Crossing Serpent's Way, page 6
part #1 of Trials of the Endless Planes Series
“Oh? And what is that?” she asked skeptically.
“The wind…or rather, the lack of wind. Every tree in my perception is swaying in the same exact direction except for one. There’s nothing that should cause the change in directions. It took me so long to catch it because this damned dungeon kept warping us, but now I’m certain. That’s the only clue I have and I think it’s a pretty good one.”
Mila didn’t answer right away, but eventually hazarded a question, “Just how far is your detection radius? I have a Boon with three uncommon abilities and I can’t sense anything different in that direction…”
Kaito just shrugged in reply, “If you don’t trust me, feel free to stay here.” Then, he beelined for the single out of place tree. After a handful of steps, he heard her curse under her breath, quickly followed by hurried steps as she hastily matched his pace.
Now, she didn’t have anything to say.
This is nice.
Before long, they stood underneath the conspicuous tree, which was the only one within a dozen yards that had its branches swaying in a different direction. Where the others pointed their leaves at seven o’clock, this one was pointing at three o’clock. Kaito didn’t hesitate and just walked where the tree pointed.
It had to have been like a hidden signpost, so he followed it.
Treading cautiously, he forced Mila to move at a snail’s pace with him. “Do you sense anything?” she whispered. Kaito absently shook his head, carefully using his senses to sift through his environment. Now that he knew what to look for, his perception caught the next tree faster than the last, so he hurried them over to it.
“I can see it now! I know what we’re looking for!” Mila quietly said in an eager tone once she spied the out of place tree as well.
She rushed ahead, but Kaito snatched at her wrist as quick as lightning, hauling her up short. “Watch it!” he hissed in an urgent tone.
Just as she turned to glare at him, three creatures suddenly jumped out of the ground in a spray of dirt and grass. His vision easily pierced the moonless gloom of the forest to find a trio of sickly centipedes. They reared up on their back legs, looming above Kaito and Mila at seven or eight feet tall, which meant they were easily 10 feet long from top to tail.
Their mandibles split open into four parts tipped with vicious, bone-white fangs. In fact, now that he realized it, their legs looked more like floating ribs sharpened to brutal tips, while their backs were covered in more bone-like carapaces.
Kaito triggered his inspection ability.
Bonecrawler (Co) Lvl.13
He kept his eyes glued to the small pack of enemies, but spoke up for Mila. “I’ve got two. You take one.” She didn’t even have enough time to reign in her surprise, before Kaito blasted dirt on her as he rocketed off.
In a whirl of blue sparks, he suddenly appeared between the two bonecrawlers on the right. They lunged faster than cobras, their fangs glistening with saliva and hungry to taste Kaito’s flesh.
Dark green scales rippled into existence, coating his arms up to his shoulders as he punched both centipedes right in their yawning maws. They immediately clamped down, expecting to rip his arms right out of their sockets, but instead, a surge of mana detonated in their mouths. Their heads didn’t explode, but their beady little eyes rolled into the backs of their skulls as they both released their bites.
They slumped down on their haunches, their heads lolling to the side and Kaito moved in to capitalize on them being dazed. His mana-coated fists flashed out in a series of rapid strikes on the rightmost beast’s abdomen. Thwack, thwack, thwack — each hit strong enough to leave cracks on its bony underbelly.
In the background, his senses informed him that Mila was busy using her roughly hewn sword to fend off her own bonecrawler. At the same time, his senses also warned him of his second enemy snapping out of its daze and striking at his back.
[Roc’s Rebuke (Un)] knocked it wide without him needing to turn around. In the meantime, his hands flashed forward to catch the legs of the bonecrawler before him, keeping it right where he wanted it.
He breathed out his [Arcane Breath (Ra)] and brutally eroded his opponent’s face. His foot then snapped out behind him in a crackling back-kick infused with mana, smashing into the other bonecrawler sneaking up on him. With his senses encompassing everything around him in a perfect sphere, he could perceive nearly any attack long before it ever came close to him.
