Chapter 57

With the cacophony of noise blasting out from all the fighters yelling and banging their weapons together, Daniel had been certain that the spider would respond. Over a minute passed and there was no reaction.

Alex glanced at him quizzically at him. “I don’t think this is working.”

Animal Sense.

His senses spread out in a micro pulse targeting where he knew the monster was. It was less than fifty metres from them and completely ignoring the commotion that they were generating. The massive spider had not even shifted a foot. “Yeah, not taking the bait. We’ll have to send someone.”

“Me,” a high pitched voiced called out as Janice walked forward.

He startled slightly having failed to predict her presence. He was slipping. Janice had not been there when fighting the plant and must have joined them since. It was not a detail that he should have overlooked especially as when he glanced around their numbers had increased to include all the available combatants, quasi or not.

Dave quickly got between her and the broken escalator stairs that would take her down to the bottom level. “Rc.”

“I’m doing it Dad.”

“Rc.”

Janice shrugged violently to dislodge Dave’s hand and kept walking, and Daniel gently moved in front of her and went to his knee. “Your dad said no.”

“Who else can go without risking themselves?”

“You might not be safe either.”

“I will be.” Her facial expression did everything but stick out a tongue to express her derision at his suggestion. “I still have my daily teleport available. I’m safe.”

“This thing will hit harder than anything we’ve fought before. It might be too fast for the child teleport.” Daniel obviously couldn’t check the details, but vague memories were sometimes sufficient for a bluff at least and people had been hurt before the teleport functioned. “Remember, it’s fallible.”

“I want—”

“Rc.” Dave stepped forward and grabbed her arm. It was the first time they had seen him be so assertive

“I’ll go.” Daniel said.

“Rc.”

“With my speed I’m the most likely to–”

“Rc.”

“You’re not going Dave.”

“Raraf.”

“One of us needs to.”

Dave pointed at one of the zombie types.

The one that he had identified was male, desiccated and looked almost dead. There was a weird colouring on its face and half of its hair had fallen out in clumps. Add some dirt, tattered clothes and have him mumble the word brains…

Daniel shuddered. Then he put on his best pretence of a neutral expression. The zombie frowned in response, which didn’t surprise Daniel in the least. He had never been a great actor.

“Speed?” Daniel asked.

“Yooic.” The strange looking mutated human answered.

“Are you willing to draw its attention?”

“His name’s Mitch,” Rosica told them.

Mitch stepped forward and nodded.

“Okay, Mitch.” Daniel forced himself to place a hand comforting on the zombie’s shoulder. There was a shirt over him, but the skin still felt wrong under his hand, bumpy. “The spider is about fifty metres that way. It feels like it’ll be on the roof. Don’t take any risks if we can’t clear this today. I’ll work out a way to trap it overnight so we can kill it.”

Mitch nodded and then walked down the stairs.

He moved cautiously with his head on the shrivel and soon disappeared in the direction that Daniel had pointed him.

A short time later, they all heard that very distinctive roar that they had grown to expect from fighting zombies.

Then Mitch appeared, running toward the stairs with a massive huntsman following him.

It was a losing sprint, and the zombie knew it. Instead of going up the stairs to reach the safety of their fighters he blurred faster to open up a few more metres and ducked into the space behind the escalators.

That wasn’t the plan.

“Make Noise,” Alex screamed. “Everyone, distract it.”

“Ugly dumb spider,” Daniel shouted with the rest of them.

The spider deviated toward them and slowed down to assess the new threat. For the first time, they got a good look at what Mitch had been running from. It’s central body was the size of a king sized bed with legs that each reached over four metres out on either size. It didn’t have an elephant’s mass, but it was taller than one and three times its width. A normal Australian house huntsman, but four hundred times large. Multiple scary eyes, fur where each strand was like a flexible sharpened spear.

Then he felt its strength and speed.

It probably wasn’t as powerful as the plant or the super, but it was definitely more deadly than the octopod.

“It can shoot its hairs as spears.” Tamara yelled out.

“Tanks forward to cover,” Alex ordered instantly. The tanks, who had been standing behind the ranged units to give them unimpeded sightlines rapidly moved to stand guard. It was a technically a single level but because it was the atrium of the hotel, it was closer two.

The spider, despite being as large as it was stood up in its classic threat posture, that often signified fear rather than aggression. Two legs in the air body tilted up so that the human child sized fangs were visible. The front legs went all the way from the ground floor to the roof above their heads. It was huge. The stance filled the two story open space and then more.

“Fire,” Alex screamed.

A host of spells were unleashed, and the monster recoiled for a moment, and then its entire body shivered.

“In–”

There was a boom. Most of the tanks glowed as they used their powers and all but two stumbled backwards.

There was a scream to the left and when he glanced, one of Rosica’s mutated humans had fallen clutching at a shoulder that was missing a chunk of flesh.

