Chapter 87: Book 1: Chapter 30 (Part 3 of 3)

The graceful elf stood from behind the shrubbery that concealed us, her bow and arrow in hand. With a single smooth action, she nocked, pulled the string back and released the arrow with a soft twang. The arrow flew true and embedded itself right behind Dougie’s ear.

I dismissed the damage notification from Quixbix, barely reading it. Dougie had been unaware and was hit in an unarmoured part of his head by an arrow shot from Shana’s Lesser Bow of the Assassin. The damage was massive and would have been a kill-shot even for somebody like me at level one.

It certainly was for Dougie.

Dougie had been rubbing his sore butt while sitting on the ground. As the arrow struck, his body rocked forward, and he remained slumped unnaturally that way with his head almost touching the dirt in front of him. His splayed legs prevented his corpse from falling all the way forward to the ground.

Nobody reacted to his sudden demise, apart from Ana and me. We rushed out from the shrubbery and ambushed the two remaining cultists. They were completely oblivious as they were struggling to swallow and keep down their ‘Marco meal’.

Anastasia’s whip flicked out and wrapped around Florence’s throat and rapidly drained her dead. I took out Mark with a well-placed swipe of my scimitar to the back of his neck.

With my new gauntlets bumping my strength by twenty and my Greater Blue Coral Ring boosting my Cold damage by a further two I was doing approximately fifty-five damage per strike. Slicing into his unarmoured neck multiplied that by eight, and his head came clean off.

I arrested my stride. Jackson now rushed forward covering the ground at a sprint. The two Capronids guarding the slaves who had been eyeing the mass of their greedily feasting fellows lowed a loud warning as one of them was struck in the chest by one of Shana’s arrows.

Thankfully, most of the mass of beasts were too focused on fighting for the juiciest portions to notice the warning in time. Jackson got within five metres of them, stretched out his palms and unleashed a wave of green flames that I’d first seen him use in the dungeon against the swarm of Skreechers. The flames were more intense this time and I could feel the waves of heat pulsing away from the attack.

The young sorcerer straightened as the two-second burst of fire exhausted itself. He stared at the writhing mass of burnt goat-men as the rotten crisped smell of flesh and hair wafted back to us.

A handful of the monsters on the front periphery of the grisly feed stampede collapsed to the ground horribly burned having taken the brunt of Jackson’s conjured conflagration. Unfortunately, this front few had partially shielded those further back and though they were certainly scorched, and very, very, angry, they weren’t dead.

Jackson seemed to realise he was standing there, staring at a bunch of wrathful mobs who had every reason to gut him like a pig, and he had no mana left. He turned tail and sprinted even faster away from them than when he had approached. Not that I think any sane person could find fault in that.

“Are you ready, Ana?” I called across to her.

With a flick of her wrist, Anastasia uncoiled her Drainer’s whip from the throat of a desiccated Florence and grinned savagely. Yeah, she was ready.

The Capronids roared, hefted their weapons, and charged. Well, the ten towards the back of the pile, including the chief immolator, did. Half a dozen of those at the front, after being trampled by their fellows, crawled towards the altar instead.

I didn’t have time to consider what was happening with them as the first of the beast-men, with horns black as night, reached me.

The creature was close enough that I could smell its rancid breath over the acrid burnt flesh stench that had washed over us in the wake of Jackson’s magic-use. The Capronid swung his blood-stained, rusted, cleaver at my head and I ducked the wild attack and slashed at the creature’s unarmoured knees in response.

My swift double strike effectively hamstrung the beast. As it fell to the ground, I hacked at it and connected with the chain protected shoulder. Quixbix flashed me a notification that I had inflicted enough damage to kill it and I looked up ready for my next opponent.

From the corner of my eye, I spied Anastasia had slowly backed up and was using the lengthy range of her special whip to her best advantage. She had dropped a Capronid of her own by the time two more approached me from either side. The one on my left had dirty-grey fur, while the other’s pelt was a muddy brown. I needed to utilise some fast footwork myself and ducked and rolled out of the way of a double mace attack.

