Sacrifice Mage-Chapter 42: A Real Battle

I didn’t see the enemy at first, too busy tying down the cave-sheep to a nearby stalagmite. There. Now, no matter how worked up it got, it wouldn’t run off and get itself killed.
The monster that appeared through the tunnel was essentially a smaller version of the dead one lying just in front of us. Scaled, halfway between a Komodo dragon and a python, and sized up to the dimensions of a small truck. The main difference was that instead of those spiky fins, this Lesser Brillwyrm had legs to move rapidly.
“Remember,” Ugnash warned, most likely for my benefit. We had already discussed fighting Brillwyrms before entering the dungeon. “Poison spit and scale shots.”
“Got it,” I said.
He didn’t need to remind me about their speed. The monster itself was lunging in fast as a cheetah. I appreciated the other two reminders, though.
The way we were arranged thanks to being busy investigating the dead Greater Brillwyrm, Ugnash was behind me at the very back, while Khagnio and Cerea were closer. As soon as the monster rushed in to the tune of the cave-sheep bleating in rage and terror, it locked its gaze on Khagnio and belched out a hissing roar. Then it bulldozed towards the Scalekin.
That probably wasn’t ideal. Ugnash was supposed to be the main tank, keeping threats focused on him while Khagnio dealt the most damage.
He disappeared. Right, of course he did.
The monster charged through the spot he had been a millisecond ago, then switched attention to me. Not great. Cerea was retreating, though lightning flickered and danced along her arm, ready to fire as soon as she had an opening. Ugnash was rushing in from behind with a roar but he wasn’t going to reach us in time.
So, I squared my feet and channelled Gravity again, focusing on Infusion to weigh myself down.
The lesser Brillwyrm wasn’t using its poison spit or scale shots, deciding instead to bear down on its targets. All I needed to do was hold its charge. Distantly, I realized it was funny to sign up as a mage and start acting like a tank. If I could just hold the—
It slammed into my raised shield with crushing force. Ugnash hadn’t mentioned its rank, but the way I was sent staggering suggested I was facing a monster that was at least Silver. I had pulled my mace out to counter as soon as
I
staggered the Brillwyrm, but all I managed was a glancing blow as I tried not to fall. It barely even dented the rippling scales.
Nevertheless, its collision against my weighted body
had
ended its momentum. That opened it up for attacks from the others.
A thunderous spark arced over its body, though it didn’t appear to have much effect. I saw faint smoke rising from a few burns, but the monster’s answering roar was more annoyed than anything else.
Where Cerea’s attack had failed, Khagnio landed a proper blow, appearing out of thin air to score a deep gash on the Brillwyrm’s flank. This time, it did scream out in pain.
But it remained fast, lashing out just as Khagnio had struck. I didn’t even see its thick tail whip around to strike the Scalekin rogue. Khagnio was already moving, so the blow wasn’t
too
hard, but he uttered a soft cry as he once again cloaked himself.
It made me think of our fight for a brief instant. If he had used his Aspect of Stealth against me, I’d have been screwed.
The Lesser Brillwyrm roared out again, focusing its attention in my and Cerea’s direction. Its scales shimmered and vibrated.
“Watch out!” Ugnash landed in front of us, red threads turning to a scuttling aura vapouring off his body. For another brief instant, I felt an unmistakeable tug towards him, my body instinctively moving closer to his back. Cerea felt it too, like the aura was turning to invisible threads and dragging us toward him.
The Brillwyrm launched its scales, each one shooting like they’d been fired from a shotgun.
Ugnash tanked them all. The scales pinged off his armour and his tower shield—a much fancier curved piece of metal than my heater shield. It almost looked magical.
On the rare instance the scales made it through his guard and poked at his skin or his leather undershirt, they were repelled by his body directly. Apparently, his Vitality was clearly on a different level.
Khagnio reappeared to counterattack, but the Brillwyrm was wise to his tricks. It was actually both amazing and a little frightening to see the monster adapt in real time. Just as the Scalekin reappeared to strike—it looked like his Stealth dropped the moment he attacked—the Brillwyrm jumped away with its strong feet, countering with a spit ball of poison.
