B5 Chapter 583: Gorespike, Finale
The roaring crescendo of battle fury ebbed as Kaius looked down on the shattered carcass of their foe. His and Kenva’s combined attacks had blown a cavernous hole between its eyes, and ragged tears stretched their way down its chest, shoulders, and belly from where Porkchop had mauled it.
Its lifeblood trickled from its wounds — a listless dribble that was no longer inflamed by the bizarre Zone Effect of Vainblood. Now that its small, black eyes had gone glassy and still, Kaius lingered on the spikes that ruptured from its back. Spines of chitinous red — like its blood had been transmuted to erupting resin. Grey hide puckered at their base, so inflamed that they rolled over themselves, revealing raw wounds.
What a cursed existence — it almost felt like a mercy putting the creature down. Mana could twist creatures in strange ways. The gods knew he’d met more than his fair share of bizarre beasts — but he’d never met a natural creature that was quite so maligned. Was it just the gruesome mana affinities that flooded Vainblood? If he visited a mountain, rich in crystal and earth mana, would he find poor bastards with chert jutting from their bones?
Kaius shook his head, summoning a rag to his hand as he wiped the blood from his blade. Regardless of gorespike’s ill fate, it had put up a fight for the hells. They’d done their research: all of them had known to be wary of creatures making use of bleed-based Skills and other blood affinity abilities.
But that bloodclone. That was something else. The gods had given them a fine warning: they might have advantages, but the System was endless. There would always be strange powers that could take them by surprise, and hulking monstrosities that hungered for their flesh.
A pained grunt pulled his attention away from the grizzly carcass. Kaius locked onto the sound: Kenva, pressing a wadded cloth into her side. It was saturated in an instant — her blood pouring like the wound had torn a major artery. There was a ragged tear through the thick leather and chain of her cuirass, just below her left ribs. The leathers below it were sodden, stained almost black with her blood.
Ianmus was already crouched next to her, holding his staff — a stride-wide disc of silver and gold keyseals still shining at its peak. He peered into the wound as she pulled back the red cloth, golden mana flowing into his free hand.
“Kenva!” Kaius blurted, flashing to her side with Porkchop close on his heels. He slid slightly in the muck, checking on her. Her brow was furrowed slightly, and she was gritting her teeth — but her cheeks were flushed. She was probably okay, but hells — he didn’t like his backline getting injured. It meant they’d fucked up.
“Got yourself a battle-scar, aye?” Porkchop asked, his head dipping down to get a closer look at the wound.
Kenva grinned, rolling her eyes. She winced a moment later as Ianmus laid his hand on the wound, his magic suffusing the tear in her flesh. It was a little different from his normal healing magic — was he checking the damage, or directly rejuvenating it?
“I’m fine — just sore. Woulda healed on its own in a few minutes anyway.”
Ianmus rolled his eyes. “I still wanted to check if it nicked any arteries with this Zone Effect. I think you got lucky — it got about halfway through the muscle. You have enough Vitality to survive the bloodloss, but there’s no point wasting perfectly good health when you don’t have to.”
Kaius planted his hands on his waist and sighed in relief. “Gods, don’t scare me like that — I thought it was serious.”
Even if Kenva was more than high enough level to survive a common stab wound without any healing skill, an arterial bleed could have been bad — it felt like even a common scratch bled like one here.
A slap rocked the back of his head. “I nearly got disembowelled! Ianmus is literally knuckles deep in my guts! That is serious!”
“Ianmus is what now?” Porkchop chortled.
Before Kaius could laugh, heat washed over his face.
“Hey!” Porkchop yelped, a fading golden ray cutting a line between his paw and Ianmus’s staff. His fur smouldered, burned away to reveal a blackened hole in his hide.
“No innuendos while I'm healing someone!” Ianmus scolded, Kenva’s wound bubbling under his palm. It must have been easier to freecast the spell without having to shape it into a ray or other ranged form. A few more moments, and the wound would be gone — cutting off the steady flow of blood.
“Now I need healing!” Porkchop replied, waving his massive paw at the mage. Kaius could see the wound was already mostly closed.
He and Kenva just laughed. It felt good; banished the looming blade of dread that hung over every battle. He might love the thing — the feeling of his heart pounding as he knew with a certainty that it was only his ability and the support of his friends that would keep death at bay — but it was a tonic best dealt out in small doses.
“There, all done,” Ianmus said, rising to his feet.
Kenva sighed in relief, twisting side to side experimentally. “I seriously don’t know how the two of you do it.”
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Kaius shrugged. Pain resistance helped, of course, but even before Rapid Adaptation he’d been no stranger to it. It was just a sensation, one he’d long grown familiar to.
In all honesty, he was just glad Kenva had gotten away with barely a scratch. He wouldn’t exactly call her fragile, not with her Silver constitution and inflated stats. But without skills to make you tougher and boost your recovery, they could only do so much. Kenva might survive having her chest crushed, but it would be dicey if she couldn’t receive some form of treatment to accelerate her recovery, and she wouldn’t be able to fight through it like he could — and certainly not ignore it entirely like Porkchop.
