“Remember,” the Regressor said calmly, “our ultimate goal is to improve our teamwork, but I want to see how we react naturally as a group first. The enemy’s weak, so limit your skill use. No transformations.”
“Aw, that’s no fun!”
Yoona nodded, “Understood, brother!”
Vadeem grunted an affirmation before taking out his massive maul, eager to meet the foe head-on. I just noticed that he was able to hold and use that thing even without transforming, although I had no idea how he did so without sending himself flying with the momentum.
Seeing everyone else ready for a scrap, I let my feelers free and waited for the enemy to approach.
Soon the first signs of what was coming flew into view. They were humanoid bird-like creatures, all female apparently, with wings and wicked talons in place of arms and legs. Its feathered body was impressive, although it was still smaller than the average person. If this is the Olympus of old, then I’m pretty sure that this is a harpy, or more accurately, an entire horde of them. The creatures flew into the air, shrieking and fluttering just above our heads.
The twins were the first to act, having already taken out their bows. Yoona joined a second after and they unleashed a torrent of arrows into the oncoming mass. The Regressor’s sister had previously said that she could add properties to her shots, and it was clear to see how effective those additions were.
Some of the arrows she shot burned a trail through the mass of enemies, while others froze them in their place. More importantly, each arrow was not stopped after hitting one or two birds, but they tore through them like a high-powered rifle.
Where Yoona took her time to aim and shoot, the twins focused solely on speed. They stood next to each other and made pertinent use of their infinite supply of ammunition. Unlike Yoona, their arrows didn’t have special effects, but the sheer speed that they were able to draw was impressive. I could hardly see the movement of their hands once they were fully in the zone.
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t bothered checking their information with my Arbiter skill. Between my hectic schedule orchestrating the little play from earlier and my meeting with the Overseer, I barely saw the twins at all outside of breakfast.
I took a peek at their most relevant info.
Ana - Level 39 CORRUPTED CLASS
Description: User is not registered with Origin Matrix, please contact the Administration for further support… Unknown Aspirant… you cannot take from us!
Eva - Level 39 CORRUPTED CLASS
Description: User is not registered with Origin Matrix, please contact the Administration for further support… Unknown Aspirant… you cannot stop us!
Noe… did you bring the twins over?
“Affirmative, my Host,” she answered, “I saw the opportunity to interfere with its operations when the Trash Matrix was at its weakest. I hope you do not mind.”
Noe’s been taking a lot of initiative lately, which I suppose was a good thing, but I just wished that she would let me know about these types of things first. But still, it’s not like I was the boss of her, and I never did like to micromanage everything. I’ll be content as long as Noe’s on my side, even if she’s becoming more and more independent.
Well, it’s good to have them around, thanks Noe. Just a little bit of a heads-up would be nice in the future if it’s not too big a bother.
“I will do my best to ensure that you are properly informed, my Host,” Noe answered calmly, “But please note that it might not be possible as I can only exploit the Trash Matrix when it is vulnerable. I apologize, dear Walter.”
I focused my attention back on the flying birds above. They seemed to be gathering in number, but none of them were attacking us quite yet. Were they waiting for a critical mass to gather before swooping?
Their numbers were increasing faster than the three archers could cope with, but they were still too high up for me to hit. I could occasionally stab one that got knocked down by its fellows, but those were rare and far between.
Noel was in the same boat as me, without her skill she was pretty much worthless in the fight since she couldn’t fly in to just drown her foes in her creepy black fire. She realized this as well, and simply gave up trying to fight and just found a spot to sit down. She even got some popcorn out at one point.
Vadeem had it even worse; he had remained normal-sized, as per the Regressor’s instructions, but the harpies instinctively fled away from him. In fact, there was a radius around him where no fliers would dare approach, and he was left flailing his hammer uselessly. Were they mistaking him for an actual titan, even in his normal form?
If they were then the class system was a little more complex than I had initially thought. It would mean that Vadeem did have titan blood flowing through him, which begs the question, did he always have that in him, or was it given to him when he got his class? Yet another question that I didn’t have the answers to.
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Lastly, Jae-Hyun was just off the side, not engaging the birds at all. Unlike Noel, he looked like he was actually analyzing the battle instead of just slacking off. No doubt he was trying to gauge our response to a flying enemy, and I’m guessing he did not like what he saw.
Once the last of the birds had exited their caves and gathered above us, an unseen signal was sent and they started to all dive at us. Noel quickly stashed away her food and grabbed her swords again, rushing to meet them head-on. Vadeem tried to do the same but the harpies would swerve wildly whenever he approached them, and he was way too slow to outmaneuver his airborne foes.
I did the same, using my tentacles to intercept anything that got close. I had a lot of experience doing so fighting those human-grasshopper things, and the harpies behaved in a pretty similar manner. They couldn’t change their flight path when they decided to swoop, so all I had to do was make sure that a feeler was placed between me and its path of attack. Momentum did the rest.
Eventually, Vadeem just screamed in frustration as nothing he was doing was working, and decided to ditch his weapon and chuck rocks at the things. Honestly, it was pretty effective, all things considered. The rocks that he threw were the size of basketballs, and they were launched at cannonball velocity. The only downside was that it would cause horrible debris to litter the battlefield when the rocks inevitably hit the cave behind the foe.
