Another bad sign, if this is anything like an official name for the fields abutting the antechamber. Winnowing, combined with the recommended 'scenic' route, gives the impression that this is a preliminary zone intended to sift the wheat from the chaff. We can only hope that whatever designed the Temple didn't expect the
Spanish Inquisition power of Progression. What doesn't kill Hunger, only makes him stronger.
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.
Picking off stragglers was the balance bro option. It's unfortunate to pass up any amount of Arete, but freedom from the Apocryphal Curse is a precious opportunity that we shouldn't squander; the
real scenic route would've cost us over half that time. If we don't clear the Temple inside the allotted window, we likely won't do it at all, and then we'd have to find a way to wriggle free of the Call's debuff before Bearic showed up again.
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.
Thank the Accursed, if there was fishing to be done in both the Temple
and whatever civilization we'd have found that would've been a real... catch-22. Also, I don't think we want to encounter whatever lurks in these waters! After catching the King Fish, what's next? The Emperor Fish? At what point do we start reeling in mythological monsters?
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?
So, logistics are a concern when exploring the Temple. Might be able to scavenge for berries and such, but in a place like this it's anybody's guess whether they're safe to eat; addressing this issue might be a hidden benefit of Hallow, once we get deep enough into the Temple that we can't return to the entrance. The knights don't seem to need sustenance and bleed grey, it's an open question whether they count as alive at all. The absence of unnatural fortifications is a strike against true sapience, but they're still a pain in the ass. Also, this has been lurking in the back of my mind for a while, but how does Decimation interact with the undead? Assuming we have access to the requisite level of life force, could Hunger recruit liches and let the Affliction run without worrying about their well-being? Would be more relevant if we had Prolessarch, but not even the Diagram and AU EFB lore could overcome costing two Lesser Remittances...
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.
Troublesome, the death knell phenomenon means that every kill alerts the others to our location, so this strategy isn't going to be viable forever. We just need to scale up sufficiently so we can live up to the Vanquisher's name and kill off all our pursuers, but they're not inclined to collaborate with their fated role as XP bags awaiting reification. I'd say that Bearic could sympathize, but it's possible that he literally can't!
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.
Yeah, there aren't any ruined fortresses hereabouts that would make sense as a base of operations for the knights and we haven't seen a leader yet. Even without the Apocryphal Curse, we can't afford to assume they don't have one. King of Thieves might've been useful here, these ambush tactics are perfectly suited for it, but sadly we sacrificed it on the altar of mage options we consistently pass on. Charitably, you could say we're holding out for the Praxis? I'd settle for the Ordinal Spiral too, just imagine Hunger with the War Form. Valor can go home, though; first
girl sword always wins. We're not cheating on the Forebear's Blade!
Wonder what sort of build he'd settle on. Examine to analyze the latest bit of Apocryphal asshattery, Accelerated sleeping, Shield for an all-purpose defense, Conjure because I just realized we have no way of carrying supplies outside of Versch. Speaking of supplies, might be possible to create some sort of vital singularity for the explicit purpose of Decimation so we could travel in space without A Hunger, Sated; TIM managed to put Megalith creatures in Conjure pockets.
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.
Praise Shai-Hulud, may his passing cleanse the world! But despite the presence of hostile megafauna this isn't Arrakis, it's not even close to arid enough. Holy shit, though, this is yet another near miss. If not for the agility of our Second Stage, this thing would've caught and possibly killed us. Form of Rage works best when you can look the abyss in the eye and spit defiance into it, making it an uncertain proposition if oneshotted from ambush. Even with our speed it still clipped us; Swift as Death would've had us dodge cleanly, but saving the Arete's going to pay off in this decision point, so eh.
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?
With our luck, it could be a bloody Ordinalist with the Elements Form. The Spiral's not the domain of humanity alone (or even humanity especially), one of the alternate Dragon boss fights at the end of Terrascape wielded it.
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?
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.
Hey, there's no need to go impugning the wurm by comparing it to a journalist! It's hungry, we were here, nothing personal. Kind of the problem, really, if it was personal we could reliably deploy the 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.
And now he's drawing parallels between it and the Tyrant; is this a meta-strategy to enrage himself? I'd initially assumed that, with a protagonist as motivated as Hunger, triggering the Form wouldn't be an issue in most circumstances. Seram's my second-favorite protagonist, but I don't miss the will economy aspect of playing him.
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.
Interesting, seems like a situation where the Master Baiter title would've been useful. Hunger's even using aquatic metaphors to conceptualize his Pressure, truly a dedicated fisherman! Anyway, Rank redeems a multitude of sins and the ring's the perfect tool for this job. I'm glad to see Hunger's intelligence put to good use, even if we did ace the combat roll (by a heart-poundingly narrow margin).
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.
Hot damn, that's a hell of a maneuver, timing it just right to dodge the maw and latch onto the creature. If he'd been an instant too slow in burrowing, Hunger would've been shredded as soon as the wurm did.
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 a time-honored boss fight tactic, I can almost see it playing out in video game format. The quest so far would work
extremely well as a Triple-A title: Gisena as a support character whose powers don't overlap with Hunger's, Bearic's escape and Letrizia's injury as the obligatory rage-inducing cutscene, etc. Anyway, Pressure's amazing for navigation even at this scale, I wouldn't have anticipated this trick. We should consider more improvised uses of it, especially if Dreadnought's Bearing wins and we can power through our weariness.
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.
One part too many.
The wurm's anatomy is cool, in a different quest I could really sink my teeth into cultivating such creatures, but with the Apocryphal Curse and the need for worthy opponents to stave off Decimation, the Gardener's Hallow is a pipe dream. A beautiful dream, sure: a peaceful land, a quiet people, and a plethora of buffs. Maybe if we hadn't chosen
death the Temple it'd get more traction, but we need to survive to eat those pies in the sky. Also, our ring's effect means downtime is currently free for socialization and changing that would make chatting with Letrizia suboptimal. On the other hand, an excuse to evade Gisena... hm.
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 alrady 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.
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.
We got lucky in a number of ways here. The roll, the ring's suitability for manipulating this opponent, and the fortunate power interaction where its bodily vigor surpassed the spiritual. This kill would've been a lot easier with A Thousand Cuts, since it buffs not only power but speed of execution, making the strikes easier to land; we missed one versus the first knight because of that.
It's not always easy to tell when Hunger's using Fell-Handed Stroke, but its upgraded form would be a godsend for both battles of attrition and burning down adversaries in a single flurry. This... definitely falls into the former category. What an exhausting image: knee-deep in acid and mucus, ethereal form fraying at the edges, seeing with one eye by starlight, slowly butchering a comatose monster from within. Also, man, does this mean we were stranded deep underground after killing the wurm? Lucky we're in spirit form or escaping would be tricky. It takes a certain sort of person to go "sure, I'll keep going, let me just take a dip to wash the slime off."
1361 words to go with the latest index update. Post now, proofread for typos later.
