I almost got mad when they questioned why would I be against such a common tactic, but Sheeno looking right into my eyes, without saying a single word but only letting her face do the talking, brought things into perspective: Yes, sacrificing a [familiar] for the sake of the master is a no-brainer, at least for most, since they would just be sent back to where they came from to automatically regenerate any damage acquired in this world; I, instead, have no clue how those that I create will regenerate once subjected to grievous injury.
Of course, there have been cases where my [familiars] got sent back to my [World Within] when harmed, even recently with the [Aurumons], but it has always been right after the attack. This time I had to rely on either [Kenny] being fast enough to dodge the laser-beams, while kiting it to the right spot, or that it could be unsummoned while under the ongoing attack, because there was no shot that it would survive the full attack if hit.
But now it was do or die, and however callous that may be, our chances of survival if we didn’t do this were lower than its if we did go through with this. So, from a purely practical point of view, this was the way to go.
From an emotional point of view felt like I was betraying a child, under duress and threat of death, sure, but that didn’t really make me feel any better.
Too late to change plans. [Kenny] was already in position while maintaining aggro.
*BWOOOM*
The laser hit the wall of rubble behind my lantern, blasting a way through without causing a cave-in.
Worry drained out of me with energy after seeing that [Kenny] only got clipped by the massive attack. I was confident that it would survive. In fact, I could feel it already starting to regenerate within my inner world; all I was lacking was a cooldown that told me how long it would take before it was back in fighting shape.
“Run you fools!” I shouted, channeling my inner grey mage, while following my own advice by floating away.
No way I was remaining behind to stall or kill the Giant: I didn’t have enough plot armor to come back in a white toga.
Everyone else soon took off after me, quickly overtaking my pace even though I was trying to swim like a frog through the air as hard as I could; I could argue that the [Sky Gnomes] were cheating, because instead of moving through their own means they were riding along in their [cloud constructs], but since Sheeno caught me under one of her arms as she was running by I decided to keep quiet and just create obstacles for the pursuing army of bones.
Speaking of our enemy, it took embarrassingly long for the [Mausoleum Giant] to notice that we were escaping through a hole it made, and it roared in anger too late to affect any of us.
[Flying Trapper] after [Flying Trapper] appeared behind us to obstacle our pursuers, with only a few [Discus Launchers] thrown into the mix to further distract them. I didn’t need to kill anything, all I had to do was buy us enough time to get the fuck out of here.
“So, what’s the plan!?” Cherry shouted between breaths, not seeming to have difficulties in keeping them steady.
“Get out. Summon vehicle. Escape. Contact [Guild]. In that order”, I replied distractedly, replaying the last event, that brought us to this point, inside my head.
It didn’t take long to start placing blame, but at the end of the day we had all fucked up: Sure, I could have been more observant, but it wasn’t my role at that point; sure, I was the one with a most appropriate tool to reveal any surprise before it was too late, but never trusting that others never had what it took would be a dangerous line of thinking that I didn’t want to adopt, even after such a cataclysmic failure.
A gigantic failure, if you will.
“That’s it!?” The Elf seemed flabbergasted about something that I said.
“What do you mean? We’re clearly outmatched here: Even if we changed the terrain to our advantage it wouldn’t change that we can barely scratch the [Mausoleum Giant]. Also, the surface has bone-trees that I’m pretty sure it can use against us”, I explained, failing to hide the annoyance that I was feeling at having to admit to my failure.
“Our failure”, I had to remind myself, forcing myself to accept that the blame wasn’t solely on me, even though it felt like it really did.
“What? No secret [Ability] hidden away under your hood to slay the sudden appearance of an [Aberrant Monster]?” Cherry mockingly asked, but I couldn’t understand why.
“Are you implying what I think you’re implying? Because, if so, tell me clearly so I know that I should maim you right now, and leave you for the [Skeletal Warrior] to kill!” Sheeno suddenly interjected, with as much venom in her voice as I’d heard. The arm curled around me tightened defensively, telling me just how serious she was being.
“You wouldn’t dare!” The Elf seethed.
