“Who daress-“ the [Demon] starts screeching to the sky, immediately finding the interloper, but was robbed of the chance to finish its villainous exclamation by something else happening.
A gigantic feminine grey hand soon followed after the woman that had intruded, ripping the tear in the web-dome wide open, its manicured nails and impressive jewelry barely noticeable when it immediately slapped the spider away from us lighting fast.
*hisssss* the spider loudly hissed while being flung away, but by the tone, I could tell that it hadn’t been hurt all that much, but it was mostly just surprised.
“Get a move on kids, there’s still the big one behind you to think about”, the floating woman with the oversized hat said to us, sounding like she was right in front of us, meanwhile we could see her body tens of meters above us.
“Merga, what are you doing here!?” I couldn’t help but ask, even when the others hadn’t waited to comply and Undine was bringing me closer to the [Depth Witch] with tacit consent.
“A little tentacled bird passed on your distress signal as soon as it arrived, and luckily for you, I can be very fast”, the Syren smirked down at me, lowering herself closer to the ground and therefore depriving me of a view that I still didn’t know how to feel about.
“So you’re here to save us?” Sheeno asked, with unexpected briskness.
“As long as we hurry up: Even I would have a hard time defeating a [High Demon] and an [Artificial Aberrant Evolution] on my own while keeping all of you alive”, Merga nonchalantly responded, still floating above us, but keeping up with our pace, her long gown the only reason why, though the otherworldly fluttering it was experiencing seemingly on its own, she wasn’t showing more panty our way.
Getting out of the depression in the ground the Gnomes wasted no time and frantically tried to conjure their [construct], and I promptly added again my [Rune] and [Speel] to the equation, which earned a single, quick, panicked look from the trio, but they then decided to just run with it, and even though it was rushed it still surprisingly worked.
Only this time, instead of a limo with a cloud underneath, we got what looked like a military black and gold Humvee that had its wheels and back replaced with grey, stormy, clouds. A much more sophisticated design than usual, but we were all working as fast as we could, so looks had to be left to chance and automastism for efficiency’s sake.
“Interesting”, Merga idly remarked, but her words were enough to snap us out of the apprehension we were all feeling towards the suddenly different vehicle.
Again, this was a do-or-die situation, even with the powerful Witch here, so it was time that we got a move on.
I opened the driver’s side door and slid right in, the Gnomes took their place on the passenger’s sofa, and everybody else climbed on in the back, with Cherry intelligently taking her place on the rotating seat without making a peep, knowing by now why it was meant for her. Only Merga was content on remaining outside, still, that didn’t stop her from taking a seat on the roof, her legs left to happily kick on one side of the not-car.
Grabbing the double stick I just sent it into full throttle, earning me a startled yelp from both above and behind me, letting me know that I would probably pay for it later, but for now, nobody complained due to the perfectly good excuse I had: We had to go fucking fast.
We were all hanging on for our lives when the giant hand came back and completely rent asunder the remainder of the web-dome, which also revealed the body to whom said hand belonged: It looked like a massive Naga, the size of a skyscraper, with six arms and a skull for a head, but said skull somehow still had a full head of silky black long hair on it.
And yeah, the snake lady was completely naked, outside of some well-placed jewelry that barely covered her privates.
Those are some some serious honkers, a real set of badonkers, packin some dobonhonkeros, massive doboonkabhankoloos, big ol' tonhongerekoogers, giant bonkhonagahoogs, humongous hungolomghononoloughongous-
It has a skeleton for a head, ffs!
“Pretty sure that I’m a proud wearer of the ‘monster-fucker badge’-“
“Whoah!” I had to cut off my mental discussion to quickly swerve away from the string of webs that had just been shot right in front of us, in an attempt to cut us off.
“Don’t worry, [Corra] got it!” Merga’s voice reached my ears maybe a tad too loud for comfort, but before I could ask who [Corra] was the snake lady started shooting black beams of magic out of its sockets to something in the distance.
