Gaius Antonius Omake #6: The Scorpion Saga: Preparation
In the desert, the most common thing is sand. The second most common, Gaius mused, might be scorpions. So many countless species of scorpion, each species with so many members. Not just the common variety but the spiritually gifted type as well. Of all species of Spirit Beast which make their home in the Organ Meat Desert, approximately 38% of them are some variety of scorpion.
He supposed it made sense; the scorpion simply had a body shape exceptionally suited for the desert climate. Arachnid legs specialized for crawling along granular surfaces, a powerful stinger that made for a powerful and highly visible weapon, useful both for killing prey and scaring off predators. A body that lay low to the ground, allowing it to easily bury itself. Potent venom, so that if prey escapes, it can chase it across the wide open sands until it collapses. Indeed, out of all the creatures of the earth, the scorpion is one of the most well-adapted of all.
And so, it should come as no surprise that today, a Golden Devil was fighting some variety of big scorpion. There most likely hadn't been a single day in the past hundred-thousand years where that didn't happen.
Gaius dodged again, then again, warding off the frenzied beast's attacks with a crude bone knife - his original having long since broken on this mission. Weaving to the side of yet another stinger attack, he finally managed to wrap his arm around the appendage and plunge his knife into a gap in its exoskeleton. One clean slice, and the venom gland was severed, spilling paralytic neurotoxin into the beast's own flesh. At that point it was all over.
Revolution Scorpions. A species of arachnid spirit beasts with near-human intelligence, Individually weak, but notable for their oversized dantians and high talent in cultivation. Due to their short lifespan and high birth rate, they fought amongst themselves viciously over cultivation resources, leading to rapid evolution. Hence, wiping them out whenever they were found was paramount.
It attempted to bite him, pinch him, grab him, even burn its own cultivation base for more strength, but when your muscles just won't do what you tell them to, you don't have a choice. Once the scorpion's movement had sufficiently slowed, Gaius charged in and pummeled the monster's head, killing it in just a few punches.
Seven feet from end to end, not including the tail. Sub-arms with humanlike hands folded up beneath the pincers, which allowed for high manual dexterity and the use of tools. A ball joint at the base and end of the tail, allowing the stinger to be swung like a blade. An enlarged head compared to the typical scorpion bodyplan, to allow for a larger brain. These were the telltale signs of a Qi Condensation level Revolution Scorpion. Looking at this one's mutations - an unusual coloration and extended jaws - Gaius concluded that this one was close to ascending. Most likely this colony's monarch.
He continued to stalk through the caverns, roughly hewn into rooms and halls. Not a one could be allowed to escape. He passed one particularly colorful room, the walls painted with all manner of murals and portraits. An art gallery, most likely; Gaius hardened his heart before he could ponder this any further. One crafty bug leapt at his back from behind a stone pillar encrusted with various raw gems and painted in bright colors. Fourth Heavenstage; he swiftly ended its life with a roundhouse kick before continuing on his way. Ten years ago, that scorpion would have given him the fight of his life. It was, after all, ten years ago that he fought Herod. Much had changed since them, even if many other things did not.
Now, he was at the Ninth Heavenstage, the point at which the path got much rockier. The tenth was very far away indeed, to speak nothing of the ones after that. He needed more points, always more points. More pills, more spirit stones, preferably middle-grade rather than low, more beast cores(that reminded him, he needed to snack on that monarch within the next hour before the qi started to leak out). And so, he took the most dangerous Qi Condensation missions he could find. The kind that would be given to early Foundation Building, had they not been preoccupied with the jobs of mid Foundation building, and the mid with the jobs of late, and so on. The shortage of elders got a tiny bit better with each passing decade, but it was still quite a problem indeed.
What this meant, in practice, was that Gaius was taking jobs he probably shouldn't be, ones that pushed him to his limits. This colony in particular had taken him four months of guerilla warfare to wear down before a direct assault was feasible. All of the weapons he brought were long-gone, as were his cloak and hat. His leather armor was tattered, battered and torn, he had multiple fractures in his ribs, left leg and left arm, and he was on the verge of overdosing on antivenom pills.
