Symon's Dumosan allies had a rapid-fire conversation in their native tongue before Aslan turned to Symon.
"Safiya has spotted monster tracks. At least a dozen of them passed through here into the valley. It happened at least an hour ago but less than three hours," he said quickly and professionally, eyes looking around for threats as he talked.
"I see," Symon said. "Any ideas? Are we going around?"
"It should not be required. The creatures appear small and should pose only a minor threat. And... I do not know any other ways through the mountains," he added sheepishly.
"A dozen smaller creatures... wolves?" Symon asked.
Aslan spoke a few words to Safiya, who shook her head in response. "The tracks belong to something smaller than a wolf. These creatures are less than waist height."
Symon's first thought was well that's good news, while his second thought immediately after was holy shit how big do wolves get here.
"So, we just continue straight through?"
"Indeed so, but let us discuss a change in the marching order..."
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Symon had begun to notice something of a theme in this world. Things would be calm, even downright boring, for days at a time until all of a sudden things went wrong. Even knowing they needed to be vigilant, it was impossible for them to maintain a complete awareness of his surroundings. What he was aware of, however, was the sudden sensation of being stabbed in the side by a hot poker.
"Ow, fuck!" he shouted, jumping into the air more out of surprise than pain. A trained soldier or experienced adventurer would have looked outwards to get eyes on the threat, but Symon was neither of those things. Instead, he looked down in confusion at the projectile embedded in his side.
It looked like an overly large porcupine quill, although it was a solid white colour like bone. That wasn't counting the bright red blood coating it. It didn't appear to have penetrated very deep, but there was still a problem. Like a spigot in a barrel, the end of the quill was pouring out Symon's blood at a prodigious pace. The quill must be hollow to allow the blood to flow, he thought.
The vitality was already pulsing out of his vessel, so he wrapped his fingers around the blood-slick quill and yanked it out. Yet another spurt of blood shot out of the wound, but it rapidly petered out now that nothing was keeping the wound open. As the tear in his flesh sealed shut, he took in his surroundings.
They were surrounded by several creepy looking monsters. They were four legged, with thin limbs that, coupled with their pale white colouration, gave them a skeletal appearance. But the strangest part of them was their head — namely, their complete lack of one. Their bodies were long and cylindrical, but the only thing attached to it were their legs. They didn't even have a neck, but they were still pointed unerringly towards Symon and his friends.
The creatures hadn't made any noises yet, but as they swivelled to face — not that they had proper face — the others, that changed. It was an odd coughing noise, reminiscent of a cat with a hairball. After a moment of this, during which Symon unsheathed his sword, they let out a final, deeper cough.
As they did so, little white projectiles came flying out of their strange, tube like bodies and pelted the party. Aslan raised his shield in time, deflecting the quills with a staccato tink-tink-tink against his metallic shield. Safiya simply dodged them, contorting her body impossibly so that each of the missiles embedded into the ground instead of her. Atabek let out a deep grunt, slamming the shaft of his massive axe against the ground and... stood still. To Symon's surprise, most of the projectiles simply bounced off of him, despite the fact that he wasn't wearing proper armour. He was even shirtless!
Symon unintentionally used the same strategy as Atabek, but he had no realistic way of avoiding injury. His healing was obviously great for recovering from injuries, but it did nothing to prevent them from occurring in the first place. This meant that, instead of having the spines bounce off him, they peppered his side as he raised his arms to protect his face.
Multiple pinpricks of pain blossomed down his body — one in his forearm, two in his ribs, and one in his thigh. The wounds themselves appeared minor, but the real problem was the bleeding they caused. It was unnaturally fast, torrents of blood spraying out of him like a firefighter's hose. Not wasting any time, he yanked them all out, uncaring of any extra damage the process was causing. Once again, the bleeding rapidly slowed before stopping completely after a few moments.
Symon knew something had to change — they couldn't just stay there and take the attacks. If only Serik were still here to shoot them with that giant bow, he thought. Considering neither he nor anyone else had a proper ranged attack, so they had to get up close and personal.
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The creatures had ambushed them from the sides of the valley, so it would be difficult to reach them. It wasn't a sheer wall, but it was a steep enough slope that it would take a dangerously long time to reach them.
But instead of keeping the high ground and raining down attacks, the monsters did the exact opposite. Perhaps they had only a few shots each that had all been used up already, maybe they knew something Symon didn't, or it could be that they were just mindless bloodthirsty monsters that made poor tactical decisions. Either way, they all came charging down the valley from both sides, moving so fast they were more falling down the slope instead of running down it.
There were close to twenty of them, which meant the four humans were at a severe numbers disadvantage. Safiya and Aslan faced one slope, while Atabek and Symon faced the other. The monsters reached to Symon's mid-thigh, but most of that height was in their spindly legs.
"Two against ten, that's not too bad," Symon said aloud.
