Blood Shaper

Chapter Seventy-nine

“Okay, it isn’t much, but it’s the plan we’ve got. Everyone knows what to do?”

The other three nodded in response and gathered near the edge of the archway.

“Then get ready.”

“I kind of hate how this is the best plan we’ve got,” Leya muttered as they got ready.

“To sort of repeat what Claudia said earlier, welcome to the adventuring life. Complicated plans usually fall apart, so you make a simple one and aim to do your best.” Stephen pulled his helmet closed and hefted his shield.

Kay finished preparing his opener and glanced over to check the preparations of the other two magic users. Claudia had two bundles of heat above her hands, and Leya was staring at the ground beneath them. She looked up at him and nodded after a moment of staring.

“Ready.”

“Go!”

Stephen led the charge like normal, putting his heavy defenses between the team and the enemy. He vaulted off the ledge, and the others followed right behind.

As they landed, each of the four split their attention, focusing on their first tasks. Leya spun to face the entrance and slammed her hands into the rocky floor. The tunnel entrance that half the horde of Rittians had taken wobbled and rumbled, then sealed itself shut. Right before it closed, she saw the surprised and angry eyes of one of the robed Rittians with a rat monstrosity next to it.

Claudia’s job was to kill or disable the two giant rat things, but only one of them had actually remained in the chamber while they’d quickly discussed the plan, so she aimed for a secondary target. One of her two casts of Immolation, her strongest attack spell, shot out at one of the two Rittians holding up the green field while the other was aimed at its original target, the monster that was starting to turn towards them. The half-visible bundle of heat and magic looked like hot air coming off of a road on a summer day as it streaked across the room, right into one of the open, snarling mouths of the creature. The monster started to scratch and scramble at the ground as it prepared to charge when it suddenly froze. It twitched in place, once, twice, then it started frantically screeching and scratching at itself. It looked like it was trying to rip its own skin off. Between one second and the next, it burst into flame. Its entire body caught fire at the same moment with a wumph, and it collapsed to the ground. A few seconds later, it was a pile of ash.

The Rittian mage had a tiny moment to react, and they managed to flick their staff towards the oncoming attack. A flickering green shield appeared at the tip of their staff and deflected Claudia’s spell into the ground next to them. Thye had to dive out of the way as the intense heat given off by the attack melted the stone into glowing slag.

Scowling in annoyance at the mage’s survival, Claudia stuck to the plan. Immolation cost a big chunk of her mana, and casting two copies of it simultaneously was tiring. She didn’t have it in her at that exact moment to start a prolonged mage battle, so she started running towards where Stephen was engaging the Rittian giant. The two mages were someone else’s problem now. Specifically Kay and Leya’s.

At the same moment Leya and Claudia were sending out their spells, Kay was doing a little Blood Manipulation. Or a lot based on perspective. He landed on the ground and rolled forward to get back to his feet. The moment he could, he shoved both arms forward and dragged them towards each other. The two floating basketball-sized spheres of blood wobbled, then shot out pressurized streams at the clambering mass of rat people that were fighting each other to get through the small door into the next chamber. Combining the power of a water saw with the flexibility of a whip, Kay’s attack tore through the Rittians like a steel cable snapping loose from its anchor. Within a second, there was a sea of tainted blood and torn apart bodies littering the floor. Only a fraction of the horde managed to survive, and they single-mindedly crawled over the bodies of their comrades to make it into the room.

With the first step he needed to do complete, Kay turned his attention to the two mages. One of them was doing the hot foot dance away from Claudia’s spell, so he focused on the other one. Deciding to steal some of their tactics, Kay made an arm of blood and threw it at the mage. Wrapping the head of his halberd and turning it into a massive spear, he dragged the enemy towards it at high speeds. The Rittian mage managed to get their hand up and formed a shield of energy right in front of Kay’s weapon. They screamed nonsense as their magic slowly failed against Kay, adding more and more blood to drag them onto the spear blade. Eventually, the shield crumbled, and the blade slammed into the Rittian’s chest and out their back. Seeing the other mage start to prepare a spell of some kind, Kay spun the halberd around and flung the body at the mage as an impromptu projectile. With Leya at his side, he charged the mage.

Stephen’s job for the plan was the same job he had for basically every other plan. Get between his team and the biggest danger, then stay there. In this specific case, that meant running up to the completely unknown giant rat man and backhanding him in the face with his shield. The giant staggered back as his snout got slammed backward, and Stephen followed up by shoulder-checking him towards the nearby wall. Because of some of his life experiences and synergy with his long-time teammates Leaf and Claudia, Stephen was a very offensive defender. This meant that even though a majority of his class slots were filled with classes like Shield User and the like, he had a few slots left over for other interesting Classes. Like Forceful Boxer, a hard-to-get Brawler line Class with two interesting Skills.

