Chapter 8: Coffin Shell (Patreon)

I flip the coins with Projectile from my left hand to my right. A lump sticks in my throat when I try to swallow, watching the monster slowly clench and unclench its claw-like fingers as it… pulsates.

“Identify.”

Monster is a part of one of your current quests.

Identification cost reduced to (0).

Confirm purchase: Y/N?

Before I can respond to the prompt, splintering wood thunders into my field of view. I yelp in surprise and throw out a slightly wrong shield in the way of the thing’s fist. It slams against the magical barrier, and a spray of black slime reminds me that it's not solid on the inside.

Wood chunks batter my exposed calves, and the slime makes sure I won’t be pulling it off any time soon. Pain lances into my brain like searing needles, poking at every single receptor like a mad doctor using me as a pincushion.

“Ugh…” I groan and flick the other coin into the monster’s path to try and slow it down. “What kind of magic pain bullshit is this?”

My screen flickers as a tiny black stain passes over the ‘Y’. Information floods into my brain, and understanding unfortunately comes a little too late.

Mass Risen Grave: Shellraiser.

A monster created from the final remnants of many Shellraisers.

Depending on the size, the Risen Grave grows in strength.

Mass Size: Regenerates at an alarming rate, has enough mass to put lethal force behind its attacks, and inflicts ‘Agony’ status when its body fluid enters your bloodstream.

Yup, agony’s a pretty damn good name for what I’m feeling right now. And it isn’t getting any better as the seconds crawl by–if anything, it’s getting a whole lot worse.

I summon a fistful of ghost quarters, fill them all with shields, and awkwardly position myself as far away from the monster as possible. Shaky breaths fill my lungs with every passing second I wait for the thing to follow me. Time ticks by as the pain grows, then stalls out at the level of a sprained ankle all over my body.

“It isn’t moving. Why isn’t it moving?” I hiss through my teeth.

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s guarding the tunnel for some reason?”

I grit my teeth. That’s about the worst thing that can happen, since the hole I came in through sealed itself off the second I dropped down. Unless there’s another passageway I haven’t been told about, this is the only way forward.

Pearl suddenly gasps. “What’s it doing?!”

The desperation in Pearl’s voice snaps me out of my pain-induced mental withdrawal, and forces me to focus on the monster before me yet again. Its arms are slowly thinning out, glooping onto the ground below it like spools of rope, and the wood is shifting to coat them anew.

Before I can even think, one of the shoulders snaps forward violently. And in the split second after, the coiled up arm follows.

“Shit!” I cry as I drop to the floor and drop a coin in front of me.

The shield flashes into being not a second too late. The arm lashes towards me in a perfectly straight line, impacting the shield with such force that it nearly shatters. I wince and bring up my arms to block my face, letting three more coins fall to the ground.

CRASH! CRASH! Crash. Clunk.

Four impacts sound out in quick succession. The entirety of the thing’s whip-like arm is coiled out in front of me, but before I can do anything about it, the thing snaps its shoulder back to recall its arm. And as that one recoils, its other shoulder sweeps through the air in front of it in a vicious arc.

I have a split second to make a decision. The thing doesn’t look like it can move from there. So… running into the other tunnel to regroup is the smartest thing to do. Unfortunately, that involves somehow surviving a few more attacks.

Which I’ll just have to do. I wince and push myself to my knees, then cry out in pain as I try to rise to my feet.

A miasma of agony washes over me, halting my thoughts for a split second. The pain is absolutely unbearable, and all I can manage through it is calling a few more empowered ghost quarters to my hand. I fill them with shield through trembling fingers and muffled cries of warning from Pearl.

Something crashes into my side. I feel my arm bend, and bend, and bend until the horrific cracking of bone sends me into adrenaline-fuelled alertness. The taste of iron and warm wetness fills my mouth as the shield filled coins vibrate uselessly against my hand.

I’m going to die. With a hand filled to the brim with spells that could’ve stopped it.

The ground skids past out of the corner of my eye. A wet cough slips through my lips, and the following intake of breath is accompanied by a horrible shooting pain right in my lung. It triggers another coughing fit, but… that’s it. Pain and awareness vye for my limited attention, and I slowly understand that I’m not actually dead.

“Pearl.” I groan. “Is it about to attack again?”

Horrified murmuring precedes any real words. “I… um… Shelby, your arm…”

I glance over at my right arm. It isn’t pretty. But somehow, most of the damage seems completely constrained to it. And what damage it caused by crushing into my ribs. After a few seconds of mouthing words of disbelief, I set my jaw and voice the question that should really be a blessing.

