Well, that title is somewhat intimidating. It implies that most who enter this place get whittled down. Or maybe We're the ones doing the winnowing? Based on the outcome, probably the latter.
It did not sit well with him to stay idle while his physical body regenerated, but neither could he afford to take undue risks in this state. He resolved to scout the surrounding area and pick off any isolated knights that presented themselves. If other enemies appeared, he would do his best to withdraw until he had an idea of their capabilities.
My pick, of course. And one I'm happy about. Sitting around would have just meant rolling the dice again later, an I stand by that. It's good Hunger has good tactical knowledge even without our guidance... because I think he may actually be our superior in it. Though this is a pretty obvious one: hit and run on the loners. Flee against the unknown.
The knights were sparsely dotted across these grassy plains, many of them situated in locations of tactical import - hills and fens, caves and groves, wherever a vantage point or natural fortification might present itself. He passed by a gently babbling brook that was, disappointingly, utterly devoid of life. Not that he had a fishing pole at the moment, with Letrizia's supplies beyond the Temple gates.
Wonder if there's a reason the lone knights tended to be at fortifications of some sort? For lone individuals that are melee-based being inside a fortification is actually a disadvantage, if anything. But then I suppose questioning the nature of this place could easily drive one mad. Perhaps they were assigned to those posts long ago and simply continue their ancient duty with no regard for the passage of time?
The lack of life continues to be concerning. Something hunted down every bug, every minnow, every rat, every sparrow... This place is even more hostile than it appears.
He wondered what, if anything, the people in here ate. Was it possible to live off the land, did adventurers simply bring their own meals?
Perhaps they live on forage found outside, or maybe the food is imported to the watchtower town? That would explain a few things.
Speed and strength having been bolstered by the first knight he felled, and wise now to their tactics, he dispatched further singleton knights without issue, though not without the occasional wound or two. It seemed a somewhat sustainable means of harvesting power without undue risk, though increasing patrols of heavily-armored knights began to appear in the region he frequented, as the hours ticked by and their isolated comrades died. They even attempted to pincer him into an ambush, with a lone knight on a tall hill serving as bait, but he sniffed out the attack when he entered the armored giant's sight and was not immediately pounced upon.
Double Echo was a good pick. Interesting that they began to finally catch on to being hunted and started to set up traps, though. That implies at least a modest level of cunning. That it took hunger more than an instant to spot the trap means it was actually quite well done. His instincts for these things are beyond impress. Getting nickled and dimed in terms of injures is a pain, though. We need to grab some form of sort-term healing when we have a chance. Having to die and wait a day to revive is inconvenient.
Tedious and increasingly risky. His enemies were no strategic geniuses, but neither were they fools. They had some basic conception of cause and effect, the ability to organize and call reinforcements as they fell. Should this continue he had little doubt this region of the Temple would be swarming with the things, and who knew if there was any limit to their number, to say nothing of greater escalations.
Aka: if I keep this up all day even a child would be able to figure out what's next, and then they'd swarm me with sheer numbers. No thank you. Probably the right move, here. We didn't want to fight a group and if there were any strays left there was too high a chance we'd run into a patrol if we kept going. The increase in power from this was modest... but worth it.
With that in mind, he called it a night and withdrew, but was intercepted along the way by an enormous burrowing wurm-creature, its titanic length erupting from the green earth in a world-sundering burst of noise and motion, tides of heaving pitch-black loam, shattered-stone shrapnel in a furious geyser as it snapped at him. Its quadruply-segmented jaw, thick with stone-cracking fangs, was mercifully slower than the wind-light mass of his spirit body; though the heaving bulk of its follow-through, like an onrushing train, caught him out with its whiplash speed. He was thrown back and away, cratering the hard earth as he landed, vision gone blurry for a moment as fragments of his spirit-corpus lost coherence and dispersed. And then, quick as it'd come, it was gone, disappeared beneath the earth once more.
Boss interrupt. Giant stone worm boss interrupt. That's problematic. And terrifying. Someone, turn on the Tremors music! Get Dune! Prepare for the giant Worm battle! We shall not go down against a mere worm!
Like a bomb going off the worm had appeared: sudden destruction and chaos to be followed by a long, ear-ringing aftermath of tense silence. Now that he was attuned to it, he could hear the mountainous rumble of its passage beneath, gliding smoothly through dirt and stone, circling about its intended prey. How much strength, how much sheer force of momentum, was required to move so effortlessly through the solid earth?
...Though admittedly it is a very powerful worm. More of a train, really. This thing has to have incredibly strength, though. In the tens of +'s. ...Though it has very low twitch action, since it hits like a train but moves like one too. That doesn't make it slow, though.
Would this be the one, this nameless, eyeless beast? Would it force out the power he'd pledged, not hours ago, to forsake except in direst extremity?
Hopefully not. Triggering Form of Rage here would be unfortunate. Though not the worst timing, as we were already on the path to retreat.
No. It would not be here, not now, not to this overgrown muckraker. He ran, sprinting for the antechamber, pounding footfalls alerting the beast to his location as he moved. Coming across a rocky hill, he climbed it, pacing across its length as if undecided as to his next destination.
Oh, guess Hunger decided that for us. Reasonable. Now let's see if he can put his actions where his thoughts are and actually take this thing down without burning Form of Rage.
There. The rumbling of its movements had paused. Some might take it that the pursuer had given up. He knew it for what it was. Unnatural stillness, like a serpent coiled to spring. Waiting to ensure its target would not spook or startle before it committed to the attack. The Tyrant had been fond of movements such as this. One did not spring the trap until the bait was claimed.
Hunger's instincts really are very impressive. As is his perception. The Worm did not have the intelligence to realize it had been spotted and was being watched, for lack of better words. Which is good, given everything else.
