Ethel responded as she moved on to Third Smasher.
“I’ll try to remember that,” Cal said as he sat down, leaning his back against the cave wall. “I’m pretty sure it’s dead this time.”
“I gathered as much when the stabbing pain in my head turned into the relief of a bad migraine. Here eat this and try to get some rest while we wait on Tiffany to get his crab ass back here.” Ethel tossed him some jerky from her pack that had somehow survived the fight.
“Thanks.” After quickly downing the jerky, he slumped further back and let sleep take him.