Ch 202 – Pincer
Bashing the tumorous head of a Bloatcrawler that had managed to slip past Deacon, who was holding the frontline with his massive tower shield, Leon followed through by smashing the side of its skull with his hammer and sending the creature skidding off to the side.
He then took four rushing steps forward and delivered a crushing downward strike onto the bloated head of another Bloatcrawler that had gotten past Deacon’s guard and was now sprinting with all the speed its spindly legs could provide toward Bonehead and Valorie, neither of whom seemed particularly aware of their immediate surroundings at the moment.
Bonehead and Valorie appeared to be engaged in some kind of animated discussion about the latest news regarding their favorite streamers and the recent announcement of a collaboration marathon stream event that was apparently happening soon.
Whatever significance that held was completely lost on Leon, as he would much rather fill his thoughts with architectural designs and construction techniques he had become inspired by after watching a few videos about them during his free time, instead of worrying about whatever entertainment nonsense his sister and Bonehead found engaging.
More importantly, he preferred to keep his attention focused on protecting his older twin sister from harm.
Valorie continued to let loose arrow after arrow from her compound bow to provide covering fire by sniping at the large number of Bloatcrawlers that were currently surrounding Deacon's position, most of them seemingly locked into some kind of trance-like state where their only goal was to kill the flame-wielding warrior who had drawn their collective aggression when the Party had first entered this particular section of the cave system.
The massive swarm of Bloatcrawlers they had come across had emerged from a tunnel they had entered through roughly fifty meters above their current depth. After descending through that passage, they ended up entering what appeared to be a new cavern that connected to approximately twenty-seven additional tunnel openings branching off in various directions, all of which had clusters of Bloatcrawlers either meandering within thirty meters or so of the tunnel entrances or simply wandering aimlessly throughout the larger chamber itself.
As such, Bonehead had taken out a particular alchemical concoction just before Deacon launched himself forward after they entered the new cave level they had descended into. It was a Battle Perfume he had purchased and been researching before his descent into Dunes Dunes Dunes as part of an attempt to create a potion version of the effect.
Unfortunately, he had been forced to put that project on hold after his thoughts moved on to other experiments following thirteen consecutive failed attempts to get the formula right.
After spraying the Battle Perfume liberally on Deacon, who, aside from gaining what Valorie claimed was a spicy grape scent now clinging to his armor and skin, did not notice any immediate effects, the real impact became apparent once Deacon reached the first large group of Bloatcrawlers clustered in the middle of the cavern floor.
Every single creature within a thirty-meter radius of his position immediately broke from whatever it had been doing and rushed directly at him with a single-minded desire to tear him apart with their many spindly hands and teeth.
After that initial application, Bonehead hadn't really had much else to do in terms of active combat support other than occasionally tossing out a bomb or two when things looked particularly dicey, so instead he'd turned his attention toward experimentation with the cores and corpses of the Bloatcrawlers they'd been killing as they made their way through the cave system.
Though he had only begun his field research roughly an hour and a half earlier, after they crossed the area Leon had cleared for them and Bonehead asked him to unearth some of the corpses he had buried so he could properly collect samples, he had not yet produced anything of major practical value other than accumulating new knowledge about Bloatcrawler anatomy and its alchemical uses.
For instance, he'd discovered that their liver and gallbladder, which were both located inside their tumorous skulls rather than in their torsos where such organs would normally be found, made for surprisingly good alternatives to some of the herbs needed for a mana potion, at least according to the side experiments he'd been running while waiting for a batch of Grease he was brewing to finish its third-order experimental refinement stage.
Another such discovery that had proven interesting if not immediately useful was that if a Nerve Rush pill was brewed and boiled with precisely two thousand and twenty-three milliliters of Bloatcrawler blood, it would reduce by half the number of pills needed to be consumed before the medication would fully poison the consumer’s nervous system.
Which obvious a bad thing as it enhanced the negative side effect of the drug while keeping the positives unchanged, but it bettered his understanding of just what he was working with, and more importantly, the System had recognized it as significant enough progress that it had pushed him to finally reach Level 26 in his Alchemist Class, so Bonehead was pretty stoked about it.
As Deacon continued slicing through spindly limbs and carving into the bloated skulls and torsos of Bloatcrawlers with his flaming dual short swords, cutting his way through the swathe of mutants, his ears suddenly picked up the sound of distant high-pitched barking echoing from somewhere within the tunnels roughly two hundred meters to his left.
Slicing off the entire top portion of the nearest Bloatcrawler’s skull in a spray of acidic blood and brain, Deacon launched himself roughly ten meters straight up into the air while simultaneously activating Blood Sense and turning his head toward the direction the barking sounds were coming from.
Unbothered by the fact that the Bloatcrawlers below him had immediately converged on the spot where he had been standing moments before and were now reaching upward with their thin, spindly arms while releasing frustrated, growling screeches at their prey being just out of reach.