“Stop throwing them!” Yoona shouted, “I can’t see anything with the dust in the air!”
After analyzing the situation more, I think that Yoona was right. Vadeem’s random throws were helping the enemies more than it hurt them, even if they killed a few unlucky harpies here and there, not to mention he risked collapsing the whole cave system if he threw them any harder. I certainly didn’t want to be buried alive in literal Tartarus.
“But I can’t fight 'em any other way!” Vadeem replied with a shout, “The damn flying turkeys keep avoiding me!”
“It’s cause you’re so ugly!” Noel shouted back as she eviscerated anything that even approached her, seeing her work was still impressive.
“Don’t push it, Noel!” Vadeem said, his tone angry, “I’ve just about had it with these damned winged fu- I mean things!”
Well that was cute, he chose not to swear after seeing the twins off to the side.
“Alright, alright,” the girl returned, “Just don’t lose it, your wife will kill me if anything happens to you, god forbid if you burst a blood vessel in your head and get even stupider.”
He grunted and turned his attention to Jae-Hyun, “You sure I can’t just go titan-sized and squish these stupid birds?”
“No,” Jae-Hyun answered calmly, “take it as a learning experience; you can’t always rely on your skills to overcome every situation. You’ve learned that airborne foes are a problem, so we can prepare properly next time.”
Vadeem took a deep breath and sighed, “Fine, do you have any suggestions on how I can fight them now though?”
“I do,” he replied, “But just watch for now.”
“Fine,” he grumbled and took a seat beside our leader, arms folded in frustration.
Well, I was starting to hope that he would give his advice soon because I was starting to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the flying turkeys myself. And the worst part about it was that I couldn’t even properly test how much more power Noe’s class gave each of my strikes. The birds all died in one strike if they hadn’t impaled themselves onto my feelers.
Now I could test my defenses, but that was something that I did not look forward to, although it appears that it will be an eventuality soon.
Right at the tipping point when it seemed like our forces would be overrun and we’d have to rely on class skills, the Regressor joined the fight. He launched himself off ledges and walls, darting between areas and killing all but the furthest up harpies. He made use of tiny footholds on the cliff to propel himself up higher and higher before allowing gravity to accelerate his downward assault.
He made it all look so easy.
“Vadeem!” he called, “Let me show you what you can do in a situation like this.”
The big man obliged and ran towards where the Regressor landed.
“If there is ever a foe that we cannot reach, say, because there weren’t any walls that I could use to launch myself, then I want you to throw me as hard as you can into the enemy.”
“As hard as I can?” Vadeem asked dubiously, “You’ll splatter into paste if I did that.”
“I will not,” he answered confidently, “Trust me.”
“Are you sure?”
Jae-Hyun gave him a hard stare, “Just do it.”
Vadeem slowly nodded, “Ok… so how do you want to do this?”
“I’ll launch myself off you, just give me a proper boost when I make contact.”
“Alright, and full force?”
“Full force.”
Without another word, Jae-Hyun dashed towards the other man. Vadeem barely had time to get into position before the Regressor’s feet landed square onto the big man’s interlocked hands. With an audible grunt, Vadeem used that momentum to push Jae-Hyun off him as hard as he could, sending the Regressor flying straight into the densely packed harpies.
All of us stopped what we were doing to see just how this would play out. Jae-Hyun was swinging with alacrity as he traveled through the air, basically vaporizing anything that was caught in his spear’s radius along the way. However, the Regressor was going at such insane speeds that I’m pretty sure that he’ll be at least injured if he crashes into the walls if not outright killed.
Yet right when he was about to splatter into the wall, he abruptly stopped, his momentum seemingly disappearing completely, and he gently landed on his feet. It was like watching a poorly edited film, seeing him completely stop like that.
“What the hell did you do?” I muttered, “How’d you stop like that?”
“A skill,” he answered, “My class allows me to control time very briefly, so I slowed it down right when I was about to hit the wall.”
Then another thought hit me, “Wait, what about all that energy from you speeding off like a bullet? Where’d it all go?”
He smiled, “You noticed, that’s good. You might want to cover your ears, but watch.”
Not sure what he meant, we did as instructed. Jae-Hyun saw a low-hanging harpy, it was disoriented and still trying to recover from the Regressor’s earlier assault. Our leader slowly stabbed his spear towards it, his movement was slow, almost lackadaisical. The speartip made contact with a soft touch.
Then the Harpy vaporized.
It along with everything in a cone-shaped area behind it. A huge shockwave of force rocked the six of us, and we all stared wide-eyed at the scene before us.
Jae-Hyun grinned, “That’s where the energy went.”
We all stared at the scene in disbelief, none of us had anything witty to say. Even his sister was surprised at the destruction her brother could unleash.
His one strike practically killed off the entire horde of harpies, and the cleanup was easily done by our three archers. I was still in shock at the true capabilities that the Regressor possessed as the last of the flying monsters died.
“What are you all waiting for?” Jae-Hyun said as he walked forward, “Let’s get going.”
“Yeah…” I muttered as I took one last look at the sheer, casual destruction that he just caused. Let’s never antagonize this goddamn freak of nature.