Chapter 51: Solo-Fight II

  Behind them, the skittering grew louder, closer; the hive was awake now and giving them its full attention.

  Alex shoved Devon forward, glancing back only once at the shattered carcass of the humanoid chimera. The corpse was already twitching with movement as smaller beasts crawled across it, harvesting the body.

  “Move faster!” Eric shouted.

  The squad stumbled, limped, and hauled themselves into the tunnel just as the first answering screech tore through the cavern.

  The tunnel swallowed them, narrow stone walls scraping shoulders and armor as they forced their way forward. The sound of pursuit was relentless, with skittering claws, snapping mandibles, the guttural clicks of the hive echoing from every turn.

  “Sharp left!” Holly shouted as she darted ahead, wind aether flaring at her heels as she carved space for those carrying the wounded. The squad followed her, stumbling through tight turns and over uneven ground.

  A shadow lunged from behind them, one of the raptor-like soldier chimeras. Alex twisted, his palm igniting as he hurled a [Wind Lance] down the passage. The blast illuminated the walls in azure light before splitting the beast’s torso open and collapsing a portion of the ceiling behind it.

  “That won’t stop them!” Kate called out as another chimera clawed free of the rubble, already shrieking in fury.

  Spells lit the dark—Eric’s lightning crackled in branching arcs, Selka’s daggers sang as they struck from shadows, Rynel fired a series of shimmering arrows and Myrae painted walls with runes of light that shattered with thunderous cracks.

  They rounded another corner into a slightly wider space, all of them stumbling inside, gasping for air. Lance and Doran slammed their hands into the walls, channeling earth-aether to seal the passage. Boulders crumbled down in a spray of dust, forming a hasty barricade.

  For two seconds, there was silence.

  Then the wall bulged, cracked, and with horrifying ease, the chimeras tore through the barrier. Their claws plunged into the stone like it was soft wood and their bodies wriggled and dug through with unnatural strength.

  “They go through it like fucking styrofoam!” Garret cursed, yanking his sword up from its sheath just as dust exploded around them.

  “Go! Go!” Alex yelled.

  They fled once again, stumbling through another tunnel. They scrambled through a series of turns, Holly scouting ahead and felling any chimera that she came across to keep the path clear. They continued their chase for a few minutes, until the tunnel suddenly opened ahead of them once again.

  The squad burst out into a massive cavern, so wide the ceiling was lost in shadow. Stalagmites stood like teeth along the floor, and a faint, bioluminescent glow pulsed across fungal growths scattered on the walls. The air was damp, and hummed with some deeper energy that made Alex’s skin break out in goosebumps.

  They staggered into the open chamber, breaths heaving, the sound of skittering still chasing them from behind. The squad wheeled around, no longer running, and set their backs against the wide-open cavern.

  “Form up!” Eric’s strong voice boomed over the entire area. “Chokepoint them here, we will turn the tunnel mouth into a killing field!”

  The first chimera burst into view right after he said this. It was serpentine, with petals for wings and far too many legs scrabbling at the stone. Before it even cleared the archway, an arrow from Rynel pinned its jaw to its chest. A half-second later, Kate’s firebolt slammed into it, detonating and plastering bits of flesh across the walls.

  But more poured in. Dozens. Claws gleamed wet, eyes burned bright in the dim fungal glow.

  Azure energy flashed as Alex unleashed a volley of [Wind Lance] bolts, each strike booming like a gunshot and staggering the oncoming swarm. Spears of lightning crawled over the front line as Eric dashed forward, his spell splashing waves of electricity into the pack.

  “Not through me!” Ghrukk roared as his halberd smashed into the lead chimera and cleaved it in half. Garret and Henry were braced beside him, absorbing the charge as mandibles scraped against reinforced steel of their armor. Alex even joined the front line, slamming hard fists into snapping maws.

  Behind them, the air shimmered with spells; Allies and Peer’s combined laser ray making an appearance once again, and Zach’s shadow bolts stabbing out from blind angles. Holly’s wind sliced at the swarm like invisible blades, with Selka weaving behind Garret and Henry to slash at vulnerable joints. Still the chimeras pressed them, their bodies piling at the tunnel entrance, their claws raking across shield and limbs even as their bodies were blown apart.

