《The Metier Apocalypse》Chapter 20: Insidious Tendrils

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"That's not good," I said. The wolfhound snarled and a fire flared along its spine. "That's much worse."

While the creature wasn't anywhere near the size of the Haze Wolf, the heat didn't look any less potent. Having spotted us, the humanoids turned in our direction and promptly unleashed blasts of ice and fire respectively.

"! !" I said, using my voice to focus on the Skill faster. The rising earth used my stone spikes to climb higher and a proper barrier blocked the blows from the humanoids. "Return fire, please!" I shouted over the tinkle of shattering glass.

My friends finally snapped out of their shock. Daniela let out two gunshots, one striking the wolfhound and the other one of the humanoids. Instead of the spray of blood as I'd expected, a gout of fire flared from the wound. The gelatinous mass started to roll in our direction while the humanoids took cover on the opposing sides of the roadway. There wasn't much to their expressions but an eerie smooth head, yet they seemed somewhat agitated.

The wolfhound shook off the shot and bolted in our direction. A trail of flame appeared on the ground as it approached, and I concentrated on it's path. My eyes tracked it's movement and I cast where I anticipated the wolfhound would be. The tip of my spike was off, but I still managed to get the creature to crash into the body of it.

"Sam, try to snag it!" Without needing much more prompting, the magic circle for his vine Skill transformed the grass around the stunned wolfhound. With the hound dealt with for the moment I had enough time to see Danny hammer the slime with . The blob ignored the attack almost completely, and I only heard the slight hiss of something boiling for a second before the creature's rolling put out the fire. Then it oozed through the gaps in my spikes and directly onto me.

"Ronan!" Sam shouted a second before all I could see was green and brown sludge.

Without thinking, and suffering the price for drawing on my mana too soon, I impaled the blob with two stone spikes. It only marginally slowed the creature, or whatever it was, before it started to part its body around them. "Don't worry about me, focus on those human things. Danny, make sure you kill the hound!"

"What do you think I've been working on!" she shouted, letting loose with her gun again. I didn't get to pay much more attention to their engagement as the slime rolled through my spikes and headed straight for me. Thick slimy residue remained on my spikes and the creature was a tad smaller than when it had oozed through our defenses.

"Oh no you don't," I hissed, calling forth my mana, but just in its passive form. The creature was subject to damage, all I needed was to deliver solid blows. I two-handed my pickaxe and swung wide across its body. The majority of it ignored the blow, but a wet splat off to my left told me I'd removed some of the creature's mass.

There was no way for me to know if the compressing effect of my magic worked on the slime, but it certainly felt like it was adding more force to my blows. Regardless, the creature didn't seem phased by my attack and instead continued to roll forward unimpeded. That's when I started hammering it with blow after blow using the chisel side of my pick. It wasn't as effective as a shovel, but slowly I could see the gelatinous creature shrink.

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When the creature was about to my waist, it stopped moving. My next blow had been anticipating its continued motion and I swung without any resistance. The top heavy weapon carried me to the side and down to a knee. Surprisingly, instead of capitalizing on my blunder the creature reshaped itself into a wall and ate a fireball that had been aimed at me. My eyes traced the origin of the attack, and I could see that the fire humanoid had crossed the street and was bolstering the wolfhound somehow. Its flames were much brighter and intense than before.

I heard a growl of frustration from Daniela, but quickly concentrated back on the gel. It still hadn't advanced, but the top portion of its body thinned into some kind of amorphous appendage and waved. Waved. Like a friendly child might have to a stranger. I was so stunned I actually waved back in response, forgetting where I was until a splash of frost hit my barrier not far from Sam's side of the fight.

"If you aren't going to attack right now... Sam, Danny! Switch sides. Samuel, try to buy time for an ."

"What about the slime!?" Sam ducked out of the way of another blast of ice before spotting the waving slime. The size to which his eyes opened would have been perfect for a cartoon character. "What the hell are you doing, Ron?"

"I think he's friendly!" I said, keeping an eye on the slime, but moving to Danny's side of the barricade. A nudge from me sent her back over to where the icy humanoid was attacking.

