[Kara] Chapter 30: Forminacs (Patreon)

Hayder whipped the reins of his draken as he rushed towards the outpouring of forminacs. The giant ants were far larger in size and stature than Architect Magus Uzbug. But that was because she was a worker, while these were soldiers.

They were uniform in size, standing at about eight feet tall. They might not have been as tall as the tallest troll or a minotaur, but their sheer numbers, and their bulky bodies with armor-like carapaces, were an intimidating sight.

The Captain of the First Company moved to intercept them quickly as he raised his enchanted spear. Unlike most other warriors who specialized with only a single weapon, he was capable of using most melee weapons thanks to his Manacore Abilities. So he would often swap around different weapons during different situations.

When he was riding his draken, he tended to stick to his spear. After all, it had a piercing enchantment that could tear through most ordinary armor with ease. And while he was on foot, he’d use his sword which inflicted light burning damage on anything it cut.

Right now, he stuck to his spear. Not just because it was more suitable while he was on drakenback, but also because of its piercing enchantment. Hayder knew just how durable the carapace of a forminac was supposed to be— especially for their soldiers.

And that was why his enchanted spear was all the more effective.

“Twenty-First Core: Winding Charge!” Hayder bellowed as he held his spear out in front.

The weapon shone with a green glow, before surging with a powerful gale. The wind magic practically wreathed him and his draken and boosted their speed while cutting anything that got close to them. He let out a war cry as he reached the back of the group of survivors.

The forminac soldiers were clashing with Bushra’s company. Hayder knew that with the sheer number of monsters, they would have been able to overwhelm the company eventually. That was why he sped to the front and tore through the first ranks of the attackers.

Hayder was shortly followed by his other drakenriders as they crashed into the horde of monsters. The watching soldiers of Bushra’s company cheered, and the troll himself rallied them to reform their lines.

A flurry of spells and arrows landed amongst the forminac soldiers as Hayder shredded their numbers. Hundreds of the monsters were killed so quickly. But still, more of them poured out from the gaping hole that had opened at the side of the hill.

Hayder didn’t know how many of them there were in total, but it was not an insignificant number. And as the first of his fellow drakenriders fell from one of the monsters, he pushed himself to fight even harder. He dug further into the line of forminac soldiers, cutting them down by the dozens.

But even though he was fast, dealing decisive strikes that took down forminac soldier after forminac soldier, he was still incomparable to—

And Hayder watched as the blast of golden flames swept across the numbers of the forminac soldiers. A hundred of them were turned to nothing but ash in a single blast. Before a being covered in flames ravaged their numbers, leaping through the battlefield.

Kara joined the fray, and she didn’t waste any time. With each swing of her flaming claws, she sheared through many of the monsters before they could even fight back.

“Cursed souls… just what is that human?”

Seeing this, Hayder pushed himself to fight harder. Even as more forminac soldiers poured out. Even though some of the ones that appeared from the side of the hill were larger— as tall as even minotaurs.

The Captain of the First Company pressed on.

—--

Arjin saw the horde of monsters, and she drew her dagger. Perhaps she could have turned around. She might have been able to run away. There was no reason for her to get involved in the fighting, considering she was previously only a prostitute.

But still, despite Dammir’s protests, she resolved herself and joined the fighting soldiers. The dwarf’s shouting voice echoed in the background as she felt her heart racing. She had never been in a proper battle before. The closest she came was when she had watched Kara fight the Adult giant centipede from the side.

Other than that, she had only ever been attacked and nearly killed by Grok and a nightmare, as well as sparring with Kara.

Still, she pushed herself forward, running up to a forminac soldier as it knocked aside a dark elf and trampled over his head as he screamed. Arjin recoiled from the sight of blood and gore. It made her sick to the stomach.

However, it wasn’t enough to deter her. With a scream, she threw herself at the monster’s back. She swung down at its carapace where it had already been cut open by a sword.

“Fifth Core: Double Stab!”

