Mage Tank

Chapter 15: Delicious Chips With a Side of Suffering

The creature’s dozens of centipede-like under-legs scraped and clawed at my midsection. They weren’t able to pierce my skin, but felt like they would leave large welts behind when they were done. While they couldn’t break my skin on their own, several worked their way into the wounds along my gut from Hognay’s claws and began digging into the exposed flesh within. It was far more painful than the attack that had caused the wounds in the first place as the hand-length, hard-tipped appendages tried to pry open my stomach.

When the first of the bug-like legs dug into my stomach, the C’thon froze for a second from my stun ability, and I was able to reach around the tentacle and yank my daggers from the hilts I had attached to my belt and I began stabbing down on the feeler frantically. It was like stabbing hard rubber wrapped in steel and the daggers bounced off of the C’thon’s skin, barely leaving a scratch behind.

“Grotto!” I yelled. “If you’re going to do something this is the time!”

I squirmed in the tentacle’s grasp and looked for the others, even as my health bar ticked down in small chunks with each piercing stab.

Wounded: Bleeding 32

Health: 80/162

Wounded: Bleeding 34

Health: 78/162

Wounded: Bleeding 36

[Believe me when I say that the excruciating doom of my foes is one of my primary functions. Steel your delicate mortal mind and body, and prepare to witness my ire!]

Varrin was wrapped up by two other tentacles. His armor was covered in scores and scrapes. His pauldrons had been torn away and I could see blood running down his legs. Xim had climbed up onto the limbs constricting him and was pumping a series of heals into his neck, golden light flashing down her arm every second. As I watched, another arm of the C’thon whipped across the room and slammed into Xim, sending her hurtling into a wall twenty feet away.

I went back to stabbing at the tentacle holding me. If I could just get through the skin…

“When?!” I said. “When will we see your ire?!”

[Just… give me a second. It’s been awhile and my functions are not fully integrated yet.]

“We don’t have a second!”

I gave up one of the daggers and used the last of my mana to cast Oblivion Orb on the feeler. The monster didn’t even flinch at having a piece of the leg removed, but I used the same technique the C’thon was using on my gut and slammed the dagger down into the exposed muscle. It sank in this time, though only about a third of the way. I yanked the blade out and reared back, holding the grip in both hands with one on the back of the pommel, then drove it down with all the force I could muster. It went in up to the hilt and the monster let out a low bellow.

The limb bucked and swung me around and, for a second, I was reminded of a terrifying carnival ride I had gone on as a child that slung you around in a swing fifty feet off the ground. I had been afraid that the swing would break and sling me off, hurling me to an untimely demise. That hadn’t happened at the carnival, but it did happen with the C’thon.

The limb whipped out and threw me into a wall with even more force than it had done to Xim. My body hit the wall and I felt, as much as heard, a loud crack when the back of my skull smashed into the rock. Then, as though it had a will of its own, the ground came up and smashed me in the face. I assumed that I had fallen, but I’d left my vestibular senses back up on the wall.

My vision, which was already blurry from one of Hognay’s curses, swam. I rolled and tried to get back upright, but I had no concept of up or down, so I collapsed back to the ground from all fours. I took a deep breath, distantly aware of the alarming amount of blood running down my face from the back of my head, and fought to get back up onto my hands and knees. I looked up and squinted through double-vision, incapable of making anything out beyond a squirming blob that the C’thon had become. Sound slowly returned to me, which was worrying since I hadn’t noticed it disappear, and I could hear Varrin screaming along with the squeal of twisting metal.

[The power you wield is not your own, foul beast! Be smited by my radiance and know that I am the end!]

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My vision started to clear and I saw glyphs all along the body of the obelisk light up. Twisting blue veins began erupting all over the body of the C’thon, then burst open. Thin streams of vibrant blue-white energy began flooding back to the dark pillar. The beast let out a screech loud enough to make the floor vibrate and tossed Varrin to the ground. It spun back around to the obelisk and its dark, beady eyes shot over it. More and more of the liquid energy was pulled from its body and into the obelisk.

[Tremble in my wake, for I am the true ruler of this realm! Let thy flesh burn to ash and be consumed by me! Wait, wait, no… don’t do that! Stop!]

The C’thon wrapped all eight of its tentacles around the obelisk again, then started thrashing violently. Fissures spiderwebbed out along the base of the obelisk where it had already been damaged. Grotto spun and his runes flared as the recess holding him began to crumble.

[Insolence! Are your sins not yet grave enough? You defy even the will of the masters?!]

There was a loud snap and the base of the pillar broke. The C’thon heaved against the pillar and sent it smashing to the ground, casting up a cloud of dust and crushing piles of bones. Fragments and splinters shot through the air. The C’thon reached out with its tentacles toward Grotto, but he zipped up into the air and began darting away.

“Fuck,” I said. “Was that it Grotto? That was your big play?!”

[Your lack of faith is disturbing!] Grotto’s thoughts came in anxious bursts as he dodged another lashing feeler. [I have taken back some of the mana it stole and this impudent cur has been substantially weakened. I have already initiated phase two and the C’thon’s destruction of the obelisk will not interrupt it!]

“How long until phase two?!”

[Though I am possessed of great intellect and foresight I-,]Grotto wove between two more tentacles, [I cannot say for certain! A minute? Two maybe? No more than three!]

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Three minutes. There was no way. We’d barely been fighting for three minutes and Varrin was in a heap, Xim was struggling to get to her feet, and I was completely out of mana. I glanced down at my bars, hoping they didn’t look as bad as I felt.

Curse: Weakness 20

Curse: Blindness 10

Wounded: Bleeding 40

Poisoned: Toxicity 3

Health: 42/162

Stamina: 125/132

Mana: 0/45

So this is what being three-quarters dead felt like. If my health regen wasn’t so huge, I’d be dead in an hour from status effects even if the C’thon ignored me. As it was, one more big hit, maybe two, and I was toast.

Xim made her way to Varrin while the C’thon chased Grotto like a cat after a laser-pointer. I watched her put two more heals into the big guy, then she turned and faced the C’thon.

She was about to pull out her trump card, but I had no idea if it would be enough.

A beam of crimson light tore down from above Xim, smashing through the cloud of poison essences. The emerald whirlpool had already begun to lose cohesion as soon as the obelisk had tumbled, but now the essences crashed into one another within the cloud, creating a falling rain of shattered green crystal. The room began to fill with a thick new cloud of poison.

The light enveloped Xim, and her body began to grow. Fur sprouted from her, the same light red of her skin, and a single jagged black horn split her forehead and rose out of it. Her chainmail plinked and shot links around the room as it split when her torso grew too large for her clothes. Her padded robes tore and she emerged from the ruined armor as a hulking figure more than seven feet tall.

She was still wrapped in a darkly stained bodysuit that must have once been white and my brain struggled over whether to make a quip about the fact that it wasn’t a giant pair of purple shorts, or that her Saiyan armor didn’t look like it had much armor to it.

Xim launched at the C’thon. It was still distracted by Grotto, and she blindsided it with a demonic shoulder-tackle, then gouged its side with her wicked horn. The C’thon wrapped her up with its tentacles and body slammed her into the wall, which cracked and shed chunks of rock. Xim bit down on a feeler, taking out a huge mouthful of yanagidako, which is distinct from calamari since calamari is squid. Calamari has a better ring to it, but I have too much integrity to abandon honesty in the pursuit of similitude. Then again, that thing wasn’t really an octopus so I was already set up to fail.

Xim tore two of the tentacles away from her body and tossed them aside, then threw a series of punches at the C’thon’s giant head that landed with deep thunks. I got unsteadily to my feet and stumbled over to Varrin, moving along the edge of the room to keep as far from the fight as I could. Varrin was sitting up, and I helped him to move back to the wall where he sagged against it. His breathing was heavy and rasping.

“How long did she say that would last?” Varrin asked.

“A minute or so,” I said, looking down at his torso. The armor was crushed, constricting his chest and stomach. “We need to get that armor off of you.”

“Good luck. Might need a pry bar.” Something caught in his throat as he took in a ragged breath and he went into a shallow coughing fit, unable to take a deep breath. “Might be the only thing keeping me in one piece,” he said after recovering, then let out a groan.

There was a loud crash as the C’thon lifted Xim up and rammed her into the stone wall again, then released her and floated back. It turned its underside up towards her and let out a huge spray of black ink that hissed and sizzled where it landed. Some of Xim’s fur dissolved under the corrosive substance, but she curled her body and held up her arms to keep the spray off her face. When she recovered she looked even more pissed, letting out a deep roar and rushing at the C’thon again. Xim swung hard into its center while the C’thon whipped her with its tentacles. She bit away pieces of the beast’s limbs and sent the centipedal underlegs scattering to the ground as they raked against her skin. She gouged new wounds all over the monster with her horn as the beast shoved her back into the wall. Xim was doing work, but the C’thon looked a long way from finished.

I opened my inventory screen and pulled out a single ruby chip. I held it up and raised an eyebrow at Varrin.

“My attacks use stamina,” he said. “And I’m out. That won’t help me. Plus, it’d probably finish me off.”

“Guess it’ll be up to me then.”

“Go for it. Though I don’t know what you can do to that creature, even with full mana.”

[He can serve the grand function of keeping it busy until more effective assistance arrives.]

I jumped, realizing Grotto was hovering right next to my head.

“Fuck, man. You gotta signal your approach or something.”

[Why? I am an entity that thrives when hidden. It is my nature to be surreptitious.]

“What if we fled,” said Varrin. “We can regroup and heal up, then come at this thing again later. It may be easier now that Hognay is dead.”

I glanced over at the stealer of organs, various and sundry. He was still face down on the ground and it didn’t look like he was breathing.

[Doubtful. The C’thon’s body is highly mobile and flexible. It can fit through spaces much smaller than itself. You will be chased down and flogged until your death. Then it will feast upon your corpses.]

“That wouldn’t be good for getting your Delve back to working, eh?” I said.

[Oh, that is impossible now.]

“The fuck do you mean?”

[The obelisk has been destroyed and much of the power I was able to recover from the C’thon has been expended on summoning our aid. There is no longer an effective method to synthesize materials for its repair within this Delve.]

“Does that mean we failed?” said Varrin. “We’re already doomed?”

Grotto’s runes twinkled.

[Perhaps. What was the wording of your quest?]

I brought up the notification and read it aloud, “This Delve’s accumulation has been interrupted. Find and eliminate the cause of the disruption to clear the Delve.”

[It does not say that you must repair the Delve.]

“Shit,” I said, “that C’thon is the cause of the disruption, so as long as we ‘eliminate’ it we’re good.”

[Maybe. The system’s logic can sometimes be… opaque.]

“You’re in charge here, Grotto! You can’t tell us?”

[I manage the Delve itself, but I am as beholden to the system as you are.]

“We don’t have time for this,” said Varrin. “Eat that mana-chip if you’re going to. You’ll need a few seconds for it to take effect and Xim isn’t looking great.”

I scowled at Grotto, then tossed the ruby chip into my mouth, biting down on it as I turned to check on Xim’s fight. She was on the ground being throttled by tentacles. Her entire body was wrapped up in them, the creature using six legs to keep her pinned. As I watched, she struggled to press out of it with her constricted arms. Then, my mouth exploded.

After the first couple of chews, wherein I thought eating the chip might not be as bad as it had been hyped up to be, the sharp shards of the crystalline chip shot out in all directions within my mouth. The jagged edges dug into my tongue, my hard palate, my cheeks. They gave me the tonsillectomy I’d never had the pleasure of experiencing in my youth. I yelped and blood streamed out of my mouth as the needling fragments of the chip melted, then shot through my veins with an icy heat.

Pain radiated across my entire body and I could see an unfamiliar pattern of hair-thin veins pulse with blue-white light beneath my skin. I felt them crawl across my face and when the phenomenon made it to my eyes, my vision became a bright, blinding flash. My mana shot back up to full, then the pain got worse. I fell to my knees, struggling to stay aware of anything outside of my body. A new debuff appeared over my health, and my interface was the only thing I could still see clearly.

Mana Overload: Your mana matrix has been damaged. You are unable to regenerate mana for the next 24 hours. Any attempt at recovering mana will result in loss of health.

I gasped and looked back up. Varrin was staring at me with the kind of expression one makes when watching someone else eat shit while skateboarding.

I managed to get back to my feet, the adrenaline and endorphin hit from the internal blitzkrieg the only thing keeping me upright.

“Ok,” I said, slurring the words out of my ruined mouth, “let’s strategize a bit.”

As soon as I spoke, Xim’s transformation wore off.