Chapter 72: War

Hanging there, Derek found himself having but one priority: leveling.

Namely, flashing his status sheet open, pouring all the XP the battle in orbit had earned him into getting new Levels, and then spending the eighty Stat points he’d gotten from that as quickly as possible.

Thirty-five each into Magic Power and Regeneration because a larger mana pool and a quicker refilling of the same would be essential in the coming battle, and the last ten into Fortitude because what the hell, durability was always good, and Derek was severely lacking in confidence in his ability to keep his distance.

But he decided against grabbing new [Skills], as he didn’t feel he had the time to dig through their descriptions to grab the right one, especially since they tended to be pretty spaceship-centric, meaning any capabilities applicable to this situation would be buried in the fine print, so to speak.

Then, finally, he triggered his Party-[Skill] in earnest for the very first time.

Because, by God, he hated the damn thing. It was comprehensive. Invasive. Creepy.

Talking into each other’s heads, being able to add object markers into the landscape that everyone else could see … Party-[Skills] in the use of veterans would let an army fight as though they shared a mind.

Them … well, let’s just say that if [Knightly Discipline] hadn’t been among those imparted by Isaac, Derek couldn’t have seen himself ever picking up the capability.

Yet at the same time, the [Skill] also worked.

“Markers” began to pop up in his vision even as he began tagging the onrushing horde himself, ensuring that the others would be able to see their locations without needing line of sight.

This was what tech should be for … but bitching wouldn’t change things.

Instead, Derek began his assault in earnest.

[Spatial Detonation] triggered beneath a seething mass of tentacles that towered over the rest of its fellows and the ground promptly blew, erupting upwards amidst a shower of molten rock and stone shards.

Sadly, it lived, not even bothering to right itself, simply continuing to lash its tentacles to the ground ahead of itself and hurl itself forward, its body seemingly devoid of anything save the tentacles themselves …

They were too many, coming in too fast, and too tightly packed for their own good.

Derek immediately cut off his own efforts at murdering that one creature in particular, save one final [Anima Bolt] to send it hurling away, then began triggering [Spatial Detonation]. Again and again.

A scattering of variously sized explosions split the rocky ground, tearing up the carpet of eldritch beasts and tossing them about the place. But more importantly, the swarm itself was being taken apart.

Slightly.

Shockwaves hurled creatures away, and even eldritch monstrosities had to obey the laws of gravity and found themselves stymied by holes … sometimes.

Come on, come on, how do I slow these things down …

The solutions his memory and [Scholar of War] provided were many and varied and, with only a bare handful of exceptions, utterly unworkable.

Barricades, “pike walls” formed from earthen spikes, swamps, minefields — all of those required magic or materials he did not have.

However, running through all those possibilities took mere milliseconds, leaving him with the doable options in practically no time at all.

Derek swept the area with his [Aura], pushing it as deep into the ground as possible, reshaping it into more of a giant cloak that swept through the dirt and stone to suss out any water or fault lines that might be (ab)used.

There were a few, but none that seemed usable. He still marked them, though, spreading that information throughout the party, just in case it somehow became relevant to something one of the others wanted to do.

More mana poured out of him as he unleashed a further series of [Spatial Detonations], [Skill]-granted knowledge guiding the spacing and power even as the “dings” of confirmed kills merged together into an overwhelming cacophony.

It was at this point that the tentacle-ball decided to try and jump Derek, somehow using several of his limbs as literal springs, no matter how ridiculous that was from the biological perspective, forcing him to twist around to aim his hand into its face and double-tapped it in the face with a pair of [Anima Bolts].

It fell back to the ground screaming, the energy having partially phased into the creature before the driving force was spent, leaving the corrosive effects of his Aspects to swiftly erode its flesh away into nothingness.

Hellfire, hydra blood, eldritch fuckery, antimagic energy, all ensuring that the monster wouldn’t be alive to try that again.

Derek’s back twinged with pain as he turned back towards the main body of the horde. Twisting like that to target his immediate issues hadn’t done him any favors.

Yeah … this was a situation where he needed both hands free, and Derek had proven himself highly incapable of standing on space-time rather than simply hanging from it.

A shit situation, but if he wanted to keep the high ground without having a hand occupied, he’d have to try. Maybe he’d manage to figure it out in the heat of battle?

He released his grasp on the nothingness above him and dropped a bare couple of millimeters before the effect was done transferring to the bottom of his feet, allowing him to rest on the oddly bouncy fabric of space-time.

For all of five seconds.

Then he lost his footing and toppled forward, barely stopping himself from instinctively unbinding himself and falling into the fray. Instead, he hung there, upside down, dangling from the bottoms of his feet, staring down towards the horde.

Despite everything, Derek found himself laughing as he sent spell after spell at the monsters.

