Grant

He'd crippled the overgrown newt some time ago, now he was playing with the monster. Of the survivors, only Ben would likely pick up on the difference between his fight performance and his capability. This was his evaluation of how much they could be burdened before they failed, how much value he could squeeze from them.

Of course, Ben detained and destroyed one of them.

While he expected a strong showing from Mathew, Amber's showing was above expectations for wielding something less than a true weapon. Considering the potency came from the ammunition, Grant supposed he could give some of that credit to Harper. Just thinking of her smarmy smile made him angry. Controlling himself, Grant focused on finishing the monster.

A casual swing of Marabell, his club, Grant shattered the test subject he'd maimed.

Mathew's lack of trust showed through more fully as he obfuscated whatever that powerful attack was. Watching Mathew step out of fog and look around, Grant noted that he didn't maintain a sense of the battle very well.

As the fog dispersed, the scene of destruction gave him pause. His danger senses hadn't gone off as they do in the presence of sufficiently powerful attacks, of which this certainly counted. Elevating Mathew to the level of threat, he continued the evaluation.

Broken rock obscured what happened to the degree his tracking skill wouldn't be able to recreate what happened. Finally, he noticed that the bone sword wound up pinned under the monster. He'd lost his only weapon... except for that hidden attack, Grant amended.

These facts were equally filed away under weaknesses to exploit and weaknesses to fill in.

Moving down to the bottom of the bowl, Grant crafted a broad grin on his face. "Well done. Well done indeed. You made quite the boom there. I'm afraid you've likely drawn some attention to this fight. So what direction do we go?"

While Mathew was looked to by the others for leadership, it was clearly a shared role. Nevertheless, it was better for Grant to prop up Mathew to seem legitimate or natural as a leader. Ben had broken their ability to trust Grant himself in the limited time they had here in this world. Having sided with Grant about doing this expedition, Mathew seemed even more aligned to his goals than Ben was.

Thankfully Mathew made it less of a chore by being passably competent at command.

"I say we push straight ahead though we need to keep an eye out for food." Mathew tapped his armor. "Tanking hits drains reserves in a way I wasn't prepared for."

Inclined to believe him, Grant filed that away under maybe true. At least something he'd have to act as true for the time being.

"Let us test the flora along the way then." Grant nodded. "I'll keep my eye out from the left flank."

"Hold up," Mathew said. "What are your capabilities?"

Suppressing the anger coming from the paranoid side of his mind, Grant curated his answer. "Yes, I have about three times the raw power I came to Leternum with. My magic is doesn't do much but make me very difficult to kill. A high stealth skill and decent tracking. Other than that, I have the equipment you see here. Donated posthumously by those who didn't make it."

"Okay, let's move before we get mobbed." Mathew turned back to the wheelbarrow.

Returning to his post as left flank scout, Grant flashed hand signs with Ben to coordinate their movement before engaging stealth. Back over the hills they rolled. The pace was too leisurely for his liking but for the sake of thinning out the monsters, it was probably better than the pace he'd drive himself. Still, slowing down grated against his sense of purpose.

Aligning his passive magic to potential reserves, he cataloged the unusual flora as he went along. Grant would dutifully fulfill the role he played. Gathering up some black tubers with a high potential reserve count, he stuffed them into his leather pouch.

Coming across a lone salamander bio-form, he pulled a rock from his bag. The bio-forms of the slimes would incorporate the deficiencies of the original. Only occasionally wielding more advanced powers than the original version. The bioforms were typically weaker than their original versions, but their powerful glass flesh allowed them to carve out quite a nice swath of territory.

One of the weaknesses of the salamanders was their motion-based vision. Putting this together had initially taken reading a journal entry and days of study.

It was quite an accomplishment to find weaknesses and ways to exploit them so quickly. The team effort was what did it. Grant felt a pang of pain at the memory of his original grouping. In their memory, I persist.

Wrapping the stone with his stealth intelectus, he charged it with an empowerment of temporary stealth. While nowhere as advanced as what Ben could manage, it was more than enough to keep Grant alive. Launching the stone in a skittering arc across the bowl-shaped valley, Grant watched the faux amphibian blast it with a laser. While he couldn't see the attack, the slight sense of danger alerted him all the same.