This time I slightly turned around, to look the glaring Cherry right in the eyes. “I don’t know what’s the problem here, or what you’re implying, but you better save it for later. You too miss”, I said, the last part while poking Sheeno in the face, and she immediately slapped the offending digit away with a free hand.
I had ended up scolding my mate too for the simple fact that she was about to cave the Elf’s face in.
“You don’t command me, you mutant ass!” She retorted, but besides her rude comment, she, fortunately, left ulterior words for later, just like I asked.
“I swear that it’s getting annoying at how much I see of myself in her outward demeanor.”
Blessed natural light finally shone ahead of us.
“We’re almost there!” Twad exclaimed in a trembly voice, clearly still rattled by the precedent fight where he and his brothers had been forced solely on a losing defensive.
And nobody could blame him: I too would get anxious when my usual strategy of steamrolling everything with a tank suddenly didn’t work.
And that’s exactly why that feeling of being at the edge of a panic attack hadn’t yet completely dissipated.
We kept advancing while I delayed as much as I could those things behind us, but the centipedal skeleton was proving to be a much more difficult target to pin down, dodging and weaving through most obstacles, and crashing right through those that it couldn’t avoid. Don’t get me wrong, I was still slowing it down enough for it to matter, but you had to consider the fact that it was much faster than its brethren and it was actively being used as a sort of macabre train to bring the slower ones along its back.
We were so close to the surface that I could smell again that horrible sulfuric smell, not even having noticed that it had faded into the background and then disappeared down into the cave to begin with; but of course, there seemed to be one last obstacle between us and salvation.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
A fucking bull-sized back spider.
I couldn’t help but shiver in both fear and disgust.
“What is it?” Sheeno asked, having noticed my moment of discomfort.
It was only then that I realized that my vision must have been much better than everybody else not only from a magical point of view, pun intended; honestly, I don’t know why it took so long for it to finally click, but a lot of stuff finally made sense if I took it into consideration, from other people reacting after something approaching was already obvious, to them being unable to look around when I was pushing my vehicle ‘too fast’.
So, that was cool, but a warning in the [Trait] description that caused this would have been useful.
“I guess you guys haven’t noticed the massive spider at the mouth of the cave?” I asked, trying to strain my [Gaze of the Abyss] to [Inspect] the spider from further away than it normally could work.
“Spider?... Isn’t that a rock?” One of the triplets responded, but I was too focused on the spider to take notice of whom had talked.
“I think I can see it: The back shape in the distance, right?” Unexpectedly, Cherry was the first one to realize what I was pointing at. It seemed that Elves did have enhanced senses, at least compared to the [Races] here present.
For a moment I felt [Inspect] working, but before a window could appear I also felt the effect of my [Ability] being rebuffed. That just activated numerous warning bells inside my head: It either was too far away for the [Ability] to work properly, or it was even more powerful than the [Monster] behind us.
Between a rock and what could possibly be a harder place, I only hoped that it wouldn’t reveal itself to be another enemy.
Luck wouldn’t obviously be on my side, since there was [Luck] involved, and such notion soon proved itself right when I noticed that the spider wasn’t just standing still, but was instead weaving an exceptionally thin net that shone in a magically blackish-green color.
“What are the chances that it being also [Death Attuned] is only a coincidence?”
As if fate wanted to mock, that was the moment we finally got within range to [Inspect] the new threat.
Name:
Skulldigger
Classification:
High Demon (Lvl: N/A)
Affinity:
Void; Death; Poison; Body (Bone); Spirit (Soul)
Danger:
Insurmountable
Behavior:
Hostile; Manipulative
Info:
A high-grade Demon birthed from the Void itself, he’s a general within the Demon Lord’s army.
[Impossible to retrieve ulterior data]
“Fuck.”
“What now?” Cherry asked hotly.
“The spider is a [High Demon]…”
Everybody immediately slowed down a bit at my words, some even almost falling onto their asses, due to the abrupt deceleration.
“WHAT!?” Sheeno, Cherry, and Undine almost shouted at once, the triplets not joining in only because they were too preoccupied with opening and closing their mouths aimlessly.
“It’s a [High Demon] and its danger level appears even higher than the [Mausoleum Giant]”, I replied quickly, expecting the discussion to develop exactly this way.
