FMH: Everything ~ Thirty-Two

The long strides and hops of the plains-walker were reminiscent of a gazelle, allowing it to eat up the distance between them and Luke, although the high-leveled Ascender was able to move much, much faster. Still, they soon had their first indication that they were getting close to the Murderhobo—the air itself was shaking, small shock waves that felt like rapid changes in elevation reaching their ears. They were extremely intermittent, only once every five minutes or so.

“I recognize that sound!” Zed called out while clapping happily. He had been reeled in and was back to sitting in a normal position on the enormous plant. “Luke is striking the front line of the creatures ahead then getting blasted away as a chunk of ground meat! I think the time in between *pops* is Luke sucking down some mana to heal his wounds.”

Andre shuttered at that thought. The fact that the Murderhobo would willingly inflict so much damage on his own body, even knowing that he could heal up time after time, was something he just couldn't wrap his head around. Of the group, Andre was the only other member who had any kind of enhanced healing factor. That was a benefit he had greatly enjoyed when he was in the Scarrocco Nature Preserve, but he had very low hopes that he would be able to connect to the world here, at least enough to have a significant benefit to his own healing.

He needed blood, oftentimes his own, in order to use his most potent Abilities, but that usually only required a few drops. The way he had heard Zed describe Luke fighting on this world was something entirely different. Luke would happily shed half a dozen pounds of his abdomen in order to inflict a wound on another creature. The Murderhobo would be bashed, smashed, and in any other plane of existence, he would be broken beyond any hope of repair. Frankly… Andre was interested in seeing it in person, his academic proclivities urging him to get a good accounting of what sort of damage his friend was capable of dealing and taking.

He wouldn't have to wait very much longer, going by how much louder the sounds of the blows landing were.

The landscape didn't work against them, being an ever-downward, gentle slope. No, the only true impediment to their vision was the dense suffusion of mana in the air, creating a thick fog his eyes simply couldn't penetrate. Still, it was affected by physical movement, and that was how they found their friend. For an instant, he was visible as his enormous Greatmace landed on the forefront of a strange type of creature that Andre’s mind had no frame of reference for. Chunks of metal, an oily substance, the very ground that the Murderhobo was standing on, and the air itself was shoved away from the absolute devastation the blow generated.

Andre blinked, and his friend was replaced with a plume of dirt and grass erupting into the air. Dozens of needle-like spears penetrated through it and peppered the area his friend had been standing on just a moment before. The Druid's mouth dropped open, and he rubbed at his eyes to see if they were deceiving him. “No way is that real. Where did Luke go? How’d he avoid those attacks? How fast can these things throw spears? I had no idea that they were even getting ready to attack; I couldn't even see it!”

“I hate to be the bear of bad news,” Zed reached into his satchel and pulled out a small headband that had bear ears attached to the top, putting it on and growling lightly before saying the rest of what he had to say. “Everything in this world is just like that. Ridiculously fast and dangerous like you wouldn't believe. Also, all of the food is poison, and the water is toxic. Abyss, most people would have burst into flame just breathing the air!”

He growled again, swiped at the air with his imaginary paws, then took his headband off and put it away. The entire time he was doing that, Andre could only watch with great incredulity. “You actually bought that, just so that you could use it for one joke?”

“No.” Zed had an enormous smirk on his face. “I bought that so I could use it as a joke with every single person I possibly could. You're going to get so sick of that bit. Guaranteed. Also, Luke is over there. Remember, when you're looking for him after an attack, you don't look at where you think he went or where he was going. You follow the trail of destruction until you set your eyes upon his broken corpse. Wait, no, I mean ‘rapidly rejuvenating body’.”

Andre followed the Bard’s pointing index finger, his eyes eventually alighting on what could easily have been mistaken as a meteorite impact site. The swirling mists made it so that his normal habit of looking for movement was failing him, and he instead needed to find what was still. For a long, long moment, he actually thought that Luke was dead. More of his body was on the ground around him than was on his bones—or at least, that was what it looked like from his vantage point.

Now that his eyes were locked upon the fallen man, his greatly enhanced eyesight could make out the fact that his skin was knitting back together, fresh blood was pumping from open wounds, and a large amount of his hair had fallen out.