Dodging, Khagnio then disappeared again. I was just stuck staring at where the rock sizzled under the monster’s spit. That reminded me of the slime bodies…
“You won’t be able to tank its poison so easily,” Cerea warned, glancing at Ugnash.
He grunted in annoyance. “I can a bit, but I’d have to stay still.”
“I can help.” I stepped up, pulling out one of the runes I had purchased. “I had a feeling we’d face something like this.”
The monster was roaring still, readying another spit ball after putting some distance between us. I crushed the small stone with the little magical etching, channelling mana through Sacrifice at the same time.
[ Sacrifice
You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Rune of Ailment Ward. Windfall bonus activated.
Reward
: Aura of Ailment Ward negating all damage from [Minor] statuses and debilitating effects engaged in a radius of 5 meters for 1 hour and 20 minutes
]
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. any appearances on Amazon.
Dark threads turned into a deep green aura that suffused me, Ugnash, and Cerea. And Khagnio too, if he was close by.
The danger with the spit ball was the splashing effect. Even when Ugnash tanked it with his big shield, it splattered outwards and sprayed droplets everywhere. I had seen the cave-sheep try to skip away when several droplets had rained on and around it.
That was where the rune I had just Sacrificed came in. Even as stray droplets of the poisonous, acidic spit landed on me and Cerea, the green aura rebuffed it, leaving us completely unharmed.
Apparently, whatever the monster was spitting at us counted as [Minor] under the Weave’s judgment. Made sense. The Mage Guild wouldn’t be selling us runes that couldn’t take what basic monsters could dish out.
The Brillwyrm kept attacking, throwing its sharp scales in a wide arc.
“Just draw it in.” I hadn’t heard Khagnio get behind me. His Stealth was kind of cracked. “Ugnash, you can deal with the other one, right?”
Other one?
I looked past the big Rakshasa’s bulk to note that another Lesser Brillwyrm was indeed joining the fray. Great. We hadn’t even killed one of them, and now there was a second.
“This is getting out of hand,” I said. “Now there are two of them!”
“Tank this one for me, Ross,” Ugnash said before rushing off to engage the second one. “Cerea, with me!”
She rushed after the big Rakshasa to tackle the second monster that had so rudely interrupted our initial fight.
“You can do this, mageling.” Khagnio’s voice was somewhere between actually encouraging and just plain mocking, and it was annoying I couldn’t settle on one. Even the cave-sheep was bleating out what felt like encouragements. “Keep it busy. It’s already injured. Just hold it down and try not to die.”
Prick.
I wasn’t sure if I was referring to Khagnio or the monster, which was turning around to attack Ugnash and Cerea rushing past it. Not on my watch. I yelled and charged, which was enough to drag the injured Lesser Brillwyrm’s attention back towards me.
It didn’t try opening its mouth to spit more poison or even try shooting its scales. I was closing in too quickly for that. Instead, it launched itself at me.
I had my shield at the ready. The monster’s gaping jaw crashed into me, the force of its impact and a terrible stench combining to bowl me over. I hadn’t raised my own weight to steady myself, focusing instead on the instant it locked its jaws around my shield, crunching down hard enough to start making the metal bend.
More importantly, the momentum had made us roll, thankfully not crushing me under a creature that was at least five times my actual weight.
Just as I had rolled atop it again, I concentrated on Infusion. More and more deep violet threads sank into myself and all my armaments, turning everything heavier than a fridge. That had been the plan as soon as I had seen I could use its momentum against it to manage to roll on top. And now I was a paperweight holding it in place.
That small moment of locking it down in place was enough. Khagnio appeared, materializing
above
the monster, as if he had leaped down from straight up.
I caught the briefest hint of a metallic red threads wrapping his dagger in a storm of destructive mana before the blade stabbed into the monster’s back and sank in deep. The Brillwyrm struggled for a bit but the violent threads from Khagnio’s dagger spiked all over its body, splitting scales and spitting blood.
In seconds, the Lesser Brillwyrm stopped struggling, finally dead for good.
Note to self: no getting hit by Khagnio’s dagger when it glowed like that.
[ Rank Up!
Your Power Attribute has risen by one Rank.
Power
: Silver I
]
A very different kind of energy rushed through me at the notification. Where before I always felt a simmering sensation slowly settle through my body, now I felt like it was hotter. Scouring away a small bit of me where a strange, permanent hollowness went up, very separate and distinct from the temporary hollowness I felt at mana exhaustion.