With it distracted, he glid down the slope in its blind spot. Vaulting the last of the gap with his shield ready just in case, the club's impact released its echo effect and shattered the artificial monster. Checking the remains for anything of particular value didn't surprise him when his passive magic didn't highlight anything as particularly valuable.

Work complete, he continued his scouting pattern.

This continued for another half hour. As Grant predicted, the territory Alpha responded by sending a kill squad out. Straight at them from its base of power. A dozen beasts of various bio-forms crested and fell down a distant rise.

Ghosting back to Mathew and Amber, Grant interrupted the conversation. "A large group is approaching straight on. About a dozen of them. What do you think?" Grant waited.

"Do you think we can take them?" Mathew asked.

Exactly as he wanted. "At a price, yes."

"Paid by me?" Mathew asked again.

Grant nodded solemnly. "With enough distraction and chaos, Ben and I can eliminate all of them. Amber's aid will cause faster success. But no matter how I scout, there is no predicting how a fight will turn out. With their force on our tail, retreat may not be an option... for all of us, that is." This was a situation Grant himself orchestrated, but it was necessary for the greater good.

"Fuck!" Mathew paced back and forth. "What can we do to best even the odds?"

Grant handed Mathew the dark tubers he had found so far. "We do our best. And if today is our final day, we bring ruin to the monsters that make the mistake of finding our limits."

Patting himself on the back, Grant almost inspired himself with that delivery.

"I'll get ready." Grant returned to the forward left flank and hid.

Ben would be mirroring his pincer, ready to fall on the beasts. While it was tempting to rob Amber of the mirror liquid, it was worth risking losing to an accident if this turned out well. Ambition had burned Grant before but this felt different. Following his gut had kept him alive time and time again. His soul said this was the time to be ambitious.

Noise filled the cloudy sky, and Grant waited behind a barrel-sized plant stalk full of a yellow organ. Peeking around the bulk, he waited for the last of the monsters to become distracted.

Well before it was time, Ben broke his cover and engaged. Throwing his net forward and capturing one of the salamanders, he pulled himself beside the beast using the tether. Grant sighed, fool.

Breaking cover himself, he focused on ending the danger as quickly as possible. Ben was too high-value a resource to endanger lightly.

Shield first, Grant blocked the feeling of danger he felt light up his chest. A laser to the chest is exactly why you wait for distractions.

Grunting in exertion, Grant began swinging. The club may seem like an indelicate and brutal weapon. While that is half right, there is a skill to making it flow in combat. A skill he put on full display. Guided by his passive magic, Grant whirled around using the reverberations of one attack to spin into another. All the while charging Marabell's echo.

Keeping his battle sense, Grant tracked the progress of the battle. Two gorilla like bio-forms were driving wild swings at Mathew while a handful of salamanders shot through their transparent form.

Ben had finished disabling his first target and he rushed to another with a silent snarl. Arrows stopped falling and Grant judged she either gained a sense of self-preservation or took a stray laser bolt. Making a mental note to get the mirror liquid, Grant detonated Marabell's echo against a cat bio-form.

Using abilities like this was draining him. Switching to technique based combat Grant took a blow across the shield from Saber Spider. The blow skittered off the surface, drawing silver sparks and putting Grant on the back foot.

This Alpha was too new to have lieutenants of this caliber! If he'd known, he never would have jumped down here. For as alarmed as his mind told him to be, the feeling of a noose closing on his neck was absent. Something in his magic didn't find this so dire... there was always retreat.

A crash of splintered wood and a flood of loose guts spilled over the battleground. His evaluation was wrong. Amber loosed their entire supply of attack water. A desperate ploy he felt grateful for.

"Shoot me!" Mathew bellowed. "Amber, shoot me!"

He had defended himself admirably. Keeping his sword between himself and his attackers, Mathew forced them to pay in broken parts to inflict their damage. The heat attacks seemed to have finally overborne his limit.

Hopefully, he could hold on. If not, he would be remembered. Grant would remember him.

Quickstepping around the bladed legs of the saber spider bio-form, Grant waited. The water already blunted the point of its attacks as they no longer drew sparks from his shield. How powerful the application of strength was as a multiplier, something as simple as sharpness would carry this fierce beast into an actual threat. However a simple threat had one point of failure.

