Hoping to draw most of the winged snappers away from her group, Samantha sprinted 100 feet away to put some distance between them. She was tempted to go farther, but needed to stay close enough so that she could still flee into whatever noxious cloud Harold was going to create.
“Start sending me some healing, Silas!”
Fortifying her head and hands with [Indomitable Body], she began unleashing a constant stream of caster fire into the cloud overhead to draw the snappers’ attention. There was no need to aim because the swarm of beasts was so thick that each beam took out at least two or three of the creatures. As small bodies rained down from above, the school roiled and closed in on her like a nest of angry hornets. She was completely blinded as scaled bodies surrounded her in a whirlwind of hunger. The beasts acted as though they were starved, some going so far as to bite through their fellows in the frenzy to reach her.
At first, her armor did a fair job of protecting her, but it wasn’t long before weaknesses or gaps in the material were exploited and she began to take significant damage. She gritted her teeth as nearly every square inch of her was latched onto by the ravenous fish. Though [Indomitable Body] helped to stave off crippling injuries, it didn’t prevent the sharp teeth from cutting into her. The only thing that kept her standing as wounds accumulated was the constant stream of healing coming through her binding thread.
Quickly becoming overwhelmed, her survival instinct took over and she abandoned the continuous caster fire in favor of a more primitive fighting strategy. She swung the weapon around wildly like a club while simultaneously kicking, punching, slapping, and crushing her attackers. She lost count of how many of the small creatures she culled, but more endlessly appeared to fill any gaps she created. Bloody carcasses piled up around her feet and ankles, and it was only due to her high Agility that she managed to prevent herself from losing her footing.
As she struggled against the churning mass for what felt like hours, she feared that something had gone horribly wrong. Harold was taking far too long. Her thoughts began to spiral as all the worst case scenarios flashed through her mind.
Did my distraction fail? Did Harold die? Is he unable to make a repellant?
She was only snapped out of her dark thoughts by a System message.
Your efforts to improve yourself have borne fruit! Training to master your body movements in combination with pushing your body beyond its current limits has granted +1 to Resilience.
Seeing the notification in the midst of yet another near-death experience forced a bitter laugh to escape her throat.
Resilience really is the worst stat to train.
Feeling a sudden wave of ferocity echo through her bond from Silas, she chastised herself over the moment of weakness. She could tell that he was still fighting with all his might, so she redoubled her resolve to do the same.
Letting out a cry of defiance, she lashed out with renewed vigor using [Swift] and [Flurry] to enhance her strikes. Wherever the deadly kicks passed, snappers disappeared in an explosion of gore. As she cut a swath of destruction around her she thought she could hear Harold trying to shout something, although the words were lost in the cacophony of the swarm.
“Samantha, come back! It smells bad, but the fish don’t like it!” Silas urged.
Using his qi signature to guide her back to the group, she blindly fought her way forward. After several long moments a gap in the mass of bodies finally appeared. Rushing through the hole, she practically threw herself into the open space. She was promptly assaulted by a foul smoke that stung her eyes and made her want to gag, but at least the area was free of winged snappers.
The many beasts that were still stubbornly attached to her immediately released their hold and fled back into the flock. Samantha practically collapsed from exhaustion as she traveled the final feet to the source of the smoke–a burning, spherical wad of… something.
“Here! Put this over your face–it’ll help.” Harold instructed, handing her a wet cloth. She gladly draped the fabric over her nose and mouth, and felt immediate relief as the stench faded into the background and her eyes stopped burning.
“I thought we had it bad over here, but look at you!” he quipped, “You’ll die if you don’t take care of that bleeding.”
Realizing how lightheaded she was beginning to feel, she consumed a couple of lesser healing pills from her pack to staunch her wounds. She reasoned the pills, in combination with Silas’s help and her Rebirth Core’s passive healing, should be enough to keep her from dying for now.
“What took so long?” she asked tiredly, “I was getting torn apart in there.”