This was fine! Well, it had to look spectacularly stupid, but somewhere along the line, he’d clearly stopped giving a shit about working upside down, as long as there weren’t any other factors being a pain.

The only small issue he found himself having was how far he could bend his spine back to look behind him, but there was a simple fix to that: [Aspect Integration] and the Hydra Aspect in his Bloodline. That let him practically fold himself in half, letting him target everything. And subsequently hammer [Anima Bolts] into any monster that might cause trouble, as well as detonate the ground underneath anything that felt like it’d go down easily but might be an issue in sufficient numbers.

Yet another [Anima Bolt] smashed a bird-bone thing out of the sky, the outside of its wings looking more like the inside of human intestines, and Derek froze. Not because it was this particular creature whose appearance made him nauseous, finally overcoming the iron stomach he hadn’t really realized he had, but the sense of energy tearing out of him, of the [Skill] taking ahold of something deep within and wrenching, turning it into an attack that tore clean through his foe.

… I’m out of mana, he realized. I just cast that bolt with life force instead.

Which was what the [Skill] was designed to do, to let him cast it in an emergency, but he really shouldn’t have used that trick by accident.

Sweat began to run down Derek’s face, the beginnings of bone-deep exhaustion setting in.

Cursing internally, too winded to swear, he popped a second mana potion jelly bean into his mouth and bit down … crushing it before he’d closed his mouth all the way.

For a couple of seconds, all that came from that was a bit of wasted potion, the extra liquid having sprayed out of his mouth and across the monsters below, not that they minded.

Except … well, Derek was presently upside-down. And having the droplets run down his face in that situation inevitably ended with some of them winding up in his nose.

His coughing fit swiftly became part-laugh as the absurdity of that particular fuck up sank in, but that didn’t stop him from laying into monsters, making sure to keep an eye on his mana pool this time.

With the wasted potion, it wasn’t nearly as high as he’d like, so he popped another “potion,” then decided to try something new. And probably quite stupid.

Yet another [Spatial Detonation], consuming fully half his mana pool, deep within the rock of the plateau. Specifically, the section the Dragonfly wasn’t resting upon.

The sound of the explosion reached his ears in an instant, dust leaping into the air as the ground bucked, only the many-limbed grotesquery of the advancing monsters allowing them to continue without losing their footing, but for a long second, that seemed to be all that was happening.

At least until the cracks began to form, shooting across the rocky surface, splitting it into dozens of chunks that began to shift and fall, revealing that whatever had once been beneath it was nothing but gravel now, and that was “merely” the stuff visible. Deeper than that, only dust remained.

Another laugh crawled its way up from the depths of his stomach.

There was something oddly grounding, no pun intended, about fighting down here. Enemies he could appreciably combat without the aid of technology, foes that moved at speeds that could be meaningfully measured in meters per second, rather than as fractions of light speed, opponents that wouldn’t have required a nuclear response even in the ancient pre-[System] times.

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How many monsters had he killed alrea- …

“Ninety-seven,” Ye-in spoke into his mind. Well, via the party, but that was the vibe it gave.

“Did I say that out loud?” Derek wondered, not entirely caring if that, too, wound up broadcast.

“Jup. Now shut up, I’m working here!”

And Mimi was still testy when interrupted while working. In other news, water was wet.

***

As incredible as controlling the weaponry of a starship often was, tearing into enemies with her own two hands was its own special kind of thrill.

Especially when said enemies were the very definition of acceptable targets.

Ye-in cast the [Phantom Armor] she’d been taught to swap her regular shipwear for combat armor, sword at her side, shield on her back, each being of the largest size she could possibly wield without toppling over, their size being their only redeeming feature … but she wouldn’t be “wielding” them.

Triggering [Arenal Switch] transformed the longsword in an instant, splitting it into a pair of multi-bladed urumis. A traditional whip-sword of several peoples found towards the southern end of India, with a long reach of a couple of meters and immense damage potential against unarmored targets, the likes of which were currently bearing down on her.

Whips. But swords. Which could be easily empowered by all of her [Skills], something an actual bullwhip would have fought her on.

As for the shield, that stayed where it was. Until it was needed, at which point she’d transform it into armor covering whatever point was about to get hit.

And then she began to swing, for an urumi was only capable of cutting so long as it was in motion.

One whip began to twirl above her head in a long arc, ensuring that anything taller than her would not be able to close without injury, while the other, in her right hand, lay steady, waiting.

Ahead of her, plumes of stone began to explode into the sky while energy beams rained down as Derek went to work. That man needed to learn to marshal his mana better … but “use it or lose it” seemed to be the order of the day.

And finally, her [Aura of the Hundred-Armed Pugilist] settled heavily around her, thickening and solidifying, just in time for the first beast to lunge at her, sharpened insectile limbs that were more like harpoons shooting for her face.

And then they met the first nodule of hardened [Aura] and slowed. Then the second, swiftly followed by the third, and before a fourth was needed, the urumi carved across them, a pulse of [Piercing Strike] spread across all five blades of the whip-sword, making it tear straight through.

With a shriek that echoed uncomfortably in her mind, leaving her feeling as though she shouldn’t even have been able to perceive it, the beast reared back… and promptly found itself in the path of her other weapon, which promptly laid open its stomach. Or what she thought was the stomach, at least.

As big a pain in the ass as the urumi had been to learn, it would have been worth it even if it hadn’t contributed to her first Evolution [Class] being [Weapon Expert].

She lashed her right-handed urumi into the “face” of another monster in front of her when she felt her other weapon catching on something as it passed behind her …

Ye-in threw herself to the side, choosing to burn the mana to make a second step off the air to hurl herself further, fully clearing the strike of some kind of blobby thing whose size seemed to be increasing as she focused on it, only for the damn thing to seemingly shrink when she glanced behind her to make sure there was nothing sneaking up on her.

There was.

But not only had she seen it, but it was also lunging at her and had a rather sizeable eye right next to the gaping void it had for a maw.

Aw, so polite of it to give her such a nice and obvious target …

Ye-in extended her right hand towards the creature and triggered a second [Arsenal Switch], once more drawing on an Indian weapon.

A pata, or gauntlet sword, was exactly what it sounded like: a massive blade that extended from above her wrist, in line with her arm, braced almost perfectly, and flaring with the bright neon light of another [Piercing Strike].

She didn’t even look as the monster impaled itself, the spray of eyeball-jelly covering her side, and the edges of her vision flashing red for a brief second as the [System] confirmed the kill were more than enough while she drew the urumi in her left across the blob-creature’s front.

When that didn’t do much more than scratch it up, Ye-in didn’t hesitate.

She triggered the first macro she’d ever made using [Combat Arts].

Meteor Shower.

It had taken her dozens of tries to pull off without any level of injury, hundreds to perfect, and something to the tune of one thousand to create something she could actually forge into something workable with her [Skill].

What had once been a whole sequence of kicking off the ground with a pair of [Power Strikes] to launch herself skywards, summoning a bundle of plumbata, or Roman throwing arrows, before herself, and then slapping both palms onto their rears, simultaneously accelerating them with a combination of [Shockwave Blow] and yet another [Power Strike], while also applying [Piercing Strike] and [Armorbreaker] onto the projectiles before their contact with her skin ceased.

As she fell back down, she caught sight of Derek, who’d apparently decided that dangling upside down in the air was the most effective way of conducting this fight, for whatever reason.

… It seemed to be working, though.

Every plumbata hammered home, tearing clean through the blob creature, each impact making it jiggle like a block of ballistics gel before it finally came apart and vanished, covering the ground with far less gunk than it realistically should have contained before that, too, disappeared entirely.

Ye-in didn’t see more than the initial strike; however, she extended her leap with two quick steps across the air to keep the distance open even should the creature have somehow survived, to give her time to react if the kill wasn’t confirmed.

She landed lightly, triggered [Arsenal Switch] yet again to return the throwing arrows to her hand, once more in the form of an urimi, and started slashing.

A simple twitch of her wrist redirected the weapon slightly; the blades not carving into the chitinous wall, extended towards her, simultaneously, instead following the same path in sequence, helped a little by one [Fine Control’s] effects.

As for the other effect she used was equally simple: parcelling out weapon buffs across the weapon.

The first blade glowed the venomous green of [Sundering Strike], weakening the fundamental structure of the armor it was scraping across.

The second had its [Piercing Strike] tear clean through the line that had already been carved into the limb.

And the last three were wreathed in the ruby-red glow of [Power Strike], sliding through already cut flesh and doing basically nothing.

Until another flick of Ye-in’s wrist twisted them, suddenly making them tear through her opponent’s body sideways rather than edge-on, stopping dead after a split-second, all their momentum transferred to the crab-beast’s insides.

The green liquid that she found herself forced to dodge away from was less “counterattack” more “inconvenient consequence of lethal damage.”

Hydrostatic shock, bitch.

It was only then that Ye-in realized that even with all the success she’d had wrecking the monsters, whether deliberately or unintentionally, they had succeeded in getting her out of position.

Yet even as she realized that, and began to summon up the mana she’d have to spend like there was no tomorrow to undo that situation, the area around the Dragonfly exploded. And then was drenched in shadow, miasma, and balefully cursed energy.

***

For all the negative things that could be laid at the feet of Atticus’ parents, most of them concerning insufficient protection from the corrosive effects of the same, never let it be said they had skimped in his education.

