Buttopia
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Chapter 60: We Who Are About to Die
🕑 Added 2024-12-25 18:29:05 +0000 UTC“Here’s what we’re going to do; Cecile, do you have any of the bomb plant left?” Elicec yelled, cutting through the terror that gripped my brain.
“Yeah, I’ve got about ten of the ruptured petunia’s fruits, but I don’t think they can do much against that thing,” Cecile answered. Exploding fruit was an interesting idea, but I had to agree with Cecile, this thing was the size of a small battleship, and I had no idea if it would work.
“That’s why they need to be inside it. We need to get as many of these as possible into it, whatever it has that passes for a nose. Cecile, that’s your job. Dave, Corey, your job is to provide as much distraction as you can. You’ve got the shield orb, Dave. Use it! I’ll start working on removing its legs,” Elicec yelled, trying to get his message across over the noise of the monster’s footfalls. And just like that, our planning time had ended as one of its feet crashed down inches away from Cecile, sending us all flying in different directions.
I managed to switch over to my shield orb and turn on the physical shield before I hit the ground. Before I could decide on the next move, a chat window popped up. I would really need to test how fast this communication method worked relative to the real world when we weren’t all in mortal danger.
I quickly judged the carnage playing out in front of me. Not being stuck on the ground during a small earthquake had its benefits. Corey had already managed to place itself in striking distance of the antennae, and I felt a surge of mana as the mallet became charged with mana. I couldn’t spot either of the brothers, but I doubted they were down just yet, and part of my job was to do what Elicec had ordered to buy them whatever time they needed. Now, just how was I going to do it?
The thing was pausing a few seconds every time Corey managed to connect with a swing, which gave me a terrible idea. It was just as likely to get me killed as it was to succeed, but considering how bad our choices were at the moment, this whole fight was going to be on giant Hail Mary anyway, so I may as well go for it. I switched off both my body modification orbs and turned on my aether orb.
The moment the centipede froze again, I recalled reverse gravity and targeted myself with it, doing my best to aim directly at one of its eyes. My body launched off the ground with the shield still fully encasing it. My flight path went true, and I crashed hard into its left eye. It exploded at the force of the impact, my shield defecting all of the disgusting parts away from my body. I could get used to that change.
It screamed in shock and pain and started wildly whipping its head back and forth, easily dislodging me. As I fell back to the ground, I spotted the brothers, currently under its head. With one arm, Elicec, with a look of grim determination, was controlling what looked like a saw blade made of man, and with the other, was lifting the odd banana-shaped fruits up toward the creature’s face. Cecile, on the other hand, had a shit-eating grin across his face. Doubtlessly, he was happy about his plants finally being useful.
I crashed to the ground, making a small crater below from my impact, and felt my shield fizzle out around me. That explained how I had hit so hard before. It seemed the shield was adding to the force involved. Before throwing another shield up, I checked my mana pool and found only a quarter drained; the core fortification had really helped there. I popped another shield up just in time to feel a shockwave across the sand as the monster toppled over. Elicec had managed to cut enough of its legs away to ruin its balance. We might just survive this yet.
As the mouth of the monster closed around me, I wished I hadn’t cursed myself with the previous sentiment. Thinking quickly, I switched to my fire elemental orb and recalled fireball, rapidly releasing a series of five shots down the thing's throat. Vomit rushed up the throat to meet me and expel me free from the possibility of being swallowed. Once again, I was glad for the shield orb. Hopefully, that hadn’t knocked loose any of the bombs, and in hindsight, I was glad I hadn’t set any off. I really needed to keep my head in the game at times like this.
The monster roared again. I looked up and spotted the new source of its rage. Corey had destroyed one of its antennae. Instead of letting myself consider any possible future, I instead of scanned the battlefield for the brothers. They were still standing, but both of them were covered in slashes and standing next to what used to be one of the creature’s mouthpieces. I tried to remember the name. The word forcipule kept hitting my brain, but I wasn’t sure if that was right. It might have just been a mandible.
These completely irrelevant thoughts ran through part of my mind while the other part took in just how bad the brothers looked and switched off my fire orb in favor of my life orb. They were both losing a lot of blood, but I wasn’t detecting any poison through medical telemetry, so that was at least a good sign. My mana was still holding at only slightly below half full, and that meant the most useful thing I could do at the moment was heal Cecile and Elicec.