“Long? I crafted a completely unfamiliar alchemical solution in 60 seconds! Faster is impossible.” he said incredulously.
She shook her head in disbelief, “That was only a minute?”
“Yes. And, this is only a temporary reprieve. The smoke isn’t going to last.”
She looked between the notably smaller burning sphere, the thinning smoke, and the ravenous spirit beasts with trepidation. For the moment the winged snappers were more interested in feasting on their many fallen fellows than overcoming the repellant, but there was no telling when that would change. They were making quick work of cleaning up the scattered carcasses and cores, and it seemed many were also traveling down the butte in search of other food.
“Maybe if we feed them enough they’ll go away?” she asked aloud.
“I doubt we could satisfy them. There’s got to be several thousand of them left even after all the ones we killed.”
Samantha thought back to the description she’d received after using [Inspect] and scoured the information for anything that could help.
Winged Snapper (Rank 1 - High)
Highest Attribute: Strength (15)
Lowest Attribute: Resilience (2)
Winged Snappers, though primarily aquatic creatures, can survive outside of water for several hours so long as they are not exposed to direct sunlight. Gathering in large schools to compensate for their individually low Resilience, these predators strip unsuspecting prey of their flesh in minutes.
It was a long shot, but she had an idea.
“They don’t do well in direct sunlight, so can we trick them into thinking it’s daytime? Maybe you can make some sort of flare like the raiders were using. Better yet…” she looked over to the sand spider and its many small saddle bags, “...maybe we already have some.”
Catching her meaning, Harold ran over and practically ripped open all of the bags in search of the flares. He quickly found a bundle of ten in a rear bag–five marked with orange paint and five marked with red paint–and started pulling them apart. He removed the powdery contents of all the flares and mixed them together in a large bowl, then held his hand over it. Brown, syrupy liquid began to drip from his hand into the powder, and he stirred everything together and shaped the mass into a sphere.
“What’s coming out of your hand?” Samantha questioned warily.
“New bond ability called [Secretion]. Think of it as alchemical glue, though it has many useful properties and applications.” he said distractedly, more focused on the mixture than answering. “In this case, it should make the flare materials more… reactive.”
He finished shaping the sphere and handed it to her. The fist-sized flare ball was slightly sticky, and she estimated that it weighed a bit less than a pound.
“It will get extremely hot and bright once lit, so I suggest setting it down and shooting it with a caster from a distance. Unless, of course, you don’t mind severe burns.” he warned.
“Can you light it? That new caster you found costs less than a qi point to shoot, but I’m going to need all the qi I can get.” She didn’t know how far she could carry the orb with [Telekinesis] with the 47 qi that remained in her pool, but hopefully it would be far enough away where the creatures would think going after other prey would be more appealing than coming back here.
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He picked up the caster in question and held it at the ready, “Fine. Just hurry and set it down somewhere!”
The repellant sphere was almost completely burnt away by this point, and the surrounding smoke was becoming wispier by the second.
“Shout ‘stop’ when it’s far enough!” she instructed, then promptly tossed the orb. As it left her fingertips she entered spectral form and grabbed a hold of it with 1 point in [Telekinesis].
Harold–not missing a beat over the strange sight of the hovering orb and her falling prone–took aim. Once she was 20 feet away, he called out, “Stop!”
She held the sphere as still in the air as she could while Harold shot at the small target with the caster. Three beams later, the orb lit and temporarily blinded everyone in a flash of light and heat–apart from Samantha who was not using her physical eyes.
To her, it seemed that she really was holding a small sun in her hand. The orb itself seemed to glow white hot, but the light shining out of it was bright vermilion. The air encompassing the sphere seemed to warp with the heat coming off of it, and the surrounding area lit up as though it were mid day.