All in all, nothing too serious.
Ah, there it was. Gaius slunk through a side-passageway which went much deeper into the earth than the others, producing a small, qi-powered lantern in order to see. The tunnel soon opened up into a large, circular chamber, with disturbing, slick sacs, each bulging with dozens of eggs, stuck to every available surface on the wall and piled up in the center. The nursery.
The Seeker retrieved a cast of oil and raised the hand in which it was clutched, suffusing it with a powerful deluge of qi. For a moment, he hesitated pondering the situation in which he found himself. "You're spirit beasts. Smart, about as smart as a monkey, but still, just beasts. You expand rapidly and eat humans to advane your cultivation. You're no better than the Blood Cannibals." Gaius said, calmly explaining himself to the babies still waiting to hatch. "So don't hold a grudge on me. I'm not even refining your bodies. Pass on quietly."
His heart properly hardened once more, Gaius blasted the cask to bits, producing a spray of sparks which set the eggs alight, creating a blaze which rapidly filled the nursery. Not a proper technique, no need to go that far and try to dignify this butchery like it was a battle. It was dirty work, but he had always been prepared for that. Gaius walkes the longest, hardest path; of course it was dirty sometimes. His mission completed, the Legionnaire left the colony, doing his best to block out the unspeakable sounds behind him.
He then began the work of harvesting the venom glands and dantians of every scorpion which still had intact ones, of which there were about fifty. A far cry from their full numbers when he started this little war, but this was about the limit of what he could carry anyways. He filled up an enchanted scent-blocking burlap sack with the grily spoils, then helped himself to the monarch's dantian. It wasn't a true beast core - most spirit beasts didn't develop those until Foundation Establishment - but due to being so overdeveloped, eating the dantian of a scorpion only a single Heavenstage below him would still be quite good for his cultivation.
And so Gaius returned from beneath the earth, holding a sack full of organs and eating another one like an apple. But suddenly, out here in the open, something seemed wrong. He began Seeking in earnest, extending his perception to its fullest extent - ah, a Runner. Looks like he missed one.
In a flash of motion, Gaius was off, dashing at top speed after the distant beast. A cloud of sand was kicked up under The Seeker's feet as he ran - he would need to slow down once he got close enough for the scorpion to see, lest it bury itself in the sand. Gaius sighed; this would take a while.
Runners were a major pain. A caste in every colony intended to capitalize on the rate at which they bred, these cultivators focused all of their techniques and development on maximizing their endurance and running speed, so that should the colony fall, they could grab a huge load of eggs and flee, digging into the sand to sequester the eggs away, so that the babies could build a new colony once they hatched. Catching every single one was paramount if one wanted to destroy a Revolution Scorpion colony, catching every single runner was paramount, so that a new one wouldn't pop up after a single generation.
After three days of careful tailing, only moving closer under cover of night, Gaius was finally close enough. Sprinting at top speed up a hill, he quickly gained on the monster, and it clearly noticed him. It sped up, reaching top speed in seconds and beginning a chase for the ages. Four hours later, Gaius leapt off a cliff as hard as he could, breaking the stone under his feet and drawing his arms down to his sides to reduce drag. Like a spear, he launched at the beast, which was madly scuttling with an eggsac nearly twice its size held over one shoulder, clutched tightly in its sub-hands. Landing with an impact that badly shook his legs, The Legionnaire pushed off, dodging the Runner's stinger by inches and tackling it to the ground. With a quick flash of his hands, he gripped its head and wrenched it to the side, severing its spinal cord and ending its life.
Rolling off the monster's body, Gaius collapsed onto his back, gulping massive quantities of air and just laying there for half an hour. He didn't quite throw up, but it was a very close thing. After an hour or so had passed, Gaius resigned himself to the very long run back. Hopefully he'd buried the organs deep enough back in the colony that nothing had come along and eaten them.
