Crossing Serpent's Way, page 32
part #1 of Trials of the Endless Planes Series
After fighting a few of their numbers already, Kaito understood the reasoning behind it. Most of them had an ability that shrouded them in light and shadows that allowed them to blend in with their surroundings. What did it matter what they wore when they could camouflage themselves so easily. It was clear how others’ eyes could pass over them completely. These four even had a device that projected a similar ability over them in a dome that hid them from casual inspection.
Too bad for them that Kaito’s perilous gaze could pierce their veil, though that was only if he concentrated. Even his eyes had slid off of their camouflaged barrier at first, but that was actually the clue that he latched onto. Whenever his eyes would pass over one of their groups, he got an itch that niggled his brain. Because of his years of battling monsters that could hide in plain sight, he had learned to trust those itches.
He’d been observing this particular four-man cell of human rangers for nearly half an hour already while hidden by his own [Spectral Razorshield (Ra)]. They went about their business, eating some dried sort of fruit while preparing a hot drink over their smokeless flame. Obviously, they were on a break. They were secure in the fact that their fifth member was on watch and hadn’t alerted them of any disturbances.
Kaito already eliminated her.
Her body had been consumed by his passive ability, while her mana core provided more fuel for his continued stalking. After hunting guild members for more than a week, he collected progressively larger and larger storage trinkets. The one he had on currently was about half the size of his void locker, making it maybe as large as a coat closet.
When the ranger in the cherry-red leathers abruptly stood up to stretch, Kaito took that as his signal.
In a flash, the ghostly vines of his [Phantasmal Entanglement (Ra)] erupted from the ground and wrapped each of them up like coiling snakes. Shouts of surprise died on their lips near instantly as haunting images assaulted their minds.
Kaito transmuted this ability not to damage, but to distract, even if just for an instant. Their shoulders slumped and their heads sagged, while his phantom vines held them suspended. Before they could so much as twitch, bloody entrails exploded outward as four wyrm fangs suddenly gored them through their stomachs.
Quick and easy.
Here in the Endless Planes, he swiftly learned to adapt his fighting style. Before, he overwhelmed monsters and people through sheer strength, but with the addition of Classes and abilities he’d never seen before, he couldn’t rely on his fists and superior attributes to take him as far. His fights against Thaxus and the Remnant of Miremaw were prime examples of that.
Kaito dropped his camouflage and padded over to the lifeless bodies. He’d interrogated other Shadow Collective members already along with several drakkar — the green-eyed humans — from the Ashen Flame guild, so he didn’t need to do it all over again.
Within moments, he robbed the bodies of their belongings, shattered their mana cores and consumed their corpses.
What honestly came as a surprise was how he’d been allowed to run rampant for the last week without any of the guilds banding together. He’d taken care of at least a dozen members from each of them. However, the Shiverdawn Shelf — that’s what the guilds called this plateau — was expansive. So far, Kaito had kept to the south-southwestern border, but if he wanted to move further east towards the dungeon, he had to prepare to deal with more guild members.
Sooner or later they would come after him, even if they didn’t know who exactly was causing so many of their people to go missing.
He shook his head of those thoughts, grateful that they hadn’t caught on just yet. Then, he went to fetch the trinket that produced the smokeless flame as well as the camouflaging dome.
But as soon as he touched the pair of items, his sense of danger suddenly spiked just in time for him to be blasted backwards by an explosive wave of shadows.
His skin instinctively hardened thanks to his [Bogbehemoth’s Resilience (Ra)] as his stolen leather armor disintegrated under the corrosive shadow energy that clung onto every inch of him. In less than a breath, he was once again barely clothed with just a few tatters covering his privates and chest.
See, this is exactly why I don’t wear armor…he thought ruefully.
As he stood to inspect himself, he found that despite the explosion from an obviously planted trap, his new shaded scales were completely unscathed.
Then, a flaming harpoon lanced straight through his calf and dropped him to his knee.
“Attack!” cried a rugged voice from over his shoulder. Suddenly, his senses lit up with nearly a dozen ambushers unveiling themselves one after the other — surrounding him completely.
