Chapter 50: Chapter 50 – Attack Tank! (Part 50)

Red beams of energy diverged from Wip’s crater in the wall. They turned and began to converge on Ortho’s position. Cursing under his breath, Ortho dropped to a knee and flowed everything he had into his shield.

Most of the beams were deflected by the shield’s projecting force entirely and bounced off sideways. Some struck his shield. Gritting his teeth, Ortho took the brunt of the impact, sliding back a few steps until his feet were sizzling due to the green, acidic floor.

He flowed enma into his shin guards to protect his feet. That was a mistake. In his peripheral vision, he caught a red blur just a moment too late. He twisted his shield to face the blur but his enma was spread too thin and he couldn’t get a pulse off in time.

The red blur materialised into the image of a grinning Wip. His collar was flashing madly. He leapt and struck Ortho’s shield with a bare foot. The shield slammed back into Ortho’s chest and sent him tumbling across the floor.

Ortho quickly corrected his footing using guided pulses from his shield. His back still ended up against one of the purple and green swirling walls.

“See, I can do it too!” Wip shouted from across the chamber.

Ortho let out a low growl. “You’re right. You can be a nuisance.”

“No, I meant the double attack.” Wip held up both his index fingers. He circled one around sideways then moved the other in a straight line. They converged a short distance of where they’d began. “You know, what you did with the shield.”

Ortho shifted his helmet’s vision to glance behind him. With its eyes offset from the front of the helmet’s face, he could see everything around him save for a short angle behind. He couldn’t tell properly as colours were muted when he looked through his helmet, but the swirl behind him appeared lighter than the one next to it, which meant it must have been green. This was a bad spot to fight.

He looked back at Wip and lowered his chin. “Yeah, but mine is better. Want to see?”

Wip scratched at his collar. “Um, alright.”

A grin split Ortho’s face. Wip was dumber than a bag of sand, he thought. “Then stand right where you are.”

Ortho tossed his shield and took off at the same time. He let the shield fly further this time and then engaged Wip head on. Wip blocked a low kick with his shin, but Ortho had thrown everything behind it. The kick carried through and Wip was tripped sideways.

Ortho circled the shield in and swept it at Wip’s head. However, while falling, Wip pulled out a glove from his backpack and held it before the shield. A flash of lightning, and black, semi-translucent bars surrounded the shield. The bars flashed and turned solid, then Ortho’s shield stopped moving in an instant.

Ortho quickly pushed himself off the ground. Recognising the danger, he darted back a few steps, creating space. He tried flowing enma into every control on his wrist, but the shield afto simply wouldn’t budge. It was like its momentum had been robbed from it.

He didn’t have time to test it further, however. Wip landed on one palm, flipped up, and charged straight at him. Grinning, Wip pulled a twisted hammer from his backpack and hurled it. The afto flashed red, curved, then shot towards Ortho, fluttering erratically in its path.

Ortho circled behind his stuck shield for cover. As he did, he saw two heliotomas approach from one side in his helmet’s peripheral vision. On the other side, the hammer was jerking towards him. In front, Wip was charging like a grupp that had spotted someone’s unattended lunch. Ortho took a few steps back, then leapt.

The hammer passed beneath his feet then pierced through one of the heliotomas. The other green snot monster rose up to chase him. Wip leapt up towards the shield, intending to use it as a springboard. Ortho smirked then flowed a pulse of enma into his shield’s grip, still wrapped around his forearm.

The front of the shield was still facing up, and he’d managed to deduce from his playing with it earlier that only its momentum was halted. All other functions were in perfect order. So, when Wip tried to leap off it, he received the brunt of a full-strength pulse.

With a yelp, Wip went flying upwards, aftos dropping everywhere from his backpack. Then Ortho flowed a deluge of enma into his ankle wadis. Rather than using them for power, he made a slight adjustment to his enma input and the wadis became heavier. Then, by manipulating their weight and kicking with one leg, Ortho’s momentum shifted and he was flipping backwards through the air, gradually gaining speed.

The snot-green heliotoma charged into range and his foot caught it underneath. He carried the spin and launched the heliotoma up at Wip.

“Catch this, you grupp!” Ortho taunted him.

Wip twisted his neck. When he saw the heliotoma, he calmly pulled an afto from the large top pocket on his bag. If Ortho wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a bent hoshing repulsor. The air in front of Wip thumped, and both he and the heliotoma were sent hurtling in different directions. The force had been enough to kill the heliotoma and it splatted into acid.

