Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty Four - 264It was one of his better plans, Felix had to admit. The Kaltraps didn't respond to sound, and only acted defensively when approached with magic attacks. They would only properly attack when they sensed something living cross them. So what to do?
Send someone with excellent footwork.
Vess darted across their grey-blonde carapace, each footstep a deception that the monsters fell for hook, line, and sinker. The Kaltraps burst from the earth behind her, popping into the air like kafkaesque landmines. They were thick as barrels and possessed of many segmented legs ending in grasping claws, half of which propelled it up into the air and the other half attempted to grappled with the heiress. Yet her Dragoon's Footwork meant she had already moved on before they felt the impression of her step, leaving them exposed for a few seconds.
Exactly as planned.
"Bindings of the White Waste!"
Chains of ice stabbed through their hard exoskeletons, entangling the living landmines. Their forms lit up as orange Mana vapor surged through their chunky abdomens, but the purple-white haze fought back the rising temperature. They wouldn't hold long, especially with so many secured at once, but they didn't need to be.
"Pillars of the Domineering Sentinel!"
"Imbued Sparkbolt!"
Beams of blue kinetic Mana slammed down from above, crushing the Kaltraps onto their sides. While they wriggled in crushing pain, red bolts of searing fire slammed into them, one after another. It all happened so fast the creatures barely had time to react, but they were Tier II beasts. As the Imbued Sparkbolts hit them, each and everyone retaliated by releasing an explosive cloud of orange fire Mana. Grass charred and dirt was thrown as the detonation tore everything around themselves, including the icy chains that held them. The discharge ripped into the earth, creating dark, loamy pits that the monsters immediately began to burrow back into.
"No you don't!" Felix shouted.
Adamant Discord!
Lightning exploded from his hands as he gripped the ineffable lines that connected him to each and every one of the Kaltraps. A piece of him recognized it as a connection of bestial animosity, of conflict, and his power surged down those lines. The eight Kaltraps that had been pulled free immediately seized, their bodily control wrested from them as electricity singed their nerves, and Felix hauled back. His Aspects, all of them, twinged in pain as he leveraged their collective bulk from the earth. They fought back, keeping their lower ends still in the earth, but unable to stop him completely. His Skill was fueled by his stats. Unable to hide in the dirt, the monsters stood no chance.
Adamant Discord is level 58!
"Pit! Now!"
Pit screeched and thrust his wings forward. Green-white Mana flowed out of his pinions like a dense liquid, changing into near-invisible crescents of hardened air as it cleared his wings. Faster than bullets, they keened as the crescent blades hit the Kaltraps. A hurricane of deadly edges.
Kaltraps shrieked in high pitched, alien voices as their visible legs were severed. Yet Pit did not relent, and blade after blade hit the insectoids. The creatures were strong, but even its Tier II exoskeleton couldn't keep it safe from the tenku. Their armor buckled and sundered, each pieces bursting with green ichor.
Felix flared his Skill, letting the electricity flow through him. Through those that dared to cross him; to make him waste so much time in this meaningless place. The air shuddered and snapped, and burning ozone assaulted his nose, but Felix didn't relent. The Kaltraps began to smoke and curl, their bodies pulling completely free of the earth as he lifted them higher and higher, until they were more than ten feet from the cleaved grasslands.
Suddenly, the closest creature exploded into an inferno. A storm of fire Mana and impotent earth Mana swept outward from it, as it became a living pyre. As the inferno hit the others they too burst, until the field went up in a billowing cloud of furious flame.
"Noctis' tits!" Evie said as she stumbled back, just moving clear of the firestorm. She poked at Atar. "A little warning next time, huh?"
"That wasn't me," he said with a significant look at Felix. "I think you hit a Mana bladder on the bug, Felix."
"Most likely on the tail end," Alister said. He pointed at a charred and blackened form inside the fire. It was still alive and twitching, but not for long. "They kept their rears planted in the earth the whole time. Likely to prevent something like this."
"Hm," Felix said through his teeth. Holding his Skill so long made him feel like things were tearing inside him. "Then...let's try something...else."
Adamant Discord is level 59!
Adamant Discord is level 60!
Felix sent his senses along more lines, following the still quivering connections between his Kaltraps to those that hid nearby. The threads were shaky, tentative, bonds of Type and shared drives. But it was enough.
Adamant Discord!
Felix screamed, but the air cracked as blinding bolts of electricity erupted from him. One, three, five, eight more Kaltraps were hauled wholesale from the earth.
"Felix, you're bleeding!"
"Twin's teeth," someone whispered. Kikri, he thought.
Felix thrust both of his hands forward, his Body quivering and his Mind and Spirit screaming. The incandescent blaze in his Skill's grip launched into the seizing Kaltraps.
*KATHOOOOM!*
Wind and sound flattened the grassland for dozens of feet as they erupted into a pillar of fire and fountaining earth. His friends leaned into it but several were knocked on their asses by the force of it, and Evie clearly had to increase her mass just to keep her feet.
You Have Killed A Kaltraps (x16)!
XP Earned!
Adamant Discord is level 61!
Felix stumbled forward as his chest and arms and legs all felt as if they'd been shredded. He slammed his hands and knees into the ground, breaking it open with his sheer weight as his Body trembled. Sound was a keening wail in his ears, and his Spirit reverberated with the strain. A string quartet surged across his senses, but it was distorted and burred with atonal riot.
Something wet dripped onto his hands.
Felix lifted an arm and wiped away blood. From his nose, and his eyes.
"Blind gods, Felix. What did you do?" Vess leaned down next to him. She reached out to touch him but stopped inches away, as if unsure. "You're bleeding. Where did you hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine," Felix gasped. He muscled down a scream as he straightened up. His muscles felt knotted tight, and it was like bending steel as he stood. "I'mit's just some internal bleeding."
"Oh is that all?" Evie said. "You had me scared for a moment there."
"Felix take my potion. Stablize yourself," Vess said. She pressed a teardrop shaped vial into his hands and closed his fingers over it. "You"
"Incoming," Felix rasped. His Spirit might have been quaking, but his eyes still worked. The grasslands around them was waving as if it were in a storm, but the wind wasn't blowing. "I think...we might have disturbed some new friends."
The surrounding grasslands came alive with the skittering voices of hundreds of beasts, all driven to terror or anger by their sudden attacks. A medley of creatures rushed at them, a flood of horns, too many legs, too many eyes, long ears, and sharp fangs.
Harn recovered first. "Tier I! Haarguard! Front and center!"
"Taunt!" Vyne shouted, and Felix saw purple Mana stream from the man's feet. It snagged well over half of the monsters' attention, diverting them away from Felix and toward his massive shield.
"Ice Wall!" Nevia intoned, her voice dropping an octave as purple-white vapor sprayed the ground, leaving jagged barriers of ice behind. She formed a tight funnel, catching those monsters Vyne's Taunt missed, and forcing them toward the shield warrior. "Kylar! Davum! You're up!"
The thin swordsman and hulking warrior took place beside Vyne, and they met the monsters with measured violence. Kylar's twin swords flickered and slashed, dispatching the Tier I creatures with carefully placed strikes, while Davum's greataxe reaped them in swaths of bloody mayhem. With Kikri firing her arrows like an Elven gatling gun, it was like watching a blender in action.
"Damn," Felix said. Something seized in his thigh, but he braced himself with a sudden conjuration of a stone column at his side. "They're...better than I thought."
"I told you," Harn said. The onrush of Tier I monsters had slackened considerably. "We'll move ahead once we've all had a chance to rest," he added with a significant look at Felix.