DD 302 Ch 39

My party had the Orkai Threadspawn encircled, taking turns at him. We were diving in while he was distracted dealing with someone else, attempting to chip away at the large fighter. It was more like fighting a boss than a person, though the Orkai certainly had me as its target. Even when I ducked back and tried to avoid his attacks, he doggedly pursued me.

His level must have been decently high, because even Crimson wasn’t blowing him away when she struck.

He came at me with the massive axe that shattered even the floor of the dungeon as I dodged out of the way.

I was thankful that I specialized in agility, because that was the only thing keeping me alive right now.

“Keep wearing him down.” I shouted, unable to do much myself.

The Orkai came crashing at me like a bull in a china shop, smashing through any attempt to slow him down, ignoring his wounds and even potentially his life if it meant he could get a strike on me.

He swung for the fences, and I had to use [Dodge] again to slip just out of his reach, only for his arm to extend past where he should reach as he dislocated his shoulder with the strength he put into the hit. It went loose and gained an extra inch, his blade brushing along my hip. But that brushing was all it took for him to clip me and send me tumbling back.

“Careful!” Crimson shouted

I gained my footing just in time for his axe to come swinging down again. The Orkai’s mouth wide with a roar as glossy eyes shone with murderous glee.

Crimson stepped in, her whip catching me around the waist and pulling me out of the way.

Penny threw herself between me and the Threadspawn, frost armor wrapping over herself as she took a blow powerful enough to shatter it and send her tumbling backwards. Penny growled and stabbed her sword into the ground as frost washed over it, coating the feet of the Orkai who broke free a split second later.

The Orkai, with his Threadspawn-enhanced strength, was proving difficult for us to keep pinned down. No matter what we threw at him, his strength and speed rose to match the attack.

He grabbed his shoulder and reset it before clashing with Crimson as she blocked the Orkai from reaching me. He strained so hard against her red lightning that his muscles bulged and his skin split, his body giving way just briefly before he sent Crimson flying.

I used [Shadow Ambush] and slipped in behind him, slicing at his hamstrings, only for the Orkai to lean forward and kick behind him like an angry mule. The move was fast enough that I only had the chance to cross my arms before he hurled me across the dungeon.

Even before I landed, there were already green swirls of Charlotte’s magic latching onto me and bringing me back to top form.

“What’s the plan?” Des shouted at me.

“If you don’t know, how am I supposed to know?” I rushed back to the fight with a helpless shrug. Five on one, we could keep this going, but there had to be a way to end this in our favor. Even if we took him down, if the Threadspawn had a chance to revive him, I was not sure that we could even win this through a battle of attrition.

 I rejoined the battle, coming in low and trying to hamper the Orkai’s legs. But this time he wasn’t going to let me get in so easily.

He kicked and twirled like he was suddenly a ballerina, forcing me backwards. Des had the best spot, standing back and firing off ranged attacks. Myself, Penny and Crimson were having a much harder go attacking.

Charlotte hung back, healing us while Felin was watching over the Doc.

Crimson came flying in from overhead, her heels hurtling down like an inbound meteor.

The Orkai wasn’t giving her much attention as he shifted back to trying to catch me, and that cost him. Crimson hit him hard enough for one of his arms to hang limp after the impact.

“Ha! Got him!” Des cheered.

The Orkai screamed, launching fire balls at Crimson one after the other like a machine gun that wasn’t going to run out of ammunition anytime soon.

Crimson tumbled backward before flipping and dodging out of the way, her long black braid swimming in the air and flying behind her as each explosion washed over her.

Des’s cheering stopped as she began hurling curses and shadow magic back at the Orkai.

I frowned, wondering if the host was a caster. After everything we had gone through, I had thought it was a fighter, but seeing the firepower it was putting out now, I couldn’t help but think that I had made the wrong assumption.

With Crimson pushed back, the Orkai turned and flung a hand toward me, a fiery tornado picking up from the ground and chasing after me.

I reached a hand forward as it reached me. [Absorb] activated and sucked the entire fiery tornado inside. My arms burned with the heat of mana flowing through me. But the burn wasn’t enough to stop me as I rushed through the fading ability, hoping to catch him by surprise.

The Orkai blinked stupidly, only to raise a hand and begin casting another ability.

I discharged all of the magic built up in my system and interrupted him before I tried to carve him up with my two blades.

Still not entirely sure, I couldn’t entirely treat him like a caster, not after the strength he’d shown in the beginning of the fight.

The Orkai spun around, twirling with his axe and forcing me backward. I dodged the next swing by a hair’s breadth, feeling the danger of the axe whoosh over me, only to get bold enough to try something different.

[Shadow Arm] raced from my feet to grab onto the caster and begin burning his mana. If I could get it low enough, then my finisher should take care of the situation, Threadspawn included.

But the Orkai picked up on what was happening. With a fiery stomp, he broke the [Shadow Arm] and came at me again, his body clearly straining with his speed and strength.

The Threadspawn was forcing through whatever strain it had experienced, and all the hits up unto that point. Now that I was looking, I could see the way its shoulder nearly gave from the socket each time it swung, and how the veins all along his exposed skin were bulging to the point I thought they would split free.

The Orkai screamed, “Die!” as its speed increased once again, catching me off guard and this time successfully catching me with a blow.

Twisting and catching the axe with my own blades did little to soften the impact. My arms strained as I kicked off the ground, letting him send me flying rather than attempting to stop his attack with my own strength.