Arjin shouted as her weapon dug into its side. The forminac soldier turned to face her, before swinging down with one of its bulky arms. If it had struck her, she knew it would have broken more than a few bones. It would have been like being struck by a club or a mace.

So she ducked under the attack and aimed for the monster’s legs.

“Ninth Core: Severing Slash!”

Even though Arjin was afraid— her legs and hands trembling— she was able to strike deftly, slashing open the monster’s kneecaps.

If it even had kneecaps.

The forminac soldier stumbled back and collapsed onto the ground, before she threw herself on top of its body, swinging down at its neck frantically, screaming and panting as she did. The monster thrashed beneath her. And it managed to grab ahold of her side with one of its four arms.

She yelped as it tossed her aside, struggling to get back to its feet. Arjin looked up in horror as the forminac soldier towered over her, even when it was on its knees. It raised another fist to crush her as she recoiled.

But a spear stabbed it through the back of its neck. The monster’s antennae twitched, before drooping down. The forminac soldier fell to the ground, dead from that blow.

Arjin blinked a few times as she saw the guard standing behind the monster.

“Brother?”

Soraan sighed, drawing his spear back from the monster’s corpse. “I commend your efforts, sister. But you shouldn’t be here.”

“I—” Arjin opened her mouth.

But a voice called out to her from behind. Both of them glanced back as Dammir finally caught up to her.

He was heaving, resting a hand on his knee while raising his warhammer with his other hand. “Don’t go runnin’ away like that again, lassie! Yer gonna give me a heart attack!”

Arjin pursed her lips. “R-right…”

“Listen to your friend, sister,” her brother continued. “Or you’ll get yourself hurt.

And Soraan turned around, rejoining the fighting. Arjin watched him go. It reminded her of back when they were children. When her brother would save her during their hunting sessions, before telling her to go back to their home.

It frustrated her. Even though she knew he meant well. She couldn’t stand the thought of being who she was again. So she rose to her feet and lowered her head.

“Sorry, I won’t go running off on my own again,” the former prostitute said as she raised her dagger. “But I won’t stay away from the fighting either. I need to do this.”

Dammir furrowed his bushy brows as he looked at her. He must have seen her resolve as he scowled, but still acquiesced.

“By Kozli’s beard, you’re so stubborn— fine! But stay with me, got it?”

“Got it.” She nodded back at him.

And the two of them joined the fighting as well.

—--

“Those are?” Kurg asked as he saw the horde of monsters clashing with the soldiers.

Even though he was now the Elder of the Swordtooth Clan, he was still young and inexperienced. He had never known much about the world beyond the Xevik Valley, learning almost everything he did about the rest of the Xor-In Mountains from his time in Alyona.

Some called him dumb. Others said he took after his father.

And while he normally enjoyed hearing the latter, he currently felt like the former. Because he had never seen such creatures before, much to the glee of Olarg.

“Those are forminac soldiers, boy,” the senior said with a sneering smile.

Olarg refused to address Kurg by his new title. Even the other seniors who were unhappy with Kurg’s position were still respectful enough to call him the Elder of the Swordtooth Clan. But Olarg didn’t care, making his disdain clear.

Kurg tried to ignore it as he focused on the fighting. He saw dark elf soldiers being cut down alongside the occasional troll and minotaur.

“We should help them,” he said, shaking his head.

“And why should we risk our lives for them?” Olarg snorted. The other gathered seniors agreed with him as the juniors hesitated. He turned around and waved a hand dismissively. “They’ve never done anything for us. Besides—”

Olarg’s eyes flickered towards the blasts of magic tearing down the number of forminac soldiers.

“It’s not like they need our help anyway,” he finished.

And Kurg pursed his lips. He might have been the Elder of the Swordtooth Clan, but he still felt like a boy.

He still felt lost and unsure of what to do without his father’s guidance.

So he remained silent, watching as the fighting continued without the help of a majority of the orc clans.

