Chapter 92: Book 1: Chapter 32 (Part 3 of 3)

<Fuck!> Quixbix roared. <This gelatinous muck you’ve covered yourself in is corrosive and it’s eating through your leather armour’s durability rapidly.>

At the same time, the crawdad tore itself free from the spiked girder, after pulling it from the ground. It hurled the girder away into the nearby woodland. Having regained its full mobility, the creature promptly barrel-rolled before I had a chance to react from the shock of seeing the rusted girder discarded like it was a toothpick.

The crawdad rolled onto its back with me still kneeling on its back and smashed me into the ground.

The only thing that saved my life was the creature was so enraged with pain that it didn’t stop the roll once it was on its back as I would have been crushed to death in a few seconds.

-400 Hit Points. (1,114/1860)

<Anastasia took the same four hundred in damage> Quixbix informed me.

Regardless of being hurt herself, she emptied her current pool into me.

+376 Hit Points. (1,490/1860)

The crawdad stopped rolling after three or four revolutions and came to rest on its back and was trying to right itself.

The durability of your leather boots has reached zero.

The durability of your leather leggings has reached zero.

The durability of your leather bracers has reached zero.

New Hit Point total 1,400/1,770

<You need to wipe that shit off your leather cuirass or you will lose that too. Your leather pauldrons seem okay, they haven’t got enough of that corrosive substance on them. Best tear the ruined stuff off as well before it starts eating into your skin. Your gauntlets have so much durability you can clean them later.> Quixbix advised.

With a groan, I rolled onto my front and scraped my chest along the dirt to scrape the gunk off it. Then I stood up and pulled at the bracers and leggings, they fell away easily as if they were made of paper. I shrugged the boots off and rubbed any remaining gel, which stung like a motherfucker wherever it touched my skin off on the ground.

 -5 Hit Points. (1,395/1770)

By this point, old crusty had managed to flip itself so that it was back on its legs and desperately sought out my location. The damage to its eyes from my frost breath made that more difficult, but not impossible, especially as it likely had some general sense of where I was from Sholmdir’s Ire, otherwise, how else would it have come upon us in the first place.

My suspicions were confirmed as it turned towards me and shrieked despite its black eyes being clouded and rotating in random directions.

I backed up to the rubble of the shrine as it charged. I might be able to evade it for a while, but I couldn’t flee, and time was ticking away on its shattered vulnerability. That and my lower half was now completely unarmoured, with my chest piece hanging on for now but not likely capable of enduring the level of wear and tear that thing could pump out.

What’s more, I felt ineffably weary.

Yes, I’d been through a lot in the last five or six minutes, but only yesterday I’d fought Fomorians, been chased for twenty minutes, and fought them again and hadn’t even been out of breath. This was answered quickly by a notification from Quixbix.

You are suffering from the negative status effect of Toxic Exhaustion.

<It’s that bloody slime, Torin. You got some on your skin. Your enhanced constitution should clear the exhaustion in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. This is going to slow your reactions, sap your stamina, and weaken your attacks until then. Anastasia managed to avoid the stuff.>

The slimy muck had been exuded by the parasites. Dean had warned me they were nasty fuckers with a plethora of negative status effects.

The horrid rat-a-tat-tat of the crawdad’s scuttling legs was growing in volume as it got nearer. Without the use of its eyes, it was being a bit more cautious but would still be on us in a few seconds and my energy was rapidly sloughing away.

So, I made a difficult decision, but it was the only play I had left.

“Ana, time for the Hail Mary,” I whispered tiredly.

“Are you sure, Torin?” she squeaked back.

“Yes, if we don’t do it now, we won’t get another chance.”

The shattering had a minute left on the timer and the toxic exhaustion hadn’t had a chance to rob me of the strength I’d need for this, not yet.

So, I held my ground on the pile of rubble as the crawdad approached.

From the corner of my eye, I could see another parasitic polyp had revived and was swiftly pierced by one of Shana’s arrows. I was supremely thankful she had followed my orders and despite the dire straits we were in hadn’t broken from the treeline and imperilled herself.

I retrieved and popped a two-hundred-point healing pellet in preparation for what was to come. Another timer appeared in my pseudo-interface, and I wouldn’t be able to use another alchemical concoction for fifteen minutes.

When its leading claw was only a few feet from me, I leapt from the pile of rocks and clutched onto the outer pincer of the nearest claw. Each pincer of the claw was several feet thick, and I wrapped my right arm on the inside and my left on the outside, while I swung my legs around the base of the bulbous pincer and wrapped them around the segmented arm that connected it to the thorax.

Unsurprisingly, the crawdad immediately snapped the pincers together on my right arm and began shaking its claw trying to help the razor edge of the pincers saw through my arm. The good news, my gauntlets, much as they had prevented bone breakage earlier came through for me again.

-600 Hit Points. (795/1770)

I won’t lie, though. The crushing weight of the clamped claw hurt, it hurt almost as bad as when the Greater Fomorian thrust his spear through my leg, but I held on. If I didn’t hold on all of this was for naught.