----
Gaius, for his part, felt really embarassed. He'd nearly bungled the whole mission at the end there. That Runner had enough eggs to start up a fairly large colony in less than fifty years. He would definitely leave that incident out of his report.
Thankfully, such things were behind him now, as up ahead was the town of Three Hills. The rendesvoux point was in here; he could turn in this extremely valuable sack of organs and stop looking over his shoulder for bandits and thieves, and then he could prepare for the third and final mission he had accepted.
Three Hills was one of those towns that spring up around a military base. Nestled in a fertile valley next to three large hills, the 211th Legion used the area as a staging ground and built a small fortress there, a sizeable workforce of mortals had been sent to help run the place, and from there it grew into a community all its own. Squat, simple buildings made of sandstone bricks and smoothed over with mortar, a ten foot wall to deter small-time bandits, many small farms and a monastery a few miles from the town's limits, that kind of thing. And attached to the side of the town was the far more impressive-looking fortress, towering over its architecture and warded with all manner of arrays. Gaius made for an odd sight as he strode into the town's gates and slipped into an unassuming house. Two days later, a caravan with several Cultivator guards arrived to pick up the goods, hand off a sizeable down payment and leave, buying some mundane odds-and-ends in the town's marketplace to justify their presence.
After a month of closed-door cultivation in the house's sub-basement to make up for the lost time in his missions, Gaius emerged, his down payment used up, trying to remember where the meeting place was. The mission was clear: the third and final target was larger than the others, and would be a collaborative effort with two other legionaires on the Ninth Heavenstage. Splitting the payout was disappointing, but he figured the joint effort had been mandatory for a reason.
But none of that would matter if the team never even met up, and wouldn't that just be a mess? Gaius walked all around town for a whole day, asking everyone he could find if they'd seen two others "like him" recently. But considering how the mortals of this town lived right next to the 211th, people "like him" passed through all the time, so that was a wash. For three days, he found himself dashing through Three Hills' every nook and cranny, looking more nervous and annoyed with each passing hour. They were going to make fun of him, weren't they? Theywere probably hanging out someplace obvious that had somehow slipped Gaius' mind fifty times. Damn it all, how had he even forgotten the place!? He was such an idiot!
Slipping into a mid-sized, unassuming bar to drown his sorrows, he threw several electrum coins over the counter without bothering to count them. "Gimme... I dunno man, whatever. Un-diluted wine. Or just something really strong and fancy." He said to the man behind the counter without thinking about it."
A chuckle rang out in response. "Rough day?"
"Rough couple of days. There's some people I'm supposed to meet with but I can't remember where I'm supposed to find them."
"That so? Sounds difficult." The bartended responded, sliding over a cup of some mixture Gaius didn't recognize, but which smelled pretty nice.
Still not looking up, the legionnaire threw it back without a second thought, and nearly fell backwards out of his stool. Holy shit. "Ffffffuck! That's good stuff! What'd you put in this?" Asked Gaius, finally looking up to look the bartender in the face. It had hit him with a heavenly impact, with a taste that was sharp, smooth, dry and just a little bit fruity. The aftertaste still lingered on his tongue and in his throat after several seconds.
The other man laughed again and got to work preparing another drink. He has very handsome, with well-proportioned features, almond-shaped eyes and long hair swept back and tied up in a ponytail. "They say that the line between good medicine and good poison is paper-thin. The same's true for a good drink, in my experience. The best alcohol is one that eases pains both physical and mental, and fortifies the soul for hardships to come."
"I'll drink to that." Replies Gaius with a smile, his usual aniety already melting away under the drink's phenomenal powers. Before he knew it, another cup was in front of him. This time he drank it slower, and noticed something else buried underneath the other flavors. Something subtle which he couldn't quite name, but which he suspected provided the drink's impressive sharpness. "I'm impressed you have something that can affect a Cultivator of my level this much. Not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty strong."
