Author’s Corner: Hey all! Have some more nightmare fuel(I think, anyways. All depends on how this turns out)

With everyone here, and Sharon’s rabbits roaming the halls, I knew that we wouldn’t have to worry about the statue type abstracts. Even if there were more of them, putting five sets of eyes on them at once would almost guarantee that it would not be able to move before we had the chance to kill it. The problem was the other type, the ones that could phase through walls.

“I’ve got three statue types on the sensors. The rabbits have them locked down just a few corridors down from the airlocks. As for the others, I’m getting intermittent readings, but I think they are hiding in the life support vents to avoid detection. Wait, no, one of the rabbits was just killed. They’re hiding in the floors and ceilings!” Celeste gave a detailed report as she kept an eye on the situation with the ship’s sensors and internal cameras.

“Come on, give me some good news, Celeste…”

“Working on it… more of the rabbits are dying, all over the ship. The good news is that they aren’t going for the ones watching the statue types, so those won’t get free. However, they seem to be gradually making their way in this direction. These readings… there should be six loose abstracts heading this way.”

I closed my eyes, and quickly turned on my combat Aspect spells. If swords work against the ‘loose’ abstracts, then razor sharp claws should work just as well. “Any final advice?”

“Don’t stare at them too long. They absorb soul energy through eye contact, it’s what triggers their solidifying ability and feeds them. You could end up losing levels, or completely dying if you take too long.”

Suddenly, Sharon spoke up next to us. “Is this going to be a problem for the rabbits?”

“Probably… The ones watching the statues might not last until we defeat the loose abstracts. Ah! One of the loose abstracts just ate too many souls from the rabbits, and has turned into a statue type. The nearby rabbits managed to lock it down, so now there are only five heading our way. Make it four, the rabbits got a kill in!” Finally, we had some good news! “Alright, they’ll be here any time. Get ready, and make sure you watch everything.”

Nodding, I spread out my mana sense, feeling for anything out of place. If they came from the floors, I wanted to be ready. However, the first one burst directly through the door. Or rather, it phased through the door. Do only the parts of them that we see become solid, or can they still walk through walls whenever they want?! Make up your mind on how you work, or at least let us have more details!

The one that ran into the room was a giant mass of long bloody hair, with four thin arms protruding out from the sides and two stubby legs. At the end of each arm were three long and deadly looking claws, while the feet appeared to be mismatched. One was the foot of a large feline, while the other looked like a smaller elephant’s foot. There were no discernable features underneath the thick hair, as it covered too much of its body. When it ran towards us, there was a trail of black blood left in its wake.

“First one, incoming!” I said as I dove towards it, with three of the other elven officers. If I was able to use my magic, I would choose to simply burn this thing, and had to actively resist doing so. I wasn’t even sure whether energy attacks like my beam saber would work, or if that would be invalidated as well. Hence, I decided to just rip it to pieces with my claws.

Just as I was getting near the violent mass of hair, I felt something was off with my Mana Sense. As such, I jumped into the air at the last second, and a moment later heard two crashes near where I had been, from the elves that had been running alongside me. I heard the voice of our tactical officer from within the group of armed elves yelling out. “It’s a trick!” Damn, so close!

Anyways, apparently a pair of hands had appeared beneath our feet, and tried to grab onto us. Aside from myself, one of the elves had noticed in time and jumped out of the way, while the other two had been tripped and crashed into the ground. Moments later, they let out a brief scream before an explosion of blood erupted under their heads.

Near their bodies, a creature appeared that almost made me lose what little lunch I had managed to eat before this battle. This one was all hands… literally. There were tens, if not over a hundred hands along this one, all connected by rope-like arms. At the center was a long insectoid body, making this seem like the freakiest centipede in history. Two of its hands were stained in blood, likely having been what killed the two elven officers.

Hearing a mild shriek from behind me, my attention returned to the monster that I was still in a midair jump towards. Bringing my claws out, I readied myself to fight head on, likely the most reckless action I could have possibly taken. But, since magic doesn’t work, and there’s a chance energy weapons wouldn’t work either, this was our only option. We didn’t have physical projectile weapons like guns made yet, since that would have taken Celeste a lot longer to make and train people to use.

