Chapter 217 - Not Your Average Monster

Zeke studied the monstrous creature in the cavern before him. The cavern itself was enormous, made of the same porous rock as the rest of the cave system, but in the center was a veritable mountain. Around the peak, which was probably three- or four-hundred feet from the cavern’s floor, curled a massive, sinuous monster. When Zeke used [Inspect], he saw:

Wyrm Queen – Level 25 (M)

That made it his target. But even from such a distance, the thing loomed, looking like a combination of a snake and a dragon, with a little bit of dinosaur mixed in. If it was less than a hundred yards long, Zeke would have been surprised, but given how it had coiled itself around the peak, it was difficult to ascertain its true size. From its sinuous body sprouted a multitude of comparatively dainty legs, and a spine vivid orange spine ran along its back, becoming a three-pronged crest when it reached its head. Otherwise, the monster bore glistening black scales that shimmered with fiery energy.

Its head was the size of a car, with orange, reptilian eyes at least four- or five-feet across. Its elongated snout held wickedly curved fangs that dripped with the same fiery energy that danced along its scales. In short, it looked like the Chinese interpretations of a dragon, though without wings – and far more imposing than any fantastical depiction could ever be. It was one thing to fight a forty-foot wurm. It was something else entirely to go up against something the length of a football field.

Zeke didn’t have a choice, did he?

Of course he did. He could have turned around and gone back. He could have forgotten about the quest and moved on with his other plan to find a way up to the next plane. He didn’t even have to tell his companions that he didn’t want to fight. He could just lie and say that he couldn’t find the wyrm.

But that wasn’t Zeke’s style, and he didn’t think he could live with himself if he abandoned the opportunity before him. It was just another monster, wasn’t it? Sure, it was stronger. Probably smarter, too. And fighting it wasn’t going to be easy. But he’d defeated powerful creatures in the past, even another monarch-tier monster, just like the wyrm.

No – he needed to do it, as much because it was in his nature to challenge the impossible as it was because he wanted the reward for the quest.

Then, Zeke noticed movement in the cavern before him, and he saw creatures crawling out of every crevice in the porous rock. Upon looking at one, he didn’t need [Inspect] to tell him what they were. Still, he used it on the closest one anyway.

Wyrm Hatchling – Level 25 (E)

That sent a shiver up Zeke’s spine. Even the hatchlings were elite-tier monsters. What, then, did that say about the queen? Zeke was well aware that all monsters in a particular grade were far from equal. The fireback turtle he’d killed was barely stronger than a boss-tier creature – which was something he instinctively knew couldn’t be applied to the matriarch still coiled around the cavern’s mountainous peak. And the same was probably true of her progeny.

There were hundreds of the things, ranging from ten to twenty feet in length, slithering and crawling across the uneven ground, and each one glimmered with that same fiery glow, the very air around them distorted by the waves of heat wafting off of their black scales. And their eyes, each and every one, were trained on the intruder in their midst.

Flee, little man, came a voice in Zeke’s head. My children do not often feast on flesh, but I will not deny them the opportunity that presents itself so willingly.

It was clearly the wyrm queen speaking to him telepathically as had the thunderbirds spoken to Abby, what felt like a lifetime ago. Suddenly, a gout of liquid flame shout out from the wyrm queen’s mouth. If Zeke hadn’t known she had spoken to him before, he did after that display. But he wasn’t dissuaded. Fire couldn’t hurt him.

Probably.

Defiantly, he stepped forward, and the nearest wyrm hatchlings reared back like snakes on the verge of a strike, and let out a series of hisses. Zeke ignored them. Originally, the plan had been to throw a few enchanted rocks at the wyrm queen and lead her back out of the cave to the traps he’d laid. But from so far away, Zeke didn’t know if he could accurately hit his target. So, he chose the next best option.

He pounced, his mace singing through the air before it collided with the nearest hatchling. Its body was long, but light, so the force of the blow sent it sprawling against a rise in the porous ground a few dozen feet away. Even as the queen bellowed in rage, Zeke didn’t let up, and with another leap, brought Voromir down on the monster’s head. Still, despite the force of Zeke’s blow, which would have shattered a lesser creature’s skull, it was only dazed. Zeke solved that problem four attacks later, when the durability of its skull was finally exhausted. It shattered with the wet sound of a smashed melon.

