Book 2 - Chapter 15: Battlefield Tactics

“Dammit, yes, but plans change as situations do. You almost got yourself killed.” Sean wiped the blood away from his rapidly mending nose as Stitch Up’s post-fight buff pulled it back into the correct position. “You almost got me killed. These things hit hard, and you let this thing hit me full force while I was tangled. I barely dodged.”

Apologies. This entity was mistakenly over-committed to Sean Lawrence’s instructions. Does entity Sean Lawrence wish to part ways?

The question caught Sean off guard. If this had been a human, he would have called that an excellent guilt trip. I was only doing what you wanted me to do and I’ll leave if you want, was what Sean’s mind translated the squid’s statement to. The only reason he didn’t tell him to fuck right off with that was that he honestly had no idea if the squid was even capable of guilt-tripping others.

“No, just…” Sean tried to gather himself. “Listen. These things regenerate when they take on too much damage. From now on, be aware of that. Think hard about whether or not it’s worth it to trip that ability. If I’m in a compromised position, don’t do it. Okay? Does that work?”

Confirmation. This entity understands.

—

The worst part about liars, Sean thought, was that they usually had much, much more practice lying than anyone else had practice noticing lies. It was like left-handed people in sports. There were people who made entire careers off the simple fact that they were much more used to competing against right-handed opponents than any right-handed person could be at dealing with lefties.

He could absolutely imagine that was happening here. The squid could be playing him like a chump. All the pieces would fit. He had, presumably, a lot more experience dealing with different kinds of humanoids than Sean had experience dealing with squids. He could be playing some weird long game, and Sean’s knowledge of squid behavior was completely insufficient to give him any clues.

At the same time, the squid could absolutely be innocent. The worst kinds of lies, the ones that really fooled you, were from people good enough at lying that their lies fit the situation on the ground just as well as the truth did. Sure, the squid could have maybe tested the waters to see if he might not be able to get Sean killed or badly hurt. But he could really actually just be that bad at close-range strategy, or that unused to working with any kind of teamwork.

Query. How did entity Sean Lawrence move fast enough to intercept the boxer.

Even the digging into Sean’s skill set made sense. It had seen him move fast, and being legitimately curious about it for good reasons would look exactly the same as it would if he was working on a plan to hurt Sean in some way.

Was Sean paranoid? Absolutely. He was constantly in danger. Every offworlder he had known up to this point was openly murderous, and it sure as hell seemed like this squid might be a closeted Earthling murderer as well. He had to take that into account if he wanted to be fair.

But even if he wanted to lean into the paranoia fully, it wasn’t exactly a good thing to leave this squid wandering around the woods. Being trailed by a stealth ambush octopus was arguably even worse than travelling with one. The only other option was killing his companion outright, which seemed a little premature of a reaction to have over what might have been a single mistake.

The worst part was that the squid was performing better than ever. The next group was all archers, and he kept every single apple that threatened Sean away. He took down his targets, then flawlessly helped Sean with his. And it was the same with the next group, and the next. Every move he made was careful and precise, like he was an apologetic child trying to make up a mistake.

Sean didn’t stonewall the questions about his speed ability. He honestly reported that he had a skill that made him move faster, that he avoided using it because it was a costly, resource-limited skill, and he wanted to keep it in reserve. But if the squid didn’t seem to notice that the boxer had slowed down as Sean sped up, that was just fine. If he wanted to think of it as a simple sprint skill, Sean was okay with that as well.

Still, Sean’s eyes were peeled. At the first sign of anything weird, he was prepared to strike, strike hard, or else run so far away the squid couldn’t find him. And so the hunting continued.

—

By the end of the day, there were fifty-seven enemies left. Sean’s system screen confirmed that twenty of them were archers, the rest were boxers, and they were getting incredibly close to the end-game of this phase of the competition.

Sean once again blessed the fact that neither the archers nor the boxers were very good at spotting them at long distances. They were looking at a group of two archers and three boxers, which was more than they had handled before. Removing them from play would be huge, if they could do it.

Concern. We have only a few hours before the light subsides and this entity becomes dormant.

“I think it’ll be fine. It shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes to take these guys out, and we saw that place a few miles back that should be fine for camping. If the system goes crazy with the area restrictions, I don’t want to wake up surrounded by any more of these guys than I have to.”

