Chapter 252: Destroying Desert (Patreon)

As I backed away from the charging Sand Stompers, I took distinct notice of the fact that the person in plate armor didn’t take effort to retreat, themself. Instead, once the Sand Stompers got close enough, they stood fast and held their ground. Another thing I took notice of was how their hands were completely empty. And, I realized, they didn’t have a single weapon sheathed anywhere on their body. Unless they were concealing a pair of daggers somewhere in that bulky suit of metal.

I, on the other hand, kept a healthy distance from the monsters. I wasn’t fleeing altogether, but if this person decided they wanted to take the frontlines for me, I wasn’t about to stop them. I’d stay healthily in the role of the backline caster, debuffing the enemies from afar and claiming a healthy share of the XP for myself.

Around a couple dozen paces away from the armored individual, I stood ready to cast my Spells on anything that came into range. Primarily, that meant Crippling Chill; I felt like there was around a half-and-half chance this guy just got trampled over and died instantly to the monsters, so any time spent building up Cumulative Catastrophe on them before they inevitably became my problem would be pretty helpful.

Once they were a short ways away from my still-stationary fighting partner, I shot off Crippling Chill on each monster, one after the other. Four Sand Stompers slowed slightly and two Sand Stingers plummeted to the ground from the Stat debuffs as my Mana dropped down by a little over 400. Man, that never got old. Turned out subtracting 17 from both Dexterity and Strength made it pretty difficult for those insects to fly around. But the Stompers were still clearly a problem. Well, they were the problem of the armored person, right now.

Speaking of, as all four of them closed in on the individual, they took a fighting stance, readying a…punch? It sure seemed like it, the way they held their fist back. But still, what was a single punch gonna do against four massive beasts stampeding in at the same—

A massive shockwave pushed me back a step. The ground shook, sand flew into my face, and the power of the blow forced a ringing into my ears. Before I could wipe the sand from my face, I noticed a notification hanging in my mind.

You have offered minor contribution toward the slaying of Level 22 Sand Stomper.

You have earned 61 XP. Your XP is 1.93k.

Barely through the kicked-up dust, I saw the person standing, fist outstretched, with the entire arm of their plate armor shredded. A few dozen paces away from them was the limp body of a Sand Stomper, having been flung away by the attack, skull caved in and neck snapped in two. The other three Stompers were looking much less damaged, having not been hit head-on by the attack. But the shockwave was clearly enough to at least stun them and push them away.

It seemed like just the backforce of the strike had been enough to shatter the person’s armor—or, at least, it had been enough to destroy the right arm. And their hand, it looked bruised and bloodied, too. Wait, was an arm supposed to bend that way?

I was shaken out of my shock by the rumbling under the ground of a Sand Sifter, and hurriedly glanced around me just in time to see one burst out of the sand from behind. I barely ducked beneath its arc as it soared over me, and at the middle of its arc, I grabbed it from below, activating Noxious Grasp and Crippling Chill to start ravaging its Health and Stamina.

The thing writhed and chomped at the air, unable to reach me with its mouth and unable to burrow itself back into the ground before I fully restrained it. And most of the monsters were focused on the person in front of me, meaning I had a few moments to actually sustain contact with the Sand Sifter and finish it off with Noxious Grasp this time, too.

As I held the Sand Sifter pinned to the ground, I watched the armored person take a step forward and raise their undamaged fist, ready to take another swing at the next wave of monsters that approached them. A second herd of Sand Stompers had rushed past the still-dazed first by this point, headed straight for them.

You have offered minor contribution toward the slaying of Level 16 Sand Sifter.

You have earned 168 XP. Your XP is 2.1k.

The Sifter in my arms went limp, and I hurriedly crawled to my feet, casting Crippling Chill on the Stompers that got in my range as they pursued the armored person. Though, I wasn’t even sure if they’d even need my assistance, if they were capable of doing that every time they threw a punch.

Or, I supposed they couldn’t do something like that every time, considering it looked like they just broke their entire arm just by swinging once. Okay, yeah, actually, they definitely needed my help. What, could they literally only attack one more time? I supposed anything as powerful as that would need an equally insane drawback.

I once again threw Crippling Chills on all of the approaching Sand Stingers, and also went ahead and refreshed the already-active curses on the ones that were currently lying on the ground. I’d talked with Index about it after our first fight with them, and it seemed like about twenty-five uninterrupted seconds of the Curse was enough to kill most of them, and it’d been around ten seconds since I’d first cast my first round on these things, meaning refreshing the duration back up to fifteen seconds would be enough to finish them off.