  “Allie! I need hand’s now!” Doran staggered back, and Alex saw a slash across his ribs leaking red out onto the ground.

  “Allie, Cole, Myrae—on rotation!” Alex shouted back without looking. He punched a chimera square in its thorax, shattering it with an explosion of a [Flare].

  Allie was the first to the dwarf's side, her hands glowing yellow as she dragged him back and shoved a vial into his mouth for good measure. Cole stabilized Lance’s shoulder when the man took a nasty hit, pulling the broken bone back into place while Myrae’s incantations sent warmth flooding into Sarson’s broken leg which he got from the whip like tail of a rather fast chimera raptor.

  The front line rotated as the fight went on. Every time one of them fell back, another went forward, their frail bodies supported by spell and potion. But it couldn’t last forever.

  “Another tunnel!” Rynel’s voice rang out, high with alarm.

  On the far side of the chamber, rubble burst outward as a second pack of chimeras poured from a crack in the wall. The chamber suddenly split into two battlefronts, skittering beasts flooding in from both sides.

  “Shit, make two lines!” Eric spat, wheeling toward the newcomers.

  The raid squad pivoted, half their strength still locked with the original wave while the other half scrambled to intercept the second.

  For one taut heartbeat, Alex’s gut went cold as he felt something. His vision tightened the second a familiar ripple of aether brushed against his senses. His head snapped toward a third tunnel, away from the twin battlefronts his squad already fought to contain.

  Two pinpricks of light shone out of the darkness. A set of sinister eyes watching from the shadow.

  They blinked as he watched back, then moved. A silhouette detached itself from the shadows, dragging itself into the cavern on two legs, hunched but unmistakably humanoid.

  “Fuuuck,” Alex hissed.

  The creature’s mandibles clicked once, twice, and then it screamed. The sound rattled Alex’s teeth, it was a keening war-cry that filled his veins with ice. He watched as flame burst from its carapace in a rolling wave. But this wasn’t ordinary fire, it twisted and warped with shadows, the energy crawling about in smokey tendrils across its body.

  It was the same dark-fire aura that clung to Ghrukk when he fought.

  “Oh, double fuck.” Alex spat.

  The raid squad faltered as the new enemy flexed its aether, all eyes snapping toward the threat. Behind Alex, claws still scraped against steel, and spellfire still hissed against carapace, but all of it blurred away as he focused on the single enemy stepping toward him with hungry intent.

  This one had copied not Holly, but Ghrukk. Not just his battle stance, or just the sheer power of the ork, it carried Ghrukk’s fiery rage too, coaxing it into something monstrous.

  Alex’s heart hammered. He knew that if this thing broke loose into the melee behind him, none of them would survive.

  “Obby,” he whispered softly under his breath. He spoke surprisingly calmly despite the worry and panic he felt rising in his mind. “I’m gonna need your full focus here. I need a battle plan, trajectories, weak points, the full thing.”

  The pebble answered with all pompous humor now gone. “About time, meatboy. Let’s dance.”

  Alex planted his feet, forcing his breath to slow. Aether swelled into his channels, spilling in waves of blue-violet light that crawled over his skin. It hissed off his fists, his veins thrumming with the [Demon Asura]’s violent hunger as he entered the first stance to the martial style's Fifth Path; Bodily Bastion.

  “Alex!” Holly’s shout cracked across the chamber. The word came out desperately, laced with worry. She’d seen him step away from the shield line, seen the way the humanoid chimera’s burning aura mirrored their Ork companion.

  But Alex was already moving ahead. He lowered his stance, his shoulders growing tight as he entered a predator’s crouch, which was mirrored in the chimera’s own twitching posture.

  They both charged each other at the same time.

  Stone cracked underfoot as they met in the middle of the chamber, Alex roaring, the chimera screeching, shadowfire and azure light colliding in a storm that threw shockwaves across the cavern walls.

