I followed Okeria down to the floor of the trawler’s main room. The man wasn’t anywhere near as cautious as I would’ve liked him to be, and I couldn’t tell if that confidence was from his own strength or how deadly this signaleech was. He nearly skipped over to the closest conveyor belt that overflowed with oil, signaled for me to take a step back, then reared up and kicked it as hard as he could.

“What the fuck!?” I yelped as the trawler shook more than was normal. Oil sloughed off the conveyor in a thick black avalanche, and then it moved. I watched in horror as what I’d previously thought a conveyor belt contracted and writhed, spraying oil everywhere as the contractions spread through the belt. It wound around the room until everything was thrashing, then the belts above us joined in. Almost as if the conveyor system was alive.

The thought slipped in the back of my mind to try and analyze these conveyor belts, but the empty rocks falling from the upper belts halted that train of thought. I lept to the right to avoid one that fell from almost directly above me and raised my arms to block the spray of oil that came with it. Each and every droplet sparked like static electricity on contact with my armor, and a very terrifying notification that I’d lost five percent battery and wouldn’t be able to recover it while the signaleech lived plastered itself in the bottom right of my vision.

//CORE BEARING SPECIMEN: SLYK SIGNALEECH

//A predatory and cannibalistic slyk that is one of the largest of its kind. The signaleech’s oil drains signals from whatever it comes in contact with and uses it to increase its own massive reserves. Continued combat with this slyk will invoke complete and utter shutdown of armor, core, and flesh if it is not slain. Due to a massive increase in the amount of oil controlled by this slyk, it has outgrown its rocky shell and is by far the most vulnerable of all slyk variants.

Core Mastery: 33.

Hazard: 24.

Core: Bituminous Core, Signaleech Variation.

Core Function: Oil Manipulation, Biological Drain.

Battery: 107 Speed: 39 Power: 50 Resilience:27 Recovery: 85

Apparently my ask for analysis had gone through, and I really didn’t like what I saw. A battery of 107 and recovery of 85 meant that this thing was built to outlast anyone that dared to fight it, even if the only thing it could do was drain Okeria and I. I looked to the man with a question on my tongue, but that one died when I saw a shimmering blue barrier made up of pentagons just over his armor that had blocked all the oil that should’ve splattered on him.

“Maybe you could’ve warned me?” I muttered, trying unsuccessfully to wipe away the oil that clung to me. It seemed like it was there to stay, which meant I was operating at 95% for the rest of this fight. Or lower, if things took a turn for the worse.

“I did warn ya. Don’t get the oil on ya, and look what ya did, ya got oil on ya. Not my fault ya don’t have any barriers to protect ya.” Okeria pointed out. “But I guess I can loan ya one for this fight. Since I don’t want ya dying on me and all.”

He punctuated the end of his sentence by snapping his fingers to toss a small disk at me. It collided with my chest before I could react and put up a translucent barrier that looked exactly like the one Okeria had, and I felt my battery start to drain ever-so-slightly. So it wasn’t a function of his; just a doohickey he’d made that emulated one.

“A word of warning; the oil will still drain the power supply from that shield there, so try to avoid getting any of it on ya if possible. Oh, and be real careful from now on. The signaleech’s main body should be showing up any second now, and ya do not want ta get caught in its warpath.”

I nodded and watched as the conveyors began to retract, coiling out from the big main room and into the smaller doorways and arches that led away from us. They started to curl in on themselves, locking the oily appendages within a cylinder of rock that had holes and gaps where the belts and tracks of the conveyors would separate ever so slightly. My first thought was that it would be something like an octopus that burst through a wall or squeezed through the biggest doorway, but as the wait stretched on, I found my thoughts called back to the loneswarm.

It was a bug. A rock-bug, sure, but still a bug nonetheless. Nia had also used a bug. Maybe all of the Staura’s monsters were based on bugs and parasites compared to how a lot of humanity’s monsters were mammals and reptiles. Or maybe I was just assuming things, and the signaleech would end up being a combination flounder and octopus because they didn’t have ocean life on Sotrien. Whatever it ended up being, it would give me a damn huge boost to my nodes when I devoured its core.

Another rumble, followed by a spray of ink through the main doors that exploded into mist the moment it got near us. “Uh-oh; that is not good.” Okeria chuckled, stepping back and pressing his hand to my chest to get me to back up as well. “This one’s a little smarter than the others I’ve killed. Looks like we’ve got an ancient one on our hands.”

“It didn’t say anything about being ancient when I analyzed it.” I pointed out.