—--

Unfortunately, even with the soldiers holding the line against the horde of monsters, some forminacs managed to break through. Especially with the larger forminac soldiers that joined the fighting. They were massive, and their carapace was harder than metal.

They were an evolved version of the mass of forminac soldiers that poured out at first. Most monsters had different names for the different stages of their monstersoul, so it was hard to pinpoint what exactly their evolution was called. But these forminac soldiers had to be in the second stage of evolution, while most of the others had to be in the first stage of their evolution.

That would explain why the forminac soldiers were relatively weak.

But that didn’t mean they didn’t pose a danger at all. It was said that monsters on their first stage of their monstersoul could be a threat up to even those who had a Tier 10 manacore, while those on their second stage were a threat to even those who had a Tier 20 manacore. It depended on the monster and the individual, of course.

And some species of monsters were weaker than others, even at the same stage of their monstersoul. So it was always dependent on the circumstances, rather than a hard rule.

However, judging by how these forminac soldiers fought, even the ones at the second stage of their monstersoul had to have been weaker than, say, a giant centipede that was also at the second stage of their monstersoul. But to a little dark elf girl who likely didn’t even have a Tier 1 manacore, it made no difference.

She screamed as a forminac soldier towered over her. It had smashed through a line of guards to reach her, and now it stood tall, even with a bunch of spears sticking out of its back. It made no sound, its mandibles simply spreading wide as if it was about to rip her head off.

The little girl covered her face as she tightly hugged onto the doll she was carrying.

“Mama—” she started as the forminac soldier reached down for her.

But then an arrow struck the monster’s back, before exploding out into a pillar of ice. The little girl blinked as the forminac soldier was frozen in place. She sniffled a few times, clearly processing what just happened.

And Caius stepped up to the frozen forminac soldier. “Don’t worry, it won’t be able to hurt you when it’s like this. But if it would ease your mind—”

He tapped the side of the ice pillar, before it shattered to a thousand pillars. The forminac soldier’s body itself was broken apart into tiny shards of ice. The little girl’s eyes went wide as the elf turned to her with a smile.

“So don’t cry, alright?” he said as he proffered her a hand.

She nodded, before her mother came rushing in from the crowd of bystanders.

“My daughter—”

“Mama!”

Caius watched as the two reunited for a moment, before he looked towards the battlefield. Even though more soldiers from the other companies were joining the fighting, the outpouring of monsters also seemed ceaseless. He sighed as he turned to the mother and daughter.

“The both of you should leave now,” Caius said as he brought his empty hand to the string of his bow. “Otherwise, one of you will get hurt.”

They blinked back at him, and he stepped forward. A spark of embers left his fingertips as he pulled the bowstring back. The mother and the daughter finally listened to him, backing away from the line of fighting.

Caius took in a deep breath as he felt a substantial amount of mana leave his manacore. He focused it onto his fingers as the vague shape of a fiery arrow appeared on his bow. And as he exhaled, he loosed the magical projectile.

“Twenty-Fifth Core—” he whispered the name of his newest Manacore Ability. “Rain Of Fire.”

And all at once, the single fiery projectile exploded into a hundred flaming arrows. Each one that struck the battlefield erupted into small fireblasts. They didn’t simply pierce the forminac soldiers, they exploded and took out a handful of the monsters with each one.

The wave of forminac soldiers slowed as Caius nocked more arrows into his bow, shooting down monster after monster with precise shots. And the tide of the battle began to finally turn.

—--

Kara leapt into the air and swung down with a God Strike, tearing through dozens of the forminac soldiers with only a single attack. When she fell back onto the ground, she cleaved through a pair of the monsters, before her feet finally touched the earth again.

One of the larger forminac soldiers flanked her, but she didn’t even spare it a single glance. She brought a hand back and pierced through its abdomen. The monster burst into golden flames and collapsed.

Looking back up, Kara watched as a volley of large rocks came crashing down into a group of forminac soldiers before they could reach her. She looked towards the side and nodded at Angel as he waved Zlo’tan’s staff in the air.