Well, it’d finish them off in fifteen seconds. For now they were just lying there, twitching and dying slowly. Man, sometimes I felt bad for my enemies. Maybe Erani had it right just going for burst damage rather than a slow death over time; at least anyone she killed wouldn’t be tortured beforehand.

Eh, fuck it. This timeline’s not permanent, anyway, so there’s no use pondering the specifics.

My thoughts were interrupted as two Sand Stompers came at the person from two separate directions. They raised their fist to swing at one, but just before their fist could connect, the other threw its head forward and batted them aside with its tusks. The chestplate of their armor crumpled as they were thrown so far back that they tumbled into the sand just behind me.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, staring at their unmoving body. “Are you alive?”

They stirred, pushing themself up to one knee using their unbroken arm, then gave a curt nod.

I shrugged. “Alright. Uh, I’ll take these things for a moment while you get your bearings.”

With that, I looked back to the horde of monsters charging at us, and strode forth. Unlike my last fight with them, we weren’t surrounded this time, and I also knew a lot more about my opponents. Not enough to survive—not by a longshot, against so many—but certainly enough to hold my own until I started to run low on resources.

The two Sand Stompers that’d attacked earlier were now charging at me, ready to arrive in just a few seconds. And, just as I’d expected, just around then I felt the familiar rumbling of the Sand Sifters coming up through the ground to distract me just before the Stompers struck. But I was ready. Instead of standing still and waiting to defend myself from their attacks, or retreating back away from the monsters—both completely normal, sane things for someone to do in this situation—I charged.

Both Sifters burst out of the ground in the completely wrong location, several paces behind my Expedite-enhanced sprint straight at the two powerhouses coming at me.

I took a split second to breathe and think gods, this better work. Then, I jumped.

The first Sand Stomper on the left threw its head forward like always, its massive tusks threatening to bash into me and throw me fifteen paces away like they’d done before. But this time, with my knowledge and a healthy helping of Dexterity, I grabbed one of its tusks with a hand as it tried to swing them at me, then used my grip to guide my body up above the attack, where I placed my feet on the side of the tusk and pushed off again, leaping to the right at the other Sand Stomper.

I managed to fling myself forward and halfway onto the back of the second Stomper, where I gripped on for dear life just as I’d done in my last fight with them. As I climbed my way up, I glanced around and spotted a couple Sand Stingers headed my way, casting Crippling Chill on them the moment they crossed into my range. I wasn’t making the mistake of letting one of them stab me ever again.

I cast Noxious Grasp and Sanguine Bond the moment I made contact with the Stomper, committing to ride it until it died. Which, ideally, would not be very long from now. It panicked as usual, but once again, these things seemed to have little they could do against anything that managed to get out of the way of their tusks. Or, rather, it seemed like they specifically had one way to get rid of something that gripped onto them—the Sand Stingers. Which, I was pretty good against those.

The first Stomper that I’d kicked off of seemed to accept that its hivemate was a lost cause, turning away and instead going after the armored person just as they’d gotten to their feet, readying their remaining hand to strike. There wasn’t much left I could do about that, so I just hoped I’d given them time to recover and went back to trying not to get thrown into the sand.

As the Sand Stomper charged at the armored person, they took a stance that told me they were about to put everything they had into this attack. I supposed they had to, if they wanted to kill the thing. But still, being left without the use of either arm afterward seemed like a pretty steep cost.

It reared its head back, ready to impale her with its horns and crush her beneath its hooves, and they readied themself to counterattack. Just as it was getting within their range, they threw their fist forward, aimed to hit it right in its nose. But at that exact time, a Sand Sifter burst from the sand, its arc flying perfectly in the way of their strike. Their fist impacted the Sifter, and an explosion of force rang through the battlefield.

The only way to describe what happened to the Sifter would be to say that it simply dissolved. It wasn’t flung away, body broken but intact. It wasn’t impaled by the punch, blood and guts erupting from a newly-made hole. It was simply that, in a single moment, every particle making up the thing’s body was torn asunder by the sheer force of the blow, leaving nothing behind. One moment it was there, the next it was not. All that was left was a pink mist that mixed with the kicked-up sand.

The Stomper was left unharmed by the intercepted attack, but it was still pushed back slightly by the shockwave. But when I looked at the armored person, they were left much worse for wear. Just as I’d assumed, the arm they’d used to throw the wasted punch was just as broken and bloodied as the first one, the armor that surrounded the arm having been shredded off. They were left with an extremely strange-looking sort of mix between a sleeveless shirt and full plate armor, their entire body covered except for their injured arms and hands.

