Nearly as hard as simply making it through the fight was everything that still needed to be done afterwards. We had quite a few people with some rather nasty road burns from when they'd been dragged across the ground or caught by a kick just before the damned scorpion had finally died. No broken bones, and our regeneration would likely take care of most of it, but it was still probably best to clean the wounds as best we could to prevent any diseases spreading through our little group. Unfortunately, our limited medical supplies were all the way back in the trailer and half buried among various supplies and comfort items. Which of course people weren't willing to leave tucked in a corner about a mile down the road for the night in case something wandered by and stole it.

Bringing in the trailer also proved to be an issue as all of our strongest people were also the most worn out from holding that absolute unit of a boss still. Rumi in particular had collapsed on her side either incapable or absolutely unwilling to move after her heroic feat of strength. I tried to pitch in myself, but found myself completely incapable of moving in anything approaching a straight line without my head throbbing and vision starting to swim and being forcibly told to stay put, which I eventually did. Under protest.

So while Omar, Kyli, and Will walked off to finish dragging the trailer up to the stadium, everyone else began either collapsing or starting to scout out the stadium. I took a minute to catch up on the sea of popups that had sprung up during and after the fight.

–Health 136/368–

–Stamina: 14/100–

–Dazed–

–Leap has Leveled up! x2–

–Gained 6xp–

–Lunge has Leveled up! x2–

–Gained 6xp–

–Stalk has Leveled up! x3–

–Gained 9xp–

–Constrict has Leveled up! x6–

–Gained 18xp–

–Constrict has reached rank E!–

–Grappling Strike has Leveled up! –

–Gained 3xp–

–Ferrous Mutagen has Leveled up! x2–

–Gained 6xp–

–Bloodline Available. Absorb Bloodline: Sabertail?–

–Bloodlines will occupy 1 Mutagen slot–

–(Y/N)–

–Evo...–

Something landed on my head, startling me out of my reading. Recoiling and coiling, I quickly began focusing on my new senses. Tongue flicked, eyes darted about, and tail struck ground to send out a ripple of kinetic waves that returned to give me a foggy view of the world around me. The results, Damian had come up and put my hat back on my head.

I could clearly see the curl of his lips on his little dinosaur face as he said, "Feeling a bit jumpy are we?"

"I was reading and your tiny ass is as quiet as a mouse." I grumbled scooping up my hat from where it had fallen in my moment of panicked flailing and returning it to my head. "So yes, having something suddenly land on your head is a bit startling."

"Don't know what you're worried about, we absolutely fucked that bug! It never stood a chance against all of us!" He struck a classic hero pose before frowning down at his utterly gore covered body and shirt, "Do wish it wasn't so messy though. Think that there's still running water inside? We could all probably use a bath."

"There might be some water in the pipes, but," I raised a tail, "I want you to keep in mind that the fight could have gone terribly wrong in dozens of ways and that we're actually very vulnerable right no-."

"Hey guys!" Nolan wheezed, his head poking out from the stadium loading bay, "There's a whole lot of eggs in here! A lot of them are wiggling too, we might want to-."

The emu wearing leg warmers, I really needed to get around to learning everyone's names, came sprinting out of the bay with a look of utter terror on her face screaming, "THEY'RE HATCHING! They're all hatching!"

–Quest Requirement: Area Boss Defeated–

–Requirement met!–

–Event Quest Available: Cauldron Boiling Over–

–Reward: Performance Based–

–0:20–

–0:19–

Are you shitting me!

"Fuck!" I sprang up whirling to face the loading bay, "Everyone who can still fight, get your ass over here! We're going to try and keep them bottled up as much as possible!" I pointed to our less fuzzy wasp, "You, other wasp, what's your name?"

"Jack," the hornet rose from where he'd been picking the shards of carapace out of the six legged rabbit's paws.

Jack the yellow jacket, easy enough to remember, "Jack, go get Omar and the others! I think we're going to need every tooth, hand, and talon we can get for this!" The bug man nodded and flew off into the darkening night towards the trailer, "Everyone else! If you don't think you're ready for the front line again, get behind us and either get anything that gets past us, or sit in reserve in case someone needs to-!"

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

–0:00–

The instant the timer finished counting down, there was a sound like a thousand bags of marbles being thrown down a stone staircase mixed with the approach of a heavy rain. Through my tremorsense I could suddenly detect an absolute flood of sixty to a hundred pound somethings rushing towards the loading bay.

"They're coming! Everyone brace!"