Sean had convinced the squid that they should at least try. With his time-slowing powers revealed, Sean had been able to experiment on the boxers, finding that they didn’t like it much at all. Something about the precision that they moved with was thrown badly out of whack with even small adjustments in the flow of time, and every single use had turned into a big opening he could use to slash a leg or put a dart through a butt-cheek.

Here, he thought he could use it to wound the three boxers pretty fast, relying on the squid to take down the archers while he held the melee fighters in place. The number of enemies was troubling, but he had held off three boxers by himself before, however briefly, and it seemed like the edge Hard Time would give him here would be enough to offset that a little longer.

The squid thought at him as it faded away from vision near a tree.

Confirmation, Sean Lawrence. This entity is prepared to begin.

Sean approached the group at very fast walking pace, trying his hardest to keep trees between him and as many of the monster’s line-of-sight as he could. He was coming in from the side of the boxers and staying as far away from the archers as possible, but every second still counted. If he could give the squid even a moment longer to slow down the boxers before it started batting down archers, he’d be in much better shape.

The boxers eventually sighted him, and any further attempts at stealth were pointless. Sean sprinted directly towards one, watching as it wound up a big, straight right hand in preparation. As it began to throw its blow, he slowed down the boxer with a charge of Hard Time, ducked, and sliced both the tendons out of the back of its knee with the Mystereamer, smelling burnt meat as the dagger procured some kind of burning damage. The boxer faltered, letting Sean take a parting shot at its opposite thigh as he strafed out of its strike zone.

It was the best beginning to a battle he had yet. Smiling at how slowly the first boxer was now moving, Sean ducked out of the way of the other two and spun around the group just in time to feel the thump of four sticky apples hitting his back.

Shit.

One apple slipping through the squid’s guard was fairly normal. It happened. Two had happened once or twice, especially when there were multiple archers in play. Four meant something had gone very, very wrong.

Sean’s heart sunk to his feet as his SAV-enhanced battlefield tactics kicked in. Dodging the arrows was possible, but the bad news was that three melee opponents were in close pursuit. Sean took a chance instead. Speeding himself up with Hard Time, He ducked between the boxers, shoulder-checking one out of the way to make room as he bashed through their formation. He caught a glancing blow to his side in the process, but made it through otherwise unhurt.

He smiled grimly as he heard four arrow-thunks behind him as the boxers caught bolts that were otherwise bound for him. Unfortunately, the more hurt of the boxers caught three of them, doing just enough damage to trigger his auto-heal and bring him back to full health. Strictly speaking, Sean had made progress in the battle. Practically? He was back to square one and potentially very, very screwed.

I need to take out the archers.

In Sean’s thinking, there were only two possibilities for why the squid’s invisible strikes were absent from the field. Either it had been ambushed by some enemy they hadn’t seen, or it had betrayed him. In the first case, it probably wasn’t watching him very carefully, but in either case the time for secret-keeping was over. Sean needed to get enemies cleared off the field as quickly as possible, using whatever means he had.

He burned his first secret by sprinting just fast enough to have time to wrap up one of the archers in his Sticky Hand. As placement went, this use of the adhesive rope wasn’t bad at all, and Sean did a quick circle around the enemy to make sure both of its arms were pinned down before yanking it off its feet. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but even a short break from the apple barrage that had left him with two arrow wounds to his torso during his attacks was helpful.

As Sean’s enhanced VIT counteracted the damage from the arrows and kept him moving, Sean revealed his second secret with the second archer taking a full-force Trash Compactor strike to his head. The sheer force of the blow swept it end over end. He couldn’t stop to see if the hit was enough to take the archer entirely out. There just wasn’t time.

Turning, Sean identified the most-injured of the boxers by means of the three arrows jutting out of his back, burned a double-charge of Hard Time to make sure his attack would hit, and shattered its femur with a heavy downwards blow. Without the ability to heal, the boxer toppled.

That was three enemies at least temporarily down, but it didn’t come without a cost. The Trash Compactor’s spikes got caught in the boxer’s legs, and Sean had to choose between retrieving it or getting bludgeoned to death by the other two boxers. He chose the latter, but lost his best brute-force weapon in the process. He was slowing down a bit now, too. The combination of stray punches he had caught and the arrows he was just now yanking out of his flesh meant he was hobbled and barely keeping ahead of the highly mobile boxers.

Now unarmed, he pulled his three darts and watched in satisfaction as his SAV-enhanced throws made all three connect with a single boxer’s legs. That was all the damage he’d apply there, at least until the other enemies on the field were cleared.