The sensation even overwhelmed the euphoria I felt at finally breaking through to Silver. That was a bit annoying.
“You alright, mageling?” Khagnio asked as he pulled out his dagger and stepped from the corpse. He sounded more curious than concerned. “Brillwyrm didn’t eat your arm, did it?”
“Fine,” I said. I had to work to free my partially ruined shield from the dead monster’s mouth, since some of its fangs were indeed tangled up with the metal. It was still serviceable but repeating that strategy wasn’t going to go well for long. “Just ranked my Power to Silver.”
Khagnio whistled. “Little mageling’s growing up!”
“Screw off, Khagnio.”
He hissed out laughter. We could afford to banter because Ugnash and Cerea had taken care of their monster as well. From my cursory glance, it looked like Cerea had zapped its eyes—since its scales appeared to be resistant—and then Ugnash had pummelled it to death. Several of the scales were crushed and the wounds looked burned too.
Did that mean Ugnash had an Aspect and Augmentation combination that imbued his punches with heat, or had Cerea just zapped the wounds once Ugnash had opened them up?
It was interesting how, despite being a tank, Ugnash fought more like a brawler. The knuckle braces on the fist of his not holding the tower shield looked like they drank in the blood he had drawn.
“All good?” he called out at us.
“We got it,” Khagnio said.
We stepped away from the corpses as Cerea performed the real duty she was here for. Ugnash and Khagnio helped chop up the monsters with large axes. It was bloody work, and I did volunteer, but they wanted to be quick about it so decided against showing me the preciseness needed. I did note how the head, legs, tail, and organs were chopped up separately.
“Different parts fetch different prices,” Cerea said. “So rather than selling the monster’s body as a whole, which not a lot of people want, we can target different markets. Well, the guild can.”
“Some people
do
take whole corpses,” Khagnio added. “But they’ll stiff you and do exactly what we’re doing anyway. Bunch of Pits-cursed scalpers. Good thing those bastards got screwed over when the guilds consolidated.”
I was walking over to the cave-sheep to free it from the stalagmite, where it was impatiently pawing at the ground. My bloodied and gory state seemed to get it even more worked up instead of making it afraid or cowed. What a strange animal. “Consolidated? Were there a lot of guilds before, then?”
“Yes,” Cerea said. “Nowadays, you’ve got one Adventurer’s Guild, one Mage Guild, and so on. A few centuries ago, Zairgon was the first city to institute that there could only be a single guild for any particular field. It was one of their main measures to tackle corruption. Naturally, a lot of the Guildmasters back then weren’t fond of the notion.”
“Ha!” Khagnio cut up the monsters like he was cutting up the old Guildmasters. “Bunch of crooks masquerading with fake, meaningless titles. Serves them right.”
“Now, now. At least they had some very interesting names back then. Adventurer’s Guild and Mage Guild don’t exactly have a lot of flair, sadly.”
Khagnio just gave her a deadpan look. “Is that right? How’d you like to be a part of Khagnio’s Most Breathtaking Guild of Utmost Excellence?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Ugnash said. “
If
you changed it to Khagnio And Ugnash’s Breathtaking Guild of Utmost Excellence.”
Khagnio just stared. Cerea and I snickered.
The monster bodies released an awful stench as they were bloodily partitioned, but it was just another nastiness on top of everything else. I was soaked in sweat and couldn’t get the Brillwyrm’s terrible breath out of my nose. Its spit was corroding my shield. Some of the blood mucked up my shoes.
Unfortunately, there was no rune that I could crush to make myself feel fresh again. Just something I’d have to get used to. There was a good reason people didn’t mention the unglamorous parts of dungeon delving.
As we finally got ready to move after Ugnash and Khagnio did their best to clean themselves up, I decided to pipe in with what I had intended to say before the fighting had started.
“Clearly, it wasn’t the Lesser Brillwyrms that killed their…” I paused, unsure about the relationship between the dead mega-monster and its smaller versions. “The big one.”
“But you suspect something?” Ugnash asked.
“I do. It’s the vampires. The Scarthralls to be exact.”
They all stared at me.