Myself, the rabbit, hyena, emu, and Jerry formed a bit of a wall in front of the damaged loading bay doors. Behind us Rumi stood drunkenly with Matilda on her head, flanked by Nolan and Rafael who both looked on the verge of panic. Damian stood off to the side of the front line, visibly worried as he clutched my bowie knife like it was a cross. This didn't feel like anywhere near enough to try and challenge what I felt coming, but twenty seconds was not enough time to get away, especially some of our number barely able to stand. Maybe if we'd all gone back to the trailer as a group we could have dodged this, but hindsight is twenty twenty.

God, let this be enough and do not let my arrogance have led these people to their deaths.

From behind us, the night briefly became day let us all catch a one frame glimpse of an absolute sea of wolf sized scorpions racing towards us. That had to have been Kyli, but there's no way that Jack could have made it to them already and she wouldn't have tried to flash them from there. Are they under attack as well? Damn it! And we're in no position to go help them!

"Nolan, do you have any more bees for us?" I asked as the shine of a million beady eyes raced towards us.

"Maybe one or two more waves," the bee/wasp wheezed, "I'm still absolutely gassed from the last fight."

"Well we could use one of them right now!" I roared as the tide of claws became visible in the fading light.

A wave of the giant bees burst from the man's fluff again, once more seeming to instantly zero in on the approaching tide. They began tearing at the front runners, tearing at eyes and the soft carapace of the still glistening newborns, who began to thrash and lash at the cloud of bees. The rest of the tide continued forwards, flowing over and around the injured like water, a few pausing to snatch and snap at the bees, nigh on instantly reducing our first strike to nothing. Their advance uninterrupted as they coated the floor of the building and charged towards our shaky defensive line.

There was no way that our line could survive the impact of that charge, they'd force holes, scatter and surround us and then we'd all be fighting in one v one hundred battles. My mind danced back to old medieval and renaissance military history books, specifically how the best way to break a charge was with a counter charge. An instant gut analysis told me that none of the others had the speed and mass to properly counter charge this tide. So with maybe fifteen feet between our two groups I charged the tide.

A burst from my Lunge skill sent me barreling headfirst into the tide, feeling several insect bodies splatter against my skull and saw a dozen more sent flying. The momentum of the enemy charge was broken, but I was now literally six feet deep in scorpions and was politely reminded that I was still suffering status conditions as a spike of agony tore through my head, fuzzing my vision to uselessness, as a wave of exhaustion rolled through me. All I got from my tremorsense was a simple cloud of nearby entities, but I could feel claws grabbing me and tails tapping at my iron scales searching for flesh. With a furious yowl I used those powerful constrictor muscles to swing my body in a wide battering arc, battering away several of those clinging to me. A cry went up behind me, but I was too stuck in now to take the time to differentiate the sounds from and simple noise. I did notice several other larger masses leaping into the edge of the mass of scorpions. Blindly reaching for something to use as a weapon I felt my tail wrap around something chitinous and I began to use it as a simple cudgel, slamming it repeatedly against the tide until my improvised weapon shattered. Good thing there was plenty more to use.

Something swept past me and slammed into the living tide giving me just a breath of clarity as my vision cleared. Another wave of bees had swept over the scorpions again, this time managing to drive them back even as their siblings tried to push past them. I was once again flanked by what had been our front line, who were all attacking the mass of newborn chitin with desperate vigor. Jerry's thagomizer was doing work, every swing pulping a limb or removing a face, but the weapon was slow and showing none of the explosive power it had shown against the boss. The emu was next to him, its clawed feet snapping out with whip cracks, splattering any arthropod that tried to take advantage of the gaps in Jerry's swings, but she was already gasping for breath. To my left the six limbed rabbit was the exact opposite, its limbs an absolute blur seeming to launch dozens if not hundreds of attacks a second, but it was taking a half dozen blows to defeat each scorpion and that had to be exhausting her quickly. The hyena seemed to be having more success, their bite going through the newborns' armor like it wasn't there and those that weren't killed outright seemed to visibly rot where they were bit, but that bite was their only weapon and it involved getting their heads in among snipping claws and stabbing tails. Damian danced along the line like a hyper little kangaroo, his knife, teeth, and claws all coated with fresh gore as he tore apart any scorpion that got too far forwards with feral aggression.

This wasn't sustainable.

I still couldn't see the end of this flood of scorpions in my tremorsense, despite the pile of shattered bodies that was vanishing under the fresh wave of newborn monsters. They had too many angles of attack on us and it was already wearing us down, and we didn't have much wear left on us after the boss.

