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Chapter 125: Sapper’s Tattoo
🕑 Added 2023-10-29 14:49:15 +0000 UTC“Come on! Shit!” Derek was leaping in the air, trying to get a clear shot on one of the birds as they swooped. Artemis had managed to land a hit on one of them so far, not killing it but putting it in range for Brennan and Matt to end it. Derek was trying to catch them midair, which was proving to be harder than he thought. Now, as he came down from his latest jump, he looked panicked, much more afraid than he had been seconds ago.
“Incoming!” he yelled, a split second before two yellow orbs rushed into their visual range, rising over the edge of the cliff and continuing on in an upwards trajectory. Eventually, they lost their momentum and started falling back towards them, screaming through the air much faster than gravity should have accelerated them.
“Matt! Those explode where they hit!” Brennan and Artemis were scrambling backwards, probably trying to get out of the range of the explosion.
Matt didn’t really want to explode, but he doubted a single shot from whatever artillery demon was attacking from below could completely end him. Choosing one of the falling orbs at random, he lined up underneath it, and pulled back his shovel.
“What are you doing! Dodge!” Derek yelled, hitting the ground and running away from the orbs.
“Can’t! I have an idea!” Matt yelled.
As the orb came down, he hit it, not hard, but he figured the actual momentum of the falling attack would help with that. If he was lucky, the thing wouldn’t blow up until it actually hit something that qualified as a target. If his shovel could set it off, he didn’t want to tempt fate by giving it a really good clobber. But, as Matt expected from most magic at this point, whatever programming the spell ran off didn’t recognize his shovel at all. Instead of exploding, the ball bounced up and out at an angle from Matt’s shove, making the slightest contact with the wing of one of the fleeing bird-men. That was enough, apparently. The bomb went off, and nothing escaped its blast range but a few feathers. At the beginning of the fight, Artemis had screamed out that bird-demons were mainly about mobility, and struggled with durability. That turned out to be true.
Matt noticed maybe a fifth of all that. The second bomb meant he had more immediate, more distracting problems to deal with. The two orbs had been clustered together, and thus when Matt hit the first one, the second fell pretty close to him. If he had been as fragile as the bird-demons were, he wouldn’t have made it. As it was, the explosion scorched his heat-resistant snake skin and flung him so far that he actually went over the edge of the cliff. If the rope wasn’t still hanging around, he would have dropped the full distance. But it was and he was glad. He didn’t think he would have survived that.
As he reached the top of the rope again, strong hands pulled him up and over before he had to negotiate the edge.
“Matt!” Derek yelled, “You lived! That was really stupid, man. Even by my standards.”
“He’s right, you idiot. Stop trying to catch bombs.” Lucy was peeved, as she always was after Matt did something life-threatening.
“Sorry, it just seemed like the only way to get rid of the birds. Artillery and air support was turning out to be a little too much.” As Matt got to his feet again, he looked back over the edge and at the army. “I’m hoping they didn’t see that bit with the shovel, just now. Oh, nope, looks like they didn’t. Yellow orbs incoming.”
“How did you even… Matt, that shovel isn’t possible. Reflecting spells like that isn’t possible. You aren’t even a magic class. What’s going on?” Brennan asked.
“Eh, that’s more of a camping story.” They hadn’t known each other long, but Matt hoped Brennan would pick up on the not-outside-your-tent implications of what he was saying. “I’ll tell you when there’s more time.”
Hitting two orbs at the same time wasn’t doable, but Matt could handle hitting one on the way up and handling the incoming downward bomb just fine. Having a proof of concept that they’d mostly ignore his shovel, the first orb got a healthier whack and screamed back towards the army much faster than it had been launched. And, just like Matt had hoped, it landed pretty close to one of the hearts. The orb explosion went off, and Matt waited with bated breath to see if it got past the force field and caused mayhem.
It wasn’t meant to be. The orb took out several demons and caused a great deal of localized havoc, but both the heart and the platform it floated on were just fine. Matt dealt with the second orb, just batting it far off into the distance and hoping it didn’t hit any unfortunate targets.
“That’s great, Matt. I bet they think twice before launching more of those now. We should be fine for a while, unless…” Brennan paused as a much larger contingent of bird-demons split off from the main force and took to the air. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. I jinxed it.”
“Matt! Watch out! There’s a battleking in that group. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound good. He’s the one in the very center of the group.”
“Heads up, everyone! The one in the center is a battleking.” Matt yelled.
“How do you know?” Artemis yelled. “Even I can’t get a read on them from that far away.”
“Just trust me on this! Should I take him?”
“No. You keep an eye on the orbs, and keep them off me and Brennan. Derek, you help him. Brennan…” Artemis was in full command mode and only stopped when Brennan interrupted her, swinging his sword in a figure eight as he loosened up.
