I landed in the middle of a group of scarrick beetles, with trident in my hands but my sword sheathed. A beetle snapped at my leg, and I batted it away, but as before, a simple weapon blow wasn’t enough to break through its shell. I let my Vigor flow along the trident, reached with my mind into the water behind me, and summoned another Crashing Wave. It shot out of the pool and slammed into a charging scarrick beetle, then smashed it against the wall. There was a crack of stone on stone, and the impact split the plates on the beetle’s back. It fell to the floor and lay limply twitching amid a heap of damp sand. Rather than give it time to recover, I pounced and struck with the Depthless Dream. The trident plunged into a crack in the creature’s armored plates and sank into the body beneath. The beetle burst apart beneath the impact of the magical blow.
Scarrick beetles were streaming through the camp, far more of them than I had faced outside. Some menaced the Pathless, but most were going for the heaps of roasted fish. They were trying to steal our supplies. Around the fires, the Pathless moved uncertainly. Most of them weren’t warriors, and even if they had been, their only weapons were thin sticks and flaming torches.
I strode over and kicked a beetle away from two scared-looking Pathless. The creature landed with a splash in the edge of a pool. Once again, I called on the power of Crashing Waves. The water fountained up around the beetle and hurled it into the air. There was a crunch as it hit the ceiling and then a splat as it landed in the sand at the side of the stream. I brought the Depthless Dream down to finish it off.
Another beetle was menacing Shadiy with its mandibles. She held out a pair of torches, trying to keep it from the people behind her, but the stone-sheathed creature had no fear of fire. It kept advancing, claws skittering across the ground, while Shadiy and her companions kept retreating.
I lifted my hand and created a wall of Plank Pillars to separate the monster from the people. Then, I dropped to one knee and slammed my fist into the earth. The ground cracked beneath my blow, and it rippled toward the beetle and threw it onto its back. I charged and slammed the trident down hard in a gap between its armored plating. The power of water surged through me and my weapon, and the beetle spattered across the floor.
Kumi stood nearby, extricating one of her knives from the underbelly of a beetle. Two more that she had killed lay nearby, but no more were moving.
“Gather up the fish,” I said to the people around me. “We’re getting out of here.”
While the Pathless collected the food, Kumi and I collected the cores. She handed her share to me, and I absorbed them. I still didn’t have enough cores to carve the internal pathways for a new technique.
We moved into the entrance cave. The Pathless loaded the fish into the cart while Shadiy got the horse into the harness.
“You take the others out of here,” I said.
“You’re not coming with?”
“I’ll be nearby, but I can move much faster than if I traveled alongside you all. Besides, if I can pick up a few more beetle cores, I can learn a new technique.”
“Do your studies never end?” Kumi climbed up onto the cart and took the reins.
“You know it.”
I ran out of the cave, ahead of the others.
In the boneyard, a pack of scarrick beetles milled about. I ensured that Kumi and the others were far from harm and slinked toward the beetles. I gathered my Vigor and sent it running down through my feet into the ground, then back up. Being in a place of earth power and with the waters in the caves right behind me, mud flowed more readily than it would elsewhere. My Mud Geyser burst forth in spectacular fashion amid the main mass of beetles and sent them flying. One landed on its back in front of me, and I sliced it in half with the Sundered Heart Sword, the flaming blade easily cutting through the creature’s soft belly to reveal its innards and glowing magical core.
The beetles had quickly regrouped and started advancing again. I created a Mud Entrapment beneath some of them, holding back part of the swarm to buy time while I dealt with others.
Direct elemental attacks like Untamed Torch wouldn’t do much good against creatures armored in stone, as I’d seen from other fights in this Vigorous Zone. But I had less direct ways of using my Augmenting to affect them. I summoned an Acid Cloud around some of the advancing beetles and watched as they backed off, agitated by the stinging green mist. Two advanced through it, but by the time they reached me, their shells were softening. I stabbed one with the Depthless Dream and punctured its softened shell. Gore oozed out around the wound as I put my foot on its head and tugged the trident free.
Its companion lashed out at me with its mandibles. I jumped back and brought the Sundered Heart down. The softened stone shell crumpled beneath the blow.
From afar, hooves clopped and wheels rumbled as the cart rolled down the desert road, Kumi still at the reins and the Pathless running along behind. I trusted that Kumi could deal with any beetles they encountered along the way, so I could spend some more time out here in the Vigorous Zone.
More beetles emerged from the cairns. They seemed to stream out from the heaps of rocks themselves,
