[NR] Chapter 399 - Not A Swarm (Patreon)

The five Quasits and 19 Dretches all charge at Jason now that they can see him. Strange how appearing in the middle of an opaque cloud wasn’t the most tactically sound decision. Anyway, Jason wasn’t going to let their all out charge get the drop on him. He flexes his legs and Energy empowers him as he takes a flying leap.

Below him, the Dretches collide with each other as Jason reaches out with his Energy and pulls himself further through the air to get that last bit of distance. He lands past the demon’s encirclement. Behind him, the Quasits all turn to him as one and let out a guttural scream.

As a mass, the Dretches pull themselves up from their dog pile and flow towards him in a chaotic wave. Appropriate for them and you would think that after all that training against swarms, Jason would be ready for an attack like this.

Well, in theory, he should have been, except this wasn’t a true swarm. A true swarm, even on the most basic level of something like rats all attacking at once, would involve some form of cooperation. The Dretches aren’t acting together. They’re all charging in his direction as individuals.

Good thing this tactic doesn’t work any better than a swarm if they can’t catch him and the one thing Dretches are known for isn’t their speed. They’re chunky little balls of hp and Jason easily moved around the mass of demons to engage the Quasits in the back.

The cowards, of course, squawk and vanish from sight. Their classic invisibility comes into play as they move to attack. Well, four of them try to attack Jason, the fifth tries to use another of their classic abilities, an odd thing to say about beings of chaos, but what can you do? Anyway, the Quasit uses its innate ability to cause fear.

A mix of mana and mental power that can cause unrestrained fear taking over a being’s mind. Useful and something that actually could affect Jason, unlike broken bones and bruises. His mind was still there, after all.

Good thing the Quasit’s fear ability isn’t something nastier. While it does edge the line of mind control, the System had judged it to not really be mind-altering. Sure, it caused fear, but so did a dragon’s aura.

This was just a little more targeted. Still causing those primal chemicals to flow or in the case of Jason, setting his Energy vibrating. Like how seeing a spider causes a reaction to those with arachnophobia, these style abilities cause a reaction without actually reaching into a person’s mind and poking things. A useful tweak done to get around resistances to such effects that happens to make it work under NeoRealm’s System.

Sadly, all the fear did to Jason was make it so he wasn’t able to approach the Quasit that used the ability. The other Quasits, though? Well, if they didn’t want Jason smashing their faces in, they should have used the ability as well.

Though they might have been trusting in their invisibility a little too much. Sure, Jason couldn’t see them. That didn’t mean Jason was unable to detect them. Their invisibility magic was sloppy. A half-educated mage could figure out how to spot them and Jason had a lot more experience with seeing things beyond the norm.

So there the Quasits were, “sneaking” up on him from the sides and the mass of Dretches arrived behind him with the Quasit in front keeping him pinned in. In Jason’s peripheral vision, he could see three Quasits to the left and one to the right. Tough luck for that one.

Even without a clear view of the Quasit, Jason is more than able to attack them. Which is exactly what he does. A flying kick to the center of mass, delivering a solid blow and a nasty package as War Stomp goes off in a magnificent bloom. More so than any previous uses of the skill with his stamina, though that probably has more to do with having so much more of the stat to work with.

That isn’t the only reason he chose it, though. Within flowers, there is a wonderful balance of chaos and order. Demons being based around chaos have a hard time with balance. Some might think that order would be more effective against them, but that just isn’t the case. They fight creatures of order and their own fellow creatures of chaos all the time. Instead, it is the mortal concept of being able to hold both at once that throws them off.

So as Jason uses the Quasit’s chest as a stepping stone, it is feeling the unrestrained chaos energy contained within every iota of its being start to tear apart. As the balance inspired by nature’s cycle spreads, the demon’s insides become more orderly. Not completely though as mortal foibles introduce themselves and its magical immune system fails to contain the damage.

Jason continues on as the Quasit falls behind him and begins to vanish as the demons very nature rebels against itself. This strategy isn’t going to keep working for long on the demons, though. After all, all around them is nature. If a little nature was enough to kill them, they would already be dead.

It is only now when they have first been summoned into the world that this weakness is so exaggerated. After all, they aren’t a group of cheesy aliens from an old late night scifi movie, showing up only to die from the common cold. They’re Demons! The pandimensional pest. Give them a little time and their own chaotic nature will adapt to reality wherever they may end up.

Jason doesn’t feel like giving them that chance. Though the fear effect isn’t doing him any favors, as the Quasit that cast it upon him decided to move inward and block off his access to the other three demons. A minor detail in the scheme of things though, as while it might have managed to land the original fear effect, his mind kept beating away at the fear and honestly? Quasits don’t exactly rate when it comes to fear for him.