CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—FIRST STRIKE
Shiro ran as fast as he could, sprinting through the grass and bounding over large white rocks. Through the mist, he could see nothing ahead except the silhouetted forms of the larger rocks and the hills.
He went straight toward the aura Debaku had gone toward when a mount in the ground suddenly appeared, at its top a protruding thing with writhing tentacles. It was one of the nodes. I do not have the map…
The samurai didn’t know where he was on the battlefield, but he suspected that he was not far off from the central trunk of the Angor monster.
Writhing tentacles filled the grass and the sounds dirt moving around him made Shiro glance about wildly as he unsheathed his sword.
Something was moving ahead.
It was a vine, stretching out across the ground. It snaked and wove its way like a slithering beast through the grasses and under the dirt. It was heading for the army. Even now, the monster was reacting.
Just a little while ago, everything seemed fine.
The Angor knew where their camp lay—so why would it not know where the army about to assault it currently was? Narrowing his eyes, he decided to cut the writhing mass.
To him, it was a trunk along the ground of writhing tentacles swirled into one large thick confluence. This was the perfect place to attack it.
Glancing toward the node again, he saw that the smaller vines, the thicker ones up near the base of the thing were moving about still, though they seemed to have not yet noticed him.
Shiro needed to get to Debaku—not waste his time here. And yet the army… It was in danger. There were probably some such vines stretching out now from each of the seventeen nodes.
He sighed suddenly. Have we miscalculated? Did we not bring enough men for this fight? Samira said nothing concerning the thousand men—and she was well versed in the Angor’s habits and placement and the manner in which it conducted its attacks.
But not even she knew everything.
He raised the sword and brought it back down with a massive amount of force, his aura completely released, for attacking with magical powers was not a thing one could do while simultaneously suppressing the aura as well.
With a hot orange blade, Shiro cut the mass, severing it instantly with a loud crackling hiss of hot metal on liquid plant substances.
The burnt smell they gave off made him wrinkle his nose. It was like nothing he had ever smelled before. The odor was heady and strong, like a drug or a burnt medicine.
Something came at him.
The samurai sensed it through his peripheral aural attenuation. He jumped, missing something large and heavy that whipped through the air. As he landed, the thing thumped across the grass near him.
When he turned, he saw the tendril, a long, thick green leaf-like thing with a flat body and ribbed veins stretching the length of the thing. It moved slightly, lazily, and then Shiro glanced up at the sudden onset of the second attack from another of the tendrils.
He moved his shoulders, stepping out of its place of impact. The whump that hit the ground flattened the grass and left a mark in the ground as it slid back.
These tendrils were not nearly so dangerous as they others. They were large, ponderous and slow. The first suddenly whipped toward him. Shiro could not jump out of its path and he put his hands forward to impact against the blow.
The sheer force of the thing sent him flying through the air, where he landed heavily on his back. He grunted, using his bodyweight to roll with this motion. He turned over his shoulder and places his feet down and they slid and dug against the ground.
His sword had fallen from his grasp and the smaller, thinner vines slithered toward it. Shiro ran for his weapon.
It was sticking out of the ground.
The large green tendrils came at him, thumping and whumping across the earth as he jumped out of the way, dodged them, and outmaneuvered their trajectories.
The vines moved to encircle the blade, but clearly they knew not what a blade was, as they wrapped themselves around the blade portion. When Shiro came near to reaching the weapon, he nearly got hit by another of the heavy flat tendrils, which slowed him down.
Picking up speed, he kcicked his legs even harder as another leaf-like tendril smashed through the air to pulverize him upon the ground.
The sound it made was like that of a tree trunk cutting through the mist. He jumped, grabbed hold of his scimitar by the hilt and rolled forward, slicing through the thinner tendrils as he came back to his feet.
With a slide across the dirt and the grass, Shiro turned around and sprinted for the thicker tendril still lying across the ground.
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Like before, it darted toward him, but this time, he held out his blade and braced himself, even went even farther by placing his palm behind the flat of his blade.
He blocked the attack of the tendril, and its green fibrous tendril was slices in two with a hot hiss and a sizzle.
The severed part thumped into the grass and wriggled slightly as the thing gushed bright green liquid that glowed in the lower light of this misty area of the night. The thicker part that extended to the stock of the node writhed and pulled back.
And that’s when more of the green tendrils came at him in succession. He jumped.
Thump!
He jumped again, the second tendril nearly hitting him—whump!— as he rolled across his shoulder and back this his feet. He gasped as the first that had fallen came at him.
Shiro jumped, missing the tendril as it had come at him, flat and heavy, like that of a naturally-formed blade of massive proportion.
The air was smashed and pushed aside as another tendril came at him, the aura in his mind alerting him to its presence. He could not jump out of its way, so instead the isekai turned his shoulders and did a minor pirouette on the ball of his left foot, missing the thing by a mere hand span.
The ground underneath his feet shook.
I am wasting my time here!
He swung his blade down and cut the tendril, damaging it, but not severing it entirely. As it pulled back toward the stock, Shiro ran, following it toward the mass of the node at the top of the hill.