But when she turned back towards the horde of monsters, she realized most of them were now running. She heard the cheering. Hayder’s voice resounded throughout the battlefield.

“They’re retreating! Push them back where they came from!”

The forminac soldiers fled back into the hole in the hill. And she felt her dragonsoul flickering inside her chest. The pool of mana there had grown from the fighting, but…

“It’s not enough,” Kara whispered.

And she dashed forward, cutting down the forminac soldiers that were running back. Some of them turned to stop her— to slow her down from reaching the rest. But she easily tore through them as well.

“I need more.”

She spoke through gritted teeth.

“Kara, what are you doing?!”

She could hear someone shout at her from a distance. But she didn’t know who it was. The voice simply faded into the background as she leapt through the air and unleashed a Dragon’s Breath into the entrance of the massive hole.

A hundred more forminac soldiers were incinerated, just like that.

“I need to get stronger.”

Kara landed on the ground, rolling past the charred corpses as she sprinted forward. She caught a glimpse of a few hundred worker forminacs standing inside of the tunnel, scratching at the side of the rock wall.

A hulking forminac soldier emerged from the tunnel and stood before her. It had to have been at least fifteen feet tall— even more massive than Zlo’tan had been. Its arms were covered in spikes like they were literal weapons, and it stopped her from cutting down any more of the fleeing soldiers.

She narrowed her eyes at it as the ceiling of the entrance of the tunnel began to crack, and she realized what was going on. But she didn’t slow down even for a moment. She leapt straight for the hulking forminac soldier as it took a step forward.

But then the ground beneath its feet shifted, sinking by five feet. It stumbled forward right as Kara crashed into it, and it couldn’t even fight back. She tore into its carapace as her body blazed with her golden fire.

It tried to rip her off its body, but when it reached for her, its arms were burned. She tore through its carapace until she reached its soft flesh beneath, but her flames evaporated her blood before it could even reach her skin. The hulking forminac soldier collapsed to the ground as its mandibles clicked together rhythmically.

And just ahead of Kara, the last of the fleeing forminac soldiers vanished into the tunnel, before the ceiling began to collapse. The ground shook as Hayder and the nearby companies pulled back.

But Kara continued to rip the hulking forminac soldier apart. It lay there as its body twitched, until it fully went limp. When she was finished, the dust of the collapsing tunnel settled, before she pulled herself back up.

She felt the manapool surrounding her dragonsoul, before raising her head to the overcast sky. Caius ran up to her side.

“Kara, what were you doing?” the elf asked with round eyes. “That was dangerous, even for you. If that had been a trap—”

“It’s fine,” Kara cut him off as she lowered her head.

She met his gaze as he blinked a few times. And a savage smile spread across her lips.

“I got what I wanted— that was enough.”

“I… what?” Caius blinked back at her.

And she would explain it to him later. But she continued to grin. Because she knew that she had enough mana.

That she could finally ascend to the next stage of her dragonsoul for the first time in nearly a year.

—--

After the battle was concluded, Hayder sent Tashia and a few of the other companies ahead with the rest of the survivors to get away from the area. While the forminacs had fled for now, they might return shortly after, so leading the noncombatants as far as possible was the smartest move right now.

However, he couldn’t go with them because he had to assess the aftermath. He took a tally of how many of their people were killed with a grim look on his face.

“In total, three hundred and fifty four of my men were killed,” Bushra said as he gritted his teeth. “And by the looks of it, at least five hundred more soldiers from the other companies were also slain.”

It was a tragedy for Bushra as his company had taken the greatest number of losses, because they had been the ones that had to hold the line before the other companies joined in. And it hadn’t been an insubstantial number of monsters that attacked either.

“By the looks of it, we killed roughly five thousand forminac soldiers today. Maybe a thousand of them were killed thanks to…” Hayder’s eyes darted around in search of Kara.