"Strong?" The mysterious man questioned with a smirk. "Strength is a silly word that doesn't mean a thing, it's all just chemical reactions in the end. There's plenty of ways to circumvent the brute force of a Cultivator's liver when you come to understand this." With those words, a realization hit Gaius.
"You! You're one of the other agents! Why didn't you alert me!? Why are you working in a bar!?" Gaius sputtered, face red as he pointed an acusatory finger. His countenance only changed to a deeper shade as loud, harsh laughter erupted behind him.
"Alcides, you dog! You're so mean!" Laughed a burly woman with strange makeup, slapping her table merrily. "I was wondering how long we could string this guy along!"
Face darting between one companion and the other, Gaius groaned and slumped down into his seat.
----
Once that bit of good-spirited bullying was over, the three cleared out the bar and began to speak in earnest, introducing themselves and bringing all the intel they had forth.
The woman was named Emilia. Unsurprisingly, she and Alcides were friends, and had collaborated on missions many times before. For a little while Gaius was worried they would conspire to cut his share of the points as much as possible, only to quickly conclude that Emilia was incapable of any sort of conspiracy more complicated than a prank. She specialized in... well, beating things. More specifically, she used a peculiar style known as the Opulent Diptych, one which traditionally asked its practitioners to paint their faces, dress in bright colors and fight with loud, whopping battlecries. Needless to say, she often acted as the loud, dangerous distraction whilst Alcides used poisons and traps to bring down the enemy.
Alcides, in turn, was a promising poisoner, but was also skilled in the medical arts, and could brew all sorts of fortifying concoctions to keep his allies alive and healthy. He seemed very devious... but then, what poisoner wasn't? Well, Gaius could think of one well-known example, but that was the exception which proved the rule. He'd watch out for Alcides, but honestly, the man seemed very good-natured in general, so hopefully everything would be fine there.
"So they've got between 100 and 150 combatants and around 400 non-combatants, right?" Asked Emilia, smoking an ornate pipe.
"Yes, but with their infighting and explosive breeding, these numbers can fluctuate. Really, it could be anywhere between 70 and 200 combatants by my estimation." Alcided replied, looking over a diagram of the typical colony's structure.
"Don't forget that these things are born Cultivators; the laborer caste are still all between the First and Third Heavenstage. Writing them off as civilians is dangerous." Gaius spoke up from experience.
"Mmm, good point. Better to not make the distinction, then. So, between 250 and 600 inhabitants... that's very big. Taking them down a few at a time just isn't practical." Alcides continues, scribbling down some notes off to the side. "Poison gas is our only real option. Blast an opening, smoke them out, kill the Runners first and then hunt down the stragglers."
Emilia leaned back in her chair, bored but attempting to pay attention. "Can we really catch 'em all though? Like, say we're unlucky and we only kill half of them with gas. That's like, at least a hundred, probably a lot more. If they get into a dozen groups and run in every direction, at least one's gonna get away."
"No, they won't make such small groups." Gaius corrected, brushing his hair over his ear. "Even for a highly mutable species like Revolution Scorpions, too much inbreeding is dangerous. A new colony would need genes from at least ten males and thirty females to keep the blood from getting too tainted, and even that few is pushing it. That's what Runners are for, they mix eggs from ten to twenty different clutches and then run off." He internally winced at just how much he'd come to know about this specific breed of monster. He probably shouldn't have taken all three missions.
"And groups of forty aren't hard to spot on the move. These are intimidating numbers, but in the end they're just animals, barely smart enough to be barbaroi. We can do this." Alcides nodded firmly.
"So how much prep time are we looking at to get everything ready, then?" Drawled Emilia, taking another long drag on her pipe. "A month to scout them out and capture one without getting seen, another month for you to analyze its body and concoct a poison?"
"Something like that." Alcides replied. "No need to rush. We'll exterminate them calmly and cleanly, with no unnecessary risk."