Then, the other wyrm hatchlings descended upon him, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. Zeke activated his various skills, including [Heart of the Berserker]. Without it, there was no way he’d be able to stand up to such a deluge of black-scaled bodies. With it, though, his every attack sent a hatchling flying away. Few sustained lethal damage – their scales were too hard, and their bodies far too durable – but it served to keep him from being buried under scaly flesh.

All the while, the queen roared, sending telepathic threats his way. Zeke ignored them as he stood his ground, his feet planted and his body moving in well-learned rhythm. Eventually, the second wyrm hatchling died. Then the third. The fourth. A dozen. But still, they came.

Zeke wasn’t unharmed. In fact, as time went on, his body went through a cycle of damage and repair that would have astounded most adventurers. One second, his bones would shatter, and the next, they would be rebuilt via the vital energy he stole with every attack. On and on it went as Zeke lost himself to the flow of combat.

In a lot of ways, he was more comfortable in battle than he was in any other situation. Even baseball, the memories of which had become progressively hazier as his time in the Radiant Isles wore on, was a poor comparison to the way he felt while engaged in a fight for his life. There was just something about it teetering on that thin barrier between life and death that made Zeke feel like he’d found his one, true purpose.

In the end, though he knew that one mistake would spell his doom and the wyrm hatchlings would rip him to pieces, the struggle came with a surge of happiness that didn’t abate, so long as he remained the one-against-many, the lone figure standing against a tide of enemies. It was who he was always meant to be.

With each wyrm hatchling’s death, the furor of the queen’s telepathic tirade climbed until her very words sent spikes of agony through Zeke’s mind. With the help the pain tolerance that had come with his racial transformation, he ignored it and kept swinging. It wasn’t until, hours – maybe even days, for all Zeke knew – later, when all but a handful of the beasts were broken on the ground, each one dead or dying, that the queen uncoiled herself from her underground mountain.

It happened in a flash, and suddenly, there was an enormous head – with equally huge fangs – streaking at him. He grabbed the nearest remaining wyrm hatchling by its conveniently hand-sized fangs, and with all his strength, heaved the comparatively smaller creature at its mother’s face. The queen narrowly avoided swallowing her own child, and Zeke used that opportunity to dart away.

Chancing a glance backward once he reached the tunnel that would lead him to the surface, Zeke only saw a jet of liquid flame. A moment later, even through his fire resistance, and with his well-developed pain tolerance in full effect, Zeke burned.

He let out a scream as he felt himself cooking in his armor, and he tumbled to the ground. Miraculously, Zeke had the presence of mind to turn his tumble into a roll that he hoped would serve the dual purposes of smothering the flames as well as keeping him moving forward. The latter worked out just fine, but his efforts did nothing to ease the fires clinging to his body.

Without his armor, Zeke knew he would have been melted down to a puddle, his resistances be damned. However, because the armor’s durability – and the protection it offered – had continuously climbed during his fight against the wyrm hatchlings, it was just enough to keep him from succumbing. So, once he got his mind around the agony coursing through him, Zeke regained his wits enough to continue his flight.

It was just in time, too. The wyrm followed right on his heels, moving with sinuous grace and speed that belied its huge frame. In any other situation, Zeke might’ve called it beautiful. But when his body was on fire, and with the threat of an agonizing death snapping at his heels, he had no time to think of anything except putting one foot in front of the other as he sprinted through the tunnels.

After a few short minutes, the fire died down, leaving his armor smoking and his body blistered and burnt, but the worst of the pain abated. Fortunately, the tunnels were narrow enough that they slowed the wyrm down. She was still coming – Zeke’s massacre of her children had seen to that – but, in a few of the tunnel’s narrowest passages, she had to smash her way through solid rock to do so. Given the sounds of rocks being crushed echoing through the caverns, Zeke supposed that she was more than up to the task.