Ortho saw some of the flying acid coming his way. Still falling, unable to dodge it, he flowed enma into his armour. Acid splatted against the projected barriers they made. Then he crashed shoulder first onto the ground. The armour cushioned the impact, but he was still somewhat dazed.

Wip landed some distance away. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “You next!” he shouted.

Pushing himself up off the floor, Ortho screamed back, “What?”

In his helmet’s peripheral vision, he noticed a lot of fresh dangers. The hammer Wip had thrown had turned around and was aiming straight for him. Not only that, but three more heliotomas were ignoring Luci’s onslaught of threads and charged straight at Ortho. He’d been so focused on landing another hit on Wip that he only just saw it now.

The hammer approached first and was fluttering every which way, making it hard to predict. Cursing, Ortho did the only thing he could think of, which was to dash out the way.

The hammer turned sharply at the last moment and missed him by five whole steps. The first heliotoma lashed out with its tentacles, which he barely had a moment to duck beneath. Without his shield, Ortho had limited options for fighting. So, when the second heliotoma charged at him, his only defence was to block it with an arm.

The heliotoma suicided into his arm and splatted all over it. His armour’s projected shielding was pushed to its limits. He shook his arm to get as much of the acid off as he could, reducing the load on both his armour and the enma he flowed into it.

Then the third heliotoma lashed out and struck his face. It was deflected again by his projected shielding. He retaliated with a fist. However, he’d put too enma into his wadis for the strike and the acid began to seep through the shielding and onto his cheek, where the helmet offered no physical protection.

Howling in pain, Ortho turned just in time to see Wip charge him. In his hand was a club bent like a fishhook. Wip swung right at his head.

Ortho blocked it with an arm. The moment his body came into contact with the afto, he smelled earth and rain. He’d made a mistake. His body felt heavy and dropped to the ground.

He stared up from the floor and saw Wip grinning at him with a mouth missing half its teeth. Ortho returned a growl. He tried to shove his enma into his wadis, but as soon as he did, he felt has back sting. He was lying on acid ground.

Ortho couldn’t split his enma all that much. He could achieve up to nine splits total, but each flow was weak. Even reducing the number of splits, the overall level of his flow was too low to manage all these threats at once while also maintaining the offense. His father, on the other hand, would have handled this without issue. The man could split his enma up to thirty times! But, for better or for worse, Ortho was not his father.

“My turn!” Wip shouted.

His hand not holding the club afto was poised over his shoulder. He swung overhead and down, too far to strike him with just a hand. Ortho smelled the stinging rot before he saw it: a heliotoma, held by the tentacle, blurred from behind Wip’s back and arced towards Ortho.

This entire time, Ortho had been maintaining a tiny trickle of enma into his shield. Through that trickle, he felt it come loose and control return to him. Ortho threw as much enma as he could manage into the controls on his wrist and the shield broke free of its stasis.

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Ortho abandoned defence. All he could think right now was that he wanted to hurt Wip. He put everything he had into his shield and sent it hurtling towards Wip. The shield intercepted the swinging heliotoma, splatting green acid everywhere. Then, with a quick twist of his enma, he turned the shield mid-air and pulsed at Wip.

The scarred dungeoneer was sent tumbling across the dungeon floor again. Ortho drew his shield back to his wrist and took off to give chase. As he did, a heliotoma dived at him and splatted all over his armour. He was a moment too late in diverting his meagre enma flow into his armour, and his skin burned and sizzled.

Gritting his teeth, he sacrificed his armour’s shielding again for his wadis to reduce the pain, but quickly realised that was a mistake.

There were more heliotomas surrounding him, dozens that had been produced over the course of their fight. They were on every side and above as well. Ortho had been so focused on Wip that he forgot to monitor his position. He had no place to escape to.

Ortho came to a screeching halt and pulsed his shield. Two went flying, another thirty were closing in. A mistake like this would have seen him punished by his father, made a mockery of before the tribe. Assuming it didn’t outright kill him.

He pulsed his shield rapid-fire, but it had limited range. It wasn’t a weapon intended for fighting hordes, but for the few large monsters that plagued the Nubah Kilebhi. He was knocking them away one at a time and they just kept coming and coming.

One struck him from behind. He worked his wadis to numb the pain, thereby weakening his next attack. He barely noticed another sneak up from his side. At the last moment, Ortho managed to bring his shield up and send it flying. The monsters moved silently and all he had for awareness was his helmet’s peripheral vision. With this many monsters surrounding him, his heightened sense of smell served no purpose.

It looked bad. It looked like he was going to die.

Between the madness, his breath slowed and his body relaxed. He’d always known he’d die one day. It was a reality that all those who walked the twisted plains of Huhl Hadem had to face from a young age. Like this, dying in combat against monsters, it wasn’t so bad. Maybe he’d see his family again in the enmastream.

Just when Ortho was about to get struck again, glowing threads lashed the air around him, wrapping every heliotoma in one swift motion. Once squeezed tightly, the heliotomas were flung up and over Luci, who was howling fierce. Her face was twisted with delight—a sight Ortho hadn’t expected out of the meek girl. The heliotomas were splatted onto the ground opposite her, crushing another three heliotomas in the process.

“Hey, stay out the way!” Ortho shouted at her.

“Shut up!” Luci screamed back.

Luci pointed a finger at him and threads came hurtling for him. Eyes bulging, Ortho tried to deflect them with his shield, but they swirled around him like a river and snapped onto his mouth. Ortho tried to claw them off with one hand, but even with the wadis they were too strong to break. Fortunately, his nose was still free, and he could still breathe.

“Okay, that’s quite enough out of you!” Luci shouted. “If you’re not going to help, you can just stay quiet.”

Ortho wanted to shout back. He wanted to throw his shield. His anger was on the verge of boiling over, but he did everything he could to control it.

“And as for you!” Luci shouted.

Her anger wasn’t directed at Ortho this time, he realised. Forgetting about himself for a second, he looked up to see Wip floating in the air, wrapped in a fist of glowing threads. He didn’t seem even the slightest bit mad about it. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and that only upset Ortho more. He should have been hurting.

Luci turned to face Wip. If she wasn’t so tiny, Ortho would have found that glare she gave to be threatening.

“Look, mister Wip,” she wailed. “I’m doing everything on my own here and it’s getting really frustrating. So can you please stop playing with all those toys and end this fight properly?”

Wip’s arms were bound to his side but he could still move his hands freely. He pointed at Luci. “There’s one behind you.”

“Huh?”

Luci flicked her staff and her threads went hurtling over and down onto the approaching heliotoma like a club. The only problem was that she forgot to let go of Wip first.

He lay crumpled on a patch of green ground, bathed in the heliotoma’s acid. His whole body was sizzling, his flesh searing. Whatever scraps of his clothing had survived his fight with Ortho were now completely gone, leaving only his purple underwear.

Ortho actually couldn’t believe it. Wip had been giving him so much trouble and Luci had just killed him in a single strike. There was no way someone could survive that, right? He needed to give his respects to Luci, even if it galled him that he wasn’t the one to have ended the fight.

Luci dropped her staff and cupped her hands to her mouth. All her threads vanished. “Mr. Wip! I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I really didn’t mean it. Please tell me you’re not too hurt. And please tell me you’re still Mr. Wip.”

“What are you talking about?” Ortho wheezed at her. His mouth was now unbound as Luci had dropped her threads in panic. Pain made it difficult to speak, however. “He’s definitely…”

Then Wip stirred. Ortho watched in disbelief as Wip slowly pried himself off the floor. His skin was burnt all over, leaving nasty charred patches of flesh everywhere. If he was hurting, he didn’t show it.

“How?” Ortho sputtered. “A hit like that could kill someone without armour. How—”

The scent of Wip caught his nostrils again, air burnt by a thunderstorm and spiky rot. Only now, the rot was far stronger than before. The lights on Wip’s collar were dim. Very dim.

Instinct took over and Ortho clumsily raised his shield. “What are you?”

“Mr. Wip?” Luci asked hesitantly.

Wip slipped his tattered backpack off his shoulders and cracked his neck. Then he turned to Luci and let out a terrible, high-pitched laugh. “Why, hello again, gravity girl. So good to see you again. What’s that? You want to see me fight properly?”

He slammed a fist into his palm and electricity crackled along it so violently that Ortho’s throat constricted. Every hair on his body was standing on end. And the rot! By Enmaneth’s spear, it made him want to puke.

A terrible smile split Wip’s face. “Sure. Let’s have some fun.”

Luci scrambled to pick up her staff. Her hands were shaking. She pointed the staff uncertainly at Wip. “Y-you! Go away. Bring back—”

She had no chance to finish her sentence before Wip was blurring across the dungeon. The sound of his feet kicking off so violently from the floor, crushing the hard, mystery material, came to Ortho a moment after he saw a flash of red in his face.

He flowed enma into his helmet on instinct, using every drop he could muster. It didn’t prevent him from being sent hurtling across the dungeon floor.

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