Activating the ability of his shield before impact, Grant braced for the expected force. The tidal surge of power latched onto the offending leg and threw it at the following edge of the shield. Dragged to the side by one of its limbs, it was forced off balance. Rushing forward, Grant delt an uppercut swing that lifted it from the ground and sent spiderweb fractures through the bio-form.

Moving out of the way of the prodigious deadweight, Grant again reacquainted himself with the battlefield. They'd carved through the backline while the animals focused on the front. Now only four monsters remained functional, and Ben restrained two together with his net. It was a short sighted decision but did reduce the immediate fighting force. One great ape bio-form continued its assault of Mathew while Amber was chased by a monster resembling a tangle of glass vines.

This was the time to rally. Pounding down onto Ben's net, Grant reduced whatever was inside to lose shards. Pointing to Mathew, Grant commanded. "Help him."

With that, Grant left over the ridge Amber just retreated over. He'd seen it, the beast wrapped her with a tendril. There would be no escape and Ben's net would do little to end the threat before it did more than just break the poor girl's back. While the end result was the same for Grant's purposes, given she'd never live long enough to recover, her survival would bolster conviction to move forward.

Cresting the rise himself, Grant was pleasantly surprised to see she'd escaped. He'd have to investigate another time. Further, she'd frozen its hurdling form enough to cause it to tumble. Grant watched it roll around the bowl between hills, alive but unable to bear its own weight on any frozen limb.

Gathering back up as a group, Grant couldn't be more pleased. Ben and himself, as the high-value assets, hadn't lost any health. The survivors continued to have potential value. If they could keep up this pressure, getting into the vault was a real option.

"Well done, well done!" For once, Grant's boisterousness wasn't a show.

Clapping Ben on the shoulder, he surveyed the fallout.

Mathew cradled his bone sword. Shards were missing and a whole section above the handle was missing. Underneath that plate now exposed to the light of day, was a beating heart.

"How are you doing?" Grant lowered his volume.

"Anyone hurt?" Mathew asked.

"Nothing significant," Grant answered.

"How much more like this to complete the mission?" Mathew asked.

"Likely no engagement quite so dense. If I may be ambitious, for a moment, we may have a chance at the Alpha." Madness, Grant's mind betrayed him. There was a feeling that induced this madness. For once, anything felt possible.

"I need food to continue and a lot more to withstand any significant damage." Mathew's words were a wrench in Grant's plans.

"That can be arranged." Grant bit down on the bitter delay.

He'd waited this long to return, and a few hours more wouldn't be the end of the world.

"I'll get to it then. Ben can scout a perimeter and forewarn you of danger. If you must retreat, do so. I'll track you down after." With that, Grant engaged stealth.

He didn't leave, though. Instead, he stuck around for a few moments to listen in. Knowing what was said in his absence was always valuable. Hopefully, Ben wouldn't sabotage his information gathering.

"Mathew," Amber spoke with a smoldering anger. "He's a snake if I ever saw one. Waited up in his high tower before pitching in."

"It was the plan, and it worked. At this point, results are what matter." Mathew's strong eye contact would aid him in leading.

Amber backed down, looking contemplative.

"Did you know it was alive-" Grant left the conversation behind himself as he went to gathering reserve rich foods. Sure they were untested and could be poisonous, but most food poisons were slow acting, and Grant wouldn't need trust outside that time frame anyway.

Test subject 4-2

Not enough. More was needed. The blob moved over the provided prey. Absorbing them entirely from their body to the remnant of their mind. 4-2 learned a little more about the process. Not enough.

Funneling the material and growing the mind within 4-2 created another servant.

Lacing its command with Alpha energy 4-2 demanded to be fed. The new servant shuffled away, familiar with the order from its old life.

Testing its draw of the Alpha spectrum, 4-2 discovered a blip where it'd sent the reserve troops. A pocket had formed where its dominion over the territory was shattered and usurped.

Rage laced its mind. After being hemmed in its growth being thwarted, now even its sovereignty was under assault. 4-2 looked over what was left behind to work with. There was one it wouldn't miss.

Drawing the body from the tube into the roiling mass of glass 4-2 couldn't handle the leftover mind. There was just too much. Paring down to essentials was what 4-2 was brought down to doing. Infusing the body with a sacrifice of Alpha energy 4-2 would not relinquish its authority. Instead, there would be blood.

Ordering it to harry the intruders 4-2 moved on to other tasks.

"Yes, Master."