Well, that was what I had thought at first anyways, until slashing down my right claw at the abstract. It easily intercepted it with its own claw, and its hair began to whip around, lunging at me like thousands of sharp needles. Oh, this is going to hurt. I waited for the stabbing pain that was soon to come, but instead there was a loud boom from behind me.

While I was still thinking that I was going to be pierced by a swarm of sharp hair, the creature in front of me was suddenly sent flying backwards, crashing against the wall heavily. From its center, a large metal ball fell to the ground and rolled lightly across the floor, like a cannonball. Looking back, I saw that Celeste had summoned one of her larger pets, which took the form of a stationary artillery.

“I figured we’d need a physical ranged attack eventually… But don’t slack off, I have to eat through the metal in the floor to load this thing!” The Deus Ex spoke, holding the controls for the turret while standing behind it. Meanwhile, Sharon had called out another half dozen horned rabbits to distract the centipede hand monster.

Though, Celeste’s attack did give me a good idea, which I was slapping myself mentally for not thinking about it earlier. These things are all but immune to magic, but who said they’re immune to physical attacks launched by magic? Jumping back a step, I put some distance between myself and the shaggy abstract, and began focusing just as it stood back up.

I would like to use my Magnetism Manipulation and have it pull all the swords towards the monsters. But, it would just eat through the magic magnetism. So instead, I lifted up the two swords from the dead elves with my Metal Manipulation, and brought them in front of myself. Since I didn’t know where in that mass of hair was a body, I just launched the two swords at its center, like Celeste had done for the cannonball.

Out of the two swords, one merely chopped off a good deal of hair and bounced against the wall behind the shaggy, while the other struck something solid. The creature let out a deafening shriek, before it slumped lifelessly to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I let out a sigh and looked back to see how the others were doing.

It appeared that Sharon had adopted my strategy, though on a larger scale. Where I had taken the two swords of the dead elves, she had instead taken twenty swords, and had them rapidly rotating as they cut through the various hands of the monster. Unfortunately, almost all of the rabbits she had summoned previously had been crushed in this creature’s hands, which was likely the cause for her current unfiltered rage.

Curious how she was doing this without the creature eating the magic, I activated my Aura Sight. From what I saw, she was only holding the handles of the swords, and making sure that they did not come into contact with the abstract directly. A good idea, and one I wish I had thought of before wanting to dive in head first.

Off on the other side of the mess hall, the elves and Celeste were fighting the other two abstracts, which must have appeared while I was briefly fighting the shaggy one. The first abstract, being attacked by over a dozen elves, was… a large foot. However, under the sole of its foot were a dozen legs, each with their own feet, while along the sides there were long, blade-like arms. Still… it was a foot. Did they have to appear so random?!

Finally, the last one looked like a three-eyed female, with two of the eyes on one side of her head. There were long, bloody trails down her pale arms, which ended in dark, six inch claws. This one actually seemed to be the strongest of the group, as it displayed remarkable agility by jumping along the walls to dodge Celeste’s cannon fire. In between shots, it would crawl along the ceiling, and then dive down on top of one of the elves in a blur of movement, crashing right through the poor elf and going straight into the floor. A moment later, it would appear outside of the crowd with a wide, demented grin covering its bloodstained face, ready to repeat the cycle again.

Grabbing the discarded sword that had missed the abstract I had just taken care of, I moved to help Sharon finish off the one she was fighting. She seemed to be aiming to ‘disarm’ it at the moment, because every time she moved to strike its main body, it would move a bundle of its arms to block the attack. Lifting my ‘borrowed’ blade with Metal Manipulation, I moved up behind the abstract.

Taking a note from Sharon’s attacks, I began rotating my blade in a similar manner, and chopped into it from the back, earning another shriek. However, my attack did not seem to cut deep enough to kill it, before several tentacle arms grabbed the blade, handle and all. These were likely arms which already had the hands cut off by Sharon, leaving it with only the wriggling stubs. Does that make this a one hundred armed octopus? A centipus? I’ll call it a centipus from now on.