“The Giant what?” Undine looked confused at the last part of my statement, and I realized that I never told them the extent of what my [Gaze of the Abyss] told me about the foe we were running from.
“Oh, yeah, I looked at the Giant behind us’ [Status], and it’s some kind of forcefully [Evolved] undead variant of our original target that had its true [Status] protected from a normal [Inspect]”, I explained, feeling a bit like we were wasting precious time, when we couldn’t afford to.
“You’re telling us that only now!?” Obviously, the [Tree Elf] wasn’t slow in trying to blame this fiasco on me.
“It’s not like I had a free moment before! We were fighting for our lives and it wasn’t my job at the time to [Inspect] it!”
I felt bad for throwing Twad under the bus, but I wouldn’t stand for getting blamed for what wasn’t my fault.
Cherry harrumphed, not completely convinced, but at least smart enough to realize that this certainly wasn’t the time to argue about this.
“So, what are supposed to do, smart guy?” Sheeno jostled me, pulling me out of the staring contest that I was having with the back of the Elf’s head without realizing.
“Well… the [Demon] is slowly but surely either trapping or closing the entrance with its web, so we’re kind of fucked…” I told them, my mind spinning with quickly discarded possibilities in an attempt to find a way to survive this.
*Gasp*
“Shit!”
“Fuck me.”
“Oh no!”
Everybody had their own appropriate reaction to this, and a rattling sound coming from behind us, followed by an echoing roar, was the only reason we did not slow down any more than we already had.
Thinking about it, the only solution I could come to, in all the haste that I was forced to work with, was that we could only pray that we could force our way through those pesky webs.
“We could try and reason with it…” I hazarded to suggest, to which Sheeno hoisted me so I was forced to look at her in the face.
“Did you seriously just ask if we could talk it out with a [Demon]?” She asked me, surprisingly more perplexed than else.
“Yeah? Its [Affinities] are similar to the [Mausoleum Giant]’s, making me think that they either come from the same source, or it had a hand- I mean leg, in its creation: Beating it is definitely out of the question, summoning a fast enough mean of escape would take too long and would allow for the skeleton army to reach us, and I’m seriously running out of ideas here!” Truth be told, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t in the best state of mind at the moment, with all the shock of losing my feet, albeit hopefully temporarily, so I wasn’t even sure if what I stated was particularly true, but I couldn’t push myself to think of anything else.
“Of course, you want to talk with the [Demon], because why wouldn’t you!?” Cherry once more interjected with plenty of venom in her voice.
“Excuse me!?” Sheeno whipped her head back to stare at her, angry in my stead.
“Oh, you heard me, or did you not notice how you two are the only ones even remotely entertaining this blasphemous idea of his?” Her tone did a complete 180, turning almost sickeningly sweet, but with still a veiled, but worriedly threatening, hint of mockery.
“You bitch! I can’t believe you’re actually hinting at-“
“Guys! Not the moment! We either talk to the evil spider, or try to break through its ‘definitely way too tough for us’ web” I interrupted my girlfriend, knowing that, if I had to intercede between the two arguing cats, it was probably best if I did so by cutting off the cat that I did know.
Cherry just grunted in displeasure, but Sheeno did look properly chagrinned that she had lost her cool.
“Darwin, dear, we don’t have time to waste in trying plans that we know are going to fail: We have to push through”, Undine practically begged for me to make the smart decision.
“Why is everybody acting like I’m the one that has to make the decisions!? Nobody else wants to talk to the big ass spider, then we didn’t talk to the big ass spider; like, no problem at all”, I really wanted to scratch my head, because I couldn’t understand how come now everybody was looking at me for directions, but I guess that was the power of the [Information] I could just seemingly pull out of my ass. “Let’s just break through and hope that the [Demon] isn’t either fast, smart, or both”, I added, successfully getting the heap of sarcasm to come through my voice.
“Fine!” Cherry almost hissed out, while everybody else gave more tame forms of their assent.
“Ok. Then everybody ready for the most powerful, non-kamikaze, attack in your arsenal, I guess”, I said, starting to feel a bit woozy for some reason.
Now it was either do or bust.