Taking a page from the Witch’s book, Cherry climbed, with great effort, out of the hatch above her seat, and then latched her wooden gun to the provided slot, just before ‘rooting’ it into the mechanism, and she just started blasting backward.
I only needed to spare a glance to see that the skeletal army was making its way out of the cave just now, and her suppression fire made sure that they couldn’t assist the spider against the giant lady; even though they were barely armed by her projectiles, the punch behind them was still enough to make them stumble back and cause a domino effect of tangled bones.
Still, we had no doubts that it wouldn’t last past the point when the [Mausoleum Giant] caught up with its army, but at least we should have bought some time for [Corra].
“Shit, I should have left behind some [Rune Mines] before escaping.”
And with that final regret, our vehicle sped off, away from the growing sound of conflict.
* * *
{SKULLDIGGER’S POV)
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The [Demon] couldn’t believe it: Someone found one of her pet projects right before completion, interrupting the gestating period and making sure that its potential was cut short, and managed to then even get away with what [Information] they managed to take with them.
[Skulldigger] was furious. But more than furious she was afraid of what would happen when her master found out about it.
The worst possibility of all was that it would destroy her eggs.
A creature of the [Void] like her shouldn’t worry about genders and offspring, but she took great pride in being able to naturally produce a smaller version of herself through copulation with a partner, with her children inheriting the better qualities of the latter added onto her own, which she could later absorb for herself if they matched her [Affinities].
The best part was that since she was the female in the relationship, she could just dispose of the unwilling male after the fact and directly take the quality she needed by consuming their skull.
Such advantage and adaptability was the only reason why such an animalistic [Demon] like her could become a [High Demon] in the first place, fortunately, she hadn’t quite reached the ceiling for her growth, so she hadn’t simply become the small fish in the big pond by advancing her [Race], but she managed to reach the middle fishes and assure some semblance of security for both her and her spawn.
But that was very likely to change when the [Lich King] came to learn of this.
“If it learns of it”, [Skulldigger] corrected herself: She had played the part of the stupid and subservient follower with the [Demon Lord], so feigning ignorance could work for her, even though only as a temporary solution.
But as long as it lasted just enough for her little ones to be born with their glorious and chaotic mutation, that was more than good for her. After all, at that point she would add to the value she represented to her liege with her a newly birthed private army of [lesser Demon]; not particularly impressive on its own, but the variety she managed to capture for her donors was exceptionally vast.
Speaking of variety, the spider sent another glare to the giant [familiar] with the now melted arms, who had kept her away from the morsel that felt tantalizingly different from anything she had come that close to before.
An eclectic mix of magics, auras, and intents that would indubitably result in some interesting offspring, which she might have brought with her away from this [Nexus] when the job had been done and it was time to move on to the next bigger and greener pasture that needed to be ruined.
[Skulldigger] looked back at the dying [familiar] once more, the beautiful skeletal head the only part still completely intact, now focused on trying to fight blast to blast with her [Mausoleum Giant]; they were almost evenly matched, the summoned enemy of a superior [Tear] and the Giant with unbalanced [Statistics] skewed toward attack and defense, to the detriment of speed and intelligence; an efficient trade in her book, especially since it should have served as a prototype for living siege weapons that her master was working on; unfortunately, she ended up finding this one lacking for no fault of her own, or her master for that matter.
“Get away from the [familiar], you cretin: It’ss obvioussly going to sself-desstruct!” She hissed to her ruined creation, and fortunately, it was smart enough to immediately follow the command, and it turned around and tried to lumber away.
The skull on the melting torso looked irked, for however irked bones alone could look, that its plan had been foiled, not expecting that the [Mana] fluctuations inside its head to be discovered, so it activated in advance the last resort move it had, conflagrating its into a storm of [Void] and [Death].
[Corra], as a literal representation of Death within the Void, knew full well that it wouldn’t kill her, but she always found it unpleasant whenever Merga ordered her to fight to the death with starting losing condition.
The spider was far away enough that she only felt a refreshing breeze from the same [Affinities] she possessed, the Giant instead was left rolling on the ground in pain, with most of its exterior exoskeleton broken, with even its main spine openly visible from outside.