Before he could break his leg free, whipping sands lashed at his scales as a cyclone swallowed him whole. He immediately covered his face with an arm only to have lassos made of shadows wrap around both wrists, which his ambushers used to try and tug his arms apart. They were strong, but he was stronger.
Kaito was more than just 64 points in his power attribute. Because of his Executioner Title, that 64 felt more like 80. Gritting his teeth, he flexed his muscles and kept his arms where they were, stubbornly resisting his attackers’ handholds.
Just as he felt as though he was winning, another flaming harpoon pierced his left shoulder and instantly, he lost his grip against the shadow lassos. One of them immediately pulled his arm taut, straining the muscles in his shoulder as Kaito stubbornly fought the vicious tug of war.
However, as he struggled against his enemies, the first flaming harpoon in his calf was suddenly forcefully expelled once the hole closed over with new flesh. He hurriedly stood, growling at the vortex of sand that stole his sight and muddled his senses. Pouring mana into his [Bogbehemoth’s Resilience (Ra)], he pushed out the other harpoon too by repairing his shoulder. Now, he could really fight off the shadow bindings.
Unfortunately, he never got the chance, instead, his eyes hastily darted upward as his senses screamed out a warning. In an instant, the sand cyclone’s opening above was swiftly eclipsed by a rain of falling elemental missiles. Sand. Shadow. And Fire. One for each of the guilds he’d been hunting.
They’re really underestimating me, Kaito thought viciously, a feral grin splitting his face.
The next moment the sand cyclone exploded into a localized mushroom cloud of chaotic energies, bolts of shadow mixing in with flames and clumps of sand in a jumbled mess.
“Did we get him?” asked a female brave from the Oasis Raiders guild.
A male ranger from Shadow Collective scoffed, “Of course we did. By the Lady, who could possibly live through that?”
“You show your lack of years, Tuketu. Consider your enemy alive until you hold their core in your hands,” answered a gruff male drakkar who towered above even others from the Ashen Flame.
“Suck on a dragon tooth, Xonbar,” Tuketu sneered, then pointed emphatically at the cloud of destruction. “We unleashed everything we had! Not even a dungeon boss could walk out of tha-”
Squawk!
In a blink, before any of the ambushers could even register what happened, a whistling bone spear had blasted out of the chaotic cloud, piercing straight through the young ranger’s skull in a sickening schlikt and silencing him forever.
All eyes were so glued on Tuketu’s brain matter splattering across the tall grass that they were a half-step too late when Kaito rocketed out of the fog of jumbled energies.
He was clad in his [Wyrm Fangs (Ra)] that were now shaped into a full set of bone-plate armor straight out of some warped medieval fantasy and he made sure to include a pair of savagely clawed gauntlets to take advantage of his other abilities.
[Mana-Empowered Strikes (Ra)]
[Claw Frenzy (Ra)]
[Rip and Tear (Ra)]
From the elbows down, he radiated a ferocious green and blue light that overshadowed the rest of him. Already his [Diamond Soul (Ra)] worked overtime to protect his mind from attack while reinforcing his body from the strain of his own abilities.
Only one of the braves from Oasis Raiders reacted fast enough to launch a ballista bolt made of sand at him.
They died first.
Spectral claws gouged lines across the dirt, ravaging the bottom half of their body as they dodged just a second too slow.
That was the shot that seemed to snap the seven remaining attackers out of their surprised stupors. Now that he was out of their trap, he counted nine total — three from each guild — though two were already dead.
Three hulking drakkar charged him in the next instant, their eyes glowing a fearsome green while their bodies were shrouded in red-hot flames as they stabbed forward with fiery harpoons. Three steps away, they froze mid-stride as Kaito leveled his perilous gaze at them. It pinned them down for just a breath, but that was enough for him to summon his phantasmal entanglement. They all took one more step before the haunting began and suddenly, the flames covering their bodies winked out like candles in an unseen wind.
