Book 2 - Chapter 12: Useless Refuse

“Okay, that worked. It’s incredible how useful that is on the apples.”

Sean’s biggest problem dealing with the Tells’ homing beacons was the fact that they would stick to any object he used to bat them down. He couldn’t find enough branches to sacrifice like that, and using anything but his shield meant the weapon would be out of service once an apple was stuck to it. But whatever force the squid man was projecting to knock the apples down either dissipated so fast the apples had nothing to hold on to, or was somehow immune to the stickiness of the fruits.

And the squid was a he, Sean confirmed that in a small side conversation as they looked for the right number of Tells to hunt.

The first fight he and the squid chose was with a group of two Tells. Not only had tentacles guy been able to knock down more than half of the homing projectiles they had thrown, he had done it while handling his own Tell. By the time Sean was able to shiv his assigned archer to death, the second one was so thoroughly cut up that he only had to put on the finishing touches.

Confirmation. Low mass, low speed projectiles are not difficult.

Satisfaction. Simply touching objects without the intent to destroy takes little concentration.

“Are you sure you don’t want any of the loot?” Sean asked as he stripped the Tells of their hats, dropped apples, and then scooted around the battlefield collecting the glue apples that the telekinetic squid had knocked down. “You could at least eat the apples for food.”

Negative response. Food is unnecessary for my kind. What nutrition is needed is taken from soil and sunlight.

“You are telling me you photosynthesize?”

Confirmation. This entity’s species descends from predatory algae. The squid began to walk away as Sean picked up the last of the sticky apples from the field. For whatever reason, he never looked directly at Sean when he talked, as if that wasn’t a social norm with telepathic communication. Satisfaction. I do not require food unless separated from soil or light for many days.

“It doesn’t feel fair, somehow.”

Confusion. Why does entity Sean Lawrence collect useless refuse.

Confusion. Why does entity Sean Lawrence believe this entity requires useless items.

Sean shrugged. “You never know when something will be useful. I just wanted to make sure I was being fair.”

The squid had no response to this. Sean felt a little funny thinking of him as that, now that they were working together. But when he requested a name from his fighting companion, it had explained that his people did not have names so much as identifiable tints to their telepathic communications that others would duplicate in reference to him.

As he didn’t expect Sean to be able to do the same, so whatever Sean wanted to refer to him to as was fine. Or at least so he claimed.

It was only five minutes before they stumbled onto their next group. Any hopes Sean had of the boxers not getting along with the Tells were dashed as he saw the group, which consisted of two of the melee fighters within striking distance of an archer, all getting along just fine.

Concern. A poor configuration for our talents.

“Yeah, I can see that. It would be better the other way, with two archers and one boxer. Do you want to move on?”

Negative response. Eliminating enemies slowly presents a threat of its own. The System space is contracting at an unconfirmed pace. Lowering enemy numbers quickly is vital.

He had a point. If they got a few days in and found themselves in a much smaller space, they’d be dealing with bigger groups than this, whether they liked it or not. And for what it was worth, the danger wasn’t as bad as the squid thought it was, as long as Sean was willing to use all of his weapons. If things got tight, he could always bring his whip or the Trash Compactor into play, but he’d have to abandon some defense against the squid’s possible bad intentions.

“I agree, I think. So what’s the game plan?” Sean asked.

Query. Entity Sean Lawrence can eliminate the two boxers?

Sean shook his head, slowly. “I don’t think so. Occupy them, probably. I can keep them tied up. But killing two of them would take a while, if I could do it at all.”

Confirmation. This entity will conceal itself and occupy and eliminate the archer, then assist with the Boxers.

Request. Please press the attack when this entity begins to destroy a boxer, to restrict their motion.

“I’ll do my best to draw their aggro, sure.” So far, whatever method the system had been using to translate between them had been working pretty well to make Sean’s language comprehensible to the squid. “How long do you think it will take to kill that Tell?”

Unsure.

“Got it. Let me know when you are ready to hide.”

Sean sat still while the squid ambled slowly off into the trees. Whatever powers his telepathy gave him, he appeared to have paid for it pretty dearly in terms of physical stats. He was much slower than Sean. It was possible he had some way to speed himself up beyond what Sean had seen so far, but he doubted it. If the squid hadn’t used such an ability against the first boxer that Sean had seen him fight, he doubted the tentacle man had much in the way of speed at all.

Entity Sean Lawrence. I am prepared.

Sean got his spear ready in his off-hand and threw the three darts at the first Boxer as he approached. He doubted he could finish his first target before the other enemies became aware of him and started fighting back, but any damage he could do to slow one down before the others came into play would be helpful.