"He came with the things shooting magic bolts at us, rock brains. How is he friendly!?" Danny asked in outrage. Her eyes were focused on the Skill in her hand just as her Wisp took to the air. "Get the ice dude!"

With those simple instructions, the mana construct flew up ten feet into the air and zoomed across to the left.

I eyed my mana and winced. The initial attack had taken most of it, and I had only regenerated enough for two full powered stone spikes, or four half powered ones. I didn't get to deliberate much because the wolfhound had managed free itself. The fire humanoid was standing still behind a tree that was charring just from its presence, but the incoming lupine threat removed any chance of striking it.

The hound leapt over my barrier easily, aiming for where Danny was recovering. There was a deep blush along her body and I knew she had to be close to her mana limits. I pulled my pistol out and fired into the hound at close range. The sound left my ears ringing a bit and the creature managed to shrug off the damage somehow, but it focused its attention on me. Good enough.

I roared a primal scream as I charged it with my pickaxe held out in front of me. Clearly, the creature hadn't been expecting that because it tried to backpedal out of the way. My skin hissed under the blaze, and for once I felt the effect of my Limestone Skin protect me from the worst of the fire.

With the metal head of my pick between us, I concentrated on the hound's torso. A ripped clear into the hound's ribcage and through it's sternum. Unfortunately, the Skill had been aimed towards me. My own spike tore a gash in my left shoulder, but thankfully my skin and adrenaline mitigated the pain of the engagement. The hound twitched, still alive, but incapacitated thanks to its impalement. Unfortunately, it was still just as hot. My legs failed to hold me up and I pitched forward.

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"Woah there. !" Sam slapped my injured shoulder and sat me down before peaking over the top of the wall and letting loose with his own gun. A howl marked that he'd hit at least once. Daniela was on the ground reloading her gun with shaky hands and I slid closer.

"I'm... almost out. Is that ice... dead?" Thick drops of sweat rolled down her forehead and I fumbled with one of our packs for water. Instead of just giving it to her, I dumped half on her head then handed it over. A thin mist rose off her body, and I could only hope she hadn't pushed herself past her mana pool.

At some point the blob rolled closer. When it nudged me with its appendage I very nearly sent a spike through it. It used its limb to point to the right, and I saw the fire humanoid was moving to flank us. Sam and the Ember Wisp were focused on dealing with the ice one and we'd hunkered down to try to recover a bit.

A string of expletives ripped themselves out of my mouth at the oversight. As the one with the highest Perception and the leader of our group, I should have been aware of where all of our enemies were regardless of who I was directly fighting. Saving that internal beratement for another time, I sent two half powered at the fire humanoid. The first it blasted with a concentrated explosion of fire as the spike formed. The second, it let hit. Instead of punching right through like I expected, the creature caught it with its arms. A moment later, the fiery aura that clung tightly to its skin flared just like the hound's had done, and it was charging towards me.

A stone spike appeared in its path, but it only managed to clip the creature. Its fiery cloak diminished slightly, but then there was even more speed to its charge. I glanced over my shoulder to Danny, who was struggling to rise to her feet, as I set my own in a wide stance. It would not get past me. My pick was held tightly in my right and I held a Skill ready on my left arm. I swore the advancing creature smiled, its information flickering through my eyes now that I concentrated on it long enough.

Processing that information wasn't immediately relevant, but at least I knew what it was called. When the Tendril was ten feet away, I released my spell. Thankfully, the creature had been both intelligent and dumb enough to try to anticipate my attempts to impale it, because that isn't what I did. The earth at its feet heaved as formed and turned the Tendril's charge into a flaming tumble. I swiped my pick horizontally, catching the humanoid with the pointed end somewhere near center mass. It’s momentum ripped the pick from my hands as it continued to tumble past me to my left and straight into the gelatinous creature. It's body sizzled like fresh onions on Juan's skillet while the fire cloak around the tendril winked out.

