Chapter 58- Rave Crabs(3)

Chapter 58: 58- Rave Crabs(3)

The eight legs went slack at once, the dead four-hundred-kilogram dome settling heavily onto Sol’s vertical left rebar guard.

Before Sol could even shove the dead weight off his back and crawl out from under the legs, a massive shadow fell over the rear of the carcass.

The third Brine-Stalker had circled the sled and arrived.

Seeing its pack-mate go limp with Sol’s boots sticking out from under the rear edge of the shell, the third Stalker didn’t wait for Sol to crawl out.

It raised its massive, eighty-kilogram crushing claw two meters into the air and brought it straight down like an executioner’s axe to smash right through the dead crab’s rear shell and crush Sol’s legs underneath.

Ten meters to the right, Valera was still pinning the second Stalker’s claw to the ground while dodging its smaller pincer.

She saw the third crab’s claw descending toward the back of Sol’s knees.

She couldn’t reach him in time on foot.

Valera let go of the second crab’s wrist, kicked off its shell to launch herself backward toward the pine sled, and grabbed the three-kilogram broken carbon-steel head of Sol’s old hatchet out from under the elk-hide tarp with her right gauntlet.

She didn’t throw it like a blade, she threw the three-kilogram block of solid iron like a shot-put, wrapping the metal in a spinning, whistling tail of compressed Pure Moon frost to add velocity.

CLANG-CRACK!

The heavy block of old-world iron slammed squarely into the side of the third Stalker’s descending claw mid-swing, knocking the eighty-kilogram pincer twenty centimeters off course.

Instead of crushing both of Sol’s thighs, the jagged tip of the claw smashed down through the salt pan two centimeters to the left of Sol’s left boot, sending a spray of black brine mud over his calves.

That half-second was all Sol needed.

With a furious heave of his shoulders, Sol shoved the dead four-hundred-kilogram crab carcass sideways off his back, rolled out from under the legs onto one knee, and spun around to face the third Stalker while its giant claw was still stuck ten centimeters deep in the salt crust beside his foot.

The beast hissed, spraying freezing blue foam across Sol’s face as it snapped its smaller left claw at his throat.

Sol didn’t block with the rebar this time.

He ducked inside the swing of the smaller claw, planted his left hand, fang-dagger and all flat against the beast’s lower mouth-frame to hold its head down, and drove the glowing, white-hot serpent fang on his right fist straight down into the soft, recessed pit where the crab’s left eye-stalk met the front of its dome.

CRUNCH-HISS!

The ten-centimeter fang slid straight down the optic nerve channel into the center of the brain.

Sol pulsed his furnace once, hard and blew the back of the eye-socket out from the inside in a geyser of white steam.

Two down.

Ten meters away, the last Brine-Stalker, having just chipped the ice off its frozen wrist-joint by slamming its own arm repeatedly against the salt pan saw both of its pack-mates dead in the mud, their shells smoking and already beginning to break apart into rising pillars of silver mist.

Unlike Level 1 Blighted beasts, which fought until they were chopped into pieces, a Level 2 Crowned creature valued its own life.

The remaining Stalker didn’t charge them. It clicked its jaws twice in panic, backed rapidly toward the open, water-filled hole where it had erupted from the salt pan thirty seconds ago, and tried to drop backward into the deep brine mud to escape.

"No you don’t!" Valera sprinted across the salt pan, diving onto the last two meters of slick white crust right in front of the mud-hole as the crab’s rear legs touched the black water.

She slammed both of her Night-iron gauntlets straight down into the black brine mud at the edge of the hole and pushed her 51% Peak-Stage core to the absolute limit.

BLOOM-CRACK!

A two-meter-wide plug of solid, interlocking blue ice froze instantaneously across the mouth of the mud-hole, trapping the crab’s four back legs waist-deep in solid ice before it could sink below the crust.

The Stalker shrieked, thrashing its two front claws wildly in the air as it tried to break the ice plug behind it.

It never got a second swing.

Sol hit the monster from the left side at a dead sprint, launching himself two meters into the air off the flat salt pan and landing with both boots squarely on top of the beast’s big crushing claw, pinning the pincer down against the ice with his body weight.

Before the smaller claw could come across to grab his ribs, Sol dropped to his knees on top of the pinned arm, leaned down under the curved lip of the front carapace, and drove both of his superheated, fang-tipped knuckle-daggers straight through the soft membrane beneath the creature’s jaw, crossing his wrists and ripping outward to sever the head-ganglion and crack the core-sac in one brutal tear.

Greenish-blue ichor and boiling steam poured out over his hands.

The third monster shuddered twice against Valera’s ice plug and went still.

Sol stayed on his knees on top of the dead crab’s claw for ten seconds, letting his head hang between his shoulders as the steam from his two fang-daggers slowly died down in the cold salt wind.

Across the ice plug, Valera was sitting flat on the salt crust with her legs stretched out in front of her, both of her Night-iron gauntlets resting on her knees, breathing out long, white plumes of frost that turned the gray dust between her boots into sparkling white snow.

"You threw my hatchet head," Sol panted, lifting his chin and nodding toward the three-kilogram chunk of old-world iron lying half-buried in the salt two meters away.

"You were about to lose your left leg at the knee," Valera shot back between breaths, leaning back on her elbows.

"Say thank you."

"Thank you," Sol said, climbing stiffly off the dead crab’s arm and walking over to pick up his iron axe-head before sliding it back into his coat pocket.

He looked down at the two Silt-Serpent fangs wired to his rebar knuckle-guards.

The right fang, which he had used to cook two Level 2 brains in under a minute, now had a dark black scorch-crack running three centimeters down from the tip, though it was still holding together.