Chapter 181

For all the shit Luke had endured since he’d been taken to Aros, nothing compared to the pain of those dozens of tentacles crushing him. It wasn’t just the pressure either; no, they had texture to them like a particularly rough and slimy piece of sandpaper. Even if Luke had been wearing his armor, he didn’t think it would stand up to this kind of punishment. His clothes were immediately shredded and the tentacles rasped across his body.

The first few seconds of contact were a series of disorientating shoves in random directions and a burning sensation as his skin was abraded. It wasn’t until he activated [Life Surge] that Luke had enough strength to begin fighting back. He hooked an arm around the tentacle pressing against his stomach and squeezed.

Other tentacles rushed across his body, but with [Life Surge] pushing his strength and stamina higher, Luke held himself stationary. His free arm pushed a tentacle aside so that he could grab the hilt of one of the swords strapped behind his shoulder and he ripped it free while channeling a [Power Strike] down his arm. The blade severed a tentacle cleanly, which did little to give him more room, but it was a start.

He passed the sword to his other hand and drew a second one. Then he got to work. The blades weren’t made to stand up to this kind of pressure, but Luke didn’t care. He didn’t need them to survive the fight, just to give him some room to move. [Power Strike] after [Power Strike]drove them through fibrous plant flesh as he chopped through the knot of tentacles he was caught in.

Abruptly, there was nothing underneath him. Luke fell twenty feet to the floor of the underground canyon. He had two full seconds to get a good look at the demon, to see the hundreds of tongues extending out of an impossibly big mouth in every direction, and to get a look at the number of severed tentacles littering the canyon around him, before the demon realized he’d escaped. Instantly, its remaining tongues descended on him again.

This time Luke was ready. He wasn’t mid-leap with a passenger in his arms, and the demon no longer had the element of surprise. As the tongue-shaped appendages slammed down around him, Luke dodged around them. [Burst Step] helped keep him from being hit when too many came at him at once and [Tactical Foresight] worked hard to keep him out of that situation in the first place, and he wasn’t shy about using his stolen swords.

Those were rapidly turning into worthless scrap metal, their edges dulled and blunted and the steel itself getting just a little bit thinner with each pass through a tentacle. Sometimes the length of a fleshy green pillar would blur, and Luke did his best to dodge those when he could. Perhaps inevitably, a wall of demon tongue slammed down on one side, and a vibrating tentacle swept across the only open space Luke had to work in.

His only option was to parry the blur. Anything else would take too much time. If he’d had even an instant to think about it, he wouldn’t have tried. He knew the swords hadn’t been up to the task even when they were in good shape, let alone now. Even with [Power Strike] surging down both arms and into the blades, he knew as soon as he made contact with the tentacle that it wasn’t going to be enough.

He swept both blades up in parallel arcs. The one in his right hand shattered immediately. The one in his left bit in an inch or two at most, then snapped. Then the tentacle slammed into him, pinning him between the wall of tongues and its own blurred length. Fresh pain flared across his stomach, chest, and the underside of his arms where the tentacle pushed up against them.

There was a flash of black, and the tentacle dropped to the ground. “I must be crazy to be doing this,” Spectacle said.

“Fight or run?” Luke asked.

“There’s no running.”

Spectacle cut through three more tentacles closing in on them, and Luke had to admit the other man put him to shame when it came to using a sword. It wasn’t just that his weapon was made up of something that could actually stand up to the demon. It was the way he moved, flowing, elegant even. Each motion led smoothly into the next, like Spectacle was dancing with the tentacles. By comparison, Luke felt brutish and slow.

Then again, he’d been hit dozens of times in this fight and was still on his feet. Could Spectacle stand back up after even a single blow? Somehow, Luke doubted it. Somewhat mollified that he had his own areas where he excelled, Luke pulled the last of his three stolen swords off his back. “What I wouldn’t give for a good mace right now,” he muttered.

“Ugh. You have no class at all,” Spectacle told him. “You might as well beat on things with a club.”

“Clubs would also be fine,” Luke said.

“Risking my life for this,” Spectacle muttered to himself. “I’ll try to keep as many of these tentacles off you as possible. Your friend said she was making something using one of her skills that you’d want. Something to feed to that mouth over there.”

Luke grinned. It practically had to be an explosion. Zea’s first resort was always to blow a threat up. [Ghost Script] was good at making quick and dirty bombs, too. While he wasn’t sure exactly how she was planning on getting that bomb to him, or even why she needed to, it was good to have a clear direction.

“Where is she?” Luke asked as he leaped over a tentacle that skimmed across the ground behind him. His sword flashed and he severed the offending limb before landing on top of it.