He left his first opponent lying dead, a steaming heap of crumbling carapace, then turned to the second monstrous centipede. His kick had sent the beast flying away and now it hastily slithered in his direction. [Farstrider (Ra)] bridged the gap first, allowing him to take a step longer than it had any right to be. He was suddenly stomping on the middle of its back, stopping it completely in its tracks.
The bonecrawler screeched as Kaito’s foot caused it to abruptly flail at both ends, before it snapped in on itself like a rubber band. It frantically thrashed beneath his foot, but he didn’t budge, leaning even harder onto its back until he heard a sickening crunch. Its screeching turned shrill, reaching a pitch that made even Kaito flinch.
He couldn’t quite use his bigger active abilities yet because his body needed to recover a bit from the strain of using them. Pushing to use heavy hitting abilities in rapid succession could leave a person so drained that it could impact their reactions and overall battle prowess in the middle of a fight, which was more dangerous than anything else. High mentality helped to mediate the strain of using powerful abilities back to back, which was the only reason Kaito could chain his all together.
The bonecrawler continued to frantically wriggle, trying its hardest to get Kaito’s foot off its back so it could flip over. Maybe if this monster was a higher rarity, it could use an ability to help itself.
Unfortunately for it, Kaito just clenched both his hands together in a beefy double fist, then slammed down on the centipede’s bone-armored skull like a sledgehammer.
Boom! Once. Boom! Twice. Boom! Dead.
Viscous ichor and green brain matter covered his scaled hands, though Kaito quickly ignored it, instead turning his attention to Mila’s fight. Now that it was two on one, he had the luxury of sitting back and watching her work.
She expertly swung her sword, which was clearly made from an uncommon or rare dragon-type monster. Only the larger dragon hybrids could produce a fang or claw big enough to be turned into a formidable sword like hers.
After watching her movements, it was clear that her fighting technique came from a higher quality Boon with a passive ability that assisted her sword skills, unless she had grown up learning how to use swords her entire life, which Kaito seriously doubted.
He knew firsthand just how powerful Boon-assisted passives could be. He had his own mana cores in his void locker that he’d tailored himself for using weapons that he gravitated towards. It was how he’d first learned to be a better melee fighter — through the use of a passive ability.
Now though, he didn’t need any help. The way he had his current Boon set-up worked far better than one centered around having more active abilities. He’d turned himself into a workhorse. Someone who could stand in the middle of a horde of monsters and grind them down by the hundreds and thousands until it was only him left standing. It was how he’d accomplished some of his most difficult Feats.
Mila used her sword to catch the bonecrawler’s vicious bite on the shaft of her blade, her feet skidding in the tall grass from the sheer force of the creature’s strength. She quickly infused lightning in her weapon and fried the centipede’s jaws. It hurriedly released her, then swiftly swept low with its lower body, smacking her legs out from under her.
She gasped loudly as the wind got knocked out of her from landing hard on her side. The centipede reared up on its hindquarters again, ready to crash its upper body down onto the fallen woman. Fueled by sheer desperation, she managed to get her sword up in time to block the beast’s body slam. But these bonecrawlers were heavier than boulders because of their dense bone carapaces. Kaito could see the strain on her face as her arms struggled to keep the centipede from crushing her.
It reared up again for a second pass, but Mila suddenly wreathed herself in a lightning shield. When the bonecrawler’s body slammed down this time, it bounced right off, landing off to the side and writhing in place as electricity coursed along its carapace.
Mila hastily dug the tip of her sword into the ground to help her stand on shaky legs, clearly favoring her right side. However, she was a warrior, a survivor, and she was determined to finish the beast. Spreading her feet wide for a steadier stance, she hefted her sword up overhead, ready to land the killing blow.
However, the centipede had other plans.
