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Chapter 355: Hunger and Madness (2) - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2025-02-21 03:29:57 +0000 UTCAs the creature charged towards the trunk of the tree, I could see the souls of the other defenders shifting. Their movements transformed, swapping from an evasive style of combat to a more confrontational one. Previously, they had moved like a swarm of bees, dodging and stinging the leviathan. Now, they moved in front of it, as so much essence surged from their body that I could still feel it despite the huge distance. After a few moments, the essence in the air flickered, until it transformed into a giant, ethereal wall. I heard a sound akin to a bell being rung as the leviathan bounced off of the wall, but it quickly recovered and surged forward again.
I looked at the leviathan, and felt the first traces of unease.
For the most part, I hadn’t interfered with the raids that had descended upon the city so far. The city defenders seemed to have it well in hand, and frankly, most monsters died before they got close enough that I could hurt them. As devastating as a well-placed Extinguish could be, if a monster was hundreds of meters above my head, my aim started to get a bit iffy, and I didn’t want to hurt someone else by accident. I lost a bit of Achievement and ability rewards that way, but it also minimized risk of exposure before we finished mapping out this world’s culture and likely reaction to a new group of heroes. Furthermore, it was never a bad thing to have some essence reserves for an emergency.
However, as the giant leviathan crashed into a giant wall for the third time, I started to wonder what I could do. The battle was still quite far away from us - but it looked like the defenders were getting pushed back with every attack. I was sure the city had extra plans to harm the creature - after all, it seemed unlikely that the city could have survived this long if a seven-bell raid could kill it. However, that might take time and essence that the city didn’t have - and would mean that other people would need to fend off the living architecture without magical support for longer.
In seconds, I made a decision.
No more hiding.
I had planned to wait until we were a bit older to prove our existence as ‘heroes,’ but I wasn’t going to let people die when I could help them.
But what could I even do in this situation?
I glanced at the whale again. Its life force was ludicrously high, so Extinguish would be useless. It would be like throwing a cup of water onto a forest fire - the effect would be practically nonexistent. However, that wasn’t my only weapon, even though I had focused most of my effort so far on improving my shaping magic.
I thought about {Spatial Rifts} again, and then I grinned. One of the more valuable parts of the ability was its potential to cause eldritch pollution in targets that I hit. Most of the things I had used {Spatial Rifts} on in the Market had died pretty fast… but from what I had observed, eldritch pollution would essentially try to take over the flesh of anything I cut. The leviathan would probably fight it off before long, but perhaps I could at least distract it or weaken it with some well-placed cuts?
Once I had that thought, I decided to prepare myself. I wasn’t sure if my actions would help - this monster was utterly beyond me. But I wanted to at least help save a few more people.
The gargantuan monster slammed itself against the giant shield for a sixth time. Unlike the previous times it had attacked the wall of flying defenders, this time it finally broke through. The fliers were tossed into the air like debris blown by a hurricane, even as the roar of another round of long-range spells echoed through the city again. The whale’s life force weakened further, but it wasn’t dying fast enough to keep the tree safe.
A moment later, the monster got within range of our safe house. The flying defenders of the city had returned, and were constantly needling it and attacking it - but the monstrous creature didn’t seem bothered. It simply kept rushing towards the tree, completely ignoring their efforts.
I felt a sprout of doubt. Would this thing even notice my attack?
I squashed my worries. I had to at least try.
I opened several portals with my first rune ability, all directly in front of the leviathan. Then, I used {Spatial Rifts} to create dozens of tripwires and hoped for the best.
The monster tore straight through the spatial tripwires, and the spatial tripwires I had created snapped like twigs. The monster didn’t even pay attention to my attacks - it just moved through the area as if didn’t even care about my attack. For a moment, my heart sank.
This thing was too hard to kill.
Then the monster froze.
I blinked in surprise as the creature screamed in pain. I used my spatial sight to get a better idea of what was going on, and then I started laughing. Two of the creature’s tentacles were now writhing and twitching, giving the creature an even more grotesque and horrifying look. To onlookers, it might have looked like the creature was about to give birth to some sort of horrifying parasite monster - but I recognized it as the first sign of eldritch corruption. One of the two tentacles twisted and writhed again, before several lumps formed on the surface of its skin. Those lumps exploded a moment later, spewing black goo onto the creature’s skin and across its body. Unlike its vomit, this goo didn’t awaken more murderous architecture. Apart from being gross, it didn’t have any other effects.
This was way more effective than I had anticipated. It was almost like I had just hosed the creature down with some sort of incredibly potent poisonous gas - for some reason, this creature was very weak to my attack.
A moment later, the creature bellowed in rage, and then used its mouth to tear apart the two infected tentacles. It used its teeth to sever its own limbs, before tossing them into the city. I heard two meaty thuds, which made me wince as I wondered how many people had been crushed. However, I didn’t have time to worry about that. If I hesitated, the entire island might be lost.
I opened up another dozen portals, before I used {Spatial Rifts} to create more tripwires. This time, the leviathan definitely noticed my attacks, and instantly dodged out of the way. I realized that the leviathan was probably perfectly aware of where my attacks were - it just hadn’t thought there was a need to dodge it before.
The fact that it was dodging my attacks meant something. It was afraid of getting hit again.
The other defenders weren’t dumb. The moment the creature started weaving around my attacks, they took advantage of that time to hammer it with even more attacks. Now that I was watching using my dimensional sight, instead of my soul sight, I could see that several of the flying combatants were using various types of elementally infused spears. Each time one of them stabbed the whale, fire, ice, acid, and lightning would leak into the whale’s body through the wounds. It wasn’t killing the creature quickly, but it was killing it.
For nearly a minute, the battlefield fell into an uneasy stalemate. Whenever the whale charged the tree, I would toss out a new wave of portals to block its path. The whale didn’t have enough agility to harm the flying defenders, who were incredibly adept at weaving around the whale and slowly whittling it down. With no way to attack the tree, and no way to hurt the defenders, the whale slowly weakened under the assault.
But no battlefield is safe from human error.
After nearly a minute and a half of fighting, one of the flying defenders finally made a mistake. He didn’t dodge out of the way quickly enough, and the whale smacked him out of the sky. The man flew towards the ground, before crashing into the street just a few houses away from us. I heard screams of panic, as survivors from that house got caught up in the storm of debris. That seemed to give the whale an idea.
Rather than continuing to fight the defenders in the sky, the eldritch leviathan eyed the city again. Then, it opened its mouth, and vomited another spray of black sludge onto the city. I wasn’t sure whether it was trying to summon other attackers to slow down the flying combatants, or just trying to distract them. Either way, it didn’t matter.
Because one of the first targets it hit, either intentionally or purely by accident, was the house we were hiding in.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
IDFree
🤣👏
Moon Winchester
Well, that’s fine. Extinguish should be very cheap to kill a bunch of newly risen infant souls.
Barkeep
Well, her aim should be good enough with extinguish to hit "the bright side of a barn"
Dax
> the first traces of unease Only just then?! xD