"Fighting retreat back to the door!" I shouted to be heard of the clatter of advancing chitin and the animal sounds of my fellow former humans, "We've blunted their charge, now use the choke point to slaughter them all!" I could see several of the fighters wanted to simply sprint back towards the door, but that would just open us to getting hit in the back and just give the damned bugs the room they needed to build up a charge again. So it was a retreat by steps and- FUCK! Snakes don't have a reverse setting! "Someone! Drag me back! I can't slither backwards!"

I continued to beat off the little vermin with their own members as I watched everyone else start to retreat at a steady pace and was damned proud of their discipline. I hissed in shocked surprise as I felt something go right through my scales and was startled again to see that Rumi had bitten me in my middle near my spine and was apparently dragging me back without visible effort. It looked like we might make it back to the door without incident, until we all heard a deep moaning sound coming from our hyena.

A couple of the scorpions had finally managed to get a hold of them, one claw latched firmly around a foreleg and a second had managed to latch a claw around their head. They were fighting, trying to pull free, but despite their youth, the scorpions' grip strength was unyielding. Damian leaped over to begin cutting them free, but not before two stingers lashed out and buried themselves in the hyena's neck and shoulder. Even as I watched, four more scorpions were surging forwards to latch onto and sting the desperate canine.

"Fucking!" I snapped my head forwards, grabbing our pinned and possibly dying ally by the haunch, with a powerful full body contraction I slid them back across the rough concrete ground and out the door, dragging two scorpions with them. "Help them! Everyone, double time it towards the door!"

I didn't like it, but I've already got one down, possibly dead and I'm not going to risk another. I let myself be pulled outside and over the lip of the loading bay and readied ourselves for the coming tide, and they did come like a tide. The first dozen or so out of the door were immediately crushed by the flow of those following behind them until their mangled forms became a ramp out of the service doors. But we were holding them.

Now instead of being surrounded on three sides by a literal ocean of bodies, it was us who had them surrounded on three sides as Rumi stepped up to fill the space left by the hyena that Matilda was clearly doing her best to try and tend to next to a passed out Nolan. We even had help from above as Rafael occasionally swooped down to snatch up a scorpion, crush it in his claws and hurl the body back among the flood ad infinitum.

Yet it still felt like a losing battle, we had no reserves and at least half of our number seemed on the verge of collapse, and I could include myself among that number. My head was spinning so badly that without my tremorsense I'd be having to fight this battle by feel. I was actually feeling the heavy iron of my scales as I continued to grab and bludgeon the tide, and every breath seemed to be full of razor blades. Yet the river of chitin seemed to continue without end. In fact, it seemed to only be building as the sea of scorpions continued to try and climb over each other to get out of the stadium and to us. At this point, backing down or stopping would mean the death of all of us.

So we held the line. Those of us who could still sweat were drenched in it. Those of us who couldn't worked our lungs like bellows even as the absolute deluge of gore covering us worked as a poor substitute. There was no thought or strategy left at this point, simply attack and crush the horde that was now stacked feet deep before us like machines and hope their numbers failed before our bodies did. I wasn't even cognizant of the others now, my entire universe was purely focused on the ten foot gap in the wall and the area immediately outside of it. It had to end eventually, until then I just needed to grab, smash four times, and fling the remains before starting the process over again.

When I found myself grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground I simply lay there confused, blinking up at the first stars of the night completely uncomprehending. I still wasn't entirely sure on the flow of the time so I'm not sure how long I lay there like a discarded rope before lifting my head and seeing a large monkey covered in cuts swinging two hammers. Casting my eyes along the battle-line, I saw several others had been pulled out of the line replaced by a twin headed wolf, giant gecko, and angry hornet. Even then it took me a moment to recognize Omar and the rest of the trailer crew.

–WARNING! YOU ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF STAMINA!–

–CONTINUING WILL COST YOU HP!–

Huh, how long has that been there I wonder? I rolled myself upright and took a quick glance at my stats

–Health 76/368–

–Stamina: 0/100–

–Dazed, Fatigue–

I've still got a far chunk of hit points left, let's give it thirty seconds and get back in there. I tried to catch my breath as much as possible before lifting my head off the ground. Has it always been this heavy? and slithering my way back towards the line. Weigh no more than four hundred pounds my ass! I feel like I weigh two tons. Brushing aside Jerry, I took his place in the line, grabbing a new scorpion hatchling and beginning to bludgeon its fellows with it once more.

I caught a glance from Omar, who looked at me with concern. I gave him a wide snakey smile before turning my attention back to the writhing mass before me. My smile widening as I felt the heavy weight falling upon my soul and the sensation of something far larger than myself watching me from afar. Despite every breath being precious, a delirious laugh worked its way free of my throat as I purred, "Come."

And come the horde did.

The sun had fully set by the time they stopped.