Mouth agape, I watched the creature slide the tendril's body through itself. The corpse, unmoving, flopped wetly to the ground, pickaxe and all. I shuddered involuntarily before I focused back on my friends. Danny had reached Sam and was firing into the ice humanoid. I watched one bullet chip the tree the creature was using as cover. The one that followed, sprayed its ice-filled brain out into the woods.

My friend pumped her arm. "Try to ignore that, snowman!"

"Did we get them?" Sam panted, wavering on his feet and leaning heavily on my makeshift wall. My eyes landed on the hound. The creature was still struggling weakly and now that I calmly looked at it, its information appeared before me.

With that information acquired, I sent another through its body and it stilled. "Now we did."

"What about that thing?" Danny gestured at our unexpected blobular ally. The creature formed another appendage and waved at my two friends. "Are we supposed to kill it?"

"It helped us fight! Why would we kill it?" Sam said, gasping in surprise. "Sure it was with the others, but why would it attack us now?"

"It's one of those Tendril things too. I don't know about you, but considering Dreg-related stuff has only caused us heartache, I say we get rid of it."

My eyes focused on the gelatinous creature and I concentrated. Through the end of the fight, it had shrunk considerably more and wasn't taller than my knee. Other than that, it still looked like someone had taken lime jello, thrown it into a mud pile, rolled it into a ball and left it out in the sun. I wasn't sure why, but it took a significantly larger amount of concentration than any other creature we'd encountered for its information to be populated through the Implant. It was also particularly unhelpful.

"That's really all we know about it. It wouldn't be fair to judge it just because it was with an agressive group, now would it?" Sam said, having taken a moment to look the gelatinous dreg tendril over.

"I suppose you are right, Sam. What do we do with it, though? As a matter of fact, what do we do about this whole excursion?" Daniela asked, waving at what I now realized were the charred remains of one of our bags and most of the surroundings.

"We keep an eye on the Tendril and attack it if it does anything funny. As for our little trip, I think for now we should gather up whatever we can and move camp. My mana is tapped and my health could use a few bumps."

"Ha! Hilarious, Ron. Don't you know the joke? Don't bother the healer. I think you are patched up enough for your own regeneration to top you off," Sam responded, deadpan. The life mage was already separating out the parts of our supplies that hadn't been affected by the fight. He made it a point not to look at me.

Daniela nodded, reloaded her pistol, and walked slowly to the growing inferno on our side of the road. The humanoid fire tendril had lit the tree it used as cover and Daniela struggled against the flames somehow. Another thing to put on the mental tally of questions. With my friends engaged, I did the only thing left to do: loot.

The first target was the wolfhound. Rough black fur with red accents was matted with orange ichor of some kind. The creature was still thoroughly impaled, and I felt a twinge of guilt about the way I'd killed it. Until I remembered it'd been trying to roast me. With a nudge of my boot, its body crystalized into a deep shade of red cinnabar. I barely had a moment to admire the mineral before it crumbled into particles, floating into me and Sam. A trail of Pith flew through my wall, presumably to where Danny was firefighting.

As the Pith settled within me, the nauseous feeling returned but disappeared much more quickly than previous times. I hadn't even realized that my nausea had disappeared when I'd killed the tendrils. A look over my shoulder told me the slime creature was still right behind me, which was another strange development. Why did the other tendrils' presence induce the sensation of absorbing Dregs, but not the blob?

I ignored the question for the moment, instead collecting the two drops from the wolfhound. The item was a perfectly skinned section of its pelt and there was the expected Quotient 1 Infusion. I almost added 'how does the Pith know to separate certain parts' and 'how does it pick a pattern to remove them' to my list of questions for the Entity. You already have enough things to ask. Just accept that it's magic and move on.

The loot went to a grumbling blonde when I passed him to get to the fire humanoid. A whole new string of questions flowed through my mind. The one that stood out the most was: Were there humans that survived on the surface? While the tendril only looked humanoid, there were a few things that appeared distinctly human. Its lower body had some kind of cloth rags and the proportion of its limbs were pretty similar to what I knew of human anatomy. While it was entirely possible that the faceless, red skinned creature was some strange mutation of another animal, I couldn't bring myself to believe it.

