Chapter 134 - The End of the Grind (Patreon)

Rivulets of sweat dragged furrows through the blood and grime that coated Zeke’s face, evidence of hours of exertion. He ignored it just as thoroughly as he ignored the pain of his many wounds and the tug of exhaustion pulling against his mind and body. Instead, he did what he’d been doing for nearly four weeks, mechanically swinging his mace or thrusting his shield, shattering one fire ant after another. Meanwhile, clinging to his armor were various patches of viscous fluid, each of which were already aflame. Every so often, one of the horde of fire ants would spit more of the gel-like substance at him, and soon after it collided with his armor, it would burst aflame from the accumulated heat alone. He ignored that, too, trusting his resistances as well as his armor and endurance to protect him. And if those failed, [Leech Strike] would make up the difference. It wasn’t an easy grind, but it was the most effective leveling experience he’d encountered since being reborn in that troll cave what seemed an eternity ago.

As Zeke waded through the mass of fire ant drones, his mace arcing out with the precision of a metronome, bursters launched themselves at him, and true to their names, exploded into a mass of chitin, insectile legs, and, of course, fire. Always fire. And while Zeke was protected from the worst of it by his resistances, Tucker’s potions, and his high endurance, it did little to shield against the overwhelming heat wafting off the flames.

Finally, after almost twenty minutes of swinging his club and wading forward, Zeke reached his goal. However, even as he beheld the monster before him, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a terrible mistake. He knew what he faced, but out of habit, he still used his inspection skill to identify the creature.

Fire Ant Royal Guard – Level 25 (E)

Unlike its brethren, which appeared to be oversized ants, the royal guard stood on four legs, with its thorax rising high into the air. More importantly, it was at least twice the size of its closest brethren, the fire ant sentries, and stood at least twenty feet tall. It was covered in red chitin, and its legs bore sharp barbs that Zeke suspected would easily penetrate his armor. In short, it seemed a good challenge, especially after spending weeks mindlessly fighting the smaller, weaker fire ants.

Zeke had come a long way since his first encounter with an elite-tier monster, way back in Nightweb Ravine. Back then, he had only been half the thing’s level, and he’d had no business even fighting the drachnid champion. But as always, he’d jumped right into it without even a moment’s hesitation. And it had almost cost him his life. In fact, without a little quick thinking and a well-placed pillar of rock, his journey would have ended, then and there. Both Abby and Pudge would have probably died as well.

But this time, Zeke was better prepared. And even more importantly, he was higher-leveled as well. During his four-week grind, Zeke had reached level nineteen, and he could feel in his core that he was at the precipice of attaining his goal and crossing into level twenty. Hopefully, the royal guard would give him the push he needed to do just that. He only had to kill it, first.

The monster let out a chittering scream before thrusting its barbed arms forward, sparking a gout of flame that rushed toward Zeke with frightening speed. Zeke hunkered down, raising his shield and trusting his gifts to see him through the deluge of fire. During his grind, Zeke had encountered quite a few pyre ants – the mound’s equivalent of fire mages – each of which were capable of engulfing their enemies in wave after wave of liquid flame. Without Tucker’s potions, his resistances, or his endurance, Zeke wouldn’t have stood a chance. Even with those things skewing the encounters in his favor, the fire was hot enough that Zeke couldn’t endure it for long. The flames created by the royal guard were hotter still, sucking the very oxygen from the air and threatening to suffocate Zeke.

Luckily, Zeke’s fighting style could be boiled down into a single tenet: advance. And so, he didn’t have to endure the wave of fire for long before he burst through, his armor smoking and his shield leading the way. He barreled into the giant ant’s leg, throwing it off balance and sending it staggering to the side. Zeke followed up his charge with a horizontal swing of his club, which connected with the thing’s thorax with a sickening crunching sound. Flames poured through the resulting web of tiny cracks, licking the monster’s deep red chitin. But Zeke wasn’t finished. Two more swings, and he managed to destroy one of the ant’s barbed legs.