“We need to get the two of you some good rejuvenation tonics,” Kaius said, frowning as he thought about it more.
Restoration, the kind of healing that directly refilled health, was fine for him and Porkchop — but total reserves weren’t the problem for their back line. They already had some for if their backline lost a limb, but they needed something that would either potentiate the effect of their health, or would directly restore injuries — rejuvenation.
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Ianmus agreed. “As we keep levelling, Kenva and I will get better at surviving wounds — but we’ll still be casualties. We need some way to get us back in the fight quickly, especially if I am unable to cast for some reason. There is the matter of availability, though.”
That there was. At the level the tonics would be actually useful to their team, rejuvenation potions were every bit as rare and expensive as ones that could regenerate limbs. Powerful second-tier crafters were as common as hens teeth, and Depths-drops were fickle. Not to mention, any delving team that went deep enough to receive those sorts of tonics would be far more likely to use them than sell them.
Put simply, the demand was immense, and the supply was just as miniscule.
A shame, because their coffers were looking a little thin after purchasing that set of Rings of Unseen Empathy.
Kaius sighed, and walked over to the nearest root to take a seat away from the mud. The tonics would be worth it.
“Hopefully we make enough from our missions to secure a couple, otherwise a delve is looking more and more likely.”
Even if a delve didn’t reward them with the tonics directly, the artefacts they could pull out would certainly be enough to fund their needs for the next good while — there weren’t many on the continent who could go as deep as them.
“It’s not so bad,” Ianmus replied as he walked over to join him with Kenva. “My next Skill evolution will be for Ray of Tender Recovery. If I can get a healing-related seal, then I'm planning on keeping an eye out for a rejuvenation-focused second-tier spell. Something we can rely on in an emergency.”
That did ease some of his worries — but they should still get some tonics. Ambushes happened, and it took time for Ianmus to both cast a keyseal, and for the construct to gather the mana for a second-tier spell.
“Well, regardless of my unfortunate run-in with a nightmarish murderhog, I’d say that went pretty well otherwise,” Kenva said, before a small notebook appeared in her hand. It wasn’t anything special — rough, beige pages, with a black leather binding — but that only made Kaius more curious.
“What’s that?”
She waved its open face towards him, revealing a list written in a dense scrawl. “Copy of the ingredients we’re looking for. Thought a notebook would hold up better than the stray pages. Been keeping an eye out for things while I've been scouting. I’ve found a couple of regents already, but nothing that’s supposed to be exceptionally valuable.”
A moment later, she paused, tapping the page.
“There we go — Daeosin tusks and hide. They’re supposed to be Steel beasts, so it didn’t click earlier. I figure they’ll still want the things if it came from an evolved Gold beast.”
“Think we should grab the spines too?” Kaius asked, his eyes lingering on the carcass at the centre of their battle field — the cruel shards that jutted from its back were positively brimming with blood mana.
“Absolutely,” Kenva said, rising to her feet as she made her way over. Passing Porkchop, she tapped him on the shoulder. “Help us crack them off? It’ll be easier to skin the thing if you can roll it onto its back.”
Porkchop nodded.
They went to work quickly, chipping at the spines. They were oddly crystalline — tough as hell, but with enough force they snapped off at the base like glass rods. While Porkchop held the beast steady, he and Kenva worked the hide, peeling it off bit by bit.
Kaius eyed one of the creature’s dripping haunches. A moment later, he shrugged and drove his knife into the viciously tough joint. Grunting, he sawed at the ligaments, working the leg free. The gorespike looked vaguely like a hog — it might taste like one too. If the density of blood mana ruined the taste, he could always leave it for the scavengers.
“You know, it’s really quite something watching the three of you so casually disassemble a body. That thing was trying to tear us in half not even an hour ago,” Ianmus said as they rejoined the mage by the base of the tree.
“Is it so strange? The three of us are more used to hunting for our food than buying it from a market or tavern,” Porkchop replied, sprawling across three roots — it seemed the ground was a little bloody, even for him.
“Not strange,” Ianmus replied, shaking his head. “More…impressive. I’ve seen trained butchers work slower.”
“Comes with a lot of practice,” Kenva replied, grinning as she waved her knife at him ominously.
Ianmus snorted.
“What now?” Porkchop asked, yawning. “It’s still pretty early — we could get a fair bit closer to the Crater before we make camp.”
“Lunch?” Kaius suggested, eying the carcass of the gorespike. Most of it was muddy, but the left flank he’d taken the haunch from was still clear. It’d be a shame to leave it, and they had other options if it turned out gross.
His team perked up at the prospect. Grinning at their enthusiasm, Kaius summoned the Pegleg. Its door swung open, the stairs inside hovering just a little above the surface of the muck.
There was no point eating in the cold mud if they didn’t have to — and he much preferred using a full kitchen compared to a camp stove.