Although the red-orange color wasn’t quite the right shade to perfectly pass for sunlight, the fish didn’t appear to recognize the difference. They all quickly gathered together and fled towards the canyon to avoid the unexpected light and heat. Flying with the orb slightly above the retreating school of snappers to better mimic the sun’s position, Samantha did her best to stay close behind. The fish flew fast enough to slightly outpace her at first, but as she gradually accelerated she soon caught up.
Once she chased them to the edge of the canyon over the course of several minutes, the fish began diving towards the river below. Seeing that her qi pool was mere seconds away from bottoming out, she hurried after them and set the orb near the river’s edge to try and trick them for as long as possible. As soon as she set it down her qi pool emptied and she was forcibly pulled back into her body.
Samantha laid on the ground, completely exhausted in every sense of the word. She barely had the energy to scan their surroundings and confirm that no portion of the winged snapper school lingered behind. Thankfully– apart from the many dead and dying fish scattered across the butte top–there was no sign of the swarm anywhere. Silas and the sand spider had already begun happily feasting on the various remains, and even Harold seemed to be interested in the many available spirit pearls that littered the ground. He didn’t go far from his position near the fallen Mid Copper cultivator, however, since doing so would cause the temporary nexus to dissipate.
Catching Harold’s gaze, she called out, “I’m taking a nap. Wake me up if anything happens.”
He nodded.
Sending one final message as she drifted off to sleep, she said, “Silas, you better save some cores for me…”
----------------------------------------
She awoke when it became too hot and bright to comfortably sleep any longer. When she opened her eyes, she realized it was already well into the morning. She must’ve been asleep for at least seven or eight hours, which was far too long in a situation like this. Worried that a raider attack or some other threat was imminent, she popped up from the ground and looked around.
Harold was still cultivating the temporary nexus, but at some point had laid out several thinly sliced strips of fish on nearby rocks in direct sunlight. Beside him was the base of some circular structure about a foot tall and 15 feet in diameter. The sand spider was excreting a cement-like mixture from its abdomen onto the circular base to continue building it up while using its legs to shape the mixture as it dried. Silas was overlooking the edge of the butte and facing the direction that the raiders had fled. He appeared to be keeping watch for the group.
Many of the winged snapper remains were still strewn across the butte, but someone had shuffled them around so that they were mainly piled near the edges. This left the center of the butte where they ‘camped’ relatively free of carcasses. She noticed a particularly large pile next to Silas which presumably gave him easy access to snacks while he was on guard duty.
Feeling her attention on him, he turned around and his ears perked up, “You’re awake! You have to try one of these. They’re tasty.” To emphasize his point, he took an entire snapper in his mouth and began happily eating it.
She laughed, “I will in a bit. What’d I miss?”
“The man has been bossy to his bond. It keeps climbing up and down. It grabs sand, then spits it out. It’s building something. The man cultivates. I saved you some cores. They’re over there. That’s all!” he reported.
She followed Silas’s gaze and found a stash of nearly 20 pearls beside one of her packs. Picking one up, she [Inspect]ed it.
Winged Snapper Beast Core (Rank 2 - Low)
Affinity: Water
She recalled how her enchanted canteen required water affinity cores to function properly and smiled. She had purchased a few backup spirit pearls on the first floor just in case, but she wouldn’t need to worry about running out for a long while now.
“If you’re hungry at all, you should probably eat some of these fish before they rot! They won’t last long in the sun.” Harold warned, taking a break from his cultivation for a quick snack of his own. He fetched one of the drying strips of meat from the rock beside him and ate it with a mild grimace.
“Will do. Mind telling me what your bond’s building over there?” she asked as she started picking through the nearby piles of fish.
“You mentioned the danger of trying to shelter anywhere below, so I figured I might as well have my bond make something up here instead. It’s slow going because she needs to continually fetch more sand, but she should be finished in a day or two.”
“Having a shelter up here is a good idea. Tell her I appreciate her hard work.”
Finally finding a couple fish that looked relatively fresh, Samantha prepared some filets for cooking. She set up a small cooking station using a pan, the enchanted firestarter she had purchased in Yivesh, and three rocks to prop the pan up above the fire.