That was all he could do before the ant recovered its balance and sent its arms spearing down at Zeke with terrifying speed. The armored warrior raised his shield, angling it just enough to deflect the weapon-like appendages before stepping forward to position himself beneath the monster’s bulbous abdomen. With a growl, he swung his mace in a vicious uppercut, hammering into the chitin with as much force as he could muster. However, as soon as he landed the strike, Zeke was thrown from his feet by an unseen attack. It wasn’t until after he landed, rolling to a stop on the barren desert ground, that he realized what had happened. Unlike was the case with the drachnids, the other fire ants weren’t content to simply watch their elite-tier brother fight off an attacker. Instead, they’d continued to swarm to the guard’s aid, and Zeke had found himself on the wrong end of a sentry’s charge.

Zeke pushed himself to his feet, enduring a barrage of bursters that, in the beginning of his grind, would have staggered him. Now, though, he was used to it. They were little more than an annoyance. Even the sentries, powerful as they were, fell easily enough. And the guard, for all that it was an elite, was a disappointing opponent as well. But all of them together? Perhaps that was the challenge Zeke really needed.

Help you, came Pudge’s intrusive thought. Zeke could feel his companion’s anxiety; the bear wanted nothing more than to charge in and assist Zeke. However, Zeke was alone by design. If he was going to progress, he needed to do so on his own. Otherwise, his friends, whose power had grown by leaps and bounds, would make everything too easy – which was the point of a grind, he supposed, but that wasn’t Zeke’s goal for the day.

So, he sent a thought back to Pudge, saying, No. I’m fine. Stay with Abby.

Pudge didn’t like that response, but Zeke knew he would respect it, mostly because the bear was privy to most of Zeke’s emotions. He knew, better than anyone, just how much Zeke needed this. Not to prove anything to anyone else, or even himself – rather, he could feel that he was on the verge of something big. Perhaps it was the evolution of one of his paths. Or maybe it was just his anticipation at finally reaching a huge milestone like level twenty. Whatever the case, he needed to do it alone, and Pudge, for all his petulance, wouldn’t go against Zeke on something so important to him.

After swinging his mace in a wide arc, clearing a space around him, Zeke rolled his shoulders, then readied himself to push forward. Crouching into a proper stance, Zeke raised his shield, then advanced through the swarm of enormous ants to confront his real target, the injured royal guard. As he waded through the enraged insectile monsters, he swung his mace with brutal efficiency. Each strike felled one of the creatures, clearing a path.

It would’ve been easy to simply lose himself in the slaughter. He’d been doing that for weeks, only pausing to retreat to the tower and sleep. He had killed thousands of the monsters, and it would have been incredibly easy to continue along that path. However, according to Tucker, the pillar wouldn’t stick around for much longer.  Already, it had remained above ground for far longer than anyone could have anticipated, but it was beginning to show signs of collapse. Soon, the ants would retreat underground, the pillar would collapse, and the ants wouldn’t reappear on the surface for years, and even that would be in a different location. No - if Zeke was going to kill a guard, he needed to do so soon. Otherwise, he might never get the opportunity again.

That he even had the chance was a stroke of luck. Normally, at least according to Tucker, that particular brand of fire ant never left the mound. That it had was apparently a response to the sheer number of ants they’d killed. Eventually, if they kept going the way they were going, more of the hulking ants would spill out of the mound, soon followed by the queen herself – a monarch-tier monster on par with the thunderbirds Abby had encountered. Perhaps even more powerful. Even if the pillar remained on the surface, they would have to disengage soon because none of them were prepared to face such a threat.

But first, Zeke had a royal guard to kill.

So, after clearing a path through the murderous lesser ants, Zeke finally found himself back where he started – standing before the royal guard, his shield up and his mace at the ready. The guard, however, was definitely a little worse off for their previous clash; it was missing one of its legs, another was clearly broken, and its abdomen bore the evidence of Zeke’s last strike, which had resulted in a web of cracks that were leaking liquid fire onto the ground. Where the flames fell, the sand smoked and sizzled as it melted; when it cooled, it would become glass.

“Abby’s going to make fun of me for this,” Zeke muttered to himself.

But in his defense, there was no other option – not unless he wanted to take a shower in liquid flame as he pummeled the monster from below. He could endure it, but it still wasn’t pleasant, and he wanted to avoid that as much as he could. So, with a sigh, he gathered his legs and sprinted toward the monster.