He was so preoccupied with the wyrm’s pursuit that he ran right into a wurm, this one only an elite-tier monster. The boss-tier creature he’d killed earlier was roughly the size of a bus, but this one was more comparable to a passenger van. And it wasn’t nearly as durable. Once Zeke recovered from his surprise, Zeke ripped into it without hesitation, killing it in the space of only a minute. During that time, with [Life Scythe] active, his burns healed considerably, but more importantly, the wyrm used that time to gain some ground. By the time Zeke finished the overgrown worm off, the sound of the wyrm crashing through the tunnels and caverns was nearly deafening.

Zeke wasted no time in resuming his flight through the tunnels. As he did, he was confronted with a host of other worm collectives and wurms who had been frightened out of their nooks and crannies by the wyrm’s obvious pursuit. It seemed that even other monsters were hesitant to get in that powerful, monarch-tier creature’s way.

For the wurms, Zeke utilized much the same strategy. Some, he killed. Others, he merely injured enough to keep them at bay while he continued sprinting through the caves, caverns, and tunnels. For the worm collectives, though, he barely paused, save to send a [Life Scything] in their direction.

So it went for Zeke as he made his way toward the surface. For anyone else, the extra monsters would have been an impediment, but for Zeke, they were an untapped well of vital energy, which he was more than eager to steal for his own purposes. With every step, he healed a little more, so by the time he reached the surface, he was as well as could be expected.

Of course, in places, his armor had fused to his body, but that was a problem for another day. For now, he had a wyrm to trap, then kill. Everything else was secondary.

After passing through the runes that constituted the traps, Zeke skidded to a stop. Nearby, he saw Carlos crouched behind a half-buried boulder. Abby was perched on the balcony of the highest floor of the tower, which loomed a quarter of a mile distant. Pudge, whose worried thoughts had been Zeke’s constant companion during his trek through the wyrm tunnels, bounded to Zeke’s side.

Talia lurked near the tunnel’s entrance, kneeling on the slope above it like she was preparing to pounce the moment the creature presented itself. She wouldn’t, of course. She knew the plan. But one look told Zeke that she was almost as eager to test herself as Zeke himself was.

“Everyone ready?” Zeke croaked, his singed throat less healed than the rest of his body.

“I am,” Carlos said.

Kill, was Pudge’s mental response.

Talia didn’t say anything, but even if she had, she would’ve been too far away to be heard. Instead, she gave Zeke a barely perceptible nod. Abby, by contrast, didn’t even know a question had been asked. Zeke would have to trust that she was ready.

A couple of tense minutes passed, with the rumbling beneath the ground drawing every closer. Finally, the wyrm queen burst forth from the cave with a shower of earth and black rock, a roar on her lips.

I will hunt you to the ends of this continent, child-slayer!

Her telepathic scream cut through Zeke’s mind like a knife, and he felt tears of blood dripping down his cheeks. A similar font originated at his nose, and his ears had fared no better. Incomparable pain stabbed through his brain.

Zeke gritted his teeth, saying, “Two can play that pain game.”

Then, letting his racial ability to flay souls envelop and intertwine with his [Life Scythe], he sent a red-and-black blade of energy toward the wyrm. She didn’t even bother trying to dodge, taking the attack head-on, and for a moment, Zeke thought that it had had no effect. Then, she let out an agonized roar, and the telepathic assault ceased.

But with that cessation, the attack truly began, and the sinuous monster charged forward, heedless of the trap that lay between her and her tormentor.

Zeke held his breath. His last trap, intended for the monarch-tier fireback turtle, had not gone very well. In fact, it had been mostly ineffective. However, this time, he’d put quite a bit of time and effort into getting it just right. And if it failed? There was a high likelihood that he would die. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that his friends would soon follow. Not even Abby, sequestered as she was in the tower, would be safe. Already, they’d seen that the tower’s effects weren’t a barrier to a powerful, truly motivated monster, so it was unlikely to prove much of a hinderance to one of the strongest creatures in the Radiant Isles.

Finally, the wyrm reached the point of no return, and Zeke felt the mana in the trap move. So did the queen, who tried to stop. But it was too late. The trap had been sprung. Now, all that was left was to see if it was enough.