Pushing through the aftershocks of Mila’s defensive barrier, the beast hurriedly lashed out with its lower body. She cried out as blood spurted from jagged cuts that blossomed on her shins, her leather armor doing little to protect her from the bonecrawler. She stumbled at first, but her legs quickly gave way and she collapsed onto her hands and knees, groaning in between labored breaths.
Kaito sighed.
This was the problem with the people who grouped up together during Earth’s Crucible. They learned to fight monsters in teams. The more powerful a monster, the more people they would throw at it. They pretended the Crucible was a game, relying on superior numbers with specific roles for different team members.
He bet that Mila was one of the main ‘damage dealers’ in her old team. But now that she had to fight alone, she couldn’t finish the job.
She just didn’t have the right Boons.
Or…maybe Kaito was just a monster who had equally monstrous standards…
Regardless, he shrugged and took a single step.
[Farstrider (Ra)] brought him to right in front of the looming bonecrawler ready to devour Mila. His hands grabbed hold of the notches on its bone-covered head, keeping it from getting any closer.
Even though the beast was less than an arm’s length away, with Kaito there, it may as well have been twice or three times that. There was no way for the monster to move another inch without his say-so.
The first creature he fought off when he initially awoke in this dungeon had been a surprise. But that feralon had served as a wake-up call for him. Everything in this forest could kill him if he didn’t use full force at all times. And now that he had a few warm up fights, he had a better understanding of his strength in this new reality.
He was still a hunter, a predator, though he wasn’t at the top of this food chain anymore. But, he would be. Of that, he was certain. The bonecrawler struggling against him was just another stepping stone on this new leg of his journey.
The monster roared, dipping its head lower to gain some more leverage to try and throw him off. Kaito just kneed it in the face and cracked its fangs. It screeched in pain, but he promptly shoved its broken maw into the forest floor to silence it. Thrashing about, the bonecrawler hastily reared up its lower body like a scorpion, darting in with rapidfire strikes.
Kaito tsked, swiftly releasing its head and using his scaled forearms to skillfully deflect each blow. Now that it was free, the centipede was able to whirl to the side, swinging more than half its body like a giant’s baseball bat. Letting out an annoyed grunt, he caught it underneath his arm, where his drakenhide bristled along his torso to protect his rib cage from caving in as the force of the attack shoved him to the side.
Quickly digging in his heels, he stood and heaved the entire centipede up just to slam it back down to the ground. Dirt and grass went flying as Kaito did it again and again like a disgruntled giant who was angry at his toy.
Every body slam cracked the earth, but he didn’t stop until the bonecrawler went slack. Then, for good measure, Kaito exhaled a plume of corrosive mana to ensure the damned thing stayed down.
He winced a little when he took a few tentative breathes, feeling the heavy bruising along his side. Fortunately, his [Regeneration (Un)] was already dealing with it. Anything less than shattered bones took just a few moments to heal up.
Between his high attributes, Feats and Boons, it was very hard to break his bones. He’d fallen off of an overgrown eagle’s back once while it was still flying and walked away from the crash landing with only a bunch of hairline fractures, no truly shattered bones.
While Kaito busied himself with collecting the bonecrawlers’ mana cores, Mila flopped onto her back, breaths ragged from exhaustion as the adrenaline of the battle left her. She groaned as she painfully propped herself up onto an elbow, watching him frisk the carcasses. “W-Who-” cough, cough, “-are you?” she managed.
Kaito ignored her, crushing two mana cores simultaneously to absorb the potent cloud of energy that erupted from the shattered crystals. He inhaled part of the nebulous mana, while the rest sunk into his skin, seeping into his pores to be routed to his own core in the middle of his back. Once he finished, he glanced over at her bloody legs. They looked painful.
“Do you have anything for that?” he asked, tilting his chin towards her injury. Mila let out a pained groan, slumping back down, too tired to ask her question again. Instead, she just sighed, “Ugh, no. I don’t have a storage ability like you do and I dropped my pack while running away from those shadow panthers.”
Kaito paused for a breath, deciding on how much it was worth it to help this woman who was just going to die in this midnight forest. “Do you have a regeneration ability at least?”