“Sstop crying, you big baby! Jusst go and eat thosse boness you left behind to regenerate fasster”, she ordered the failure, now seriously angered by its lack of intelligence.
At least it stopped shouting with its bone-breaking loud voice, and just went to accomplish what it was ordered to do silently, lumbering forward step after lumbering step.
Left to her own thoughts, delectable sounds of crunched bones aside, the faces of the prey that had escaped her came back to mind, and a plausible report quickly formed almost on its own.
* * *
We had been riding out for almost a straight hour and, except for a slight humming from above us, everyone inside the car had been dead silent for the entire time.
“So…” I decided to try and break the ice, “has everybody seen the Witch’s panties?”
“Wuh-!”
“Huh!?”
“Darwin!”
“Ha!”
Everybody’s focus immediately snapped towards me, with even Merga herself being unable to choke back a laugh.
Was it an inappropriate question? Without a doubt.
Did it serve its purpose? Seeing that most were now either shocked or angry at me, instead of brooding over having almost died, I’d say that it did.
“Darwin, you can’t say that with the [Depth Witch] so close!” Undine was the first one to put her shock aside and admonish me with a harsh whisper.
“Also, you’re supposed to ignore gaffs from very powerful people. It’s the proper thing to do”, Sheeno lightly slapped my shoulder, showing an incredible degree of control over her ponderous [Strength], still conscious that I was the most badly injured among us all.
“You’re making it very difficult to not think of you as sexist”, Cherry japed with a raised eyebrow, but I could feel that there wasn’t the usual aggressiveness behind her words.
“I’d like to believe that I know Merga well enough to know that what she did was deliberate, and she was trying to get a rise out of us”, I defended my stance, reminding them that I actually knew the Witch in question prior to this.
“Well, aren’t you full of surprises: I leave you alone for a month and I come back to find you sassier than ever”, A massively brimmed hat peaked in from the left window.
“Don’t act like you don’t like it”, I responded without even looking away from the was was in front of us: Trees peaking just over the horizon.
“I never said that”, she immediately responded with a strange twinkle in her eyes.
“Good, because you’re the sassiest Witch I know, and you’re probably the type of person that likes to have competition”, I decided to sass her right back.
“I’m the only [Witch] you know”, she pointed out, with unconcealed humor in her voice.
“That doesn’t make what I said any less true.”
“Indeed.”
Seeing us bicker goodnaturally eased some of the tension in the air, finally allowing some the chance the relax a bit: From the lowering of shoulders, to the lessening of shaking and unspirited eyes, everyone started looking better.
Even me.
Again, I was missing both my feet, and I could still feel a bit of pain and phantom sensation from them, but that little banter made me feel a bit more ‘normal’ again in other ways.
“We’re going back to the [Guild], right?” Sheeno asked a surprisingly normal question, given the previous subject.
“Of course”, I say, as if it was a matter of fact.
“But that also means that we’ll be giving up on those other missions, right?” Cherry continued with the obviously normal questions.
“Given what happened, I’m pretty sure that we will be excused for those”, this time it was Undine who responded.
“Unless you’ve picked up [Quests] that include other people, or are marked as urgent, then you have nothing to worry about”, Merga explained from above, her dangling booted feet being the only visible part of her once more.
We then spent another couple of minutes discussing what we were supposed to do once we arrived, and it all boiled down to going to the infirmary right off, and only then those that got discharged would have to make a report to Merglobth, with Merga as a witness, because reporting a [High Demon] appearing this close wasn’t anything that could simply be accepted at face value, under normal circumstances.
For me, personally, this time was spent more than I’d like bashing myself for what I could have done better, and only Sheeno comfortably squeezing my thigh, as if reading my mind, kept me from falling into a downward spiral.
We all made it out alive: that is what mattered.
‘Alive’ was good. Sure, we made mistakes, but one can learn from mistakes.
And next time… if there is a next time for such a disastrous situation, we will be found ready.