“Bojemoi! Too soon, Torin,” Anastasia cried shrilly, as soon as I had jumped on and clung to the creature’s claw like a monkey.

While she chastised my timing Anastasia flicked her whip and attached it to one of the clouded eyes to minimise the time it took her to drain the monster’s Hit Points.

A few seconds later the healing and damage notifications flashed one after the other.

+484 Hit Points. (1,279/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (679/1770)

I thanked the Shattered Goddess that Ana’s healing had come fractionally before the second imposition of the crushing claw damage, otherwise, this plan would have failed and ended in my death.

The drawback of Anastasia’s Drain ability is that once she filled her pool, she couldn’t drain any further Hit Points or Health. She needed a repository to redirect those drain points.

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Hence, the Hail Mary plan involved me getting close and taking repeated punishment which would give Ana somewhere to dump her pool and keep siphoning from the mutated crawdad.

My mind felt foggy but a stray thought that Anastasia was right about my poor timing managed to penetrate the mental mists. I hadn’t been at maximum health; therefore, I hadn’t needed to put my arm in harm’s way immediately like I had.

But because of the brain fog from the toxic exhaustion, I’d let the claw clamp down on my arm before it was necessary.

+484 Hit Points. (1,163/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (563/1770)

Now we were in a race. Who would run out of Hit Points quicker, me or the mutated crawdad?

+484 Hit Points. (1,047/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (447/1770)

 The crawdad wasn’t taking this lying down, though. It rushed around as it shook its claw vigorously, trying once more to saw through my arm, but my armour held firm.

+484 Hit Points. (931/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (331/1770)

I held on despite the forceful shaking, my grip beginning to slip but the clawed tips of the gauntlets gave me a little more purchase. This was why we hadn’t been able to wait any longer and allow the toxic exhaustion to sap my stamina and strength further.

+484 Hit Points. (815/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (215/1770)

-10 Health (13/23) Compound fracture of the right arm.

Although my armour prevented the claw from severing my arm, the continued compression had eventually snapped and crushed the bone. Luckily, I didn’t need that arm as much to hold on as the crawdad had kept it firmly squeezed in its pincers. Boy, did it hurt, though

Then the crawdad tried to snap at me with its other claw and finish me off, but without clear vision it missed. I also noted that Ana’s heals were outpacing the claw damage by a little extra each time. Would it be enough to get me a double dose of healing before I died? I desperately needed it.

+484 Hit Points. (699/1770)

-600 Hit Points. (99/1770)

Having failed to snap me with its claws the crawdad chose to slam me into the ground headfirst. This motion happened in tandem with Anastasia’s healing.

+484 Hit Points. (583/1770)

-583 Hit Points. (0/1770)

Damage to vital area -8 Health (5/23)

However, when the crawdad had thrashed around, trying to sever my arm, it had moved us back into the centre of the dell. The blackened soil here had been churned and loosened during our earlier tussle. This loose earth cushioned the blow and the damage to my head was only doubled instead of quadrupled and this saved my life, for now.

I would still be fucked when in one more second the next round of claw damage came through. I was out of Hit Points and had been shred of most of my health.

It was over.

The Hail Mary had been intercepted due to my shitty, poorly timed throw and the game would end in a loss.

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t just the soil that had been loosened when the crawdad bashed me into the earth, the claws hold on my right arm did as well, freeing it. I released the grip of my legs and left arm and remained laying on the ground as the crawdad raised its claw. My right arm was in mind-numbing agony, but I had no time for rest.

I rolled away as the crawdad’s second claw slammed into the earth where I had been lying a heartbeat earlier.

I ended up face down in the dirt, my useless right arm flopping onto the ground sending agonising jolts of pain through my body.

“Keep rolling, Torin, please keep rolling,” I heard the tiny voice of Anastasia beg.

I couldn’t answer, but from somewhere deep inside I seized the fortitude to fight through the agony, to battle through the toxic exhaustion and roll.

-1 Health (4/23)

I dismissed the notification of further harm as my pulped arm slapped onto the earth. But I didn’t stop, expending every last iota of my reserves I kept going.

-1 Health (3/23)

Distantly, my brain acknowledged the lack of any further healing from Ana. Had she been killed? Hadn’t she just urged me to roll? Rolling, yes that is what I had to do. One last time.

-1 Health (2/23)

And finally, my battered and aching body came to a rest. Fearful of death but unable to do anything more about it. Chest heaving, eyes closed, utterly spent.

The multi-tonne body of the giant mutated crawdad, now in its death throes and no doubt being urged by Sholmdir, lurched towards me. The monstrosity crunched onto the ground. The last roll was just far enough away that it missed landing on me by about three inches.

<It’s dead. Oh, my Framework, it’s fucking dead. I don’t how you managed it, but you have killed it and survived. Oh, fuck Torin, you do not look good mate> Quixbix helpfully informed me.

No shit, Sherlock, I thought at him, and promptly passed out.

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