As she activated the fire starter she found herself feeling immensely grateful for the fist sized, obsidian sphere. The option to produce a moderately sized flame by powering the orb with an external qi source made it invaluable in a place where firewood wasn’t readily available. All she had needed to do was touch a beast core to an empowering rune for a few seconds, then interact with a manipulation rune to control the flame itself.
Once the fish was golden brown, she turned off the flame and seasoned the meal with a pinch of salt and pepper. She could see Harold looking between his fish ‘jerky’ and her filets with obvious envy, but she ignored him.
You have consumed qi-enriched meat (Rank 1-High)!
Effect: +2 Strength
Duration: 1 hour
Satiated, she stood and gave her stiff muscles a stretch. As she flexed her limbs in various directions, a part of her lamellar chest piece tore and the entire thing almost slid off of her body. She looked herself over with a frown and realized how mangled the leather had truly become.
Her entire armor set looked as though it had been dyed brown and red with blood. There were so many holes and tears on its surface that she was honestly surprised it hadn’t broken apart earlier. Her clothes weren’t in much better shape either, and she was suddenly self conscious with the amount of bare skin that was exposed. Granted, the ‘important bits’ remained covered and most of the exposed skin was thoroughly coated in a sheen of muck… but still. She decided it was well past time for a wipedown and a change of clothes.
After grabbing fresh underclothes, the Silver Weaver Battle Robe set that the Braxands had given her, a rag, and her canteen, she went to the only feasible ‘bathing area’ nearby: a moderately sized boulder. The rock was just large enough that she could squat down behind it to hide everything except the top of her head from Harold. She felt incredibly awkward at first, but once she realized that he was wholly focused on cultivation and was not paying her any mind she became much less concerned about it.
After she finished putting everything away, she grabbed a spare canvas sack from her bag and got Harold’s attention, “Hey! I’m heading down to check the other saddles for supplies. Would it be helpful if I tried to bring up some sand for the shelter as well?”
Harold tilted his head to the side for a few seconds before he responded, “She says yes, that would speed things up considerably.”
Samantha nodded and was about to leave, but Harold stopped her.
“Wait!”
This should be good.
“What?” she asked, doing her best to keep her tone neutral.
“Since you’re in such a helpful mood, I’d also like some shade. Some grilled fish too, like what you made not long ago.”
She blinked at him a couple of times as she contemplated how to respond. Then, she had an idea.
Putting on a sickly sweet smile and raising the pitch of her voice ever so slightly, she said, “Of course!”
She grabbed some nearby fish at random and tossed it in the pan, then moved her cooking setup in front of Harold. Next, she pulled the tent from her bag and set it beside him.
“I hope that helps!” she said cheerfully, “If you need me, give Silas a shout and he’ll let me know.” She quickly departed and started climbing down the butte before Harold could complain too much.
After reaching the bottom, she ran directly for the sand spider that she had killed with a falling stone. Not much of the actual spider remained due to being scavenged by the winged snappers, but the saddlebag was in fairly good condition. The only noticeable damage was that a couple pouches had been gnawed through and emptied by the snappers–presumably to get at some snacks or rations within.
Going through each bag, she ended up with 50 feet of rope, 10 more flares, a canteen ¾ filled with water, two unknown potions, and a caster holster that could be worn across the back. Half buried in the sand about 20 feet away was another yellow-beam caster, which she placed in the holster and tied to her body. Now she and Harold could both have a weapon that was somewhat effective against the swarm, if needed.
Not seeing any sign of the raiders yet, she ran to the other side where she had killed Cain’s mount with Nethershot. She had hoped that the raider leader’s saddle would have something special in it, but it contained a similar set of supplies to the other saddles. Just as she had finished stashing everything in the canvas sack and was tying off the bag, Silas sent her a mental alarm.
“The raiders are running towards you!”