CA Chapter Thirty-two (Patreon)

Alpha had never particularly enjoyed fighting in Veritas Online. A long time ago, in a different life, she had played a support character, helping her friends and guild mates from the back, while they dove into battle. Once she was reborn as Alpha, she had had to be able to do everything herself, painfully aware that she couldn’t count on anyone else to be there for her. She had slogged through thousands of solo battles, all carefully calculated to allow her to level at the best possible pace, while gathering valuable or necessary items at the same time. Even after meeting Amythyst, and partying with Tess, they had really dealt with monsters as needed, not for fun.

This? This was entirely unnecessary, and, frankly, ridiculous. No matter how she tried to settle into the detached place from which she usually fought, she just… couldn’t. The mooing black and white cubes were just the right combination of ridiculous and dangerous to keep her on her toes while also making her laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Tess picked up and threw the revolting lumps from the pile at her feet, one after the other, like a dwarven railgun. They landed in front of her Moocube target with squelching noises Alpha would probably hear later in her nightmares, and the Moocube rolled over them, engulfing them within its monochromatic mass without hesitation. Instantly, the thing stalled, quivering, and when it started again, it seemed to be moving even more slowly.

Alpha got to see the results of this ashy injection from up close, as she ran forward and slashed her grimy sword at the leading cube. She felt like she’d tried to hit a tire with a stick, and her arm shook with spongy reverberations. Still, the blade cut through the black and white fur, revealing quivering pink gelatin inside, and a clear fluid began to ooze out of the wound. Encouraged, she continued to hack away at the thing, though she had to dance back and dip her blade in her bag of ash again each time her sword started to smoke.

Vexxx, meanwhile, had quickly determined that throwing soot on the Moocubes did exactly nothing, except to cover him in ashy blowback. Giving up on that, he decided to join Tess in delivering meat to the cubes, except that with his noodle-like arms, he couldn’t throw them from a distance. So, he carried them in, and laid them in the path of the Moocubes like a trail of sugar cubes left for fairies. But when he was weighed down by meat, he couldn’t dodge, and when one of the cubes abruptly shot out a furry pseudopod, knocking him onto his butt, he barely managed to roll out of the way before another cube swallowed him whole.

Alpha, who had whittled her cube down enough so that she could see objects floating inside the clear, pinkish pulp inside, glanced to the side as Vexxx scrambled to his feet. “Get out of here, Vexxx! Try some spells from a distance.”

They had discussed everything they knew about gelatinous cubes, and while they all agreed that the things seemed to be at least resistant to every form of magic except, possibly, earth, they also agreed that if the soot-bombs didn’t work, it was worth trying magic anyway. Vexxx was supposed to be on the sidelines, tossing in every spell he had, just to see if anything would stick.

Vexxx grunted, barely managing to dodge another pseudopod as he jumped back again. “Boring. We know it won’t work.”

“No,” Alpha lunged forward, her sword driving through the exposed goo to impale a slightly darker blob deep inside the monster. “We assume it won’t work. We won’t know until we try.” The tip of her weapon impaled the blob, and it burst like a balloon, releasing a flood of darker color that stained the quivering jelly purple, and a moment later, the whole Moocube seemed to melt into a puddle. The ground hissed and steamed, and Alpha barely managed to get out of the way of the small flood that soaked and then melted the grass on which she stood.

“Tess! They have,” she cast her mind back to high-school biology, “organelles inside. They die if you pop them!”

Vexxx, who had also had to hop rapidly out of the way of the acid wash, huffed. “See? This is a job for pointy sticks.”

Alpha threw her sword away just as the blade turned into melted slag that poured down over the hilt. Summoning another one from her inventory, she growled, “Only if you have at least thirty pointy sticks. That destroyed the durability of my weapon, even with the ash.” She threw an accusatory glare at Myles and Amy, who were watching the battle with identical looks of amusement.

“Alpha, wait!” Tess called. “Look at the ones that ate the meat.”

Leaping backward, Alpha’s high dexterity allowed her to land on top of one of the fence posts, balancing gracefully on her toes. From there, she could see what had been hidden behind the bulk of the surrounding Moocubes. The cubes that had eaten the meat dredged in ash were slumped, their edges no longer sharply defined beneath their black and white fur. In fact, the white parts of the fur looked gray and dull, and the flesh beneath rippled like an ocean caught in a furry bag.

Which was when the first Moocube exploded. The sound was something between the foomp of air being released from a pressurized container and the wet gurgle of someone vomiting with a full stomach. A moment later, fluid and globs of pink gel began to rain down around all of them. It hissed on contact, and Alpha immediately began to feel the burn of the acid. She threw herself backward just as the second Moocube burst.

You have lost 10 Drops of Blood due to Acid.

You have lost 10 Drops of Blood due to Acid.

…

You have a Chemical Burn.

After that, it was like a muffled fourth of July. The ‘cows’ detonated, one after the other, until the air was filled with aerosolized acid and nuggets of corrosive pulp. Even the ones who hadn’t ingested any of the base-coated meat lost chunks from the sides closest to their erupting comrades, so Alpha could see the floating blobs inside through the pink mist hanging in the air.