Even from my distance, I could see some of the pain melt off their faces as the mana stitches closed up several of the wounds. I wished I had a way to help with the blood loss they had already experienced, but that much was far beyond my abilities to do for anyone other than myself. Would I be able to push regeneration that far? I hoped so. What I really needed was a doctor whose brain I could pick after showing him just what this orb could do, but that was a thought for the far future. Right now, there was still a giant monster thrashing for its life.
I switched off all of my mana orbs, other than life, and ran quickly away from the monster, giving Corey as much of the mana as they wanted. The moment I was behind one of the larger rock outcroppings, I peeked my head out to see the brothers not far behind me, following my escape path, and Corey rocketing away from the centipede itself, having left a large mallet-shaped impression in its head.
“Back here, quick!” I yelled to the running twinogs.
“Now!” Elicec yelled after spotting my hiding spot. The brothers leaped behind the rocks at the same moment the centipede’s head exploded in one of the loudest booms I had ever heard, and I had been a kid far too interested in homemade fireworks, so that was saying something. I felt the force of it through the rocks. It had been powerful enough to create a small sandstorm, small, painful grains of sand colliding with all parts of my exposed flesh.
“Is it dead?” I yelled, barely able to hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears.
“I think so,” Elicec yelled back.
“If it survived that and is in any way still able to fight, we’re screwed, so we’d better hope it’s dead,” Cecile added. He was entirely right. We sat in relative silence for several more moments, waiting for the thing to move. So far, nothing had happened, and the sand had started to settle back down. Even the ringing was fading. Just as I was considering poking my head above the rock, a System message popped into view.
So, high-level monsters did start to give a lot more experience. Now, I understood how my simulator would eventually run into issues. I wouldn’t be able to farm all the small guys with a million modifiers forever. If I ever got to the point where I could reliably kill several of these, then I might able to really push it, but for now, I was quickly reaching a limit on what I could do with it, and it was good to know there were other options.
“That’s a lot of levels,” Cecile said, bringing my focus back to the world around us. I wasn’t sure where Corey was, so I tried placing them back into my storage. It worked, so I removed it again back to where we were.
“I am pleasantly happy we survived. I did not expect to,” Corey said the moment it left my storage.
“Same. Good thing Elicec had good tactical ideas to counter that expectation,” I said, clapping the twinog on the back.
“I’m honestly as shocked as you all are, but I didn’t want to die without trying. I can’t believe we just destroyed a persistent dungeon,” Elicec said, his smile breaking through some of his usual sourness.
“We may have destroyed it, but whatever is left of its spawn will go out and make others, and we’re in no shape to hunt them down,” Corey said.
“Good point. We should loot that thing and start on our way back. I really don’t want to fight anything else tonight,” Cecile said. I agreed with him, I needed to get something into my stomach and a good sleep before even thinking of another fight.
“Dave, we need to check it for its core. I doubt it survived, but we should collect any shards we can find,” Corey said.
“Looks like it’s looting time then,” I said, wondering just what the dungeon core had in mind.
Desert mana orbs are one of the harder to procure of the environmental mana orb types. The places they spawn tend to be extremely hostile to outsiders, and therefore, they generally become a dungeon core before anyone is able to find them. This isn’t to suggest they aren’t valuable; all of the environmental orbs can be. Altering the terrain in a fight is incredibly useful. I believe they are underutilized, and the fact I was only able to find two recorded instances of their use in the Arena seems to agree with my findings. Hopefully, in a future edition, I will have learned more of these elusive orbs.
Mana Sources by Henjen Klank
Comments
viperfan7
Jayzuz, and here I was thinking Ralts wrote a ton. But also, his stories aren't planned out like yours are
Ian Weidner
So I've talked about this a bit on the Discord before. I have books 1-3 pretty strongly mapped out, books 4-6 plot beats planned, and I know the big structure of the ending and some big events beyond book 6, but how that shakes out as I continue to write I don't fully know yet.
Ian Weidner
Nope, I'm currently about 7 more chapters ahead of what's here, I intend to have a 15 chapter ahead tier up this weekend (just need a buffer really to be there) and then a grind to hit a 50 chapter ahead tier. As for my writing schedule, I try to write 4-5k words a day, but as that's not always possible I also try to work myself as far as I can get.
viperfan7
How do you manage to pump out so many of these? Like, did you finish it already and just posting it on a schedule?