Then Daniel looked down at the ground. Directly in front of him were the remnants of what used to be six hairs. They had broken against the juggernaut shield. Magic was the only explanation for how they had been propelled that fast. To his perception they had been like bullets. Across the line of defensive specialists, the same story repeated itself. All of them had blocked anywhere from three to seven of super fast spears. In a daze, he stared above and noticed a hole blown through the roof, both the plaster and the concrete so he could see into the floor above them.

This was not good.

There was a scream to his right and when he checked, one of the melee fights on the flank had been blown backwards when the spider had used one if its front legs to hit him.

Daniel was pretty confident that they should be retreating.

Alex pushed himself to his feet. “Range, Burn it down, Tanks up and defend. Melee, hold.” Alex stumbled forward to follow his own commands and get ready to deflect the next assault.

As far as this fight was considered, Daniel knew he was classified to be part of the melee. While he really wanted to get into the fight, the way a single blow of the spider’s legs had forced back an entrenched tank meant Daniel would be in trouble if he got hit and unless he was burning his speed ability, the monster was significantly faster than him. And it only functioned for a so long before it would leave him as a liability. Possibly no longer than a single dodge and counterattack, so if he acted he would need to make sure it was decisive.

A variety of spells and arrows rained down upon it. Some were resisted by the spider’s thick hair. Those that hit the more vulnerable eyes did devastating damage, and he saw several of them pop. Daniel paced the battle by counting Ingrid’s booming arrows. On her eighth arrow, Daniel saw the similar rippling effects in the monster’s hairs. It was just like they had behaved at the start of fights.

“Defensive formation!”

He knew what Alex’s order was telling them to do. And Daniel did as instructed, moving to get behind their tanks and then leant his upper body into the tank to help brace him.

Boom!

It was like the juggernaut had been hit by a battering ram. The force transferred into Daniel and he felt his feet slipping but three other people who had also sought shelter behind the juggernaut helped keep the tank standing. Without them, Daniel knew both he and the tank would have ended up being pushed all the way across to the far wall.

“Ranged unleash, target torso.” Alex yelled from the ground. “Melee, harass.”

That was the instruction that Daniel was waiting for, and he immediately sprinted over toward the closest leg. He was not the only one.

The leg struck, and a tank slid back about three metres, then it attempted to hit a darkness mage who had been hiding behind the man who had been knocked aside but a but a different tank intercepted the strike. This one glowed orange and was able to hold his ground through his metal shield, which had presumably been healed by one of Daniel’s blacksmiths. A soccer ball size depression was left in the metal after the blow.

Then Daniel was there. The spider must have seen him in front of the others with one of its few remaining eyes because it actively targeted him.

The leg that was sending everyone flying lashed out at him.

Speed.

It slowed from incredibly fast to moving only slightly faster than a bicycle. It brought him sufficient time to step away and then the leg swished past him and he felt the hairs on the leg slide past. There was a sting of pain.

Daniel wished he had a spear instead of a club, but he had his growth magic. Almost faster than thought the shape of the weapon changed. The leg flashed past, but for a moment when at full extensions it slowed to a halt. The second joint on the leg was going to come to a halt right in front of him.

It was a weakness to exploit.

Strength.

The sharpened tip of his club slammed home and knowing what was about to happen he used his magic for two purposes. The first was to bond the weapon to his hands with some tight vines so he wouldn’t lose it, and the second was to send the wood at the tip of his weapon arcing out in all directions.

Then the spider withdrew its leg, fast.

Daniel was ripped off his feet and flew through the air. His arms stuck to the weapon screamed in pain as the power transferred from the leg to his elbow and shoulder turned him into little more than a pin ball as it waved its massive limb side to side. It felt like his arms were about to pop out.

The spider seemed to register his presence and flicked its leg faster. Daniel had never experienced those levels of gee force before.

He almost blanked out as blood rushed from his head.

It was too much.

With a panicked application of will, he forced the vines gripping his hands, wrist and elbow to all release.

Then he was airborne and crashed through the glass window of a seafood restaurant.

With a groan, he stood and looked at what had happened. The bottom two segments of the leg he had stuck were ruined.

The hairs on the spider’s front started waving. Daniel ducked down out of direct line and then watched the tank line. He had been thrown so that if he approached the spider he would come in almost from its back while the rest of the team stood mostly right in front of it. The entire line of shield users stumbled backwards and Daniel knew he was lucky that he had been out of the sight line of the spider because if had of launched one of those at him without a tank to help him he would have been in trouble.

“Press,” Alex yelled.

Daniel looked at his positioning. He was well away from the line and if ran forward and looked over the railing, he would see the spider directly below him. He was nearly at full mana and had two options: dive on top of the spider weaponless or zap it like the bug it was.