“You wouldn’t. ‘Ancient’ is what I call it when a monster like this has much higher stats and levels than the normal ones do.” Okeria explained. “I don’t think there’s a set term for it, so ya can call it whatever ya want. A boss, an elite, an anomaly; whatever. It all means the same thing, and I just messed up royally by not analyzing the signaleech for myself.”

I’d never quite experienced something like how the signaleech burst through the doorway and into the main room, but I definitely wasn’t going to forget what I saw for the rest of my life. It was as if a tidal wave of oil crashed through the other room and spilled through, carrying chunks of the previously intact doorway in its wake. It spilled onto the floor at breakneck speeds and threatened to soak my feet in the span of a few heartbeats, and the only thing that saved me was Okeria slamming something into my stomach that pushed me off the ground and sent me spiraling upwards until I was halfway up the back wall.

He joined me moments later without a drop of oil on him, but his shoulders were beyond tense. He shuddered as the oil below bubbled and squelched to a strangely hypnotizing rhythm, then pulled back towards the ruined doors as I caught a glimpse of eight crackling spheres of electricity in the darkness. I blinked and frowned, then took a better look at the wave that was being pulled back towards the signaleech.

It looked nothing like a web, but from all the debris that was now stuck in it and the creature that was dragging it in, it couldn’t be anything but a web. The massive spider-slyk in the other room quietly gathered its haul with its eight limbs that had previously been conveyor belts, stuffing the entirety of the oil into its face as its abdomen ballooned to absurd levels. It looked like a mosquito bloated with blood, except it was a rock-spider bloated with electric oil.

It was only slightly more frightening.

“That’s about a third bigger than any of the others I’ve killed.” Okeria mumbled to himself. He rapidly summoned and unsummoned gun barrels, shaking his head each time, until he summoned a sextet of them and an absolute ton of metal spheres to go along with them. “I need ya to distract it when it comes in ta find us. The membrane that stretches real thin when it’s bloated like that is one of its weak points, just like the oil inside of those conveyor-legs, and we’ll have ta take quite a few risks ta kill this thing.”

I blinked and stared at Okeria to check if he was fucking with me. Unfortunately, he seemed completely serious. “Are you kidding? I’ll die in, like, ten seconds. Maybe less.”

Okeria turned to me, his body shaking with anticipation. “I didn’t hear a no.”

“No.”

“Spoilsport.”

There was absolutely no way I could distract that spider-oil-electric-tidalwave-thing. Even with the buffs from my new weapon, helmet, and chestpiece, I’d still die far too easily. I did a quick calculation comparing my stats to the slyk’s, seeing how long it would take for me to drain away its speed and resilience with my nullblade’s function. It didn’t look good, but it also wasn’t terrible either.

“It’ll take me ten minutes to drain the slyk’s resilience down to nothing.” I relayed as the spider scuttled around in the massive room beyond. “But if I keep the function active for that long, I literally won’t be able to do anything else. So if you can keep it distracted for a while, it’ll be extra softened up when you go in for the kill.”

“No can do, unfortunately. The skittering thing down there won’t ignore either of us as long as we’re still breathing, but if you think you can soften it up while running, that’s good enough for me.” Okeria said. “Fair warning though, these things are scarily good at fighting off multiple of us at once. Almost impossible to fight one-on-one, too, which means I don’t get as many materials as I’d like.”

We were both drawn to the sound of rock cracking on the other side of the room. The signaleech was pressing itself to the straining wall that contained it, glowing electric eyes filled with malicious intent fixated on Okeria as it mushed and distorted itself just as much as it destroyed the rock around it. One leg shot out from underneath it with startling speed, followed by another, then another and another until half of the signaleech was scrabbling at the floor on our half of the door.

It was like the spider was turning itself inside out to fit through the door. Its body convulsed and spat oil as it squeezed through the opening that was much smaller than it was, its eyes somehow locked on us at all times no matter how contorted or distorted it became.

“That’s not terrifying at all.” I muttered, morphing my sword into a shield as I summoned it and activated //WIPE-AWAY for the first time. Nothing happened at first, which I’d expected since it said it worked in ten-second intervals, and the signaleech squelched and scrabbled forwards as I waited.

As I got my first notification of the signaleech being drained, the spider’s hatred was suddenly and completely focused on me. Even if I’d only taken a quarter point away from each of its stats.

“Prioritize staying alive first. If things go really bad, we get Keratily. That clear?” Okeria half-asked, half-ordered.

“Clear as can be.” I confirmed, falling into a defensive stance as the signaleech struggled with getting through the ruined door. “Whatever you’re going to do, I’m ready.”

Okeria nodded, then dropped to the ground and snapped three gun barrels to each of his forearms. Their indentations glowed bright blue for a split second, and then the battle truly began.