I don’t want that to happen.
“Arol,” Wunder said. “We might need to use our specials.”
“My throat is sore.”
“Arol…” Wunder warned.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But what about Janus?”
“What about him?”
“He’s in range you know.”
“In range?” I did not like the sound of that. “I’m in range of what?”
“Arol and I need to use a special combined technique that is extremely indiscriminate. You are within the radius and will likely get killed.” Wunder said. “Nothing personal of course.”
Alarm bells began ringing in my head. “How far do I need to get away to be safe?”
“It’s not exactly a distance you can cover in –”
“How far?”
“If you could somehow leap seventy-five footsteps into the air –”
Seventy-five feet. “[Greater Rabbit Leap].”
The air rushed as I ascended into Alamir’s sky, Wunder and Arol becoming smaller and smaller specks in my vision. I knew, of course, that I would still need to descend, as gravity would inevitably make me descend, but my mind was already thinking ahead. Thinking and planning and strategizing the utilization of abilities that I had not used for the longest time.
“[Insect Metamorphosis].”
Giant dragonfly wings sprung from my back, creating gusts of winds and beating at a pace that prevented me from descending too far within the strike zone. As a worm, this was the skill that enabled me to kill Agkistrodon, the Serpent of the Rock, and earn me my first Domain of Refuge Creek. The skill that granted me one trait of any insect, and enabled it to last for exactly thirty seconds.
From my vantage point in the sky, I could not even begin to count the number of kobolds that surrounded Arol and Wunder. I aimed my fingers and prepared to fire [Diamond Bullet] after bullet, but hesitated as I was not entirely sure what Wunder and Arol had in mind.
Wunder’s spines were growing from all over his body, thicker, longer, looking sharper and deadlier with each passing second. Arol was taking in a deep, breath, inhaling and inflating, just as the kobolds burst out of their hiding spots and charged with battle cries.
“[Millennium Needle].”
“[Geist Song].”
Arol shifted, tilting back as she took in a deep, long gasp of air, like a diver preparing to descend a thousand miles into the ocean. Then, coiling her body like a wind-up toy releasing stored potential energy, she shrieked.
The earth fractured into rivulets. Stones shattered into powder and trees burst into a confetti rain of toothpicks. Irrevocable deafness would have befallen me had I possessed ears and had I been closer to the epicenter of the scream.
Simultaneously, spikes flew off the porcupine-man like he was a blowfish exploding, firing off in all directions. Their speed through open-air became ridiculous as they blasted forward using the supersonic force of Arol’s scream. The combination was a ghastly bloodbath. Spikes tore through flesh and bone like harpoons imitating machinegun fire. Kobolds were pierced through the stomach, disemboweled in a single strike, some had limbs ripped straight from the joints, broken and bent backward from different angles. Several were speared through the head, dying instantly.
Those who died on impact were the lucky ones. Those who did not receive the full weight of Arol’s bone-shattering scream, bombarded by debris and shattering trees, blood gushing from the orifices.
In a single strike, more than half the charging kobolds were eliminated. Those behind, managing to survive the worst of the attack, lost the momentum of their charge. A portion of the forest was now cleared of trees and debris and decorated with blood, guts, limbs and kobolds roaring in agony.
“Time for the cleanup.” A long spine elongated from Wunder’s back. He cut it off, and it became flexible. Like rubber. Raising it high, the whip-like spine made tiny cracks against the air.
Crack. The whip connected with a stray kobold, snapping his neck in an instant. “That’s one.”
Crack. More heads turned, more necks snapped. Arol floated around the battlefield, her macuahuitl finishing off those maimed by Wunder’s attack and her scream. She vanished, disappearing and reappearing up and around the place like a dancer of death. She never appeared more than once, never swung her weapon to sever a head or cave in a skull more than once. The red of her cloak was everywhere as if she was teleporting, and I realized she was leaving afterimages in her wake.
Crack. About two minutes after it began, it was over. The legion of red dots – of enemies – cleared out as if they were an amateur paintball league challenging a platoon of military veterans to a friendly game. Environmental factors, numbers, and logistics – all of it was meaningless, irrelevant.
Arol and Wunder made an extremely deadly team. Arol was intangible and phased through Wunder’s area-of-effect attack without care, and Wunder’s black quills acted as reflectors for her sonic scream, making him immune to her own AoE. They played off each other, complementing each other’s strengths, while covering weaknesses. They did such a good job of covering weaknesses that I could not even find any.
“Jesus…”
The smell was nauseating as I descended. Blood. So much of it. So much blood and death. Reeking. Reeking into my non-existent nose the smell of numerous emptied bowels. Kobold shit was not something I ever thought I would smell in my lifetime, and it was now my expletive of choice. Kobold shit. Had I possessed eyes, they would be watering from the stench. Had I possessed a stomach, I’d have thrown up seven times over.
Zlosta’s massacre of her people did not compare to this. The smell was nothing like this.