After a moment getting over its daze, the Sand Stomper charged again, undeterred by the show of force. I could almost swear I could see an eagerness in its eyes, saying ‘you’re out of tricks now, without your arms!’

The person seemed just as fearless as the Stomper did, though, taking yet another fighting stance—or, taking whatever a stance could be called where your legs were stood ready for battle while each arm hung uselessly by your side.

I winced as I watched the Stomper draw closer, readying myself to watch this poor person get absolutely thrashed by the beast. But just before it hit them, they moved. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what they were doing, but then I realized.

Oh, gods. Are they going in for a headbutt?!

They slammed their forehead into the beast’s nose, and once again I felt my hair get swept back by the wind that blew from the strike. The Sand Stomper caught a lot more than just a heavy breeze, though, its mangled corpse flying off and slamming into a sand dune, leaving the person standing solitary in a pit made by the blast.

For a second, I wondered if their neck would be snapped or something because of what they’d done, but they seemed relatively unharmed as my vision cleared. Their helmet had been destroyed, just like their gauntlets beforehand, revealing a woman’s square face with long brown hair tied in a single braid falling down her back.

Okay, actually, the ‘relatively’ in ‘relatively unharmed’ was pulling a lot of weight. Her face was pretty fucked up. Her nose was broken, she was missing several teeth, blood leaked from several cuts surely made by metal shrapnel, and—gods, was that a dent in her forehead? I hoped my mind was playing tricks on me. But she wasn’t dead, which was entirely what I’d had assumed would happen, so relative to that, sure, she was unharmed.

With a lurch, I remembered I was still gripped onto a monster of my own, which had been aimlessly running around, seemingly hoping I’d just hop right off of its back of my own accord. Which I hadn’t done, obviously. But it seemed like Noxious Grasp, Crippling Chill, and Sanguine Bond had all worked quite the wonder on the beast, combining with each other to do a whole lot of damage per second.

“A decent bit over 60 per second, altogether and accounting for Cumulative Catastrophe,” Index said. “It’ll be dead in six, five four, three…”

The beast keeled over just around then, crashing down onto its side and offering me a juicy message about earning something like 250 XP for the kill.

But, even after we’d fought so many, more came. In fact, I could see about two dozen Sand Stompers alone running across these dunes and headed straight for us, and that wasn’t even counting the far-off ones in the horizon which were, as one would assume, also heading for us. My Mana wasn’t looking good, after using so much to kill what I had—especially all of those damned Stingers that would each eat two Crippling Chills—140 Mana’s worth—before they’d finally die.

“You fight well.” A voice came from behind me, to which I turned and found the woman stumbling forth to my side. Blood dripped down her fingers and chin, staining the sand below her as she walked, and her voice carried a lisp that I wasn’t sure whether was caused by a natural accent or by the number of teeth she was missing. “It is an interesting combat style you have.”

I chuckled as I cast Crippling Chill on another Sand Stinger. My Mana went below 500. “I don’t think you get to say that, considering you’ve taken a hit from a Stomper that flung you halfway across the desert and yet still the majority of the damage dealt to you so far has been self-inflicted.”

She chuckled too, gazing off onto the horizon. For a moment, I thought she was surveying our suite of enemies, but then I realized she was just watching the sky, a strange look in her eye. “Yes, perhaps I invested too much in Strength and not enough in Endurance. The concept of killing an enemy in a single blow had seemed so enticing to my younger self. I will not let it be my final regret, then, even if it was the cause of my undoing.”

Oh, shit, right, we’re about to die. I guess I’m the one who’s acting strange here for not being a little dramatic and sentimental. “Ah, uh, right. What’s your name?”

She smiled and shook her head. “May we not simply be strangers fighting our last stands on a battlefield full of our enemies? Names introduce too much complexity; we might become enemies of each other in our final moments if we find we don’t like who the other is.”

“Huh. I guess. Um, why did you charge at these things in the first place? I was kinda taking care not to aggravate them when I went for the crystal.”

“I have lived much too sheltered a life, it seems. I did not realize the Sand Hive was as powerful as they said. Perhaps too many people had whispered too many empty praises into my ear, after all.”

“...Got it. So, if I’d just warned you about how dangerous they were, you’d have left them alone, I’d have gotten the crystal, and we’d all live happily ever after?”

“Let us not dwell on the actions that brought us to this moment. The advent of our eternity is at hand.”

She stepped forward, readying herself against the countless monsters.

I shrugged, stepping forward as well. “Yeah, sure, let’s go for a last push.”