The remaining pair of braves and rangers hastily fired ranged attacks at him, breaking against his bone- plate armor and distracting him before he could finish off the first three. Kaito sighed at the guildsmen who couldn’t seem to wait their turn, then released his [Miasma of the Sunkenlands (Ra)] to take care of the three that were immobilized.
With that done, Kaito turned his attention to the closest pair of enemies and farstrided over. Two braves from Oasis Raiders — a man and woman — reacted instantly, desperately dashing backwards to make some space for themselves. A series of shadowy projectiles from the rangers harmlessly exploded on the back of his wyrm fang armor, which he ignored so he could focus on chasing down his intended prey.
Against these rank and file, he may as well have been an unstoppable juggernaut when ensconced in his bone-plate.
As he continued farstriding forward, the male brave continued firing off sand missiles in the hopes that they would delay Kaito, while the woman summoned a sand cyclone and a pit of quicksand. He didn’t even break his stride as he took steps longer than they had any right to be.
In a single step, he was beyond the sandstorm. And in the next, he was upon them, their milky white eyes barely registering the bone-claws embedded in their chests. Before their limbs even went slack, he was already on the move, farstriding over to the last pair of rangers from Shadow Collective.
They screamed profanities at him as they detonated shadowy explosions that rattled even his wyrm fang armor. Unfortunately for them, he still had his [Bogbehemoth’s Resilience (Ra)] protecting him. He never felt a thing.
They frantically lashed his limbs and torso with shadow whips just before they shadow-stepped away in a vain attempt to pull him off balance. Instead, he simply farstrided passed them in a blur, intending to use their own bindings against them.
Panicked yelps echoed behind him as he bodily dragged them through the tall grass by their own whips. Then, Kaito made a sharp u-turn, swinging them wide as they yelled at the top of their lungs like they were on a runaway roller-coaster, which…he guessed they were.
He brought them back around only to dash them straight through the still immobilized Ashen Flame drakkar and his own debilitating miasma. Kaito stopped then, unceremoniously dropping the disheveled pair right in the heart of his own powers. They hastily scrambled to their feet only to breathe in deep lungfuls of Kaito’s miasma, which threw them into a coughing fit.
Promptly leveling a perilous gaze at them, his enemies were quickly knocked back down to the ground. Then, he followed up by exhaling an [Arcane Breath (Ra)] that rapidly combined with his miasma to not only sap their strength, but corrode their bodies in a volatile smokescreen of arcane energies.
Kaito stood rooted in the middle of his abilities as they actively chipped away at the five guildsmen without any more action on his part. He even deactivated his melee abilities along with his wyrm fang armor. The combination of miasma and arcane breath wasn’t detrimental to him at all. In fact, as he breathed in small amounts, he felt more and more energized.
After a handful of long, agonizing minutes for his helpless opponents, he finally inhaled deeply, sucking in the entire miasma in one large lungful, reveling in the stolen mana while refilling his reserves. By the time the debilitating smokescreen cleared, the five guildsmen were barely hanging on to what little life they had left.
Their breaths came rapid and ragged as if any one of them could be their last. Kaito wasn’t a complete monster though, so he promptly stepped to the nearest human ranger to finish them swiftly.
With a single clawed hand, he methodically moved from one fallen foe to the next, shattering their mana cores, then consuming their bodies for even more sustenance. However, before he could finish the final drakkar, the fucking bastard actually had enough wherewithal to set off an explosion.
Kaito instantly blasted backward more than a dozen feet away as the drakkar died from their last ditch attack. And just as he shook off the shock of that final ‘fuck you,’ his eyes were inexorably drawn to the skies of the Shiverdawn Shelf where a blazing red fireball now hovered high above him.
Uh-oh, he thought, a pit forming in his stomach. That can’t be good…
As if reading his thoughts, a deep horn sounded nearby, quickly followed by a distant trumpet that was then echoed by remote drum beats even further away.
“Well, fuck me,” Kaito said in a regretful tone as he stared off into the distance. “Maybe this was a bad idea…”
* * *
Chapter 29
Yes, it was a bad idea. A very bad idea in fact. But…hindsight was always twenty-fucking-twenty, now wasn’t it?