The result was that I hurtled through the air, flying until I hit a dungeon wall that failed to give at all, which meant all of the give was left to my body. I hit, feeling my back crack and my ribs snap.

The Orkai let out a grunt of excitement before he put his hands together and a fireball the size of a bus chased me.

While I was unable to get out of the way, I had the benefit of my party. Penny’s sword was wreathed in ice as she tried to cut through the fire, the ice sizzling off her blade before she turned her shoulder into it and took the fire head-on.

The explosion was huge, and even from a distance, I could feel the heat wash over me.

“Penny!” I screamed, feeling my breath re-enter my body as the blue-haired woman appeared in the midst of the dust, clinging to her sword for support as she knelt on the ground, furrows dug in the soil before her.

I let out a breath of relief and turned back to the Orkai, who was bleeding profusely from wounds all over his body. Yet no one had touched him. Instead, it was as if he had simply strained himself to repeated injury.

He stood panting, leaning on his axe. The baleful glare he had given me in the beginning hadn’t cooled in the slightest. If anything, his gaze had only grown hotter.

“So,” Des teased, “what do you say? Is he your newest fan?”

I turned to her with a glare. We were all still recovering, and she just had to be so cheeky.

“I don’t know. Is he my top fan? I didn’t think you’d be willing to give that spot up to anyone else. But if you are…” I said with a helpless shrug.

Des gasped. “You’re right. There’s no way I can give that up. I do love the perks of the job.” She called out as she continued to fight, hurling more magic at the Orkai who seemed to be hunkering down waiting for something. At this moment he was braced against his axe, concentrating on something I couldn’t see.

And in the process, he completely ignored Des and even Crimson. Crimson’s whip lashed across his skin and at least visually doing a significant amount of damage, but the hits didn’t bother the Orkai in the slightest.

At this point, he had closed his eyes and was weathering the attacks, his skin beginning to glow with a healing ability. My own body was barely functional, and I was forced to watch as Charlotte’s healing washed over me and hopefully got me ready to join the fight shortly.

As the Orkai stood  concentrating, I couldn’t help but notice something moving slowly along the ground like a living carpet. I glanced down to see what could only be a Threadspawn flowing out of the ponds on this floor toward the Orkai, and it took all my will to keep bile from rising in my throat and my most recent meal from escaping.

“Des! The Threadspawn!” I shouted, pointing at the ground.

She frowned before she followed my finger. Her own expression shifted to one of disbelief and then disgust as she realized exactly what she was seeing.

“No way,” she said aloud.

The others followed her gaze as the floor covered in Threadspawn continued to squirm and move forward, crawling over each other.

Des turned her attacks to the Threadspawn in front of her and even Crimson shifted her attacks. But it didn’t matter. These Threadspawn seemed near endless. They came from everywhere endlessly.

The Orkai continued to ignore everything happening around him as the flowing carpet of Threadspawn reached him and began latching onto his ankles before digging into his skin, burrowing into his flesh. It was a sickening sight, only made worse as soon the Orkai’s skin simply had no space for more to latch onto. The Threadspawn began crawling over one another, reaching up and over their fellows and finding more flesh to burrow into.

I was extraordinarily frustrated that at this moment my body was too weak and still recovering to go over and start cutting them apart or squishing the worms for all they were worth. Straining to stand back up, my body warned me not to push it.

While I worked on regaining my strength, the Orkai finally looked up from what he was doing, a smile of victory on his lips.

“Behold,” he said as his skin began to squirm, “the true strength of my people, and the reason you will all fail to overcome us now and forevermore.”

As his skin bulged and squirmed, I couldn’t look away. I could only stare as the Orkai split apart, his green skin replaced with the pinkish-gray of Threadspawn worms. Thousands, perhaps millions of them, were squirming over one another, wrapping tightly until they merged into a massive humanoid form. The previous Orkai’s frame was just barely still visible underneath the massive Threadspawn threat.

Even as I thought the situation couldn’t get worse, Felin jumped through the portal. “The doctor’s dead!” she cried.

I flinched, glancing toward Felon in disbelief. “How?” I shouted, trying to keep the anger from my voice. The anger wasn’t directed at her, but the situation was not going in the way I had hoped.

“One of the unconscious patients just went crazy and blew itself up!” She threw her hands in the air and then turned to see the Orkai, registering him for the first time. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”

“I’m glad we can all agree on that,” Crimson said. “Now could you put your head in the game and get ready to do something about it?”

But even before Crimson finished speaking, a bolt of lightning raced from Felin’s spear and smashed into the writhing mass of Threadspawn.

The hit blew away several of the worms; however, there were so many that they simply re-formed a moment later. The mass going across the floor seemed to be absorbed into the larger form unnaturally. Because while it wasn’t growing, there were simply too many of them joining it for it not to grow, yet it failed to expand larger than the Orkai’s frame.

I momentarily wondered just why it had to be bound to the Orkai’s body.

But my thoughts shattered as the Threadspawn moved.

It punched, a dozen worms branching out from its fist, maws open and lunging for Crimson. 

She flinched, trying to get out of the way.

The creature gloated with a grating laugh as it followed Crimson with another series of punches, each barely missing her. Threadspawn sprouted from its fist and arm, trying to snag and bite her. Thankfully, individually, they weren’t strong enough to break her red leather armor.

I heaved a sigh of relief before determination flowed through me again. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself against the pain and promising myself I was going to join this and deal with the Threadspawn threat.

AN - Sorry I had a kid in urgent care. Here's this chapter and working on finishing editing the next tomorrow morning.