Chapter 91: Book 1: Chapter 32 (Part 2 of 3)

Anyway, it was time to enact plan alpha. With the crawdad advancing towards me I turned tail and sprinted deeper into the barren dell. As I legged it past the blood shrine, I flashed the sole surviving Capronid a vicious smirk. The beast-man had a confused expression but came to understand the source of my taunt about a second later.

The crawdad completely heedless of the obstacle the blood shrine posed continued to take the most direct route to its target, me. It didn’t quite run directly into the shrine but passed close enough that one of its leading claws belted the girder hard enough most of the rubble around its base was sent flying straight into the crouched Capronid.

If being battered by rocks wasn’t enough to ensure the final Capronid’s death, the armour-plated tail fan swung into the altar, smashing it off the makeshift legs and scything apart anything remaining as it passed.

The spiked girder wasn’t quite entirely knocked from its placement but now teetered at less than a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, directly backwards. I dismissed a notification that let me know I had destroyed the blood shrine and wiped out the local cult of Carnax. We’d deal with that later.

I had drawn the crawdad to this part of the wasteland as the ruts in the ground developed into full-on cracks which started at the base of the shrine. The gaps got much deeper and farther apart on this side of the dell. Deep enough for a person to fall into and struggle to get out of quickly. I hoped that this would make the footing uneven enough to seriously hinder the monstrous crustacean.

Shana continued to eliminate the last few remaining parasites as I led the monster deeper into the heart of the damaged land.

The plan worked, kind of.

Once in the centre of the rutted landscape, the giant crawdad did indeed suffer severe movement penalties and struggled to chase after me effectively. The beast screeched loudly in a horrible ear-splitting octave, voicing its frustration.

I busied myself leaping across the furrows, circling, and staying just out of reach of my opponent. The crawdad, which was already a little slower when trying to shift around on the spot, struggled more with the deep ruts tripping its many segments’ legs.

I stowed my two scimitars and formed a series of throwing knives made from ice and hurled them whenever I had the chance. Aiming for the snapping mandibles and soulless black compound eyes that sought me out.

With me constantly moving, and because I’d had very little practice throwing knives, my success rate was on the low side. Most of them clattered into the shell or flew over its head.

My notifications from Quixbix let me know that the knives which hit the shell only damaged it for one of two Hit Points and the handful that managed to hit the intended target only did eight. I hadn’t activated my Shattering ability yet, but I couldn’t possibly do enough damage in two minutes even with it lowering the crawdad’s damage mitigation.

I’d made several full circuits around the enraged crawdad and kept this frustration strategy up long enough that one of the first parasites Shana killed revived itself. Which was a nice bonus.

I was beginning to think we’d adopted a winning tactic. Then as I landed after my latest evasive leap, the dried and blackened earth underfoot gave way a little and I stumbled.

This wasn’t immediately fatal for me. It took me a moment to right my footing and continue leaping for safety. Although it did give the crawdad a chance to clip my shoulder with the tip of its claw for a glancing blow on my armour.

-300 Hit Points. (1,450/1860)

I’d been anticipating the danger and aimed my last jump a bit further out from the damaged area so I wouldn’t be so badly affected by the blow. I quickly bounded around the backside of the crawdad, not bothering to try and draw its attention.

I needed a second or two to examine the ruined earth that I was using to slow it down.

“Bollocks!” I cried.

“What’s the matter,” Anastasia squeaked from inside my hood.

As part of the plan, she had remained fully concealed until we were close enough to engage the beast.

“The cracked earth here isn’t as hardened as I’d hoped. It’s already beginning to give way. It will only be a few more circuits before the crawdad levels the ground and then we’re back to square one and we’ve barely hurt the fucker,” I grunted, a little breathlessly as I leapt over to the next rut in the ground.

“We knew this was a long shot, but it bought us a few minutes,” Anastasia added encouragingly.

Sadly, my prediction proved unerringly accurate.

After I drew the crawdad around twice more, the formerly deeply furrowed centre, where it had been spinning, was now flattened. The loose soil offered little, if any, impediment. It was still slower than me as it turned around, but I had to take a wider circuit and the ground under my feet hadn’t been levelled in the same way which largely evened out or relative progress to one another.

It was soon clear Sholmdir’s champion would easily catch me should I become unbalanced or stumble in any way and then I’d be in trouble. However, the extra time had allowed a second parasite to revive and be quickly despatched by the eagle-eyed Shana. And it gave me enough time to formulate a new plan of action on the fly.

Recalling the crawdad’s earlier behaviour, I gave up on circling and sprinted back towards the shrine. I ran directly under the pointed girder and scrambled over the rubble it was leaning against. Thankfully, the altar stone was in one piece, it had merely been knocked over and squished the beast-man that had been hiding behind it.

I jumped off the shrine’s base and put my shoulder on the flat stone pushing it over on top of where the girder had emerged from the ground. Adding its weight and my strength to assist in bracing the broken shrine.

<What are you doing?> Quixbix yelled in my mind, but I pushed him out of my thoughts, and focused on what was coming next.