----
"Is that so? The time is already coming? Never a dull decade, is there?"
Far from that sleepy little town was a hole in the ground. This hole could be considered a town as well, of a sort. It has a name, though not one any human would know: Sudberj. Deep within this hidden sanctum, a meeting was taking place. It concerned a crucial piece of intelligence: news of a coming attack by Golden Devil cultivators.
A bizarre creature coiled upon a raised dias. Ten feet long from the head to the base of the body, with a tail of the same length, ending in three wicked stingers. sixteen-legged, four-armed, two ending in serrated pincers and two with clawed human fingers. All culminating in a head far more humanoid than the typical sorpion, albiet with the usual mouthparts. This hideous creature was King Derrick. He scowled, or did the approximation of such one does with mandibles. "The other two colonies in this region descended from the same ancestors as ours. Not that it matters much, but I can't deny that I'm angry."
The hall was dead silent as he paused in conemplation for a moment. "But... Just Qi Condensation, are you sure?" asked the monarch, to which a scout nodded in confirmation. Derrick chuckled. "Then they've miscalculated. We've developed just a little bit faster than the humans thought we would, haven't we?" He asks, not only to himself, but to the two generals behind him, who were already beginning to mutate themselves.
"Yes, Kaiser." said general Adelina to his left, as if she hadn't been preparing to ascend and kill him for a year now. Ah, the ambition of youth. "If we begin mobilizing now, we will be able to relocate sixty to seventy percent of our population and build ten new colonies. Should we kill all of the hunters before they can bring word back, that will buy us the time we need. This colony will be doomed once we get the Devils' full attention, but our numbers will multiply greatly in the next century." She analyzed coldly, holding a roll of parchment scrawled with various schematics and statistics.
"A frustrating step back though, I must admit." Retorted general Chloris to his right with a growl, ferociously open with her emotions as ever. "A colony takes at least four generations to start producing Foundation Establishment Cultivators. We're throwing away our accomplishments now for a future we'll never see! It's so frustrating!" She ranted and seethed, as was her nature.
"Chloris. You should know well by now that this world is not a just one. Under the cruel eyes of heaven, potential is the most valuable thing. Ten newborn colonies will collectively hold far greater potential than ours. The cause is eternal." the King explained in a soft, grandfatherly tone.
For her part, Chloris seemed about ready to start a fight right now, but backed off at the last moment. "As you command, Kaiser." She said with a curt bow.
"Now, begin the gathering!" commanded the Derrick as a guard to his side banged on a large, crudely-forged gong, calling every scorpion in Sudberj to the great hall. Within an hour, all were gathered, filling the chamber to the brim with over three hundred bodies. Several dozen more were forced to listen from adjacent rooms or halls.
"Brothers. Sisters. A time of great strife has come to us once again. We have been found, and it is time to make our stand." The Kaiser's words echoed and rippled through the hall, causing a few hushed murmurs, which soon died out as he raised a pincer. "Believe me, it brings great pain to deliver this message to you all. The capricious heavens once more test our people. We must not be found unworthy, or we will be destroyed. We must be austere and resolute, so as to fling a light into the future again."
Grim solemnity descended upon the hall, as the gravity of the situation began to set in. "We know now that we are not the chosen people, we are not the heroic tribe who shall unify the desert, but we must pave the road for them. Today, forget your jobs and duties and enjoy yourselfs, for tomorrow The Great Exodus begins once more."
The scorpions cheered one and all in a great clamor, banging spears on shields, clapping pincers together, striking their tails against the walls. They made a defeaning noise by any means they had on hand, screaming their defiance against the heavens that would see their cursed people wiped out, declaring once more their intention to fight on forever. Soon, scorpions of all castes reveled together throughout the colony, drinking their best wine, feasting on the cured meat of beast and human alike, singing songs of valor, love and battle, even mating out in the open, behind columns and in cramped alcoves. They squeezed every bit of joy they could out of this day, so that they might die without regrets.