“Kill the big bad guy. Got it.”
It sounded like a good plan. If anybody could pull off being the linchpin, it was Brennan. If anyone could take down the birds, it was the other three, working in tandem. But reality ended up being a lot harder.
The battleking bird, who looked for all the world like a Peregrine Falcon, rose above the ground and dove. But when the strike didn’t land, it didn’t opt to pull up. Instead, it touched down lightly and quickly, converting almost all of the speed from its dive into running speed across the ground. It ran in a stooped position and led with both its beak and its sword. Both looked capable of disemboweling Brennan, but he caught both on his sword somehow before spinning around and aiming an elbow at the back of the bird’s head. The bird flicked a wing up, deflecting the elbow.
It was an even match. The most Matt, Derek and Artemis could do to help was to make sure it stayed that way. Arrow after arrow flew through the air, bringing down birds left and right, while Matt ran around finishing the grounded and Derek jumped here and there like a pogo-stick blocking others from joining in on Brennan’s fight.
And then Brennan screamed. Matt turned around to see the bird’s beak sunk in his arm, drawing blood as it twisted and tore apart his flesh. The balance of battle was changing, and not in their favor.
And then two more orbs appeared, much bigger than those that had been launched before, flying much higher, glowing much brighter, and bringing that much more doom with them.
—
“Brennan!” Artemis screamed, turning her attention from the dive-bombing bird squadron to its ground-bound captain. The arrows she launched at it were deflected with ease. But the distraction was just enough for Brennan to get loose and create some distance, letting his hurt arm drop to the side and keeping his sword pointed in front of him like a fencer to maintain distance.
For a few seconds, it was too much. Derek and Matt managed to keep the birds off of Brennan and Artemis, but only just, and picked up a few wounds doing it. Without Artemis’s arrows in play, they’d soon be overwhelmed. It was just a matter of time before something broke.
Then, all of a sudden, the birds cleared out. The battleking peregrine falcon stayed, but seemed focused on pushing Brennan farther and farther from the pass and the others. Matt was confused about why until he realized the only reasonable explanation. The artillery orbs were coming back.
As things stood, they were doomed. Brennan was still doing poorly, and Artemis’ distracting arrows weren’t doing much to help that. Derek’s initial attempt to join in was met immediately by a backhand which sent him rolling across the ground. And Matt couldn’t help, as he had gigantic magic bombs to deal with.
He stomped his feet, kicking up dust from the same crack that Artemis had noticed earlier. The same dirt-filled crack. And though the orbs were falling, he had probably just enough time to try something that almost certainly wouldn’t work, but was worth a shot. Digging his shovel into the crack, he charged up as much energy as he dared, leaving only a margin to have time to still deflect the orbs. Luckily, the people on the ground still didn’t seem to know exactly how their bomb had previously been sent back. These two were offset by a few seconds, long enough for him to hopeful get both.
He released his dig skill into the crack, hoping it would continue its habit of outperforming his expectations of it. This time, it failed to do so. All the dirt blasted out of the crack, instantly atomizing into tiny particles of dust and floating off. But the mass at the edge of the cliff itself was fine, unaffected by the dig skill and sturdy enough to easily hold up despite missing a significant portion of dirt it previously had.
And then it was time to deal with the orbs, He tried to deal with them with a scooping sort of golf swing, one that would send them far away. But then, almost at the last moment, it occurred to him what a waste that would be. As he prepared to swat at the orb, Survivor’s Reflexes somehow made a correct guess at what he had been trying to do and highlighted one particular point deep within the crack he had just cleared. He obliged, hitting the first orb with a Tennis overhead serve that sent it deep into the crack.
The detonation was loud and violent, but mostly contained by the crack, which remained intact.
“Matt, is that going to work?” Lucy shouted. “We could try to send them at the army, still.”
“Probably not! It’s still… just trust me on this one?” Matt shouted. It was truly a long shot. He wouldn’t have tried it in the first place, except for something Lucy didn’t and couldn’t know about. After clearing the tower, Brennan and his crew were happy for him because of the Church money he was eventually going to get. But Matt hardly cared about that, because he had received a different kind of pay.
Sapper’s Tattoo
The Sapper’s Tattoo is a one-time-use skin-marking enchantment. While wearing the tattoo, any weak spot detection skills the user might possess gain additional efficacy on the surrounding environment.
If the skills didn’t register the environment as a target before the use of the tattoo, they will now do so with minimal efficacy, highlighting only the largest and most obvious weaknesses. If the weak point skill has already been enabled, it will now function even better.
The tattoo can be removed, either by willing its erasure or by replacing it with another tattoo of similar function.