Atabek couldn't understand his words, but he appeared to agree with Symon's sentiment. With a deep, animalistic roar he charged straight into the biggest cluster of the monsters, his heavy footfalls exploding into the ground and propelling his massive body forwards.
Symon ran after him, his Running passive allowing him arrive in the fight at the same time as his ally. Up close, he got a better look at the creature's... neck hole. Rows of tiny, shark-like teeth were visible down the creature's slathering maw, as well as messily crowding the outside of what could only be its mouth. He wasn't sure how it knew where he was, as he couldn't see any eyes or any other sensory organs, and the only noise the creature made was the skittering impacts of its bony feet against the gravel and loose stones.
The creature's animalistic intelligence perceived Atabek as the biggest threat, so they focused on him with only a few stragglers directing themselves to Symon. The bone-white monsters had been accurate in their assessment, as shown when Atabek lashed out with a kick from his tree trunk sized legs. It hit one dead on, right in the centre of its spindly body, and the results were predictable.
With a sharp crack that echoed through the valley like a gunshot, the monster flew backwards through the air for a dozen metres, landing in a messy heap. Its body was bent at an odd angle, while its legs thrashed out wildly before rapidly slowing down. It did not get back up.
Symon had no more time to be impressed, as the monsters were upon him. There were only three of them, and he had his magic and a sword as well as its relevant passive skill, so he was as confident as he could reasonably be when fighting creepy tube monsters.
The monsters fanned out in front of him, their weird circular mouths snapping shut threateningly. Individually, they were small and not too intimidating, but he didn't want to allow them to surround him. One hand gripped his sword, while from the other the grey threads of Seize dangled, twitching slightly in anticipation.
"Let's see what you're made of, you ugly bastards," Symon said, aiming his body to face the pair standing together while watching the one circling him out of the corner of his eye. It stepped sideways, getting ready to attack him from behind. In response, Symon suddenly accelerated into an all out sprint, pushing his Running passive to the absolute limit.
The wind whistled in Symon's ears as he moved almost too quickly to properly control, only barely able to transfer his momentum into a swing of his sword as he skidded to a halt. His fingers held a white knuckled grip as the blade impacted the creatures side.
Their pale white colouration and skeletally thin appearance had lead Symon to suspect that they were some type of undead bone monster, but his assumption had been wrong. His blade had cut almost completely through the body of the creature, his momentum sliding the blade the length of its body and disembowelling it. The ruby red blood, sausage-like intestines, and the various other organs he didn't recognise from his anatomy classes spilled out of the creature, evidence that it was a living creature. It already wouldn't remain that way for long, but Symon extended his left hand and allowed his magic to feast. Vitality seemed to rapidly fade away from dead creatures, so Symon grabbed as much as he could while he turned to face the remaining pair of monsters.
The sounds of battle still continued around him, but Symon couldn't spare them any attention. He would kill these two as quickly as possible first, then move to help his friends.
The thin lips around the monsters' mouths peeled back, revealing even more fangs, though their charge continued to be silent. Just like the centipedes he'd fought so many times, these monsters appeared too short to attack anything above his legs, and they employed a similar tactic to the bugs. In tandem, their legs bunched up like a coiled spring before they leapt through the air, heading straight for Symon.
Symon raised his free arm for defence, while the armed one swung out in a warding strike. The creature was moving so fast that, when his sword impacted its leg, the force cut straight through and severed the limb, spinning the creature head over heels as it shot past Symon.
That left the remaining monster, which had attached itself to his forearm with its oversized lamprey mouth. "Fuck!" he cried out as he felt the mouth attempt to force itself shut, grinding its teeth deeper into Symon's flesh. He could feel its warm tongue rubbing against his arm, but the pain won out over the creepiness.
He shifted the his draining magic from the disembowelled and rapidly dying monster on the ground to the one attached to his arm, encouraging the magic to rip the vitality out as fast as he could. But it was far too slow to rely on as his only offense. A couple minutes to kill the creature might not have seemed like much, but it may as well have been a lifetime during battle.
Despite its sleek appearance, the thing was strong. As the jaws enveloping his arm continued to grind together, he felt the bone beginning to strain in a way he'd never experienced before. This was surely going to result in another level of Pain Resistance, but for some odd reason he didn't feel particularly grateful in that moment.
With a sickening crack, he felt something in his arm shift. The sudden realisation that the creature was chewing through his goddamned arm spurred him into action. He lifted his arm up with little difficulty — the creature was surprisingly light — though his eyes were blurring from the pain, his vision darkening at the edges. He staggered slightly on the uneven gravel, steadying himself in time to avoid falling over. Why was he feeling so dizzy? The pain was intense, but his resistance kept his mind from being consumed by it, so he didn't think it was the cause.
As something crashed into him and took his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground, he knew it could only be one thing. Looking down, he was unsurprised to see the freshly-three-legged monster latched onto his calf, ravenously trying to gnaw his foot off.
This wasn't going as well as Symon had hoped.