It screamed its clicking scream, lowering itself as it anticipated his attack. Before, Zeke had gone low, attacking its legs and the underside of its abdomen. This time, though, he had something different planned. Something far more comfortable for him. A move that came so naturally to him that it had become something of a trademark – or at least that was how Abby referred to it. In Zeke’s mind, though, it was just the most expedient way to attack a creature that was literally four times his size. At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he leapt high into the air, his mace held aloft so that when he landed, he struck with the full force of his considerable strength as well as gravity. The chitin split like a melon, fire erupting in great gouts and bathing Zeke in its fiery embrace. He endured it stoically, stowing his shield so he could grip the edge of the wound for leverage as he embarked on a barrage of attacks that eventually dug an enormous crater into the monster’s body.

Zeke didn’t stop there, though. If he had, the monster might survive. No – he needed to keep going until it had no hope of living through the assault. So, grimacing at the heat, Zeke descended into the fiery wound, all the while, hammering away at its internal organs. Flames, blood, and milky white organs were mashed into a slurry as he continued his assault, eventually hitting the other side of the abdomen and breaking through. When he did, the chitinous exterior broke apart, and his footing went with it.

Zeke fell to the ground with the clatter of his own chitinous armor, and the monster soon followed, collapsing atop him in a heap of chitin, the fiery mush that had once been the monster’s guts, and twitching legs. Zeke lay there, pinned by the corpse, for a long moment before repositioning himself and bench pressing the body off of him. It didn’t move easily – the monster was huge, and its corpse was heavy – but he managed to shift it just enough that he could roll out from under it. When he did, he saw the familiar sight of Pudge going toe-to-toe with one of the sentries.

The bear had continued to grow, and if he was less than twenty feet from snout to rump, Zeke would have been surprised. He was much larger than any bear on Earth had ever been, but he was also much more densely packed with muscle as well. And he used his size to great effect as he savagely dismantled the sentry with a few swipes of his foreclaws.

Not to be outdone, Talia flitted between a pair of other sentries, raking her own claws across their abdomens as she targeted a lone pyre ant that soon fell to her [Circle of Death]. Finally, the now-familiar crack of thunder filled the air when Abby shot yet another sentry, and her skill, [Thunder Strike] sent a bolt of lightning down to obliterate the unlucky monster. Afterwards, all that was left was a smoking crater and a few sizzling pieces of monster meat.

“You going to lay there all day?” came Tucker’s voice. Zeke turned to see the big man extending his hand. He took it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Idly, Tucker tossed a tiny, marble sized globe at a charging ant, and the thing burst into white-hot flames. When they died down an instant later, the only thing left of the monster was a puddle of melted goo. “That was impressive.”

“I guess,” Zeke muttered, running his hand along his ruined breastplate. The royal guard’s flaming guts had left it melted and misshapen. “I hope the self-repair function can fix this.”

“If not, we can get a replacement in Jariq,” Tucker stated, his eyes never wavering from the surrounding horde of ants. None approached, finally scared off by the fall of their champion. However, they both knew it wouldn’t last long. “You were going to have to replaced it eventually anyway.”

Zeke didn’t respond. He didn’t want new armor. He liked what he had, if only for sentimental reasons. It had been made from the carapace of the first elite-tier monsters he’d faced, not to mention that it was the first time he and Abby tackled a quest together. But all things had to come to an end, he supposed. It was just happening a lot sooner than he’d expected.

“More importantly, did you get it?” Tucker asked.

Zeke nodded. “The sentry pushed me over the edge,” he said. “I’m level twenty now.”

Tucker grinned, his smile blindingly white. “Fantastic,” he said, clapping Zeke on the shoulder. “Now, we can leave this armpit of fire ant pillar and rejoin civilization. Let’s get the others and head back to the tower so you can finally choose your new skill.”

Zeke nodded, then glanced back at the mound. It was a few hundred yards away, but even at that distance, Zeke could tell that it was crumbling. Soon, it would collapse entirely. And as far as he was concerned, it was good riddance. Certainly, it had provided a fantastic opportunity to advance, and they’d taken full advantage of it – Zeke was the last of the group to reach level twenty – but he wouldn’t be upset if he never saw another ant again.