“Are you noticing the hair?” Zed nudged him, the humor in his voice attempting to hide the slight quivering of fear underneath it. “Yeah, apparently that is a strange side effect of getting liquid mana on your body. It just makes all of your hair fall out. I think it has something to do with it being nonliving material, but, who knows for sure? Maybe you can do a study on it. It would have a fairly niche market, since I think there are four total people that have the option to bathe in liquid mana. I’d read it.”

“But he's always so hairy?” Andre simply couldn't wrap his head around what he was seeing. The sheer devastation  Luke could wreak on everything around him was how he perceived his friend. Not this… destroyed being. Even as he had that thought, Luke hopped back to his feet, lifted his hand, and caught the enormous Greatmace that was flying through the air toward him. Then the man vanished again, reappearing where the Druid had first seen him, only to almost perfectly replicate the situation.

This time, Andre was able to watch as hundreds of the strange, synthetic monsters were absolutely devastated, only to have a fresh group of them appear in the exact same position with no discernible damage to them. His brow furrowed as he looked at this new detail. “What was that? How did that just happen?”

“We don't know!” Zed chipperly announced. “Luke really hit a wall trying to get into this Zone. Ha! I hit a wall in effort I’m willing to expend when I try to run too fast; he literally hits a wall of monsters and bounces off. Anyway, he has been stuck here for quite a while. Every time he kills a large group of monsters, they just get back up. He's tried to go over them, through them, and I think he was muttering something about making a tunnel at one point. I don't think that would work, as they’re right at the boundary to the next Zone. Something about this place does not like interaction between the two areas and actively fights back against intrusion.”

“You mean to tell me that he just shows up here, kills all of these things as much as possible for nearly thirty days straight, then comes back?” Andre had never felt that he understood his friend as well as he did right now. “This explains just… so much. How he handles problems back on the base world. Everything from seeing something in the way of his goals to having an enemy take the field against him. He’s used to having so many enemies that he just needs to throw himself face-first against them until they break, or his skull stays caved in permanently.”

“Yes, but now that we're here, we can-”

Andre's eyes lit up, and he snapped his fingers, “That's it! Good thinking, Zed, we can figure out a better method for fighting each of these individual types of monsters. They have to have some kind of weakness, and perhaps we can take out large groups of them from a distance? What if I figured out a way to send across some seeds and took over the majority of the Zone with plants that could destroy these things? Sure, that might take some trial and error, some testing over time, but I think it's manageable. It's not like we're going anywhere until we’re strong enough to handle most things.”

“Huh.” Zed cleared his throat and looked away. “Yeah, that's better than what I was going to say. I was going to say that since we're here now, we can start siphoning off some of the Potentia he’s earning from these monsters. It isn't like he’s going to be annoyed that we're joining in on the killing, right?”

Andre took a deep breath and sent a long look over at the lotus Taylor was wrapped up in, wishing wistfully that he had someone he considered his intellectual equal to discuss these issues with. “Well… I suppose… that is the end result? The goal itself isn’t to take the Potentia, but it is a side effect. Fair enough. I guess.”

Zed beamed at him so brightly that Andre felt bad for his unkind intrusive thoughts. Internally, he chastised himself for forgetting that Zed had something like fifty years less life experience than him. The Druid shook that off, once again looking over at the lotus. His jaw set, and his mouth firmed into a line. “We have lots of work to do, Zed. Let's get down there and help him.”

The plains-walker dropped a foot root near the fallen Murderhobo, and as Andre started to lower them, Luke was suddenly on his feet and swinging at the vine that had come within range. Andre could have slapped himself. As the enormous plant started to topple over, the Druid's thoughts were barely louder than the Murderhobo’s challenging, inarticulate bellow of rage.

“You know better than this, Andre. Why did I put a moving plant near the tree-punching Barbarian? Come on.” The red-haired man focused his attention on his companions, wrapping them in vines and swinging each of them to safety as the plains-walker collapsed to the ground. “Hey there, Luke! Want a hand?”

The Murderhobo stared at them, evaluating them and seeming to come to a conclusion. “No. I have as many hands as I can use, but I would take new and better weapons. Unless you can grow me an additional arm? Then, I would take another hand.”

Andre’s smile froze on his face as he remembered that his friend was far too literal. “Well, in that case, how about I help you bust this blockade?”

“Sure.” The Murderhobo hoisted Cookie to his shoulder and started walking toward the enemy. “Don't get too close. You'll die.”