He closed his eyes, become still and silent, attuned to the world around him, the whorls and eddies of Pressure as it twisted the skeins of chance, bringing the physical world in alignment with his wishes. The ring of power blazed on his hand, crimson light like an anglerfish lure, enticing the creature's avarice, its hunger. Now, he prodded it. Strike now and fill the gnawing emptiness within.
Is this the first time we've used the Ring's active effect to manipulate others? I can't remember another time. I suppose we were lucky this worm was a mere beast. Something with more intelligence may have noticed the prod and failed to respond. But a beast has no choice but to follow the instincts we are pouring into it with all we can afford.
And so it did, thunderous blast of roaring sound as its jaws swallowed earth and sky, the hill given way in a instant, plunged within the monster's gullet. But he was already gone, sprung away in that final moment, now attached like a limpet to the creature's side, running down its length, splitting its carapace with the Forebear's Blade to carve himself a crevice. A makeshift warren, cut into the monster's absurdly thick armor, within which he could withstand the awesome pressures of the creature's movement underground. Inside he climbed, as sun and sky disappeared, his world become a blind narrow place of heat and abrading force, this subterranean ocean where errant stone and branch passed with speed enough to splinter limbs and shatter bone.
Well.. That's... certainly one way to fight an incredibly powerful beat like this. Cut it open and jump inside. We got lucky it didn't really have any kind of defense against this, though. Imagine if it had some of shredding hairs, meant for attacking others of its kind? ...I probably need to be careful giving Rihaku ideas, here. or not, he's probably got much nastier things than I could casually think of in mind.
Anyway, underground express via Worm. I did not expect the flea tactic but it seems to be working pretty well. At least in the sense it hasn't killed us yet. ...Though since we are in spiritual form could we just phase through that rock, since it's mundane, even if the worm itself is not?
But ensconced in its armor he felt none of that, and steadily cut himself further in, a fell-handed excavator cleaving the outer crust to the treasures secreted within. At last he reached a vein, springy flesh yielding tenderly to the Forebear's Blade, and where he struck huge gouts of acid spat outwards and at him, the monster's pressurized digestive juices or perhaps merely its blood. The Evening Sky wrapped around him, he stubbornly cut onwards, even as the outer boundary of his spirit-flesh began to waver and burn away. Before long he reached a pocket of empty air, esophageal flesh coated with mucus, and tucked himself inside, the stars of his cloak his only light. By their illumination he ran, up and through the monster's digestive tunnel, instincts guiding him to an organ of greater import. Acid dribbled off his form, coating his footsteps as he ran. There was pain but he ignored the pain, easy to do in this body of wraith-flesh.
This is not how it's supposed to go, Jonah! But more seriously I am more grateful to the evening sky every update. Totally worth working ourselves to the bone to get the 7 arete. I'm surprised the inside of the creature was pleasant as it was, really. Most creatures would be even worse than that worm. This is not a tactic we should repeat. Ever. We are very lucky Hunger has faced his end so many times, or he may have faltered here.
There. A cluster of nerve endings, synapses as thick as his fist, sheltered within a calcite growth of hardened stone. Thickly spooled nerves radiated from the organ, spiraling into the creature's musculature, wrapped densely around translucent reservoirs of bright green acid. It pulsed steadily in time to the wurm's movements, part part action potential, part heartbeat.
And a weak spot. Good. Our time was running short. Fortunately with a weak spot and Ruin there is almost nothing we cannot kill. Which really is fortunate given we were in the Worm's stomach and dying this entire time. Not pleasant, that.
Likely not the only such organ in a beast of this length, but he only needed the one. Marshaling his energies he struck down with the Forebear's Blade, attacking mind and spirit more than flesh, and at this the wurm jerked, twisting and tunneling in a futile attempt to dislodge what was already within. Again and again he stabbed downwards; each steady, gruesome blow left a wound leaking pale-white soul matter out into nothingness. The wurm convulsed, acid ducts widening, mucus flooding the tunnel in an attempt to sweep him free, drown him out, but it was too slow by far. He attacked unrelentingly, drawing upon his uttermost reserves of energy, and by the time he was knee-deep in mucus half a dozen soul-fraying wounds were buried in its nerve cluster. Positioning himself sideways against its esophagus-wall, he continued to run, occasionally striking out with another fell blow as his energies recovered.
The benefits of Ruin. Redundant organs are not very effective if the destruction of one releases a deadly poison across your entire body. Especially if the redundancy was minor.
This is one of those times we really need a longer sword, it would have been much less work has the Forebear's blade been its repaired length. Saber, that choice from so long ago, would probably have helped significantly here. A thing to remember for the next time we are presented a clear chance to repair the blade.
And so we make our escape. It was far, far too close.
Its primitive mind and soul bled dry by his onslaught, the creature did not last long. For all its towering physical might, it was, in the end, only a worm, and though the force of it spirit was unusually bountiful, still it had no way to stem the bleeding, no means to replenish what his attacks irrevocably stole. Eventually it ground to a slow, shuddering halt, meters-thick layers of muscle twitching and undulating stupidly, its intellect utterly banished, dispersed into the aether by the Forebear's cruel power. Unable now to control or regulate its internal functions, it was a helplessly breathing corpse, meat to the slaughter. He decoupled Blade from belt and began the bloody work.
Poor thing ultimately died without ever realizing what was happening, didn't it? Ah, it was a fight to the death and there can't be mercy in those. Not so easily.
We gained significant power from this fight. That's good, given how dangerously close it brought us to triggering rage... and maybe dying for real.
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1038 words. I'll do the most recent chapter shortly.