Leaving his subjects to their revelry, Derrick scuttled back to his personal chambers, back to isolation. A simple cell, very spartan, containing only a bed, a chamber pot and a pool for bathing. It was clearly made for one attempting to leave worldly desires behind, it looked nothing like what one might picture should they imagine the bedchambers of a king. Indeed, the old scorpion had tried festooning himself and his possessions with glittering gemstones and lustrous gold before; it just didn't suit him.
He would need to return to cultivation in about 25 minutes - he was currently on a schedule of about 20 hours of cultivation per day - but until then, he knew just the way to pass the time. Pulling a lever by his bed, Derrick activated a mechanism which groaned and whined, opening a secret passageway in the wall. Slowly and thoughtfully, the scorpion walked down a long, winding tunnel, running his hand along its walls, feeling history in every groove. This place would be abandoned soon. Left to be held only by a third of their number, so that when the Devils sent real firepower and killed the inhabitants, they might think they got them all and call off the hunt. Buying time. Building numbers. Hiding. Waiting for a miracle, some heaven-sent talent or miraculous treasure that would transform one lucky colony into a mighty Clan. That was the fate of his kind.
He hated it.
A chunk of the tunnel wall broke off, held tight in his fist, which crushed the stone into pebbles. Reaching the end of this passageway, Derrick pulled another lever, opening another hidden door and allowing sunlight to stream in. He squinted for a minute as his eyes adjusted, then walked out into the light. Climbing up to the top of a large dune so that he could gaze out into the distance, Old Longbody coiled himself into a spiral and tucked his legs in, the equivalent of sitting for a body like his.
How foolish he had been, ten long years ago, how hubristic. He mutated into this shape so that he would look more like a dragon. All he'd really done is become a centipede. He laughed and then sighed, letting his perception spread out across the desert, dancing on the heat haze as it shimmered through the air.
"No one truly loves the desert. Scorpions most of all." He spoke, to no one in particular, laying bare his bottled emotions for heaven alone. "True, the right kind of sand can be softer than any pillow, and the warmth of the sun is a wonderful companion, but the distance... I think we all lose something to it. To that endless expanse, looking at it every day."
Derrick scooped up a handful of pure, yellow-white sand and let it fall through his fingers. "Looking out there every day, we are never allowed to forget how small we are. Perhaps that is why my people cultivate, a vain attempt to overcome that feeling." He let out a long, bittersweet laugh. "For all my power I am just a bug. Just a terrified little bug, trying to live a little longer before something eats me. One amongst many. Amongst countless generations."
He smiled. Despite the pain in his voice, despite the seemingly infinite size of the desert seeming to crush him beneath its weight, the crafty old bug smiled. "It won't be me. I won't be the one who strides across the world as a conqueror. Hopefully it will be one of my descendents, but I will be lost to time, another grain of sand. Perhaps I can at least win some more glory while I'm here." His smile grew wider, wilder, fiercer. A challenge to all who would oppose him; a challenge, perhaps, to the world itself.
"Come to me, Devils. Come here and die."
And here we are with the first chapter of this arc, at 4,794 words. Getting this one to work was frustrating, and there's still some stuff I'm not fully satisfied with. I had to re-do certain parts and re-arrange the sections multiple times, so I really hope I didn't miss any mistakes. It finally feels pretty good, so I'm posting it now. This is my first foray into actually writing Gaius into a larger narrative with like... themes and shit. I've got the story all planned out, at least in the broad strokes sense, and I'm looking forward to writing more of it.
Chapter 2 might not come out for a while, since I may end up being part of a crossover omake depending on what mission Gaius goes on, we'll have to see.
@Alectai Threadmark, pls. And for my turn 9 bonus, I would like an LST. As much as I want to keep pumping the cultivation, having that buffer is crucial, and I'd like to have two of them when I go to a Secret Realm.