“How come I’m still alive?”

My left hand tightens around the coins, and I pause. One of them’s missing. I look back at the distance the monster’s attack sent me sprawling, trying to locate the one coin I must’ve dropped during the tumble. Instead, I see the remnants of a shield dissipating into thin air.

A shield I’m damn sure I didn’t throw.

“A shield appeared and protected you.” Pearl finally squeaks. “It… it wasn’t enough to keep you safe, but it looks like it kept you alive.”

I chuckle grimly and try to move. The pain’s absolutely horrible, but I’m starting to feel… numb. That’s probably a terrible sign, but I need to make use of it.

“The shield triggered on its own. And instead of coming out of the coin itself, it somehow manifested a few feet away.” I say to myself as I watch the monster come to grips with my continued existence. “That’s got to be part of that coinbound upgrade. But… that’s not very coin-bound. How do I use this?”

Two projectile-filled coins clatter to the ground and release their spells. I grimace at the absolutely no damage they caused to the glass.

“Shelby!”

Dark awareness spreads in the corner of my mind. I shift my body and raise my left arm to block the whip-like limb screaming towards my head, four coins shattering in my palm as I do. A shield four layers thick springs into being a few inches from my hand, and the arm slams into it with enough force to break one.

The head-on attack broke three and damaged a fourth. The sideways whip only broke one and damaged a second. Only a slight difference, but it’ll save me some ghost quarters if I can tell in time. It takes a few seconds for the arm to start recoiling. Longer than the straight, but it’s a much safer attack.

If I’d been smart about it, I probably could’ve jumped out of the way of the straight. It started all at once, and I hadn’t seen it adjust afterwards. Probably couldn’t, anyway. At least not keeping the raw power of the straight. So I need to move. But my damn legs still won’t listen to me.

…Legs?

My eyes are drawn to the monster’s spindly legs. It hasn’t used them for any kind of leverage. Plus, it reshaped its arms once already, so why did it still have those two very much weak points on display? And why hasn’t it moved from right on top of the tunnel? Obviously it’s guarding it, but it’s proven that it can move. So why haven’t its legs shifted in the slightest?

“Are you okay? Can you still think?” Pearl asks worriedly.

“No to the first, yes to the second.” I half-chuckle, half wheeze with a gesture at the monster. “Why does it have spindly legs? Shouldn’t it turn them into a… trunk, or something if it’s not going to move?”

Pearl sputters out a string of words filled with disbelief. “Yes, it’s weird, but we’ve got much bigger problems! Your legs… and your arm… and the attack that’s coming RIGHT NOW!”

I snap to the attack, see that it’s a straight, and force myself to roll out of the way. The arm sails through right where I was a second ago, and the monster tries to adjust itself a little too late to hit me. But that proves me right–it can alter the path of the straight. Just… not really well.

“Why aren’t you panicking?” Pearl demands as I shakily get to my legs. My muscles almost instantly give out, but the hardened coating acts like impromptu casts. “I’m panicking, and the monster can’t even kill me! It’s–wait. Do you feel that?”

Her focus instantly shifts to the monster. More specifically, at the tunnel entrance between its legs. I don’t question how I can feel or understand any of that, but it definitely adds to the pile of questions I have for this shell-dweller.

“I feel nothing.”

“It’s… like… hrrm. Watch out.” Pearl pauses, and a flash of awareness alerts me to another sweep. I bring up enough shields to protect myself, and then another four for the follow-up straight it launches right after.

I snort and summon more ghost quarters. “Who’s not panicking now, little miss shellfish?”

“I’m not a shellfish. And I’m still panicking super hard, I’m just trying to make sure we get out of this alive. There’s something coming out of that tunnel, and it’s super intense. I… don’t know how I didn’t feel it before.” She mutters. “It’s like a roaring fire just below the surface, and the tendrils of heat are licking at the monster’s… undercarriage.”

There’s nothing there that I can see, but if Pearl says it’s there, I have no reason not to trust her. So I nod and let her continue as the monster retracts its limbs.

“Somehow… it has to be sustaining it and hurting it at the same time.” She theorizes. “If it was only sustaining it, it would plomp itself down on the hole and block off our escape. And if it was just hurting it, it would use those spindly legs to run over here and rip your head off. …Your people do have your brain in your head, right?”’

“Is that some thinly veiled insult?”

Pearl shakes her head. “Nope–it’s a genuine question. The shark-dog you killed has its brain sandwiched between its stomach and its lungs. I’m not sure what kind of cruel evolution made it do that, but–INCOMING!”

I already have my shields ready, so all the warning serves to do is catch me a little off guard.