“Yes…[Recovery (Co)]. It’s a part of an uncommon Boon,” she replied, strain evident in her voice. He nodded, “That’s something at least. I just needed to know what quality to give you.”
While pocketing the last mana core from the bonecrawlers into his void locker, he also reached for one of a number of stoppered metal flasks. He’d received so many of them throughout his life for being a part of his friends’ wedding parties, but that was before the start of Earth’s Crucible. Never did he think he would actually use them all and then some.
Each flask held some mana-charged liquid that usually could only be found in water sources that had potent mana geodes buried underwater or nearby. At some point, he grew tired of staying close to those natural treasures, so he ended up creating his own.
The concept was simple enough — get some water and drop a mana core or ten inside to charge it up. It took a while, but he had three wine barrels worth in his void locker. One made with common cores, another with uncommon and the last with rare. He filled his flasks from those barrels.
Now, for a couple of scratches? She only needed the common stuff, especially since she already had a regeneration ability. So he pulled out the appropriate flask and generously poured the enchanted liquid over her lacerations.
She screamed as if he’d seared her with a hot iron. Guess her mentality isn’t very high…he thought offhandedly. Luckily for them, they didn’t need to stay quiet. His senses told him there weren’t any more enemies around, above or below them.
He checked her wounds to make sure they were closing up before he moved off to the fallen bonecrawlers. Staring down at their bone-carapaces, he doubted he could bite through them, but he needed a way to trigger his passive [Glutton] ability.
Scales suddenly coated his hand just before he struck a centipede’s skull, instantly caving it in with a fist-sized indentation. Another strike shattered it, leaving a jagged hole that opened up into its brain.
Kaito then bent down, lifted up the whole bonecrawler and tipped its skull over so its brain juices could fall into his waiting mouth. As soon as he did, his ability triggered and a suction force pulled in half the carcass in a matter of seconds. Now that its flesh was exposed, the lower half was easier to consume. In the span of a few minutes, all three centipede bodies were gone, broken down into mana and nutrients to fuel him further.
Retching sounds could be heard behind him as Mila rolled onto her side despite her healing wounds and emptied the contents of her stomach into the tall grass of the gloomy forest. Kaito had grown so accustomed to his ability over the years that he forgot that others might find it revolting. He didn’t particularly care though. She was the one who almost died, not him.
“I hope you have enough mana reserves stockpiled to keep fighting, otherwise you’re gonna need to start actually killing monsters or I’ll just leave you. This place is dangerous, even for me, and I don’t plan on babysitting you for the rest of the dungeon,” he explained. “Now, heal up while I scout up to the next signpost tree. We’ve barely scratched the surface of this place…I know it.”
* * *
Chapter 6
After passing by more signpost trees than he cared to admit, Kaito finally realized there was a pattern. It was so obvious once he saw it, but he was still out of sorts from being transported to an entirely new plane of existence.
Questions continued to plague his mind.
What happened to his homeworld? And where were the other humans? Hell, were there any sentient creatures here? Or just monsters?
More than that though…What were the Endless Planes? Was it the afterlife? He didn’t feel dead. He also didn’t feel like he was some ethereal spirit. If anything, he felt stronger and more robust than he ever did on Earth.
Shaking himself of those incessant thoughts, he stowed them away, knowing that there was no benefit to wracking his brain for answers that he couldn’t possibly know. He would just need to find those for himself once he was out of this dungeon.
In the meantime, the pattern of the trees, as it turned out, was simple enough — defeat the monsters near one signpost for the next one to become available. If they ran from a group of monsters, then none of the trees would ever switch the direction of their swaying. And if they ran too far, then they would end up right back where they started, which was where he first found Mila.
By his estimation, the starting area was larger than the actual warped path. He’d fought off a feralon. She’d encountered those umbral fangs. And that was all within the same area. But once they started following the signpost trees, the area they could explore before warping back to the beginning was considerably smaller.
