Assault, page 25
Condition:
Hungry
Level (or equivalent):
28
Risk Assessment:
Very high
Value:
Nearly every piece of this creature can be sold at a good to great value.
[Yikes. Level twenty-eight. That explains what happened to Wallie. His mom was probably fighting the badger, and it either was tossed out or fled.]
This is the highest level opponent you’ve faced directly, putting the nearly exploded matriarch aside. What is your plan? . . .
[No idea. Thinking.]
Looking around, I see behind the two creatures what appears to be a raised area of stone, rounded and with what I assume are eggs peeking above the edge.
[She was defending her nest.]
It appears so. She never had a chance . . .
[I’m not sure I am equipped to kill this thing.]
With a ripping sound, the badger pulls back, and a large portion of the lizard's innards come pouring out.
[This is beyond me, I’m leav—]
Then the clicking of Wallie comes from behind me. He makes a small squeaking sound, and the badger’s blood-covered muzzle turns towards us.
[Fuck.]
I turn around and run towards Wallie. As I run past I tap him on the head and think Send to [Living Inventory]. Maybe I can find a way to help him later. If we’re both still alive.
The badger lets out a high-pitched roar, and I hear the glacking of its claws as it races after me.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I exclaim as I glance backwards while running for my life and find the thing is gaining on me. It looks like the earth itself is helping push it forward with little waves as its clawed paws hit the ground.
I point backwards, and a bright white, fist-sized plasma ball flies at it. I hear a splat and sizzle followed by a screeching sound of a badger in pain. Umm. Hopefully that wasn’t a terrible idea.
A wave of earth throws me into the air and is followed by a roar so loud it shakes the entire cave passageway. I fall on my ass, and as I scramble to get back up, an immense clump of stone and rock plummets from the ceiling and buries me. A piece of rock slaps into the back of my head, and everything goes dark.
Chapter 51
Vic! Vic, can you hear me? . . .
Everything is muddled, but I can focus enough to understand. I feel a pain in my head and left leg.
[Jo?]
Vic! Can you focus? You only have a few minutes of air left in the suit . . .
I can breathe for now, thanks to my sealed mask, but that won’t last forever.
[I think so. Do I have a concussion?]
Yes . . .
Warning! Host has suffered a minor concussion. All cognitive processes will be 25% slower for 60 hours.
Can you focus enough to use life magica? Your regen is too slow on a head wound debuff in addition to your leg and health loss . . .
[I’ll try.]
I reach inside myself and pull forth the gold energy of life and healing. My head throbs, but I persist until I ask to help my injured head. The golden energy moves around my skull and into what’s left of my scrambled brain. The pain starts to fade, and I can think clearer.
Minor concussion has been successfully removed. Cognitive processes have been restored . . .
Of course, the downside of thinking clearer is I can feel the pain in the rest of my body. Everything hurts, but my left leg is burning with pain.
[My leg?]
Warning! Host has suffered a crushed leg. All movement in that leg will be reduced by 99% until healed.
[I have to determine how badly it’s broken before I heal that. What is my remaining air counter?]
4:03 . . .
Now that I can think again, I follow my usual procedure. Despite the pain, I lie still and assess. Sight, smell and taste are out. Hearing . . .
I listen carefully.
[Can you turn up the audio in this suit or is it isolation only?]
I can raise audio sensitivity slightly . . .
Gradually, I can hear more through the surrounding dirt and stone. There are two sounds I hear that are not good news: one is scabbling and scraping, the other is snuffling.
[Timer?]
2:54 . . .
[Is that the max volume?]
Yes . . .
[The noise is getting louder, which means its digging and getting closer.]
I need to figure out how to either kill or damage this thing quickly. It’s going to be right on top of me, so I can do nothing that will make it thrash around. My options are limited in this situation.
[Give me a notice at one minute and every ten seconds after that.]
Affirmative . . .
I send mana into the earth around me. I can sense the layers of dirt above me and the large stone currently pinning my left leg. Then I feel a resonance just outside my mana range, and the earth energy that I have sent out is suddenly beaten back violently. It smashes back into me, and I scream as a spike of pain ignites in my mind.
It fades quickly, and I recover panting.
Forty-seven seconds. You lost air with that . . .
[Shit, that hurt. There isn’t much dirt left for the badger to get through, but it is more than I have air for. I need to either get out or make an airway.]
Any ideas how? . . .
[A few and they are all terrible.]
The dirt is too densely packed for me to move even a hand; one foot is crushed and the other equally buried. So option one is whatever I do has to come from my whole body. Option two is I try to alter those variables.
Forty seconds . . .
I build up and internalize earth mana into my right forearm, hand and fingers. The muscles, ligaments, and tendons bulge and thicken as I cycle more mana.
Thirty seconds . . .
Using this increased strength, I wiggle my fingers until I can move and then squeeze my hand.
Twenty seconds . . .
The dirt falls to cover the empty space, but before it compacts, I move my hand enough that it is pointing towards where I heard the noise before. I immediately drop the mana going into that hand. And the strength fades.