“Still up in the tunnel.”

That could be a problem. Luke could barely keep up with the demon when he had solid ground under his feet, let alone while scaling fifty or sixty feet of sheer cliffs to reach Zea. There was no way he could get up to her, and it was way too dangerous for her to come to him.  If anything, she should be running away as fast as she could.

Running away never seemed to be an option Zea considered. She’d gotten herself into trouble more than once by staying to fight with Luke in battles she had no business being in, but she’d also saved his ass a few times as well. He trusted her judgment, but he wasn’t sure exactly how he was supposed to link back up with her prior to killing the demon.

Luke had a bit over a minute left before [Life Surge]dropped and, if at all possible, he wanted to avoid needing to use it back-to-back again. That extra thirty seconds was not worth the after-effects unless it was literally life-or-death. The problem was that Luke didn’t have a strategy. He’d needed the power boost just to survive being crushed inside the ball of tentacles, and he had no idea how to kill the demon.

The fact that all of the tentacles had even come from one single entity was mind-boggling to him. Some of them were hundreds of feet long, and all of them could push through stone easily. This thing would have ripped apart tanks without any apparent effort and completely ignored any sort of small arms fire. Luke was strong enough to split steel like it was styrofoam now, and he couldn’t get through one of those tentacles barehanded without a [Power Strike] to reinforce his attack.

With no way to get to Zea and no idea how much time she’d need to finish drawing the runes on whatever she was using, Luke didn’t see a good way to incorporate her into any plan he came up with. He’d just have to trust that she’d find an opening and make herself useful. In the meantime, the obvious weak spot was the mouth all the tongues originated from.

That thing was creepy in and of itself. It wasn’t a whole face, just a kind of seed-shaped ball of green flesh split open on side. It had ridges of a sort along that opening that resembled lips, but there were no other features. Perhaps the worst part of it was that those lips were easily twenty feet wide, and they were parted a solid fifteen feet.

Luke was no expert at physics or math, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t possible for all the tentacles filling the canyon to fit inside that seed. There was definitely some kind of bullshittery happening there, though perhaps not the system-induced sort. A quick glance around showed Luke all the severed tongue-tentacles, which far, far out-sized the seed pod. Luke wondered what would happen if he broke the pod open. Would it kill the demon, or would it just release all the hidden tongues it still held in reserve all at once?

Spectacle had firmly proven that cutting through random tentacles wasn’t going to do any good. If they wanted this demon dead, the only way Luke knew was with fire. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any on-hand. Failing that, his fallback option was to hit things until they stopped moving. He just needed to get there first.

“New plan,” Luke said. “I’ll keep tentacles off you and you go fuck up that demon’s day.”

Spectacle dodged between four different tentacles coming at him from different angles using some sort of move that involved him jumping into the air, turning sideways, and spinning to keep his limbs clear. It looked like something someone taking up breakdancing might have done, only done at speeds faster than a normal human was capable of seeing, let alone moving.

“How exactly are you going to do that?” the black-shrouded man asked.

Luke sent a [Power Strike] through his remaining sword and severed a tentacle coming their way. “Like that. But only if you hurry.”

[Power Strike] was both draining and not meant to be used with a bladed weapon. He knew he was going to break the sword quicker this way, but only if the demon didn’t do it first. One way or another, the fight was going to be over in the next minute or two, so he figured he might as well go all-in on the plan with the best chance of succeeding.

Spectacle darted around Luke, putting himself closer to the wall. “Keep it busy,” he commanded, and the pair leaped forward together.

Luke couldn’t match Spectacle’s sheer speed or coordination, but he had the other man completely outclassed in terms of raw strength. Not every tentacle needed to be cut apart either. In fact, sometimes it was better to redirect one into the way of another one. The tentacles didn’t seem to care if they got tangled up with each other, and whatever slime coating they had on them was enough lubricant to pull themselves back apart.

But for a few seconds here and there, Luke could take two or three out of action and use them as a shield to block new tongues from reaching them. In a fight like this one, where everyone was moving a hundred miles an hour, a few seconds was a lot. He flanked Spectacle’s advance, blocked the majority of the tentacles that tried to snag them, and together the two of them rushed the seed pod.

It loomed overhead, anchored in midair by at least eight different tentacles that had bored into the stone above their heads. There was no convenient way to reach it, not unless they wanted to brave the tangled mess coming directly out of its mouth. Luke had already been caught in that once, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. Fortunately for him, he had a better idea.

He cupped his hands in front of him, looked at Spectacle, and said, “Want a lift up?”