Almost on instinct, he dashed forward. As he did so, he focused on his lightning. His consciousness sinking into that offshoot of his core, that bump coming out of his initially perfect core. This was the computational engine that the lightning bugs had utilised so effectively yet he had not tapped its full power. Ivey’s interface, or the remnants within him calculated he had only mastered less than a third of the power.

He was a missing a trick, and the spider was huge. For this next strike, he needed that spell to hit with everything.

He knew the ability to summon the power and then direct it.

What twist was eluding him?

Why a third? Or less?

The power came from inside him, concentrated, and then shot forward. There were no losses in that process. It was efficient for what it was. But he was missing power.

That is what his innate scan had told him, and Daniel was inclined to trust it, as its skill predictions had come true.

Time was not slowed but his mind chewed on the problem. The bugs had glowed before they fired.

He didn’t.

Lightning in real life built up.

He didn’t.

Then there was what he remembered from science. It was not the clouds shooting energy down the electrons went in both directions or something like that. Static would build up on the ground before shooting up into the sky. It was why people’s hair would start rising before an electric strike.

It was not an instant problem. Even those lightning machines took a while to build charge.

Daniel was thinking about this as he approached the balcony. His guess was that he should be able to build up a charge.

So do it!

The thought spurred him on, and that was exactly what he attempted. He tried to trigger his core with an intent of gathering electricity in order to launch a lightning bolt. The response was different from his normal spell. Slightly different spots within the core lit up versus what usually happened. The magic ran along divergent pathways to the other times. He could feel energy building up around him as he ran a cloud of it. The hairs on his head were lifting upwards and the fur on his back. The energy was both ticklish and explosive.

The calculations kept occurring, and his brain continued to gnaw on the obstacle. Grinding the impossible problem down via repetition. In nature, it was the clouds and the ground. Not just him. Electricity was a transfer between two spots. Currently, he was only focusing on one side.

Animal sense.

The skill pulsed and granted him the exact position of the spider, and then the offshoot in his head lit up in an additional spot.

The entire of body of the spider was clear to his sight. Unfortunately, he lacked time to be fancy with his application, but the theory was easy. He required a circuit that ended on the ground. Lightning strikes in nature only hurt when they went through a person, and so that’s what he needed. It’s abdomen touched the ground, and was the point where lightning would need to be grounded.

And the brain had to be fried.

That’s where the electricity from him would hit.

Then, for multiple purpose it was better to go through rather than around. Though Daniel’s calculation engine told him he didn’t need to worry about directing that bit, as the insides of the spider were more conductive than the outside.

Calculations kept running.

Mana affected the surrounding air, and it almost sizzled but the same thing happened with the spider.

It turned to towards him somehow sensing the threat he represented.

Dimly, Daniel noticed those shooting hairs wiggling like they did preceding a volley.

That was the least of his concerns. Fifty percent of his mana had already pooled out of him, and both he and the spider crackled with suppressed power.

From his fingertips, to its mandibles, to its brain, then internal organs and then out the abdomen.

He reached the railing and looked down.

It was all true.

The spider had turned to face him. The hair spears were preparing to fire and electricity crackled over its skin ready to be explosively discharged. When he studied at his hand, was already reaching out toward the spider like in supplication. There was so much energy that the hand shone. It was beyond anything he had sensed from anyone or anything outside of when Ivey had killed the super.

The crackling drowned out all the noise, and it was unstable.

There was a pathway and there was no way he could stop the power from unleashing or he could do was direct it slightly.

He finished thrusting out his hand.

BOOM!

The concussive noise shattered the glass that was part of the railing and sent him flying backward to crash through a fresh set of windows of the fish restaurant.

His ears were ringing.

His mana was at zero, but he did not move. He could feel something was wrong.

A dull ache deep inside him.

Daniel did not understand what was happening. Had the lightning burnt something out?

Priscilla was there, and he felt her fear and terror.

The need for a mind connection.

The….

Suddenly, he could see through her eyes. He was lying on top of a broken table, but that was not the important detail.

It was his chest.

A glass shard jutted out of it.

Right in the middle of the chest.

There were other injuries, but they were not the important one.

Glass covered in blood.

Priscilla looked away and Finigan barking wildly to encourage Cindy to run faster toward him.

Her face when she got close was priceless.

Shock, horror, fear and determination. She seemed to understand what to do. Priscilla blurred away and then he had the vision of Tamara grabbing a different healer and running toward him.

Spider, he thought.

He could feel Priscilla blur and then she looked over the edge and there was a spider leg curled up under it and smoking. In that configuration, it was only the size of a mini-bus. Lights were gathering around it, not human generated but system ones.

That was going to be another chest.

Thank god it was dead.

They had killed it.

He was lying on the ground, but the world was swaying and he couldn’t hear anything. He opened his eyes and looked at his hand. It was covered in red.

Someone snatched it down and pinned it to the ground.

Cindy was screaming at him.

Daniel smiled at her. The tower was cleared.

At least he had achieved that much.

The world went black.