I then push a different kind of mana into my hand, but not into my muscles.
Ten seconds . . .
I just let it sit there and feel my hand starting to get hot.
Five seconds . . .
A fist-sized ball of plasma shoots through the dirt as I release the mana. Then I feel shaking again, and the thinner dirt layer the creature has been digging begins to fall. The pressure lightens enough for me to move the hand, and I release more plasma spheres. I sweep my palm up and around, and I am more free, so I sweep it all round, a solid stream of plasma clearing my surroundings. The last of the dirt holding me loosens, and the front half of my body starts to tumble forward.
Air refilling . . .
I terminate the mana to my hand and scream as the fall twists my crushed leg. I’m panting as it fades back to the throbbing. I stop moving and am able to look around. The badger is a few feet away on its side and is rubbing its steaming snout, which I apparently caught with my plasma.
I press my hand to the ground and towards the badger while thrusting ice magica through it. An inch-thick, blue-white frost rapidly advances out from my hand in a cone. The ice begins to climb the creature’s prone body. It reaches a few inches up when the distracted badger finally realizes what is happening. It tries to react but is too late to do anything but whine and shudder as it tries to break from the ice growing past its face.
I push more mana and in less than ten seconds, the entire badger is covered in an inch-thick layer of crystalline white-blue. I drop the mana and slump on the ground. I’m panting harder and just lying there trying to control my breathing and regain my thoughts.
My mana bar is at thirty-six percent and rising. I shift and roll onto my back carefully, but lances of pain still radiate from my leg. I finally see how big the rock is that has turned my lower leg bones into paste. It is a meter tall, half that wide, and shaped kind of like a mana shield with one flat side and the rest rounded. The corner where it turns from round to flat is pressing what’s left of my tibia and fibula into the compacted floor of the dungeon’s cavern tunnel.
I send earth mana and give it a shove enough to drop the stone to its right with a crash. Not that I can hear it from the screaming sounds I make as the shifting stone presses against my already-busted leg. Once I can think again, I drag myself away from the pile that almost killed me.
Looking at my leg, I can see it’s a disaster. I start sending life mana into it to explore if I can do anything when I hear crackling behind me. I look back and see the layer of ice has started to lose its integrity as small cracks form. I also become aware that below the badger, the earth is vibrating. Damn, I thought I’d have more time.
I press my hand to the ground and send more ice mana, but the earth’s vibrations shatter it before it even gets close. I crawl closer to the badger, my leg dangling loosely behind me. I can feel the ground beneath me vibrating at an astonishing speed, and my hands blur as they are moving so fast with the earth.
I think this is close enough. I raise my hand and aim at the beast’s neck when the ice shatters in an explosion that launches and then rolls me away. I faint from the pain in my leg as it hits the nearby passageway wall, and I roll back towards the badger. When I come to only seconds later, the badger shakily raises itself to its paws only three feet away and faces me. A growl reverberates through the stone as the massive badger peels back the skin on its upper jaws and shows its five inch fangs.
I do the first thing that comes to mind and throw a darkness bubble on it. The key to the darkness affinity is not that it makes the light go away. That would not work on an underground creature. No, darkness is truly nefarious because it is the lack of all things. The badger is suffering not just from blindness. But also from a lack of sound, smell, touch, and taste. Sensory deprivation is absolute torment; I know.
And inside the darkness bubble, the badger is experiencing that misery right now. The badger is screaming and scrambling around swiping at anything and everything. I aim my right hand mana projector and charge it the highest it can go without damage, a thousand mana. As I engage [Mana Sight] and the brown shape of the badger is glowing, I can see a buildup of brown on the badger’s paws. Shit, hurry up and charge!
All of a sudden, the badger slams its paws into the ground and then stands in its back feet. It makes a huge sweep of its claws, and brown power flows out in the shape of three massive brown claws. I let loose the built-up projector blast at the same time the glowing brown claws make contact with my chest. I feel a sharp pain and tearing, and I’m flung back against the wall again. This time I manage to keep the weight on my undamaged leg only and remain standing.
I shake my head to clear the blur, and I see the badger do the same. Nothing is working on this thing. I put my hands together at the bottom of my palms and wrists and thrust air mana into one hand and fire mana into the other.
A massive swirling conflagration of blue flame propels at the badger like a sideways tornado. The badger screams and thrashes, and then it charges at me right into the torrent of superheated air. I pour more mana in, and it brightens from blue to white, but the badger ignores it and rams into my chest with its right shoulder. As I am crushed against the wall, the burning creature latches it’s massive jaws on my upper right arm and shoulder, and I feel myself being pierced by sharp canines that are serrated on the inner side. I lose focus on my magica and scream again from the bite and the flames that have now latched onto me.
Warning! Host has 10% remaining health . . .