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  Obby clipped tone flickered in Alex’s mind the moment they collided. “Trajectory—thirty-three degrees left, slash incoming!”

  Alex twisted as a claw like a scythe carved past his ribs close enough to tear fabric and graze his skin. The pain came quickly after as dark energy pushed its way into his wound, but he ignored it.

  It became obvious to him that the chimera was faster than he was. Stronger even. Its shadowfire aura burned hotter than Ghrukk’s and smothered Alex’s [Burning Strike] aura before it could do much of anything.

  He released a [Flare] that detonated from his fist like a land mine. The concussive burst smashed into the beast’s torso, but the beast flowed with inhuman grace and pulled back from the impact. Alex saw a copy of Kate’s [Flare Blitz] footwork in its movements. A flame-laced kick lashed out, faster than Alex could brace himself.

  “Duck, now!” Obby barked.

  He dropped. Wind screamed over his head, shaving stone clean from the wall only a couple feet behind him.

  He countered fast, thrusting his hand forward and casting a close-quarters [Wind Lance] spell. The spear of compressed energy shot across the gap and pierced its chitin barely an inch before the beast’s compressed internal energy shunted it aside.

  The creature hissed, one clawed hand curling at its side, and in an instant chains of fire licked the ground around Alex’s ankles.

  Alex countered by quickly casting [Earth Bind], his own blue-violet chains shooting up from the stone and binding the chimera for a moment. As he was held by the flame-coated bindings of it’s spell, it too contended with Alex’s.

  A moment was all he got.

  It flexed once, its muscles bulging, and the bindings of his spell shattered into aether motes.

  Alex brought up a [Shield] in reflex as a carapace-clad fist struck at him like a warhammer. It cracked his barrier and even broke its own binding spell before the force of the blow launched him across the cavern floor. His back hit stone, hard.

  “Its aether output is twenty percent above yours,” Obby warned clinically. “Its durability is layered in two aether distinct weaves over its chitin. The fire aura is its outer layer, and it has another beneath that. Blunt force will be ineffective.”

  “Yeah,” Alex spat blood before staggering upright again. “I noticed.”

  He dove forward into the fight once more. With a mental nudge, [Wrath Siphon] activated and began pulling vitality from his target with every moment of contact. At the same time, energy twisted around his fist. While the beast's energy overpowered his own, concentrating the density of his [Burning Strike] allowed him to still add its normal effect to the many blows he landed.

  But that wasn't all; an uppercut caught the beast’s mandibles and he followed with two quick jabs that were laced with his own blood. His aether-caustic Wyrm-Heart Blood.

  Both fists landed, and... both were blocked. The beast’s aether blazed suddenly hotter around it in violent defiance, diffusing his strikes into nothing but wasted force as it battered his arms away.

  Then it countered with an attack of its own.

  A sharp taloned elbow smashed into his guard. Pain exploded in his shoulder and he felt it pop out of place. The follow-up kick sent him reeling, and skidding across the ground. His lungs burned, and his vision hazed over as he took a second to refocus himself.

  Their initial exchange had ended with Alex hunched, blood dripping from a gash across his temple, a cut across his ribs, one arms dislocated, and his legs trembling.

  The humanoid chimera stood tall, fire-shadow aether raging unchecked with mandibles clicking in a laughter-like rhythm.

  Alex ground his teeth in frustration. He knew he was losing, and fast.

  The chimera’s aura pressed down on him like a furnace, its flames tainted with a contrasting chilly darkness, its chitin gleaming slick with heat and cold. Alex’s legs buckled, his muscles and lungs begging him to stay down, that he shouldn't go on.

  Then something in him snapped.

  His veins seared an icy-hot as the corrosive sting of his [Asura Bloodwrath] skill finally tore through the mental cap placed on it by his self-control. He couldn't hold the skill back anymore due to the sheer number of his injuries, and it flooded his body with a tide of dark blue-purple aether in moments. The energy filled his body, then radiated outward soon after. It rolled off him in waves, the same shade as his martial style, as it increased his body’s strength and agility rapidly.

  “Passive skill fully engaged,” Obby’s words were distant, like radio static. “Physical attributes enhanced. Caution: bodily strain increasing rapidly.”

  Blood slicked his teeth as he grinned. “Caution noted.”

  The cavern floor cracked under the force of his sprint when he launched forward. His body now burned with renewed energy as he slammed a left-right combo into the chimera’s chest. The first punch staggered it, the second spilled blood across the air.

  The beast clapped back with two darkfire-laced claws. Alex could recognize Ghrukks’s stolen weapon augmentor spell, condensed into precise points on its nails. But, Alex moved differently now, with his full skill boost, he was faster and stronger than before. His [Shield] spell took the blow at an angle as he redirected the impact and drove a counter knee thrust into the chimera’s side.

  Aether and chitin burst like fireworks from the impact.

  They weren’t quite equals yet, but Alex could at least keep up now.

  Spell after spell, fist after fist collided, bone and carapace breaking and splitting. Alex hurled a [Wind Lance] straight for its head and the chimera mirrored the motion, its own bolt of fire slicing through the projectile. The beast's projectile continued through the air and into his arm, drawing more blood.

  They jumped, clashed midair, and both were slammed back by the force.

  The two warriors hit the ground opposite each other, skidding across stone and leaving gouges in their wake.

  Alex coughed blood into the dirt. He felt his aether channels roaring hotter in his body with every breath.

  The chimera landed crouched, one leg dragging from a [Flare] spell wound which was now torn wider by his violent strikes. Smoke curled from a cracked section of its torso, the copied flames of its spell sputtering where Alex had wounded it.

  They locked eyes; two predators, both were wounded, and both were grinning savagely in their own way.

  His [Bloodwrath] skill still ate at his insides, even fighting against his [Wymheart Blood], but in that agony was even more power. Alex yelled in defiance as he dashed at the Chimera. Each new strike landed harder, hammering into the chimera’s torso, sending it sprawling back across the stone.

  For a heartbeat—just one heartbeat—Alex had the edge.

  Obby’s guidance was still in his head. “Trajectory predictions locked. Weak point: upper sternum—three inches right!”

  He drove in, knuckles cracking against the beast, only for the chimera to suddenly slip aside his attack. The blow grazed the chimera’s torso instead of crushing it as Alex had expected.

  The beast’s mandibles clacked, and its aura shifted subtly. It pulled away from Alex with light, fast steps, and it kept a positioned angle with Alex as he tried to chase after it. Before, the chimera was as much a beast as he was, violent and ruthless, but now it was more reserved, acting calm and cold. It had changed, and Alex didn't like it.

  “Warning! Adaptive patterns detected, your movements are being predicted.” Obby’s words carried an underpin of panic.

  The chimera stepped forward to attack right then.

  Alex ducked, rolling under a claw just as the creature’s knee came down almost perfectly timed with his recovery, something it hadn't ever anticipated before. Pain burst across his ribs as the impact smashed him aside and off his feet.

  “Shit!” Alex skid across stone. He planted his hands and forced himself upright, vision tunneling with pain.

  The chimera crouched, almost as if mocking his battle stance, its aura curling into a warped reflection of his martial style.

  His heart thundered with confusion, frustration and anger. Even with the [BloodWrath] boost burning at full power, and even with Obby screaming weak points and attack patterns into his mind, he wasn’t winning this fight.

  He risked a glance over his shoulder.

  The other were still locked in frantic battle, two groups of chittering soldier-chimeras holding the squad busy. At that moment Ghrukk and Garret pressed one tunnel, their bodies moving with only willpower and sheer fury. Holly and Kate fought back-to-back against the other side, slashes and spellfire cutting into the horde in bloody swathes.

  Everyone was bleeding. Everyone was holding on by threads and fumes. He looked inward, finding his body’s aether pool was dipping below 20%, and he had already emptied two of the three aether gems in his bracer.

  He wouldn’t last much longer himself. But, if he called for help, pulling one of their numbers off the defensive lines, or even if he let this monster slip past him... people would die.

  He growled through clenched teeth and spat to the side. He hated the choice he was forced to make, hated the cold inevitability of it.

  “Obby,” he rasped. “Forget defense. Forget the battle plan. Help me get in close to it again.”

  There was a pause, then Obby answered. “Acknowledged. Maneuvering path found and locked. Warning fleshboy, this is a one-way commitment.”

  Alex’s fists tightened at his sides, his aether seethed around his still good arm like a dark storm. “Yeah. I know.”

  He planted his feet, “All I need is for you to line me up for a [Descending Demon Fist].”

  "Done."

  His vision filled with a highlight path from Obby, and Alex moved forward.

  The beast seemed to notice something was off, as it began to frantically try to slow Alex's approach. It fired off a volley of flaming bolts, followed by a large blazing spear. Alex ducked beneath a blazing bolt of fire, then another, and side stepped barely enough to dodge a third. His positioning placed a stalagmite between himself and the spear, causing it to detonate on the large stone before reaching him.

  Meanwhile, Obby gave him commands.

  “Left two steps—no, tighter—hug the wall, meatboy! You’ve got half a second window. Trust me!”

  The path Obby was showing him was insane. It led to a small fissure between two collapsed boulders and a wicked sharp stalagmite, barely wide enough for a man’s shoulders. The chimera loomed behind it on the other side, fire and shadow wreathing its frame, and eyes blazing with hunger.

  Alex didn’t give in to his doubt. He drove himself forward, scraping stone as he threaded the gap in a leap, the heat from more spells heating at his back. His feet skidded across uneven ground on the other side, knees bent and his momentum carrying him out the far side in a burst of pure aether from a [Flare] spell.

  Obby bellowed in his mind. “Now! Straight line! Put everything you’ve got—!”

  Alex roared and thrust his fist forward.

  A ghostly Asura arm, massive and translucent, unfolded from his body, fingers curled into a brutal fist that overlapped his own. The [Descending Demon Fist] slammed into the chimera’s chest.

  The impact detonated with a resounding Boom!, stone cracked under the skill's backlash and aether erupted like lightning across the walls. The chimera’s torso folded inward as though struck by a god. It collapsed, flames sputtering and blood spilling in a torrent across the chamber floor. The shockwave hurled dust and debris across the cavern, the screams and battle-cries of the raid squad swallowed by the echo of Alex’s strike.

  But Alex’s arm throbbed, his vision swam with the sheer recoil of the skill.

  Obby’s tone was almost thrilled. “Holy shit, meatboy, you landed it.”

  He didn’t like that the rock sounded surprised.

  The chimera snarled from the ground, smoke spilling from its jaws. It was already trying to force itself upright. The fight wasn’t over.

  For a moment, it seemed it would rally again. Its eyes burned, flames roaring to life once more, when suddenly its whole body convulsed. The shadowfire aether sputtered, guttering like a dying torch. The beast choked out a sound, part screech and part cough with black ichor spilling from its mouth.

  It was perfect timing, because Alex could no longer fight.

  His body seized in agony. He dropped to his knees. Bone-deep cracks spiderwebbed from shoulder to wrist in his arm, each finger twitching unnaturally as the recoil of the [Descending Demon Fist] exacted its toll. Skin had split open, blood spilling freely across the cavern stones. Every ragged breath he took sent another wave of pain lancing through him. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even dying. But his body had reached its breaking point.

  “…You’re tapped out, meatboy.” Obby’s tone shifted to almost worried.

  Alex grit his teeth, eyes locked on the convulsing chimera as it writhed on the floor, shrieked, and clawed at its own chest, dying not from one single blow, but from the poisoned storm of energy Alex had forced into it.

  The raid squad’s clash still roared in the background, weapons and spells ringing out in the tunnels. Alex wanted to rise and rejoin them—but his legs trembled and refused to support him. He was left slumped on his knees with blood pooling beneath him.

  The humanoid chimera twitched one last time… then let out a strangled roar, fire bursting violently from its chest, burning out in a mess of smoke and ruin.

  Alex, shaking, could barely lift his head. He whispered to himself, “One down… gods know how many left.”