Kaito’s original plan of sneaking onto the Shiverdawn Shelf, sowing a little bit of chaos amongst the guilds on his shit list and then jumping into the nearby dungeon had gone completely tits up.
Already, he wasted more than a week hunting down guild groups and now, he was being chased by a veritable company of vengeful, alien humans. At a rough estimate, he guessed there were just under 200 enemies roaming the western half of the plateau, searching for him.
This wasn’t the most enemies he’d ever faced, but this wasn’t Earth and he wasn’t the apex predator that he used to be. He was still close to the top of the food chain, just not at the very top.
For three days and three nights they hunted him, while he stayed one step ahead, bleeding their numbers as he did so.
Just because he couldn’t simply wade through them unmolested like he used to be able to do didn’t mean that he was going to run and hide from a fight. These people summoned him and the other Earthlings to the Endless Planes and he was going to show them the folly of their actions goddammit.
He lured teams of four to six into carefully laid traps where his [Phantasmal Entanglement (Ra)] could bind them, while his miasma and arcane breath combination steadily destroyed them. All the while he practically lived behind the veil of his razorshield under the protection of his [Diamond Soul (Ra)].
In this way, he gradually whittled away at the guilds’ numbers.
However, after three full days of non-stop hit and run tactics, his mind lagged and his eyes drooped. He’d resorted to the use of his debilitating abilities because they were more economical and didn’t require the use of too many abilities to be active at once. After all, this was a battle of attrition. A marathon. And he’d be damned if he dropped before they did.
So he kept up his guerilla warfare, his mana reserves soaring as he continued to steal his enemies’ energy. With every miasma he inhaled, he absorbed their strength. Then, he consumed their bodies to break them into further nourishment. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He solely ran on the constant buzz of an almost overwhelming influx of energy like an insomniac on an IV drip of arcane caffeine.
And as Kaito waged his personal war, the leaders of the three guilds on the plateau convened a meeting…
* * *
…“We can’t go on like this, Atas. It’s like chasing down a bunch of wraiths from the Pioneer’s Crypt! These people are nothing but ghosts devastating our forces. My guild leader, Gerqa, will already have my ink for this!” bemoaned Eigas, head of the Oasis Raiders forces on the Shiverdawn Shelf. A round of agreements came from his subordinates with a few grunts of approval from the Shadow Collective side.
The guild forces’ leadership were located at the heart of the western plateau so they could deploy their manpower anywhere along this half of the region. Meanwhile, the Shiverdawn Lighthouse was in the northeastern corner, where the new Pioneers continued to congregate. The guilds had left a token force to continue watching over the low leveled humans and ensure that none decided to escape, while the majority had been sent out to hunt the unknown mercenaries who’d clearly been hired to ruin the guilds’ plans.
“This stinks of those pointy-eared fains…” remarked Tehya, one of the lieutenants of Shadow Collective. Her leader on this mission, Yanisin, shook her head, “No, it could just as easily be the werelichs or the onikai themselves.”
“Are you all just ignoring me?” Eigas said, exasperated. “We need to fall back!”
Atas, the largest and oldest of the Ashen Flame drakkar present, crossed his coiled, muscly arms as his eyes smoldered with green energy, “That’s not going to happen, Eigas. You said so yourself, our guild heads will already take their pound of flesh from us when they find out about what happened. How much worse will it be if we show them nothing in return for our losses?”
“Atas is right, Eigas,” said Lekku, another lieutenant from Shadow Collective, “We need to bring these mercenaries to heel. We’ve lost close to a hundred of our total forces to them already. But they can’t keep this up much longer. Who can fight for three days straight without any rest? Their ability strain will soon lay them low and when that happens, they’ll make a fatal lapse of judgment for us to exploit. We just need to hold out.”
“We should tell our forces not to engage any longer,” suggested Masog, one of the Ashen Flame lieutenants. “They need to harass while keeping their distance.”
