Chapter 87: Chapter 85: Overrun Canyon

The party traversed through the lush canyon carefully. They made extensive use of Tess’s tremorsense to watch for any monsters, and The Rumors didn’t mess around when they spotted one. Instead of involving the younger girls in the process, The Rumors elected to go full-force and eliminate the monsters as quickly and quietly as possible.

It was a stark change of pace from anything Tess had really seen from them. Even when they had been speeding through Slime Tower, or any of the other low leveled dungeons, The Rumors had maintained an air of relaxation, an ease that came from being so dramatically overleveled that they were, effectively, invincible.

And, while they were still easily handling the monsters in the area, Tess could see that they were starting to be at least somewhat challenged. One or two monsters were easy enough for them to handle, sure, but then the monsters started coming in packs of three or four, and then five or six.

Tess almost felt like she could watch their attitudes change in real time as they proceeded further into the canyon. Their stops became briefer, only enough time for a few terse words to be spoken regarding the direction they were going or asking if there were any monsters up ahead.

And, increasingly, there were. Just as the size of the groups of monsters got larger, the frequency with which the party encountered them likewise grew. It was almost baffling, in a way; Tess had imagined that monsters, devoid of the system’s pressure to stay in a small area without killing each other, would spread out more, instead of clustering densely around a dungeon.

She waited expectantly, but for once didn’t get an answer from the gods. They probably didn’t want to distract her in the increasingly tense situation she found herself in, so she decided it was time to follow suit and redoubled her efforts in looking for monsters or other things of interest using her tremorsense.

Things really started to get hairy when Tess discovered a group of eleven monsters around a bend. Or, rather, group of eleven was perhaps the wrong term; it was more akin to two groups of five and six. They were separated by ten or so feet, and were pacing around each other carefully.

“I think there’s some sort of fight about to break out ahead of us.” Tess whispered. “Six of those lizard-y things and five of the crab things.”

Ker frowned. “Are any of them injured?” He whispered back.

“None are obviously injured, like missing legs or anything, but I can’t tell if they’ve got minor injuries.” Tess replied.

“Are there any ways around it?” Alice asked.

“Not if we keep going the way we’re going. I mean, I guess we could go up and then come back down on the other side of them, but that puts us at risk of dropping down onto another group of monsters.”

“That’s a valid point.” Alice said. “What are they doing now?”

“They’re just sort of pacing around each other.” She paused, focusing on the monsters. “I think the lizards might be getting ready to make a move, though. They keep darting forward like they’re going to attack, so I think they’re testing the waters.”

Alice sighed, turning to Jin. “What do you think?” She asked.

“It’s a bit too chaotic, I don’t like it.” He replied. “I think we should wait it out and clean up whatever side remains afterwards. If it was just the three of us, I would say we could probably just rush through it, but…”

“Agreed.” Ker said. “Tess, keep us updated on the battle, let us know if it’s moving over here or if it’s almost over.”

“Should I try and pay attention to the rest of our surroundings, too?” Tess asked.

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“No.” Alice said quickly. “Better to just focus on one thing, so you don’t miss something important. We’ll keep watch over here and make sure we don’t get ambushed.”

Tess nodded and turned her attention back to the monsters. It took less than a minute for the fight to begin in earnest; one of the lizards darted in, but instead of backing away like they always had before, the rest of the lizards joined in too, and things got hectic.

While tremorsense was superior to vision in many ways, it did not come without its drawbacks. Foremost among those was the fact that she only saw outlines and shapes. Without the ability to tell the material of an object, aside from whether or not it was a solid, she was left to extrapolate details for herself.

Bodies generally were composed of liquids and solids, so telling if something was living or had once been living was usually easy enough, but that was about as far as she got. When the lizards would go in to bite the crabs, and especially when the lizards would crawl on top of the crabs, the two shapes essentially merged into one big misshapen blob.

Even so, she was able to tease out a general picture of what was happening. The lizards’ main goal was to get on top of the crabs; the crabs were a fair bit larger than the lizards, so the lizards would use that to their advantage and get in places the crabs had a hard time reaching. Once there, they would do…something that she couldn’t quite make out, and, eventually, the crab would either manage to get the lizard off, or would stop moving, and the lizard would move on to another crab.

The whole fight took perhaps three minutes, ending in the eventual defeat of the crabs, though they did manage to take a lizard out with them. Tess presumed a few of the remaining lizards were injured, as she had seen multiple lizards take blows, but she couldn’t really check their condition with tremorsense, so that was mostly just an assumption.

“They’re done.” She whispered. “Lizards won. There are still five of them, and I think some are injured but I can’t be sure from here.”

“Good enough.” Jin said. “You three, these monsters are likely to be even more territorial than normal since they’re still at the site of their kill. We’re going to do our best to keep them from getting to you, but they outnumber the three of us, so it’s very possible one or two might slip through the cracks. If that happens, handle the stragglers yourself. I believe we determined that the lizards are probably safe for you if it’s only one or two of them, yes?”

“Yeah.” Tess said. “They’re nothing special, it’s just the level gap. Shouldn’t be too different from fighting a miniboss or something. They seemed to like testing out their opposition with feints if that last fight was any indicator, so we should probably be able to get the first hit.”

“Good.” Jin said. “We’re going, then.”

Alice cautiously led the group around the bend, where five lizards in varying states of injury were feasting on crab corpses, shells melted and dripping onto the floor below. As they came into view, the lizards whipped around form their meals and began scurrying towards the group, getting into the formation that Tess had seen them use against the crabs.

Unfortunately for the lizards, probing the space between them and their enemies was a lot less effective when said enemies had ranged attacks. Alice’s sword and a couple of spells slammed into one of the injured lizards, finishing it off rather soundly.

Realizing that their old plan wouldn’t work, the lizards rushed in and began their attack in earnest. Alice managed to intercept one with her shield, bashing it backwards before it was able to find any purchase to climb over. Jin and Ker each began to cast as quickly as possible, spells that would push the lizards back or freeze them in place while Alice delivered quick strikes of her sword.

Even so, one of the injured lizards was able to slip past them, skittering up the canyon wall and deftly dodging the spell that had been aimed at it. “You three!” Jin barked between spells. “Take care of it!”

Maven immediately began to cast a spell, while Ellie moved to place herself between the lizard and the open flank of The Rumors. For her part, Tess began activating her Skills, then prepared herself. When the lizard came down from the wall, she activated Mad Dash, feeling a strange rush as she suddenly was moving much faster than she had anticipated. She was barely able to get her claws in front of her to impale the monster, the force of her speed carrying the monster forward with her as she stopped barely before impacting the canyon wall.

Then, You Are Already Dead kicked in, and the monster took the damage.

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