Alpha and Tess had managed to back out of range of the worst of the debris, and when Alpha turned to look, she saw that Amy, Myles, and Toggle were all wearing what looked like rubber raincoats. Myles, who gripped the handle of an umbrella large enough to cover all three of them, raised it in a salute, and Alpha snorted a laugh as she scanned the area, trying to find the last member of their party. When she found him, her snort turned into real laughter.

It looked like Vexxx had tried to jump away from the explosions as well, but because of his lower Dexterity, he’d gotten tangled in the barbed wire of the fence, instead of jumping over it. He’d obviously tried to get free, but his Strength wasn’t high enough to break the strong, metallic strands, and all he’d done was get himself more and more wrapped up in the wire and his own baggy wizard’s robe. Since the robe was made of spider silk, it wouldn’t even tear, and now he looked like nothing so much as a caterpillar that hadn’t quite finished building its cocoon, or perhaps a particularly displeased baby in a too-tight swaddle.

Unfortunately, Alpha couldn’t take the time to tease him, because one of the last few Moocubes was nearly on the boy, its black and white side pressing against him, fur rippling as it shifted to allow the cube to swallow him whole.

Tess let out a shout and leaped forward. She summoned her axe from her inventory and sent it whirling through the air toward the approaching cube. It lodged in the monster’s furry side with a glop, then slid down as the part of the blade that had chopped into the monster dissolved with a hiss and a pop. The now single-bladed axe fell to the grass with a final thump, and Alpha dumped her bag of ash over Vexxx, thoroughly coating the mage in black just before he vanished inside the gelatinous cube. A moment later, the cube slid back a few inches, leaving behind a blackened length of wire, and no sign of the boy.

Alpha and Tess exchanged a horrified look, but the cube was already beginning to quiver. This time, the reaction happened much more quickly, and the two women barely had time to scatter before the cube exploded in the most violent burst yet, flinging chunks of quivering goo the size of Alpha’s torso thirty feet into the air.

Tess vanished beneath her huge shield, hunkering down as the pieces fell again like huge, squelching hail. Myles’ umbrella didn’t so much as tremble as a fifty-pound piece of Moocube impacted its surface. Which left Alpha dancing through the disgusting deluge as she dodged chunk after chunk, pushing her Dexterity to its max.

When the hail finally stopped, and the only sound was the soft hiss of melting… everything, Alpha was finally able to stop and look around again. Tess, Myles, Amy, and Toggle were all safe and accounted for, and, as far as she could tell, none of the Moocubes were still intact enough to move, if they were still alive at all, which left Vexxx. Again.

Vaulting over the fence without touching the dissolving fencepost, Alpha moved toward the black lump where the Moocube had been before it blew up. Cautiously, she reached out and rolled the sodden mass over, revealing Vexxx’s filthy, slimy face, his hair melted away, and his skin red and patchy. She reached out a hand, but just before she touched him, he opened his eyes, glaring up at her.

“FML, lightning totally works,” he slurred, and lifted a sizzling hand.

Alpha winced. Her own health was ticking down as the acid ate into her skin, and he was absolutely covered in it. She felt like she had blisters all over her body, and he was in much worse shape. If he wasn’t a minor, with minimal pain input, and using a headset, he’d be in agony. Cautiously, she helped him up, and as she did, the last shreds of his robe melted away, leaving him clad in nothing but acidic goo, ash, and his impermeable undies.

“Damn it,” the boy muttered, his free hand moving to cover himself as he swayed on his feet.

Tess slogged her way over to join them, her sabatons squishing through the black, melted grass. “We need to get rid of this stuff before it finishes us off,” she said, swiping at the chunks still clinging to Vexxx and Alpha’s bodies.

“Incoming!” called a cheerful voice, and they all turned to look at Myles as a white powder began to fall around them, caking them with white as thoroughly as if someone had dumped a bag of flour over their heads. Even the grass around them stopped steaming.

You no longer have a Chemical Burn.

Current Blood supply: 1440/2100

“What was that?” Alpha demanded, swiping a thick crust of white powder, black ash, and pink slime off her face.

“Neutralizing powder,” he answered, giving his umbrella a little shake before closing it. His and Amy’s raincoats vanished into their inventories, and Toggle began carefully removing his child-sized one, handling it with near reverence.

Alpha, Tess, and Vexxx all turned incredulous looks on the Sword Reaper, who just smiled blandly.

“Why did you, like, let us do all that if you had some kinda neutralizer all along? That’s cold, man,” Vexxx said, scraping glop from his skin.

For once, Alpha found herself in complete agreement with Vexxx, and, without having to exchange a single word, the two of them turned and flung the gobbets of ghastly goo in their hands straight at Myles. Vexxx’s fell far short, but Alpha’s hit him directly in the chest, sliding down and falling to the ground with a moist plop.

Myles gingerly poked at the slimy streak it left behind and looked up with a face full of offended innocence. “But-”

“It was funny,” chorused everyone else, and this time even Tess joined in as they bombarded Myles with gelatinous black snowballs.