To him, the shape was much like that of a giant flower bud. When he came near enough, the tendrils reacted, coming at him from every angle as he put magic into his sword.
He missed the first strike, then lowered himself at the waist when another came over his head. He ran, sprinting. He jumped, slid, darted in another direction at the tendrils snapped and thumped and attempted to smash him over and over.
Shiro’s sword hissed in midair, cooking the moisture out the environment as it glowed white-hot. His sword was the sword of the jinni Jessamine—the Blade Dancer.
He didn’t fully understand what that meant, but when he approached the bulbous bud of the node, he screamed and slashed at it with an upward thrust. His blade sunk into it, as the material was soft and cut easily—surprising the samurai.
As his sword came back out, a viscous fluid followed, hissing and burning up with a foul odor. Had it not been for his blade, Shiro thought the glowing liquid that pulsed bright with green luminescence would have been far greater.
Something writhed from inside the node and the ground shook. Something large moved within and the tendrils continued to come at him. He missed them, jumping and sliding out of the way.
So close to the base of the node, he felt the tendrils were not nearly as adept at attacking him as they had been.
With a grunt, he turned and thrust his sword back into the node and the thing shook and moved internally like corded muscle. He screamed and pulled his blade with him as he ran around the base.
His eyes widened when one of the flat green tendrils, came at him like a sword point, the tapered end hard and spiny.
With a lurching heart, he jumped, landed atop the flat of the leaf-like tendril and ran as it curled back in on itself. He knew not what would happen if it managed to wrap itself around his body, but he suspected he would be turned into a pulpy mass of blood and shattered bones.
The leaf tendril curled upwards back around toward the base of the stock on the other side. Shiro followed it, and when his body was positioned perpendicular to the node itself, he jumped, summersaulting I the air.
He came back down feet first onto a pedal-like protrusion in the central node, a part that had wilted and fallen do to his deep sword cut. It exposed something within, something grey-green and soft.
Landing on the armored leaf that curled tight about the node, Shiro struck the fleshy mass and cut it down the center.
It exploded into a mist of green-grey liquid and suddenly the map shit up into the air, his blade pulling up with him. But he held it down, screaming with his effort as the thing shot high into the air, the stock of which that was exposed cut deep down the center all the way to the bottom.
The writhing tentacle shot up into the sky and the split bulbous end exploded like mist. The stock went to mush and wilted. The think creaked like a tree wrung out in the hands of a giant, and fell down, limp.
All around him the ground moved and those corded muscles or plant fibers moving within the node sounded underground, and near him the stalks and the tendrils, both thin and thick, writhed like hardening wood and then stopped moving.
Shiro breathed out heavily, his heart pounding inside his chest.
“Ugh!” he growled as he looked at himself, covered in thick slime, but none of it the luminescent liquid that had come from the leaf-like tendrils. That, he suspected, were magical in nature, and he did not want to test what it would do to him if he touched it.
Glancing down, he realized his pocket was alight, but dimming fast. He frowned, pulled out the pearl he had taken from the lagoon where he and Jessamine had made love.
She appeared suddenly in puff of blue luminescence. “Hmm—bad, Shiro.”
The samurai glanced about at his work, then he nodded. “It was not as hard as I believed it would be.”
She chortled with amusement. “Only sixteen more to go.”
“Mmm,” he growled, knowing that it was one thing for him to run about wildy while dodging the node’s attempt to hit him with its thick defensive tendrils, and having a group of men attack the thing.
Many Scorpion were going to die.
“I wish we had five more adventurers,” he said. “We could make short work of this beast while the army watches.”
“Do not be so sure, Shiro.”
“Why not?”
“This creature has many of these so called ‘nodes’ and its tendrils are preoccupied even right now with a thousand men at its flanks. I sense the greater Badur and that woman even now. They are surely doing battle, while you here do your fight.”
“We have surrounded this beast.”
“On three fronts at least.” She sighed. “How tiresome.”
“Go,” he said.
“Go?”
He nodded. “You must rest.”
“I said I was tired, Shiro. I did not say that I am an invalid.”
“I know,” he said. “But I want you to prepare yourself. We may need your help with the central part of this monster. I just hope it is not too powerful.”
“Indeed,” Jessamine said. She touched him on the shoulder and sauntered around him while dragging her thin fingers across his chest. “Then go on, my love.”
He nodded as she swirled away.
That had taken a lot longer than he had wanted. At first, he only meant to attack a thick mass of the thinner tendrils, the ones the army had previously had trouble with, which turned into him doing battle with the thicker tendrils, and then finally with him cutting into the node itself.
It really hadn’t been that difficult.
Perhaps this would not be so bad after all. He smiled, but that faltered almost immediately as Debaku’s aura flashed and then disappeared.
He gasped, glancing up toward that direction. It was close to the aura of the other presence—of Archaemenes. Shiro still could not understand how he could be here. In any event, he sprinted toward Debaku, his sword still in his grip.
Something was wrong.