A Knockback Blow from Stephen’s empty right hand released a pulse of force energy from Stephen’s fist that threw the giant off his feet and into the wall with enough force to crack the stone. There were lots of skills similar to Conserve Force, and even Classes that had the same Skill with slightly different variants of it, but Forceful Boxer’s version of it let Stephen gather some of the force from physical attacks against him and store it for use in his Knockback Blow. The more he stored, the more he had available to throw into a punch. He tended to save it for big moments, like making sure the unknown enemy didn’t have any time to react while the rest of Stephen’s team took care of the other threats. As the giant struggled to his feet, Claudia ran over and started peppering him with blasts of fire. Stephen grinned under his helmet. It felt like things were coming together.

That happened to be the wrong thing to think. Not that it was a jinx or anything, it was just that Stephen had failed to remember one thing when he was talking to Leya before they attacked. It was true that complicated plans fell apart much more easily than simple ones, but that didn’t mean that simple plans couldn’t fall apart.

Kay stagged and fell to his knees as a ghastly shriek echoed across the cavernous room. He tried to stay upright, but the feeling of worms of pain burrowing into his head intensified as the noise grew louder. He had just enough control of himself to look over and see the giant pulling himself all the way upright, with another open mouth stretching across his chest, screaming horrifically. The air around the giant seemed to stretch and distort as the scream forced its way into the team’s brains and rendered them unable to move. Flickers of light and movement danced their way across Kay’s vision even though there wasn’t anything there. For a moment, he thought he could feel something biting him, but the sensation disappeared in a flash.

The mouth closed, and the scream faded away, but Kay was still unable to move. He lay there, paralyzed as the giant Rittian stalked towards the doorway. He stopped and glanced down at the mage Kay and Leya had been fighting, the only other living creature left in the room. “No time for more sacrifices. ?×|??↓au? calls. Finish them.” With grunts of pain and strange sounds of flesh moving, the giant forced his way through the significantly smaller doorway.

Kay tried to force himself to move, to get up as the mage approached Leya and raised their staff overhead to smash down on her. He managed to get his fingers to twitch, but it was too late as the mage slammed their staff down on Leya. For whatever reason, whether it was exhaustion, injuries from their fight, or just bad aim, the staff landed across her shoulders instead of on her head. Leya grunted in pain, and Kay could see her struggling to move just like he was.

Right before the rat-man mage could bring down a second strike, a thrown shield slammed into them and knocked them over. Stephen suddenly rushed into view and grabbed the enemy around the neck. He squeezed tightly for a moment, then dropped the lifeless body to the ground.

Glancing down at the still-paralyzed bodies of his companions, Stephen shrugged when he saw the confusion in the eyes of Kay and Leya. “Defensive classes come with a lot of resistances, even against mental attacks. Anyway,” He grabbed his shield from the ground, “It should wear off you guys in a moment, then we need to go after-”

A loud cracking noise startled him out of what he’d been about to say, and he turned towards it. The entrance that Leya had sealed with a sheet of stone had a large crack running across it. From inside, there was a green glow that was slowly getting bigger.

“Shit.” Stephen rushed over and positioned himself in front of the entrance as a stone staff pushed its way through the crack, covered in green energy that shifted and swirled around the weapon. For a moment, it looked like it shaped itself into biting mouths before the staff was pulled back behind the wall. A moment later, it pushed its way through again. Through the growing number of holes, Stephen could see the mage that had gone with the other half of the horde, as well as the mouth monster that had accompanied it, and at least part of the mass of Rittians, all coming back to kill them.

“If you guys could get over the mental attack and get your asses over here pretty soon, I’d be really happy!” Stephen called back.

“Working on it!” Claudia pushed herself up and started staggering over. By the time she’d made it over, she was walking smoothly again, and she pushed her hand close to one of the holes before letting out a stream of fire into the hallway beyond.

Kay managed to shake off the paralysis a few moments before Leya did, and they both made their way over to the rest of the group. Kay looked at the growing number of enemies slowly breaking their way into the same room as the party, then back over his shoulder at the small door the giant had pushed through.

“You three hold them off. With a chokepoint like this and your skill sets, you should be fine. I’m going after the giant.”

“I agree that we can hold this spot for a long time,” Stephen looked back as he crushed the bones in one of the reaching rat-like hands with his free hand, “But is it a good idea for you to go alone?”

“No, but I don’t know if only two of us can hold this against that many enemies, and someone needs to go stop the awakening or whatever is happening before it’s too late.”

Claudia stopped the flamethrower-like spell she was channeling and scowled at Kay. “That’s fucking stupid. Leya, push these fuckers back with another wall of rock, then drop a pit right in front of the tunnel. That will slow them down long enough for us to deal with the giant.”

Kay glanced away and tried to hide his blush. “Yep. Much better plan. Do that.”

Claudia patted him on the shoulder while Leya did some quick restructuring of the local geography. “Your head’s in the right place, and you’re doing pretty good for your level of experience, but you still need some practice.”

“Thanks.” Kay shouldered his halberd and grabbed his sword since the doorway looked small enough to hinder him from using his longer weapon. “Let’s go make sure we stop whatever the fuck this thing is and make sure I have time to get that practice.”