I jumped back to my feet, having put a little distance between grey-fur on my left and slashed my swords at brown-fur. One of my blades was blocked by his mace but the second connected solidly with the monster’s gut. I registered that it dealt fifty-five damage to the beast.

Quixbix had changed my notification ‘settings’ at my request and only significant information would flash before my eyes, but the notifications still existed, and I could mentally check them with a thought.

I continued to back up, battling with the pair who were quickly joined by two more, one of these being the immolator Capronid, who still had the serrated blade in hand.

I was hit three times losing forty Hit Points each time which accounted for about ten percent of my total.

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As the combat progressed, I dropped another of my opponents, the brown-furred one I connected with first, but there were still three in the fight. After the first few times that they got past my desperate parrying, I adapted my strategy.

Instead of trying to deflect, I started taking the hits on my dragonscale protected arms. I would likely be hit more frequently, but the damage was massively reduced and left me freer to strike back. The damage inflicted dropped from forty to six and left me much happier.

As we danced, my blades against their cleavers and maces, I was able to peek to my side and see how Anastasia was doing. She had been surrounded by four Goat-men the same as I had, and her attackers were too close for the whip to be usable.

She had jumped on the back of one with black matted fur and silvery horns and was draining him dry, but she was taking a heavy beating in the process from the remaining three.

She would be able to use her victim’s essence, when she drained it, to renew her own Hit Points. And she couldn’t die permanently, so I wasn’t overly concerned about her safety, but it did highlight another worry.

Where was our ranged support?

Quixbix, what has happened to Shana? Is she okay? I thought at my imp as I intercepted another blow on my upper left arm for a small reduction in my Hit Point total.

<She is hale and hearty, Torin> he assured me quickly. <Unfortunately, she has had other matters to deal with. Although I was correct about the Capronids not being able to use the blood pool of the shrine to summon other herds or open portals, it would appear they can use it to heal themselves.>

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grunted as I was hit on the elbow and whipped my scimitar back with a savage blow to the offending beast-man’s jaw, slicing it clean off and dropping the creature.

This left grey-fur and the immolator in the fight with me.

<She killed the two guards and then saw what the remaining six were doing. She managed to kill four of them before they finished healing themselves and is keeping the other two off you for now. Jackson has made it to the hanging frame and freed two of the six slaves. Oh, and Ana just killed one of her four. With her three, your two, and Shana’s two, you have seven left> Quixbix informed me rapid-fire.

I doubled down with only two left and abandoned defence entirely and went on a frenzy of offensive moves. Twenty seconds later I had slain both at the cost of another two hundred of my Hit Points.

I was about to turn and assist the blonde spitfire who continued to struggle with her group of Capronids, though she had killed a second of her four enemies. However, I was distracted from aiding her as a terrifying screech echoed across the battleground from the southern woods.

The battle halted on all fronts as the screech was joined by the tearing and cracking sounds of trees being destroyed as something enormous barged through the wooded area to the south of us and emerged into the bright daylight of the dell.

My mouth was left agape as I stared at the fresh monstrosity.

It was over thirty feet tall.

At first, I thought it was a kind of scorpion, as it had two gigantic sandy-grey mottled pincers that it had used to uproot and discard inconvenient things like forty-foot trees blocking its path. When I took in its head with two exposed black beady eyes and a pair of twitching feelers that almost looked like a moustache, I realised this was some type of giant crustacean and not a scorpion.

The creature had a hard shell the same shade as the pincers, and it was covered in wriggling tentacular extensions that looked like polyps tipped with circular orifices lined with sharp teeth.

As it came crashing through into the barren clearing, time slowed to a halt.

<I think a period of Action Mode is in order> Quixbix said.

That was the understatement of the century.

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