"Great," Deacon muttered to himself with obvious sarcasm as he reached the apex of his jump and used Air Step to stand suspended in midair, turning his upper body to address the rest of his Party over the cacophony of screeching Bloatcrawlers below.
“Two-headed dogs and large humanoids incoming from the tunnels at our eight o’clock position!” he shouted loud enough for his voice to carry over the noise. He then kicked off the air itself and launched forward, landing just outside the massive horde of Bloatcrawlers that had converged beneath where he had been hovering.
He positioned himself so that he stood directly between the Bloatcrawlers, who were still focused on him, and the point where the new arrivals would be emerging from the tunnels.
Not even a handful of seconds after Deacon had made his announcement to the Party, he found himself mildly surprised by the thundering sound of heavy boots pounding against stone coming from directly behind his position, and he risked a quick glance over his shoulder while simultaneously stabbing his right short sword through the heart of a lunging Bloatcrawler to see that it was Leon charging toward him at a full sprint.
"What are you—" Deacon started to say before cutting himself off, because ultimately it was Leon's choice to make about where he positioned himself in the fight, and Deacon wasn't going to second-guess the man's tactical decisions when he'd already proven himself capable during the past hour and a half of their journey to clear the Floor.
"Cover my right flank and keep your shield up," Deacon called out to Leon as the larger man used his tower shield to bash the heads of three separate Bloatcrawlers that had tried to intercept his charge, the impacts crushing their skulls and sending them tumbling backward as Leon skidded to a halt directly beside Deacon's position. "I'm about to set off a large area-of-effect attack."
Leon gave a gruff nod of acknowledgment that Deacon barely caught in his peripheral vision before raising his massive tower shield to cover his face and upper body in preparation for whatever Deacon was about to unleash.
Deacon immediately pressed down on the mental trigger he had established as the detonation command for all the Flame Mines he had been carefully placing on top of the corpses he had stepped over and on sections of the stone floor beneath his feet that were now covered in pools of sludgy, acidic blood.
The moment he activated the mental command, a massive chain reaction of explosions erupted from the back and middle sections of the Bloatcrawler horde, along with towering geysers of orange and crimson flame that blasted upward into the air and momentarily illuminated much of the large cavern floor and the rough stone walls surrounding them with flickering firelight that cast dancing shadows in every direction.
As Deacon immediately threw himself back into close-quarters melee combat with the Bloatcrawlers that had survived the explosions and remained standing despite being burned and disoriented, he could not quite suppress the frown that crossed his face as a passing thought entered his mind.
Sam and Esmerelda would have capitalized on the flames created by his Flame Mines by casting various Wind affinity spells to empower and redirect the fire, washing it over the remaining Bloatcrawlers, finishing them off without requiring any additional effort on his part.
Damn these thoughts, Deacon muttered internally as he harshly thrust his right flaming short sword straight through the chest cavity and into the heart of a Bloatcrawler, while using his left blade to punch through the milky eye socket and deep into the brain of another creature that had tried to flank him from the side.
Activating Power Boost and pushing it to 5%, Deacon’s entire body began to hum with barely contained energy as he shifted from methodical efficiency into overwhelming brutality.
He began systematically slaughtering the remaining twenty or so Bloatcrawlers that were still alive and mobile in his immediate area, with Leon fighting alongside him and proving that, despite being primarily a Builder Class, he had clearly assigned most of his Free Points into physical statistics given how effortlessly he wielded his tower shield and hammer to bash and crush Bloatcrawlers that were at the same level as him or higher.
As the two quickly cleared out the remaining Bloatcrawlers in the center of the cave, Valorie provided covering fire for both herself and Bonehead by picking off any stragglers that got too close to their position and occasionally sending arrows whistling across the cave to take out Bloatcrawlers lingering around the entrances of nearby tunnels.
These creatures had clearly heard the noise of the battle but were too cautious or fearful of what they were witnessing to actually charge forward and join the fray.
Meanwhile, the barking sounds that had been echoing and bouncing off the cave walls from the far left end of the chamber continued to grow progressively louder and closer until the source of the noise sprinted out of the tunnels from which they originally resounded.
What emerged from the darkness of the tunnel were waist-high mutant hounds, each one sporting twin heads that shared a single neck and body, along with a prominent ridge of thick bone-yellow spines running the entire length of their backs like a row of broken fence posts, and their faces were a ruined mess of overlapping fangs jutting out at odd angles from raw pink flesh centered around a single milky-white eye positioned on each of their malformed heads.
However, what immediately caught the attention of everyone in the Party were the heavy chain leashes wrapped around the necks of these mutant hounds.
The chains were held by their handlers, who followed close behind, tall and grotesquely muscled humanoids standing at least seven feet in height with completely bald heads and wearing only scraps of ragged cloth around their waists that left their thick corded muscles with some sporting bone spikes fully visible for all to see.
With the remaining Bloatcrawlers finally taken care of and their corpses littering the cavern floor in various states of dismemberment, both Deacon and Leon turned to give these newest arrivals their full and undivided attention.
[Dredger Lv 25]
[Pitwalker Lv 26]