The boxer managed to punch down one of the darts as it approached, taking little damage from it, if any. Another caught it in the chest, which seemed to do a little more. But the third was the winner, not only hitting its leg but piercing far enough into its flesh to get stuck. The boxer was visibly slowed almost immediately, much more than Sean would have imagined from the small amount of damage dealt.

A Boxer’s weakness is its legs, I guess. Sean thought. Take out the legs first, and they can’t move well enough to make their attacks land. Probably.

As the boxer came in, Sean took a chance and feinted towards its head with his spear before dropping down and punching the Mystereamer into the flesh just above its knee. The random damage didn’t proc, but judging by the roar of the boxer, even the conventional damage was substantial.

Before Sean could push his luck much more, the other boxer was on him. With the squid doing a good job keeping the apples at bay, Sean focused on doing what damage he could to the fists and arms on the more intact of the two boxers. He danced around, trying to keep the less healthy fighter in between him and the greater threat as much as he could, but with little luck. For better or worse, these things were just better at the footwork part of battlefield maneuvering than he was.

But that didn’t mean that he didn’t make progress at all. The boxer moved forward, constantly throwing a barrage of jabs and hooks that occasionally caught Sean, hurting him and throwing him around. But he was in turn able to make the fighter pay for that in dozens of deep cuts and stabs to the boxer’s arms, eventually slowing down its punches.

By the time he managed to land a clean hit to the thing’s legs, the squid was finishing with the Tell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a particularly well-aimed slash of invisible energy take a chunk out of the archer’s neck just before it collapsed limply on the forest floor. The squid’s destructive energies almost immediately turned on the boxer Sean was fighting, cutting into his face, arms, and chest constantly when the monster tried to valiantly knock Sean’s jaw off his face.

Almost immediately, the Boxer changed focus from Sean to finding the source of its newer, less visible torment. Sean, true to his word, amped up the intensity of his attacks to try and hold the Boxer in place. Whatever camouflage the squid was using to hide itself during the battle was apparently enough to conceal him from the boxers while they weren’t looking, but didn’t seem to do much to hide him from their active search.

As the boxer stepped in the direction of the trees where the squid had hidden itself, Sean took advantage of its inattention and buried his dagger deep into the back of its right shoulder joint, pleased to see it go limp from the damage.

With any luck, that should be enough damage that the squid can take him down. Sean thought, turning just a moment too late to notice that the other boxer had chosen that moment of distraction to heal itself, wind up a deep, wicked shovel-hook, and send it hurtling at Sean’s ribs.

Sean was instantly taught the difference between getting hit with a searching, fast hit from one of these things and the kind of damage they could do if he gave them enough time to accumulate power. The hit sent him flying several feet to the side, where he landed hard and gasped for air through the pain of a shattered rib cage. He staggered weakly to his feet just in time to throw some limp, weak weapon blows at the now-healthy Boxer that was following him.

Alarm. Entity Sean Lawrence, the boxer is approaching me. It has healed.

“I can see that! Try to slow it down!”

Negative. I cannot do enough damage to stop it before it reaches me.

“Go for the legs! Damage to their legs slows them down more than it should!”

Confirmation. I will damage its legs.

Sean screamed and faltered as Stitch Up popped one of his ribs back into position mid-stab, eating another jab to the face as the boxer easily weaved out of the way of the remaining momentum of the blow.

“Okay, fuck you too,” Sean said, backing up. “I’m going to now do a bunch of stupid stuff, and one of us is going to end up very, very unhappy over it.”

Sean threw a few weak shots at the boxer as it continued moving in, wincing with pain as he did. Then, as the thing wound up for another big shot, he dropped into a crouch, low enough that if the monster redirected its blow, he wouldn’t be able to escape. Luckily, he had timed it just right where the boxer was far too committed to the blow, which gave Sean just enough time to bury both his weapons in its legs before driving his head hard upwards into the boxer’s sternum.

The headbutt didn’t do much to hurt the boxer, but the sheer physics behind the power Sean was able to put into a full leap upwards from a squat meant that it got pushed back a few feet in the process. Sean stood up as it found its footing, then dove out of the way as it threw a much slower, much less effective straight right at his head that would have still knocked him out completely if it had connected.

He sprinted several strides away, picking up one of the darts from the ground to replace his lost armaments, then turned and pressed into the boxer hard with it. As injured as the monster was, it was still an exquisite fighter, much more skilled than Sean was. If he wasn’t better armed and didn’t have a fairly large advantage in speed stats, it would have demolished him.

Now, it wasn’t doing nearly as well. With weapons in both of its legs, it wasn’t able to hit at Sean with nearly the force and speed it needed to, while Sean was able to stab it with the dart almost at will. Within ten seconds, Sean had stabbed it almost twice that many times, and finally put it down with a lucky shot to the eye.