But all he saw were his soldiers gathering up the corpses of their dead and bringing them together into a pile. They needed to burn the bodies so they wouldn’t be feasted on by any ghoul vultures or nearby monsters. Caius was there too, but he was just sitting to the side and watching the bodies be burnt.

Unfortunately for Hayder, it seemed that the human had left along with Tashia and the rest of the survivors instead of staying behind. He dismissed his concerns for now as he turned to Uzbug. She was inspecting the corpses of the forminacs that had attacked.

“Architect Magus, do you recognize these forminacs?” he asked simply.

I do not know any of these forminacs personally, Captain Hayder, Uzbug replied, before drawing back from a dead forminac soldier. However, I recognize the patterns on their carapace. I know which hive they come from.

Hayder and Bushra exchanged a glance.

“Tell us, Architect Magus, did we cross into the territory of the Fire Hive?” Hayder asked apprehensively.

The Fire Hive was known as the most dangerous and largest of the forminac hives. They were said to have been in control of nearly a quarter of the Ashfields. And considering there was said to be dozens of forminac hives in existence, the fact that she controlled such a substantial portion of the region was quite the feat.

Uzbug’s antennae twitched. No, if it had been the Fire Hive, these forminac soldiers would have used some form of fire magic during the battle.

“So which hive do they come from, Architect Magus?” Hayder asked insistently.

And Uzbug clicked her mandibles together like she was sighing. These forminac soldiers are from my hive, Captain Hayder.

That made the two captains frown. Bushra crossed his arms as he spoke up.

“But you told us that your hive was located ten miles to the east of us. We should not have been even close to their territory. Did you lie to us?”

I did not lie, Captain Bushra, Uzbug countered quickly. What I told you was based on what I knew.

“But—” Bushra started.

And Hayder spoke up, interrupting him. “I do not believe Architect Magus would have any intention to deceive us. She has lived in our city for over a decade, so there is no reason for any deception.”

Uzbug’s mandibles pressed tightly against one another, and Bushra harrumphed. Hayder just sighed.

“But the fact that Architect Magus Uzbug has lived with us for a long time means that her information could also be outdated. And that is likely what happened here.”

“What are you saying, Captain Hayder?” Bushra asked quizzically.

Hayder and Uzbug nodded at each other. The latter was the one to speak up.

It is very likely that my hive has expanded its borders since I left, the Architect Magus explained. Which means that from now on, we will be traversing through unknown lands. We do not know whether anywhere we make camp for the night will be safe for certain.

“That’s…” Bushra opened his mouth.

And Hayder finished his thought for him, “It is going to be a massive pain in the ass to deal with.”

—--

The group of survivors set up camp for the night as the sun began to set over the horizon. Hayder and the rest of the soldiers that stayed behind hadn’t caught up to them just yet. But Tashia made the decision to stop because everyone was starting to get tired.

Kara was glad that they were finally going to set up camp. She was smiling as she walked alongside Angel, heading towards their tent.

“You’re the one who made that big forminac trip, weren’t you?” she asked him.

And the utlas bear nodded eagerly. She reached her tent as he sat down right outside.

“You’re amazing as always, Angel. But can you do me a favor? Make sure nobody disturbs me, alright?”

He tilted his head, confused by what she was doing. She leaned over towards his ear and pointed at herself.

“I need to ascend,” she whispered.

And Angel’s eyes went wide. He stared at her in shock— at first, with a look that said, Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? But then, he brought his staff up and gave her a thumbs-up. Or at least, he tried to give her a thumbs-up with his paw.

She chuckled at the sight, before she vanished into her tent. When she was inside, she sat on the ground and closed her eyes.

Kara focused on her dragonsoul as the world around her grew distant. She felt the pool of mana that had gathered over months pour into the golden flames. It was what needed to be done for her to undergo her ascension.

To reach the next stage of her dragonsoul.

To learn the power of a Juvenile Dragon.

And when she opened her eyes, she was once again immersed in a vision of Zarkoth’s past.

Author's Notes:

4k words. Thanks for reading :) 

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