Chapter 98: The Sunken turbine (3)
"Aren’t these Reidar’s summoned creatures?" Jorik asked.
"How would I tell?" Lena said, annoyed. "It’s not like we can distinguish them from the real wild ones."
"They didn’t give C.L.A.S.P. points," Jorik said.
"Regardless, they are the ones who attacked, so it was just right for us to fight back."
"I wouldn’t say that ’fightback’ was the right word. Those things crushed us," Torren said. "We were forced to flee!"
Lena nodded. "Indeed, those fuckers could re-summon themselves. I guess this explains how Reidar was able to kill the quarry boss monster. He likely flooded the cave with creatures, and they took care of it."
Reidar gave an order to the contubernium, and that was to kill those who were chasing him. The problem was that the unknown group tailing them wasn’t the only one inside the forest.
Lena and her team were there as usual, and the two groups stumbled upon each other.
"Well, if nothing else, at least now we have our answers."
"Reidar is with the church," Lena said.
While they didn’t have proof to say the Church of Unbinding was the one involved in all of this, they were also sure about it.
"Don’t jump to conclusions, Lena!" Torren said.
"Then why did he attack?"
"How would I know this?!"
"Calm down, guys!" Jorik had to intervene as things were going out of hand. "Lysa is here..."
The woman approached the group.
"What have you found out?"
Lysa remained silent for a second. "One of them escaped. The horde of monsters is chasing it."
"See?" Torren gave Lena a dirty look. "Why would they chase the guy if they were with the church? Even the earlier guy was fleeing from Reidar’s summons!"
"Reidar should be at the lake," Lysa said, turning to Lena. "I heard he left this morning to tackle the sunken turbine quest.
Lysa nodded. "What do we do?" Jorik wanted the situation to be over. Lena turned to Lysa. "Tail the guy that is fleeing and see what is happening; I and the others are going to the lake."
Lysa nodded and then disappeared through the trees.
Jorik approached her. There was concern in his eyes. They barely survived against Reidar’s army of summoned creatures by escaping. "He is clearly more powerful than we assumed. He defeated us easily, and he wasn’t even here. Are you sure we can pull this off?"
Jorik understood Lena’s intentions.
Lena remained silent for a while. Then she sighed. "Reidar is strong; there is no denying that, but not on a personal level. He relies too much on his summoned creatures and on flood tactics. I can take care of him if he doesn’t notice me."
"This is a mistake," Torren said.
"Shut up, Torren."
***
The silence of the abyss was absolute. Down there, hundreds of feet below the monster-tossed surface, the water was still, cold, and black.
The Razor-Gill school cut through the dark searching for the convoy.
Moving through the remains of the drowned forest and past the silhouettes of various submerged buildings, they finally found it.
The convoy was a line of metal behemoths half-buried in the silt of the gigantic lakebed.
Armored trucks, transport vehicles, and a massive mobile command lay in an underwater dead procession.
Rust and algae coated their surfaces already. The Cataclysm pushed even the aquatic vegetation to grow, so that situation was only expected.
The vehicle’s military-grade construction resisted the crushing pressure, but the mana filled water was already corroding them. Regardless, this was Reidar’s school’s target.
As they moved toward the convoy, a shape detached itself from the truck’s massive chassis.
It was immense, a living embodiment of armored death. Its head was a solid plate of black, chitin, like the shell of some prehistoric but aquatic fishlike beetle.
Its eyes were dead black orbs that held no light, only an infinite, hungry gaze.
« Elite Abyss Lurker Level 63 »
The order the summoned creatures got from their master went through their heads. They had to kill that thing since they had to secure the convoy. But how to do that?
That thing was far stronger than them. Though there were other summons in the surroundings, especially after their master decided to play it seriously and summoned more creatures.
Then they understood what they had to do: Distract it. Their role was to sacrifice themselves until the skeletons drowned the monsters in a sea of bones and swords.
The school of monsters attacked. They were fast inside the water, and their size allowed them much more agility in the lurking depths than the level 63 gigantic monster could hope to achieve. But they were still level 50, while that thing was 13 levels higher than them, and that made a vast difference.
The school dashed ahead and started attacking the monster. The creature didn’t like it. Bite after bite, their serrated fins sliced at its thick hide, leaving shallow white scratches on the black armor.
With their Swarm Tactics activated, each of the ten fish increased the damage of its siblings by 5%, which added to the increased damage they already did thanks to Reidar’s gear. The problem was that against a creature so many levels higher than them; it was like throwing pebbles at a fortress.
The Lurker replied with contemptuous ease. It opened its jaws, and the Jagged Shard Bite, a skill that thing possessed, snapped shut on one of the Strikers.
There was a sickening crunch of scale and bone, and one of the Razor-Gills ceased to exist.
45% damage increase remained.
The Lurker then expelled a violent burst of water from its gills. The pressure wave hit the school, hurting them as if a giant wall did, stunning three of them. They floated, disoriented, as the Lurker turned and devoured another.
40% damage increase remained.
The remaining eight summoned creatures pressed their attack. They swarmed the monster’s head, trying to bite at its eyes, tearing at the softer flesh of its gills.
To the monster, they were a nuisance, an irritation, but they held its absolute, undivided attention.
The Lurker thrashed, its tail triggering shockwaves across the water, but the small, quick Razor-Gills weren’t easy targets. Still, it caught another one of Reidar’s summoned fish, then another.
30% damage increase remained.
Six of the school remained. Then three. Then two. The last pair of Razor-Gills fought with the fury of those who knew they were about to die, or better, turn back into lumps of mana. A fate that would befall them regardless as soon as their temporary life ended its timeframe.
The creature managed one last, deep gouge near the Lurker’s eye before the wild monster finally caught them both in a single bite.
Silence returned to the wreck of the convoy. The Elite Abyss Lurker drifted slowly, its eyes scanning the darkness, the victor. It had defeated the strange, swarming pest.
Or so it thought. In truth, the distraction had served its purpose, and well at that.
From the abyssal gloom, a new army arrived. They did not swim; they walked. Hundreds of skeletons, difficult to spot, marched across the lakebed. The tide of bones had its empty eye sockets fixed on the Elite Abyss Lurker.
The terrible beast turned at this new threat, but then, the monster noticed something had just grabbed it.
It turned, only to see dozens of other skeletons quickly doing the same thing, scaling all over it. Then they started stabbing.
It didn’t take much, but the stabs increased and increased. The more the skeletons damaged the same spot, the more the wound opened.
The creature thrashed, rolling and spinning, crushing dozens of them against the silt and the metal hulls of the convoy.
The rest of the skeletons got close enough to the beast, and soon, the monster found itself covered by skeletons.
The Elite Abyss Lurker was completely covered in bones. It was no longer a predator; it was an island of flesh being consumed by the undead. The various bone militias stabbed with their swords, hammered with their fists, and clawed with their fingers.
The levels ranged from 46 to 1. The weakest ones got killed easily, but it didn’t matter. They were there just for the sake of inflicting wounds that their brothers would then enlarge.
The skeletons targeted the Elite Abyss Lurker’s eyes, its gills, and the joints of its fins. The monster’s roars of fury became muffled gurgles of pain.
It was a slow, grinding, horrific execution. The mighty beast’s struggles weakened, and finally, with a last spasm, it died.