Chapter 386: An Old Friend That He Had No Time For (1/2)

The bottom of the gorge had a small river running through it, with a wide road running alongside it. The road was stone-paved and well maintained, its purpose being for bringing people into the fort from the surrounding towns and villages, along with their provisions and whatever herds the fort could manage to squeeze in. The bottom of the deep gorge was filled with shadow, which would make it a playground for Jason’s shadow jumping.

Descending through the air, Jason absently wondered how all the people and their belongings were brought into the fortress buried high into the gorge wall. It was a question to be put off for later as he landed amongst the monsters swarming over the ground below.

The bone feasters were thin monsters with dark purple flesh and toothy mouths for faces. Their signature power was to rapidly grow hard and sharp bones from their bodies in all manner of shapes. Currently, they were all but encased in bone armour to shield them from the wind blades being fired from the fortress above, although the blades had, at Jason’s request, been stopped. He didn’t want them chasing after him as he descended.

Jason had completely restrained his aura as he dropped, so as to avoid the attention of the monsters. They had neither eyes nor ears, so he knew their supernatural senses would be preternaturally sharp. He let gravity carry him down rapidly until his cloak slowed his fall as he neared the ground. A pair of Gordon’s eye spheres manifested and started orbiting around him.

As Jason alighted on the road, the horde of monsters all turned on him. Jason conjured his dagger as he unleashed his aura, taking the bone feasters aback. In the brief moment they paused, he sprang into action, his blade quickly finding a gap in the heavy bone armour of the closest monster.

A dagger worked well against the monsters and their bone armour, compared to a spear or sword. So long as he was willing to move close to the monsters, the short blade was ideal for finding the small gaps in the armour. Unless the monsters wanted to render themselves immobile, that exposure around the joints was a necessary vulnerability.

Jason wasn’t inflicting major wounds, but that had never been his style. As much as he might like to land powerful, fight-defining blows, he had always been the tortoise and not the hare. He chanted quick spells even as his special attacks bit in, leaving behind a monster suffering little damage but marked for doom.

There was no shortage of additional targets as the monsters moved in on Jason like the rising tide. He sent an orb at the first bone feaster he had dosed with afflictions, only for it to be stopped dead by the armour. Apparently the bones the monsters grew had significant magical properties to go with the physical resilience, which wasn’t especially surprising. The monsters weren’t physically powerful for silver-rank, making up for it with numbers and the quality of their abilities.

He tried directing the orb to a gap in the monster’s armour, but it was clearly aware of the threat. Bone filled in the joints as the orb sought a way in, rendering the monster safe, if immobile. The orb foiled, Jason brought it back to his side. As an exposed island with a hurricane of monsters bearing down, he had little time for experimentation.

The numbers weren’t an immediate problem for Jason because of the armour the monsters were encased in. Their only surpassing physical attribute was speed, which the heavy shells forced them to give up. Jason didn’t let himself be pinned down and the shadowy gorge allowed him to teleport essentially at will. He popped up in one spot then another, laying on afflictions and leaving before getting swamped.

He tried another approach as he was attacking another monster. He called out Gordon, who reclaimed his orbs from Jason as he manifested in the air over Jason's head, bringing four more orbs with him.

“Drill a hole,” Jason directed.

Orange beams blasted from all six orbs. The resonating-force of the beams was a specific form of damage, especially effective against rigid objects. It was prized for its ability to break through armour and the beams swiftly burrowed through the bone shell of one of the monsters. Gordon immediately slipped an orb through the rent in the armour before the monster had a chance to seal it off.

While Gordon was digging through monster armour, the monsters started throwing ranged attacks his way, all made from bone. Darts, needle clusters and arrows shot from compound bows with purple sinewy strings all came his way. Despite Gordon’s intangible nature, the magical bone projectiles were able to harm his ephemeral body.

As soon as he had shoved an orb through one monster's armour, Gordon turned the remaining five spheres into shields against the hailstorm of attacks. Much like the monsters and their bone shells, he took a turtling approach.

Affliction-spreading butterflies spread out from the affected monster, triggering a wave of change in the behaviour of the bone feasters. Sensing the threat, they started casting off their heavy shells, leaving behind partial armour that was not as protective but freed up their movement. It would expose them to the butterflies but they didn’t give the conjured blue and orange creatures the chance to reach them. Their speed restored, the monster backed away from their afflicted fellow, firing out needle clusters and heavy spears.

The needles struck down the butterflies before they could reach any more of the bone feasters. That triggered explosions as the butterflies were destroyed, but the disruptive-force damage was most effective against magical protections and did little to the monsters. As for the spears, they slammed into the bone harvester spreading butterflies. It had cast off its armour and stood still, accepting the attacks. They had turned on one of their own to shut off the production of butterflies, with the monster making no attempt to avoid the spears that left it riddled and dead.

Jason guessed that the bone feasters' ability to sense magic was their strongest sense, clearly identifying that Gordon and his powers were the biggest threat to their numerical superiority. They were also smart, decisive and committed to the welfare of the group as a whole, the afflicted monster accepting its demise without hesitation.

Jason saw that the monsters would be too wary to allow the butterflies to be effective. He could serve as a distraction, but with so many of the monsters, distracting some of them wasn’t enough to risk subjecting Gordon to a storm of attacks.

Jason could have made another attempt at using the butterflies but he had other options. He wasn’t averse to doing things the long way, which had been his lot ever since iron-rank. He started by spraying leeches like a fire hose, scattering them over the monsters. Colin had no trouble crawling past the armour to find flesh to bite into now that their armour was less comprehensive.

The monsters plucked leeches off themselves and crushed them but Colin used the life force he was draining from them to self-replicate. At silver-rank, the leech swarm familiar could replenish himself as fast as the bone feasters could destroy individual leeches, using the monster’s own vitality as the fuel. In addition, for every leech they crushed, they suffered an instance of the sin affliction from Jason’s aura. This made the necrotic poison Colin inflicted all the worse.

The battle entered a new phase as Jason was pushed harder by the monsters. Their less comprehensive armour coverage made landing hits on the move easier but they were no longer awkward and sluggish. Where he had been dancing around them with near-impunity, they were now faster and more dangerous. They reacted to his attacks not just with evasion but retaliation, quickly growing weapons made of bone and purple sinew. They had all manner of weapons, from swords, spears and axes to brutal bladed whips. Ranged weapons were of little use when Jason was always surrounded.

Jason’s attributes were into the mid-range of silver-rank. That made him stronger than the monsters, whose physical power was at the bottom of what could be expected from a silver-rank monster. This was not unusual for monsters that spawned in such large numbers. Their reflexes, however, were a match for Jason’s or better. Their skills were mundane and lacking technique, but those reflexes and overwhelming numbers quickly put Jason under pressure. If not for his ability to teleport around the shadowy gorge, he would have been swiftly ploughed under.

The battle continued at length, Jason a fleeting shadow, dancing through the monsters as he drizzled afflictions amongst them. Colin continued to crawl through the bone feasters, moving from one to the next. They kept futilely yanking off leeches to little effect, although their numbers were so great that it was little help to Jason in terms of a distraction.

While Jason was swift, unpredictable and evasive, the fight was anything but one-sided. For all his powers and skills made him devilishly elusive, avoiding every attack in a sea of monsters was trying to swim without getting wet. The sheer number of monsters carpeting the gorge was an inescapable reality.