Duskbound

Chapter 63

As many scorplings as he'd killed, Velik didn't have much trouble keeping up with the waves chasing him down. He was nimble enough to keep them from reaching him in groups larger than two or three, but there were some issues avoiding the champion elite. It still hadn't focused its attention on him, and it was still bleeding profusely from the single wound he'd dealt it. If that was enough to kill it, it'd be the easiest champion he'd fought so far.

He wasn't betting on it, though. So, while he dealt with the smaller scorplings that kept tearing their way up through rents in the floor, he was on the lookout for another good opening. The problem with that was that the damn thing never stopped moving, and it was so unpredictable that even approaching it was a good way to get swatted across the cavern again.

And then it did something so unexpected, Velik wasn't sure he'd actually seen what he thought he'd seen. The champion staggered drunkenly to the left, bringing its mouth in line with the corpse of one of the smaller scorplings seemingly through sheer coincidence. When it finished the pass, the body was gone.

Did it... Did it just eat that monster?

If so, he was dead certain that no good could come from that. Champions always had weird, unique skills, and consuming corpses sounded exactly like one of those. The only question in his mind was how many it needed to eat and what exactly it would do with them once it reached that number.

Not killing the scorplings wasn't really an option, however. If he didn't keep their numbers under control, they'd overwhelm him. That meant he needed to be more proactive in attacking the champion before it could do whatever it was it was building up to. Just standing back and letting it slowly bleed out was no longer an option.

Velik quickly slew the scorpling in front of him with a [Kinetic Charge] to split it down the center, then turned and sprinted toward the brood mother. It was scooping up another body in its mouth and swallowing it whole—Is this thing immune to their venom, too? I guess that makes sense, maybe?—just as he reached the monster.

Rather than try to dance his way through its scrambling legs and flailing pincers, Velik jumped for the monster's back. Normally, he wouldn't even have considered that idea, not with that stinger the size of a broad sword looming overhead, but he liked his odds of dodging that better than the rest of its limbs.

A new problem reared its head once he regained his balance. Scorplings were tough, even for him. He'd learned to find the weak spots in their exoskeletons and could rely on [Kinetic Charge] to muscle through if needed, but punching through their carapaces without a care wasn't an option. Against the giant champion version, even the weak spots were hard to do more than just scratch.

Less useful, but not useless entirely. New sacs were already ballooning up, six of them now, while the two scorplings clicked and hissed at him. Unwilling to take a chance at getting shot with a stream of acid, he summoned all four spears and used them to harry the monsters while he closed the distance.

This was a losing strategy for him, not because it didn't work, but because the brood mother had half a dozen more ready to go with even more of those strange sacs growing out of the joints in its armored back. Though he wasn't sure how the ability worked, exactly, he thought it must have something to do with the bodies it had already consumed. Even if it could create a new scorpling for each one it ate, it was amazing that it did the work so fast.

This thing has got to be cheating somehow.

It couldn't just recycle its minions forever. There had to be some sort of inefficiency in the process somewhere, but if it was small enough, that could leave Velik killing the same monsters a thousand times just to defeat this one ability. There had to be some way to kill the brood mother directly, but his spear wasn't cutting it. Even with its boost to legendary quality, he didn't have the physical needed to actually hurt the damn thing.

[Kinetic Charge] was finally ready to use again, but just before he could activate it, he saw something interesting. The flesh sacs containing the regrown scorplings would grow, then they'd tear themselves free. The sacs would fall off, and in the spot where they'd been attached to the champion, there was no armor plating. Finally, a weakness.

The next three minutes were among the most chaotic of Velik's life. He put every single point of his stats to work controlling not only his own body, but the four spears of [Phalanx] to keep the scorpling swarm from tearing him apart. It wasn't worth the effort to try to kill them, so he settled for knocking them back and pinning them down until he was past.

Scorplings came at him from every direction, some big, others small. Lines of acid shot through the air, the monsters uncaring if they hit each other. Two of the tiniest ones had oversized pincers that produced sharp blades of wind each time they snapped them at him. Those were dangerous enough that Velik had to kill them rather than try to ignore them.

Eventually, he made it through the wave of monsters to where new ones were growing. With a vicious kick, Velik separated one of the sacs from the brood mother, then he drove his spear straight down into the open hole in its back. The result was immediate.

The champion let out a chittering screech of what Velik assumed was pain and spun in place so fast that better than half the scorplings went flying. Velik himself only held his position by using the spear still anchored in the monster's body as a handhold.

Now we're getting somewhere! he thought with a savage grin.