“You don’t have to yell. Anymore. It was really helpful at the start.” I clarify as sincerely as I can. “So, I need your opinion on this–break its legs to send it splattering onto the tunnel, or try to finagle a shield into the tunnel to plug it up?”

“...Can you even make a shield big enough to plug up the tunnel?”

That… is a very good point. And there’s a good chance that destroying its legs would only delay it for a dozen seconds, not outright stop it. If my legs weren’t screwed, maybe running away would work. But I’m pretty sure they’re literally destroyed under these hardened slime casts.

Two ghost quarters pop into my hand. I fill them with projectiles and carefully separate them from the remaining shields. They won’t detonate in my hand, as was shown by me dropping a pair after the monster destroyed my arm, but I’m not risking anything.

Both of the monster's limbs are fully retracted. It doesn’t look like it can launch another attack until it’s completely reset its arm, so that gives me a window of opportunity. It’ll cost me a whole lot of ghost quarters, and if I screw up I’ll be on a serious resource limit, but it’s my best chance.

I steady myself and raise my arm in front of me. The monster’s right arm lashes in a sweep, and is instantly joined by its left. Attacks from both sides, probably meant to check if I can actually block them at the same time. For a split second I wonder that exact same thing, but Pearl’s dark awareness keeps me on edge and confident at the same time.

“Both!” She warns me, even if it’s completely unnecessary.

“Noted!” I call back, raising shields on both sides to block the oncoming limbs. They crash through the shields just like before, and the monster switches into recall mode the moment they hit.

Now’s my chance. I fumble a coin onto my thumbnail and aim it at the thing’s left leg. My confidence dies when I see just how shaky my arm is. Being right-handed doesn’t help for shit, either, and it being fifty feet away means I’ll have to be way more accurate than the… one or two shots I’ve fired before.

“Pearl! Help!”

She nods. “I’m on it!”

The edges of my vision become soaked in colour-strewn darkness. Instead of making it harder to see, it somehow makes everything sharper and far more vibrant than a second ago. My arm doesn’t get stronger. But suddenly I know just how to compensate for my own weakness–the right way to flick the coin so that the projectile will hit its mark.

Before I can think myself out of this newfound certainly, I flick the coin with all of my might. It spins for a few feet before shattering into a mass of whirling magical power that accelerates as it forms. The monster shifts its torso to try and avoid my attack, but the thing is way too slow. And way too rooted to its exact spot.

Projectile shatters a spindly leg from the middle down. The monster emits a low groan, like heavy machinery starting to jam, and shifts slightly to the side. But it’s not down yet. I raise my other coin, watching like a hawk just in case it somehow manages to launch more attacks way faster than before, and use Pearl’s help to aim at the other immobile limb.

It impacts heavily, and the monster lets out a mighty shriek like shearing metal. It lurches forward the instant its leg is severed, launching itself a dozen feet closer to me. My thoughts catch on the dark possibility that I had been horrifically wrong, and I feel Pearl’s fear right alongside mine.

Arms shift from whips into massive claws. The monster slams them into the glass, but the floor is far stronger than the wood that makes it up. Splinters and goo fly everywhere as the thing destroys itself in a desperate attempt to get closer to me. Then it seems to remember where it is. It turns around as well as a mass of wood and goo can, scrabbles with destroyed hands to try and pull itself back over the hole, and slowly but surely stops moving.

“Is… is it dead?” Pearl whispers. “Or… more dead, since it was already dead to start with.”

I don’t have a good answer for her. Not a single notification pops up, I don’t get a surge of Worth like I would experience from a game, and I certainly don’t feel any stronger. I pull out my Class Card to check for any changes, but the only thing that greets me is a terrifyingly low ghost quarter count.

“It better be.” I close my Class Card with a grimace and start making my way to the thing’s ‘corpse’. “I’m running low on coins and blood. Either of those things run out, I’m cooked.”

The monster doesn’t move as I approach. Before I’m really ready, I’m standing over it with my hand hovering dangerously close to the thing’s wooden and goopy body. I swallow my worries and lean over it, press my hand to its body, and attempt to bring it into my inventory.

Mass Risen Grave: Shellraiser unable to be stored.

Items: Concentrated Shellraiser Nuclei, Shellraiser shell conglomerate, and everdriftwood scraps possible to gain instead.

Remaining materials converted to: 75 Worth.

Current Worth (91) clears the (50) Worth threshold.

(1) Clearance ticket issued.

If not used within 2 hours, it will be destroyed.

Opening Clearance Shop at your location.

Shop wisely.

Your life may depend on it.