The enraged crawdad had cleared the centre of the blackened earth and was past the remaining rutted ground. There was just enough space for it to pick up speed as it rushed recklessly after me. Right onto the barbed spike-tipped girder.

The spike caught the crawdad just below the mandibles. The carapace underneath the monster was not quite as tough and with the power of its momentum my improvised spear plunged through the chitinous material and deep into the beast’s flesh.

The power of the collision pushed the angled girder backwards, tearing through the earth and flinging both me and the former altar back. I landed on my backside and heavy pieces of the stone slab, which had finally broken, fell on my legs and gut winding me.

-200 Hit Points. (1,250/1860)

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 I could have done without that, I thought.

<Maybe, next time, don’t stand in the way of a rampaging multi-tonne monster with something as flimsy as a twenty-foot improvised bulwark> Quixbix snarked at my foolishness.

I pulled the broken pieces off my body and stood up gingerly.

Apart from the getting-crushed-by-rubble element, my on-the-fly plan had worked extremely well. The giant crawdad had impaled itself all the way down to the antlered effigy which had been smashed to smithereens in the process. The barbs on the spike were making it difficult for the crawdad to pull itself off, especially as the base of the girder was no longer as firmly lodged into the ground as it once was.

The crawdad shrieked with pain as it struggled.

“Time for the crazy hero shit,” I yelled to Ana who was still safely ensconced in the black scaled hood of my coif.

“Saving your own ass isn’t heroism, Torin,” she squeaked correcting me as she pulled herself up to the back of my neck.

Now was the time to hit this monstrous fucker as hard as we could.

The crawdad was trying to clutch the girder with its claws to hold it in place and pull itself off, but the rusted struts were getting in the way, and it had to bend or tear them off to be successful. Difficult when the extreme discomfort it must be in was taken into account.

Offering my sincerest prayers to the Shattered Goddess, I ran forward and vaulted onto the shifting girder. My agility was solid and the girder wide enough for me to land safely with a little help from the Acrobatics skill. Now all I had to do was run up it and attack the head of my enemy.

I bounded up the wobbling girder. Trusting in my balance and not thinking about everything that could go wrong with this manoeuvre. As I planted my first outstretched foot, I activated the Shattering ability with the crawdad as target and saw the two-minute timer overlayed on my peripheral vision start to count down.

I had covered half the distance to my target

Taking two more brave strides up the rusted metal brought me three-quarters of the way to my target. I triggered the first of my two breath attack charges and picked Frost for the damage type.

I inhaled deeply as my boots contacted the girder once, then twice. The compound eyes of the crawdad had zeroed in on me, its attempts to free itself abandoned as it redirected its claws to the role of seizing me, but it was too late.

I exhaled strongly and unleashed a blast of frigid air from the back of my throat.

Luckily, my first breath attack hadn’t been randomised and the Frost breath poured forth in waves of the familiar white and blue of thick ice that adorned my hair, eyes, armour, and body. The wave blasted the crawdad’s head encompassing both its beady black eyes that were on short stalks.

-90 Hit Points. (1,160/1860)

Critical Strike! x2 You have inflicted 1,600 points of cold damage to Mutated Crawdad King

Hells yeah! Sixteen hundred points of damage. It wasn’t the quadrupling we would get for striking the head of a humanoid, but double was better than no multiplication at all.

My run meant I sailed over the top of its head and landed on the back of its thorax. As my boots contacted the creature’s back, I summoned my scimitars ready to slash about me with wild abandon.

I slid on the gunk that coated the crawdad’s abdominal thorax which made keeping my balance treacherous as I tried to lay about me with my blades. Each successful slash inflicted a further thirty points of damage, small change but it all added up.

Meanwhile, Anastasia had flicked her tiny wrist and wrapped one of the eyestalks with her Drainer’s whip and was rapidly refilling her drain pool at the crawdad’s expense. Like any other attack, draining went quicker if the point of contact was a vital spot.

The beast thrashed and tried to dislodge me from its back, but while it remained skewered on the former blood shrine all it achieved was forcing me to drop onto my hands and knees. I did lose one of my scimitars and it bounced away to the ground. But I steadied myself and kept stabbing away on its back.

It also tried to use its claws but the exoskeleton of its ‘arms’ meant it was unable to reach over its back to get at me.

When Anastasia had filled her pool to full, she used her curative touch on me.

+484 Hit Points. (1,644/1860)

Then as Ana resumed draining its life, and with most of my Hit Points back, I crawled a few feet back towards its head ready to compound the pain. I activated my second and final breath attack charge, selecting Frost again.

I wasn’t so lucky the second time around and the coin flip went the way of randomisation. What emerged from the back of my throat was golden arcing lightning. I’d aimed the attack for the dead centre of its head and the attack was unerringly accurate. But unlike the Frost breath, the lightning was focused on a single point and not a cone of expanding cold.

-130 Hit Points. (1,514/1860)

You have inflicted 800 points of electrical damage to Mutated Crawdad King

The result was I didn’t get the benefit of hitting the eyes and doubling the damage for hitting a more vulnerable spot. Never mind, I thought and swung my blade at the nearest eyestalk.

Which was when my good fortune evaporated.

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