My left hand is holding its right paw in an attempt to stop those eight inch claws from disemboweling me while my right is pressed into its chest. I thrust black ooze out of that hand as I reach inside of it and grab for the light of its lifeforce. I find it and pull. Sucking it in to empower me, I start to feel fainter, but I keep absorbing the life from the creature. We are in a battle of attrition now, and whoever fades first will die. I start to think it will be me as I am losing focus. In the back of my mind, I can tell my left hand is weakening, and I feel a pain in my middle.
All that is on my mind is that I need to pull more. I see nothing and feel nothing other than the light of its life and the need to pull it into me. Eventually, that light . . . all light . . . fades, and I know nothing but darkness.
Chapter 52
When I open my eyes, I can see only a face full of brown fur, and my first attempt at shifting my head to examine the situation fails due to the weight and pressure.
[Jo?]
Vic! How do you feel? . . .
[I can’t seem to move.]
That’s because a seven-hundred-pound badger is holding you up against a wall. Luckily, it isn’t across your diaphragm, or you would have suffocated by now. . .
[I’m in a lot of pain. Everything hurts.]
I know, Vic. Can you focus enough to [Inventory] the body?
I try, but when I attempt to move it, the pain in my stomach flares.
Okay. Don’t try any more. Can you send earth into your arms and push the body to the side?
The mana cycles, and I can feel my left arm working fine, but my right arm won’t move. I stop sending mana there and put more into the left. Pressing my left shoulder against the wall behind me, I shove forward and towards my right. Slowly, the massive furred beast moves away from me. As my body falls straight to the ground onto my rear, I feel a terrible tearing from my right shoulder and middle.
Warning! Host has 5% remaining health . . .
I fall to the ground, collapse on my left side, and black out again.
***
I wake as I always seem to wake lately, in excruciating pain. Reaching for life mana, I direct it to the nerves in my shoulder, stomach, and leg. My skin still feels like it’s burning, so I send life magica there, and eventually the pain fades.
[Is my regeneration helping at all?]
You’re not dead because of it, so I’d say yes . . .
Warning! Host has suffered severe bleeding (shoulder). Health will drop by 6 health per second until bleeding is stopped . . .
Warning! Host has suffered severe bleeding (abdomen). Health will drop by 6 health per second until bleeding is stopped . . .
Warning! Host has suffered internal bleeding (intestines). Health will drop by 4 health per second until bleeding is stopped . . .
Warning! Host has suffered internal bleeding (leg). Health will drop by 4 health per second until bleeding is stopped . . .
I’m not showing all the broken bones because that would take too long. And you already healed your skin burns . . .
Just relieving the pain is helping me focus. I send mana into my gut and see why it is in such pain. I refuse to look. Oh. That explains it. I find three tear wounds that go past my skin and into my intestines and nearly reach my spine. Pretty sure my insides are on the outside. I am, unsurprisingly, bleeding quite badly, so I send life magica to those places in an attempt to close the flesh. Finally building the courage to look down, I use my working left hand and return my organs to the correct side of my skin. Flooded with life magica, the tears slowly mend, and my insides return to the correct places.
[This is ridiculous. I don’t even need my intestines anymore. I should just take them out and put something better there.]
I know you’re feeling better if you are snarking at me . . .
All is back in pace down there, so I close the skin and move to my shoulder. With the stomach bleed gone, I can see my shoulder starting to heal itself. I help it along by closing the opened veins, rebuilding the torn tissue and fibers, and repairing the numerous microfractures in my shoulder and ribcage.
Warning! Host has 10% remaining mana . . .
I stop to let my mana recover.
Soon, although not soon enough in my opinion, my mana is back to full, and I move to my leg. I grunt and squirm and, yes, tear up a little when I start to rebuild my leg. Having bone fragments move throughout tissue Is. Not. Fun.
Panting and my voice rough, I finally finish with my leg.
Warning! Host has 5% remaining mana . . .
[Debuffs gone?]
Severe bleeding has been successfully removed. Health will stop decreasing . . .
Severe bleeding has been successfully removed. Health will stop decreasing . . .
Internal bleeding has been successfully removed. Health will stop decreasing . . .
Internal bleeding has been successfully removed. Health will stop decreasing . . .
Crushed leg has been successfully removed. Movement is restored . . .
[Okay. Good step.]
After lying still for another thirty minutes for my mana to fully refill and now that all the major injuries are resolved, I send life magica through my entire body and simply flood myself. Finally, the last of the pain fades.
Warning! Host has 10% remaining mana . . .
I drop the mana and sigh in relief.
[I tried to not have that fight. You saw it right? I wanted to run.]
I saw. This one is bad luck that Wallie popped in. Speaking of which, I hope he’s okay . . .
[I just hope he hasn’t eaten my entire inner world, assuming he survived the transfer. But I can’t check in an insecure location. Let’s deal with the badger carcass.]
Do you want your alerts? . . .
[Let’s hold off for now.]
Standing up, I walk to it. This thing is fucking huge. I take out my skinning knife and do a complete dressing of pelt, meat, bones, claws, teeth, eyes, tongue (yes, it has a use), and mana stone. Speaking of mana stone, it’s a biggie. Like the size of my fists put together.
Name:
Mana Stone (Earth)
Description:
