Chapter: 535 – Giant Arachnid

Tala snapped into action as the instructions came from Masters Clevnis and Meridius.

Their quickly pieced together redoubt was to be a fall-back point, but it wasn’t designed to stand up to Paragon—let alone Reforged—level threats. Thus, the time had come to strike out.

Meallain was going to keep the hunting cat engaged. She essentially could not use her magic at all due to her soul damage, but just holding the power within herself granted increased reactions and strength in a similar way to how Refined were generally improved by that advancement. Though, in her case—and in the case of all arcanes of a similar level—it was more extreme, but only lasted as long as she held sufficient power. When she was assigned to engage the large cat, the implication was almost explicitly stated that should she die in the attempt, that wouldn’t be too much of an issue… so long as she gave warning before she did so.

Rane and Master Girt were tasked with the cyclops, along with the fire wielding Arcane Hunter.

Tala was assigned to the scorpion looking creature.

And finally, two Arcane Hunters were assigned to each of the last two Reforged level creatures, Master Meridius partnering with the ice user against the conglomeration of limbs.

The goal was for Tala and Rane’s Defender unit—without Master Girt or Mistress Vanga of course—to work with the Talons and Terry to remove the Paragon level threats and the few lessers that were still scattered around the battlefield. Then, assuming no one was in dire straits, they would assist the Paragon closest to victory. At that point, they would turn and continue as such until all the greatest threats had been dealt with as well.

It was a solid plan as things went. Simple, easy to understand, and something that should survive first contact with the enemy.

Even as Alat conveyed all of this, Tala had lunged from the battlements, closing quickly on her target, ignoring the creatures who were on par with her and below—advancement wise—that she shot over.

That would have been rather foolish, but as she moved, Talons began to come into being in units of ten fighters, shields overlapping, and spears already lancing out.

Two hundred Talons had been deemed ‘worthy’ of this clash, and that meant that all of a sudden, there were twenty groups of heavily armored, magically empowered soldiers, scything through the enemy ranks. Given that there were only twenty or so Paragon level threats and a scattering of lesser creatures left? The deployment was instantly effective.

The precision and execution of the Talons wasn’t perfect, and they started taking injuries rather quickly. None of the greater creatures died immediately, either, but with the lessers slain quickly by their blades—and by the efforts of the others leaving the walls—each group was able to begin surrounding their target, working to keep the given creature locked down until it could be finished off.

The Talons who were injured healed almost as quickly as Tala would have, even if their reserves of materials to pull from would be far more shallow. They simply hadn’t had the time to build up to her level of physical mass.

Terry flickered around between the various clashes, taking less than a second at any given one as he kept each of the conflicts from tipping against the Talons and Defenders.

But even taking note of those opening moments of the various clashes almost cost Tala, dearly.

The scorpion was oddly colored, most of its body being brown and of a wood-like texture, shot throughout with splintering cracks of violently glowing, hot pink.

The venom dripping from its upraised stinger was thick and white, reminding Tala of various remedies that she’d seen her father mix up oh so long ago.

Even as she came in, landing lightly some hundred feet in front of it, Tala could feel that something was off.

As she pulled her entire focus forward, fully onto the creature, she noticed the oddities a moment before it might have been too late.

The creature’s authority was rushing toward her at speeds akin to a charging bull, while to all other perceptions, it didn’t seem to be moving at all.

She dove to the side just in time to see the ground behind her explode with a heavy impact, the scorpion coming into her perception only after the hit landed.

Something like delayed perception? How can it affect me? I’m not under its authority.

-Light, maybe? It’s delaying the light and sound from exiting its authority, thus there is no contest with you.-

That… shouldn’t work like that? Shouldn’t what we see be dimmer if that is the case? Or completely black because no light is getting through?

-I’m not sure, but I don’t think now is the time to debate this.-

Tala grunted, throwing her aura and authority outward in the tangible form of iron spikes, driving them into the ground to give her sway over the battlefield more resilience.

The scorpion was upon her again, now fully visible as it pressed through her aura and authority, remaining outside their domain but not still able to use the same trick as before.

The beast let out a strange, high-pitched, screeching chitter that set Tala’s teeth on edge.

Flow flashed out, clashing as a glaive against one claw before rebounding and blocking the much closer second claw in the form of a sword.

Tala then had to move forward, putting herself uncomfortably close to the human-sized face of the giant arachnid to dodge under the stinger, which slammed into the ground behind her.

She trusted her armor a great deal, but something about this creature made her want to be extra careful. Similarly with her healing and that venom…

Face to face with her opponent—even though she had her full defensive gear on, so she was behind a faceplate—she saw malice and hostile intelligence behind the many eyes.

Its mandibles clacked at her, trying to take a bite as it rushed forward before she could strike at its face. Tala bent backward, slashing Flow as a void-knife across the undercarriage of the beast in six quick strokes before it had fully overrode her.

The brown, wood-like chitin parted easily under the blade, but wherever Flow hit the pink cracks, it skipped over the material to plunge in again at the other side.

The gashes, even when they went in the full length of the blade, didn’t draw blood, or ichor, or whatever this thing had inside it.

It did elicit another chittering shriek, and the creature struck backward in response with its stinger. Tala barely rolled out of the way in time.

The scorpion was directly over one of her iron spikes, so Tala decided to do exactly as some had suggested so many times.

Her breath weapon only really had to come from between her teeth in order to be enshrouded in her containment magics, those which originated in her throat and mouth.

She could open the portal anywhere within her sphere of influence.

So, she did.

A small portal opened directly beneath the massive arachnid. Highly compressed air laden with dissolution magic blasted upward, igniting the air instantly even as it drilled into the belly of the beast.

The scorpion actually made things worse for itself as its legs each gripped into the ground, keeping it from being thrown off and away and allowing the full force of the blast to carve into it.

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Tala let out a relieved chuckle as her three-fold perception saw the attack about to punch through the top side, the magics fully encompassing the scorpion as she stepped further back.

Then, she frowned.

It… It was solid the entire way through. There were no organs, no viscera, no blood or fluids of any kind. There was only the brown and pink interspersed through the entirety of the creature.

As the last of the dissolution was expelled and the portal closed, the magic finally wrapped all the way around even the tip of the tail, seeming to settle into the beast somehow.

The hot pink cracks pulsed with light and all the dissolution power was drained inward.

A moment later, the arachnid burst like a stepped-on sand castle.

Each brown section was suddenly its own scorpion, the sizes varying from barely larger than her pinkie nail all the way up to some the size of her head, the rest running the gamut in between.

They no longer held a Reforged level aura—though, collectively they easily still had that much weight to them—instead, each now felt like a Paragon level threat in its own right. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the venom coming from their stingers still felt just as powerful as before.

To her threefold sight, Tala could see an odd connection remaining between what seemed to be the poison sac of each in the tip of their tail, as if that one part of each one were still united with all the others and the original whole.

But that was mostly inconsequential, as Tala launched a full third of her siege orb pairs into the oncoming tide of horrid little monsters before opening another portal into her artificial lung on the head of a spike off to her right to begin drawing in air once more. She feared that she’d need it again all too soon.

Rust, rust. Rust! ALAT!!!

The rippling concussion of explosions from her siege orbs sent cold rippling outward in a wave, flash freezing the high grass all around them before the wind that the sudden temperature change caused shattered the hardened vegetation.