Especially when it came to creative ways of making sure there wasn’t enough left of his enemy to bury.

One part raw skill, two parts diabolical creativity, all murderous intent. An easy enough recipe to follow.

Take, for example, the armor-switching [Skill] Derek’s older brother had taught them all.

The “standard” use for that was the obvious, basic, application of keeping spare outfits around.

The “creative” use for melee combatants was what effectively amounted to a reusable magic bomb vest that only projected force outwards, leaving the user unharmed, recharged while stored in the [Skill], and had been named “Der Mittelfinger” (the middle finger) approximately one nanosecond after the first few had been handed out to the German military.

Atticus’ use was … considerably more complicated.

Scale mail made from tear-away metal chips, each one individually enchanted, the strength of the attachment a carefully calibrated gradient, wrapped around him as he exploded into motion.

At the same moment, [Speester’s Halo] switched to Shockwave mode, pushing away everything around him, its force growing as his speed did, every bit of momentum he poured on blowing off another set of magical caltrops.

Two seconds after Atticus had started moving, he was back where he’d started, in front of the airlock he’d left through, back in his regular dragon-leather-and-spider-silk armor, now-bald scale mail nowhere to be seen.

Three seconds after he’d begun, the world around him was swallowed by a fusillade of explosions that rent ground and foe alike.

After four seconds, shadows descended to wreathe the battlefield, swallowing light and life alike.

And finally, a mere five seconds into his contribution to the battle, Atticus’ blades began to find flesh.

A worm made from intestines, spitting what he could only describe as rot incarnate, was the first to enter the zone of chaos and disruption, looking about to start melting the side of the Dragonfly … only to spin around in an instant when he tugged on its tail.

Not with his hands; he might be a tad crazy, but he most certainly wasn’t insane, no, with his [Aura], the shadowy tentacles of the [Aura of the Umbral Kraken] almost solid within this zone of darkness.

And now that it had done him the courtesy of facing away from him, Atticus slammed both his daggers into the monster’s rear, only to wind up holding just the handles a moment later.

… Fucker rotted my daggers. Rotted. They’re made of metal, goddamnit!

Two more identical weapons manifested in his weapons, one flaring with a baleful curse while the second glowed with the simple luminescence of pure magical reinforcement.

Both once more fell apart when he rammed them into the monster’s gut even as it lunged back at him … and went right over his head.

Gravity-disruption curse. A classic for a reason.

A shotgun blast of raw magic sent it hurling further skyward, a quick cast of [Stone Pillar] raised a sharpened lance from the ground under the monster, and after another cast of a reinforcement spell, Atticus cancelled the curse.

Two quick steps backwards took him out of the path of the falling monster, his [Aura] yanking a critter that sorely underestimated his situational awareness from its hiding place behind his back and into yet another one of his blades.

This one, at least, had the decency to be cleaved in half without wrecking the weapon. He had a lot of knives, but nowhere near enough to waste them willy-nilly.

Speaking of …

The monster that had already cost him four of his weapons landed right on the spike he’d prepared with a loud squish, pierced clean through.

Immediately, the rock began dissolving within it, yet all that achieved was giving the creature’s innards a pair of holes to slop out of.

Atticus took a second to make sure it wasn’t moving anymore, then launched himself forward, beginning to pour more and more mana into his newest [Skills], purchased with the bounty of the battle above.

It didn’t quite turn him into a [Shooting Star], but the flames that wreathed him as he flashed through the crowd certainly gave that impression.

… Right up to the moment when they formed themselves into bolts of condensed fire and began to tear into anything that got too close that he did not choose to claim with his blades.

And those he did cut burst into flames more often than not, the inferno around him blazing hotter and hotter as he sped up; [Speedster’s Halo] switched into a new configuration that increased the sharpness of his weapons based on his speed.

Not to mention that with his brand-new [Stellar Momentum], the longer he moved at a given speed, the easier it was to maintain it.

Scattered by a never-ending series of explosions, courtesy of the captain.

Torn asunder by the executive officer’s weapons, which could only be described as the bastard offspring of a bullwhip and a razor blade.

And anything that got past them would meet the blazing acursed knives of the Dragonfly’s pilot.

It was a damn good thing these were mere [System] monsters; otherwise, Atticus might actually have to feel sorry for the damn things.

Then, after ten minutes of constant combat, it seemed as though the lesser creatures were finally running out.

For the briefest of moments, Atticus allowed himself to feel some hope that this was almost over.

That was when Mimi oh-so-helpfully began to use the Party to draw in the locations of all the monsters that the sensors were picking up in the distance.

Big suckers, one and all, judging by the fact that they were being detected based on ground vibrations alone, and they were nowhere near the Dragonfly.