What I also noticed is that it didn't look to be an old human either. The Dreg might have been able to halt a human's aging somehow, but if that wasn't the case then that meant they had to have survived Landfall as children or been born after the Crystals struck the surface. Both of those possibilities made me swell with hope. It also made me shudder at what had happened to them. Are these the side effects the Entity was talking about? That went to the top of the list of things to ask.

I contemplated using the to bring the body back to the Bunker, but I wasn't confident we would be able to keep nature from interfering with a dead body. Attuned vultures and ravens, or more wolves, were things I did not want to lead back to the base just to look over the corpse. Before I lost my nerve, I nudged the corpse with my hand and it crystallized into a now familiar cinnabar-esque mineral before the Pith spread to us.

The feeling of power from the Pith and the nausea from the Dreg did a number on my stomach. I hadn't opened my Status to look over the gains, but the other creatures whose Pith we'd absorbed hadn't produced quite as violent of a reaction. Regardless, their drops were what I was most excited about.

One way of getting used to killing things was that we got tangible benefits out of it. Surprise tangible rewards added something extra to the situation.

The drops were a length of bone and the Tendril's fire Infusion. Comparing the piece of bone to my own body, it was probably a forearm bone. Ava would be able to tell us more. The information on the Implant merely called it 'human bone'. I did add that as a question to the Entity. Where exactly our Implants were drawing the information they displayed. It wasn't a priority, but getting more detailed information or anything of that sort could be invaluable when we encountered threats.

When I handed Sam the loot, he grimaced. "Human... What--"

"No sense speculating or feeling guilt, Samuel. We knew the surface would be different and we always hoped there would be survivors. As for what this means for that, and my... Father... We shouldn't dwell on it. This is not a good sign, but it is a sign." He took the bone from me, the depth of his frown uncharacteristically deep, but he nodded.

The walk across the road was tense. Considering how much noise we'd made, attracting creatures was a possibility. I almost didn't want to entertain the fact that the Human Tendrils acted intelligently. Few animals I knew of would think to seek cover or bolster their allies like they'd done to the wolfhound. Having to deal with souped up animals was enough of a concern.

Regardless, I arrived at the body of the other tendril. Unlike the fire one, who'd been neutralized by the slime, this one was still positively frosty. The ground around it and the blood spray that had exited him were all turned to ice. Instead of giving it the decency of a hand tap like I'd done to the other human, I nudged it with my boot. Sure enough some of the frost transferred to the tip of it. Yet another thing to keep in mind.

With that unpleasant thought in mind, I collected a human heart and a Water-Ice Infusion with Quotient 2 Density. The infusion looked just like the bead of water I expected, and the heart looked like any of the numerous anatomical representations I'd seen in my classes, sans blood and the rest of the circulatory system. While the heart didn't beat or anything strange like that, I felt it trying to pull on my mana. The sensation was disconcerting. I let the spell chain for form in my hand and it was immediately sucked into it.

Then the heart beat. I yelped and dropped the organ on the grass where it beat for a few more seconds. Each pulse spat out a small wave of frost across the blades of grass before it quickly melted. Less intimidated by the development, I grabbed it again and sent mana into the heart. Sure enough, it beat with ice but I didn't feel the cold.

"You are going straight into the Infusion workshop!" I exclaimed. It was hard to not be excited about having an instant refrigerator on hand.

When I moved to cross the street again, my eyes focused on another group of figures walking in the distance. It was hard to discern what they were, but I didn't spend any further time looking them over. I activated the Comm in our implants. "We're going to have to cut the trip short. There are some more somethings incoming. Danny, help Sam load up. I'll keep an eye out. Stay on the other side of the road and we'll join up when we get to the intersection for the side road."

"Got it," Danny replied. "I've got one more tree to put out." Sam echoed her response and I saw him move around the makeshift wall I'd made. When Danny rushed over, she grabbed hold of the pack he handed her and they pushed south. The figures hadn't moved much further down the road, but I didn't want to risk watching them any longer. I turned and mirrored my friends' progress on the other side of the road.

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