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[Skill-Eater] Chapter 139: Destruction
🕑 Added 2024-11-05 18:01:01 +0000 UTCEdge woke up early the next morning, relieved that nothing had attacked them during the night. Everyone but Trapper was fast asleep. She had given the crew an extra two hours to rest, after tending to their stings with her cleanse skill. Although they had an important mission to complete, the hunters needed to recover from their latest fight before they took on the padamas.
His body was already in peak condition thanks to regeneration, so he kept the crew’s leader company while they waited for the sun to rise. After breakfast, the hunters refilled the jugs they had emptied to endure the flames during the battle’s climax, then took turns bathing in the spring.
It was the first time that any of them had endured a siege by a swarm of monsters, even Trapper. While they were stressed out from the unexpected turn of events, they were elated too.
Killing hundreds of monsters in a single fight had let the crew’s core-wielders cycle-up faster than ever before. Riller had ranked-up eagle eye, and Violet had conditioned two attributes—making the battle a valuable opportunity for everyone to grow stronger.
Their monetary gains were somewhat less spectacular. Most of the monsters had been destroyed by acid or flame. But the team was able to collect some chitin plates from the pair of big crabs they had killed in melee, so at least they hadn’t walked away emptyhanded.
“Talk about mixed luck.” Jumo took a seat beside Edge, as they enjoyed a cup of tea in front of the fire. “Getting caught by a swarm of that size is usually a death sentence. But since we went all out to prepare for an ambush by the padamas, everything worked out in the end. We got a ton of experience and helped secure the region, but we burned through all our mana-seeds and quite a few consumables in the process.”
“Swarms that size are rare,” Riller added as the man moved to join them. “They strip the environment of prey so quickly that they are forced to disperse. Their progenitors must have entered the area relatively recently, then evolved around the same time to spawn a horde. It’s good that we dealt with them so thoroughly, or more infestations would be popping up across the biome over the next few months. Puppet Town already has enough to deal with without a full-on monster invasion.”
“Are we sure that we killed them all?” Edge asked.
“A few of them got away,” Violet replied. “But Trapper and Sasha just set out to hunt them down with Blue. Her nose is good enough to scent them in their lairs, and she’s quite good at digging, although she’ll whine about being dirty until she rinses off. They should return before too long, since the sunlight drove the survivors back into their burrows.”
As the crew’s quartermaster had predicted, the women came walking back half an hour later, carrying a collection of shells with them. Edge lent them a hand separating flesh from chitin, while Blue took a bath in the spring. After the monster parts were loaded into the wagon, they hitched the dino into her harness and continued on their way.
Now that they were within the padamas’s territory, the crew proceeded slowly, sweeping the area for signs of its presence before moving on. A beast of that size had a massive domain, and the next step to hunting it was to either figure out where it was laired or where it was likely to feed. They discovered a few signs that something big had passed through the region sometime within the last week, but nothing that indicated the creature was dwelling nearby.
Due to the blightling swarm and the big lizard, the Painted Lands were eerily quiet as the team rolled past. Many of the beasts had been driven away, and Edge saw far fewer animals crossing the brightly colored ground than he was used to. Although they kept up their guard, nothing threatening appeared as noon transitioned into early evening.
Since they hadn’t found their quarry and were in the vicinity of several farms, Trapper decided to take a closer look and see if they could figure out what had happened to the resident staff. The hunters hadn’t crossed paths with any of the farmers on their way out of Puppet Town, although they might have journeyed south by another route.
Along the way, Violet took a look at Edge’s backpack and belt, using her mend skill to repair the damaged portions and restore the weakened material to pristine condition. It was a slow process, but extremely mana efficient, and she was able to mend them while driving the wagon.
By the time the sun set, her work was done. She handed the gear back to Edge, good as new. That’s a fantastic skill. He ran his fingertips over the surfaces of his equipment, unable to tell that it had been scorched and scratched from his vicious battle with Warren. I’ll have to find some way to repay the favor.
Late in the next day, they made it to the area in question—a lush sub-biome known as the Breadbasket. Edge watched with interest as the ground transitioned from brilliantly banded hues to a rich brown earth. Fertile soil that was perfect for growing crops and raising beasts.
There were a dozen or so farms scattered throughout the region. Each was staffed by fifteen to twenty people, including a cored defender who was capable of dealing with stage-one monsters and predatory beasts.
Combined with the magtech defenses guarding each location, the farms had thrived on their own before the disaster. They had been able to repel anything nasty that was native to the biome, and could call in assistance from Earl and the peacekeepers to tackle anything that wasn’t. But now that the planet’s ecosystems were changing by the hour, as the altered flows of magicytes reached a new equilibrium, the farmsteads were too isolated. Unable to face the danger that was coming, as relentless as the rising tide.
The mayor had ordered everyone to relocate closer to the settlement, at least for the time being. Most of the farmers had arrived in Puppet Town before the crew left. But there had been a couple of holdouts that were led by people too stubborn or too blind to their new reality to abandon their claims. For the residents of the first farm that the crew scouted, their resistance to change had cost them their lives.
Edge stepped through fields of crops, walking alongside rows of ripe produce that were begging to be picked. Some of the fruits and vegetables had already been eaten, but most of the harvest was intact, thanks to liberal castings of repel vermin.
Smoke was still rising from the remnants of the farmhouse, which must have caught fire during the attack, and one of the barns had collapsed. The magtech generators and mini-turret had been destroyed—reduced to twisted mounds of metal and circuitry.
Everyone maintained a combat formation until they came to a stop in a clear area in the center of the farmstead. Their first goal was to sweep the holding for anything nasty and establish a perimeter, then the crew would be ready to begin their investigation.
“Some of the aether tanks are still full,” Riller reported as he used eagle eye to survey the region. “The barrier and turret must have been taken out fast for that to happen.”
“I don’t think it was the padamas,” Sasha added. “The only tracks I see are way too small.”
“It wasn’t,” Trapper said. “The big lizard is omnivorous and would have eaten the crops too. Whatever attacked this farm was carnivorous. I think they got hit by the swarm of cancerous blightlings we ran into earlier. It would explain how it was able to grow so quickly.” She ignited her core and mana gathered around her eyes, making them shine with a lustrous golden light as she activated sense life.
While he waited for the crew’s leader to scan the area with her magic, Edge did his best to sweep the ground for tracks, using what Sasha had taught him. There were prints scattered all across the farm. Oblong ones, from the monsters that had slaughtered its inhabitants, and lots of little pawprints that were still fresh. Scavengers that arrived to pick up the pieces.
Trapper spoke up a few minutes later. “Whatever it was, they are long gone. There aren’t any survivors either, besides a few terrified beasts hiding behind the barn. I’ll let Dialla know when we get back, so she can send a team to pick up the livestock and equipment.”
“There’s no reason to let all this go to waste,” Violet said. “We should grab those aether tanks and as much produce as we can carry. We’ll eat it tonight and top off our provisions. Hopefully, the rest of the farms were able to bring in the harvest. It will be a lean winter in Puppet Town living on beast meat alone, especially with all those extra mouths to feed.”
“Spread out and see if you can find anything interesting,” Trapper ordered. “Riller, if you could climb that silo and stand watch, I’ll focus on scanning for the padamas. We’ll meet back at the wagon in an hour and report what we’ve discovered, then plan our next move. Get going, people. Time is of the essence.”