Anyways, the centipus had grabbed the blade, ripping it away from my control by negating the magic on it. With that, I was entirely out of ammo, well almost at least. There was still one thing I could do, but it would probably hurt like hell. Using my Toybox power, I grabbed the blade from within the mass of tentacles, and set the other portal away from it. Did I mention that this would hurt like hell? Because I was gripping my head from the sudden pain by the time the sword was completely out of its grip.

Deciding to change tactics, I made two thin portal rings around the handle of the blade, to grip it without transporting it. This let me move the blade in a manner similar to telekinesis.

New Ability Unlocked!Toybox: Toy Hand - Psychic Power: Toybox - ★☆

By placing portals in the proper manner, it is possible to grip objects with your power, and control them as if with an invisible third hand.

Not now, blue screen. I’ll look at you later. Right now, I was surprised at how natural it felt to hold the sword in the portal grip like I was. It was as if it was actually just a third hand, like the message had said. Taking advantage of that fact, I once more began slicing and dicing at the creature, stabbing at anything I could. With just moving the portals, I only felt a minor increase in the pain in my head.

Sharon seemed a bit surprised when she looked at me, but instantly her face became one of worry. “John, stop it quick!” I wasn’t sure why she was saying that, but I had to at least help take this one out so that she could help deal with the freaky girl abstract that was practically toying with Celeste.

Of course, I began to understand once I started tasting copper in my mouth, but by then the sword was at the head of the monster, stabbing into it. There was another shriek, and the centipus fell to the ground, its tentacle arms falling limply to its sides. Rather than going to help Celeste, Sharon quickly ran in my direction. “Are you alright?”

I looked over to her and nodded my head, cancelling the Toybox power and using the formula Celeste had taught me for psychic stress relief. “I’m fine, go help them.” I nodded towards the other fights, and Sharon soon ran off. I would like to say I was the cool guy that stayed focused and watched the entire fight. But does that sound even the slightest bit like me? No, I didn’t think so either.

Although the headache was lessened with my casting of the spell, it was still quite powerful, and easily enough to knock me out the moment I relaxed enough to allow it. Why do I have to miss all the cool action sequences? I could vaguely hear various shouting around me, which only further agitated the headache. Such as ‘the statues are moving, the rabbits around them died’, or a panicked scream of a dying elf. The worst was the high pitched, crazed laugh that I had to assume came from the little girl monster. Seriously, who the hell thought of that one!?

It only took a little while before I was completely out of it, and likely to die if another monster shows up to step on me. However, I did wake up safe and sound in the medbay, eventually. There was a worried Sharon sitting next to my bedside, slumped over asleep in a chair. Looking around, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. Was nobody else injured? Well… aside from those that died.

Wow… I must be a seriously shitty captain. I haven’t even gotten to a planet yet, and I’ve already started losing crew members. Pulling up the Ship Management Window, I decided to see how many people were left. Before, it had shown two hundred and fifty elves, along with myself, Sharon, Celeste, Yin, Yang, and Yo. So, a grand total of 256 people.

Crew Members: 237

Names

---

I furrowed my brow, thinking that through. Yin, Yang, and Yo were all still in my grove, so they might not count as crew members on the ship at the moment. That still meant we had lost sixteen people. Celeste?

“Ah, John, you’re up!” I heard a voice cheerfully calling back to me mentally. “We were starting to get worried about you. You’ve been out for a couple of days now.”

“...Seriously? I even missed the aftermath?” I could just imagine the gods laughing at me. I barely contribute in the fight, lose sixteen of my crew, and pass out before the battle is even over. “You better have a very good report for me to look over…”

There was a slight giggle, and I could just imagine Celeste nodding. “I’ll come up with something, Captain. It’s good that you’re alright.”

Author's Basement: Did I just kill off Officer Ackbar for not saying his lines properly?! Stay tuned next time to find out!