Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

Chapter 213

My legs burned as I sprinted out of its wide AOE attack, dodging the attack itself even as splinters of wood and bits of metal pelted my back. Nothing too serious- rather, nothing that pierced through my poncho and trench coat combo. It was a near thing. My hand was all scraped up by the splinter storm.

I glanced over my shoulder as I repositioned, checking on the massive ent creature. It seemed to lose track of me, mindlessly slamming its thick arms around as it destroyed everything around it. It was a brute—a dumb brute at that.

“La! La La LEEEE!” It sang out another mental attack, though it was just as useless as the others. 

I glanced around, trying to find the Inquisition. How much more time did he need? I thought about shouting and asking him, though I held back as I decided to reposition while I had the chance. Seriously, though, was he just hiding somewhere? Hurry the hell up, man!

I activated my Stealth perks, slinking around the crates as I stayed low and out of sight. The plant beast stood no chance with its lacking intelligence as I circled to get a better angle. The most challenging part was finding the angle itself, not sneaking around it.

While moving, I flicked on Aetherial Perception. Just like the rest of Mother’s awful plants, I spotted a corruptive aura emanating from the ent-like creature. The Aether seemed to be repelled by it, retreating from the field as if it were poison. It seemed centered around the creature’s chest, seemingly coming from its heart. 

Underneath all of that? Mother herself stared out. Her lecherous gaze latched onto me as her presence strengthened by the second. She was coming here- or at least trying to. She was much slower than when using Corvin as a conduit. Still, as her unsettling gaze met mine, I felt a shiver down my spine. 

I turned off Aetherial Perception and checked the enemy from my new vantage point. The tree had slowed down its aimless attacks, though it still wandered around mindlessly. Its injured eye was already regenerated from my knife, and the vines across its body had finally managed to put out the flames from my Molotov by smothering them. 

The Molotov didn’t seem as if it did much damage to begin with. Sure, it charred and burned its way through some of the bark armor, but it was just a mundane flame at the end of the day. With the thing’s regeneration, all of that was already starting to mend.

How am I supposed to kill something that could constantly regenerate anyway? Attack its brain? I doubted it even had one. The thing was stupid- or at least had terrible perception. Shred its heart? Thick wood blocked that path. It’d take several attempts to get through the wood.  

I could probably do it with three or four Blaze rounds, but that was assuming I hit the same spot every time. With the way it thrashed around, that wasn’t very likely. And on top of that, the Blaze rounds caused localized damage. No telling if they'd even be enough to take out a monster of that size.

Should I retreat? Run away? There was no real reason I had to take this fight… but what about the Inquisitor? I couldn’t just leave him to die… right. Just buy some more time. Hopefully whatever he’s doing will have a good effect. Nothing of mine was working very well.

I pulled another cheap knife out and swapped back to my rifle. Its weak spots, such as its eyes, weren’t protected very well. Probably since it could regenerate. It was good for me. I lined up a knife as countless calculations and instinct ran through my head. The time-slow effect of Dexterity helped get everything done rapidly. With one last adjustment, I threw it hard at one of the cross beams.

While the knife was in mid-air, I grabbed my rifle with both hands and lined up with its right eye. I fired, giving my position away as the bullets pelted its face with no success. My second burst succeeded, popping its right eye easily as it screeched and staggered back-

Right into the path of my deflected knife. Up above, the knife had perfectly bounced off of the cross beam, slicing through the air as gravity boosted its momentum. The knife easily pierced through its left eye, fully blinding the beast.

Blinded, it returned to its basics as it lashed out with its vines in a massive AOE attack. I was way out of its range though. I took the time it blindly rampaged to once more reposition onto another side. I could probably keep this up for a bit longer, but Inquisitor Varus really needed to hurry up-

The Aether trembled as Insight flashed a warning. I felt my entire body get ripped apart. I flicked on Aether Perception just in time to catch a storm whip up out of nowhere. It lasted a few seconds before shifting into reality as a shout came from closer to the middle of the cavern. “Take cover!”

I was already sprinting away as fast as I could even before his shout, ignoring the shooting pain in my legs as I moved for the cavern wall. It was a gut feeling—an instinct—that being even remotely near the tree would be a very, very bad idea. Not to mention Insight's continuous warnings of danger.

I heard it before I saw it. The crash of dozens of crates shattering and the splintering of wood, closely followed by the splattering of water as if it was raining in here. 

Then the scent of burning ozone followed as a bright flash illuminated the entire cavern. Had I been looking at the source, I would’ve definitely lost my vision for several moments. As it was, I only felt a searing pain in my eye. My ears swelled in pain as a cacophonous boom echoed off the walls.

I didn’t dare turn to look until I made it to the far side of the cavern. As soon as I reached it though? I turned to see the destruction that Inquisitor Varus’s magic caused.

Unlike most destruction-type magic I’d seen so far, this wasn’t just a simple short-duration yet brutal attack. Instead, a massive tornado of water moved through the cavern, centered on the malicious tree. The water tornado flashed with lightning, each strike precisely hitting the tree and splintering wood. The fires caused by the lightning were put out as fast as they were set, snuffed out by the vortex of water.

The lightning didn’t seem to be the spell’s main source of damage. That honor belonged to the sharks hidden in the tornado. As expected of a Shark Magus, I guess. They weren’t really sharks though. They looked like constructs made of water, though that was a deceptive description.

With every moment, sharks would form before launching at the malevolent tree with their massive maws spread wide. For beings made of water, they easily shredded through the bark, tearing strips off with every pass of their terrifying bodies. The ent tried to fight them off, though its cumbersome arms and vines only splatted them into water. Said water would then rejoin the storm as another shark launched out.

The tree wasn’t in a good state. With every second that passed, its body was slowly stripped of its bark. Damage accumulated far faster than it could regenerate, and it was only a matter of time till it dropped dead.

The creature reacted, its body vibrating as the corruptive aura it emitted slowly separated. Its body split into three parts, each about a third of the tree’s original form. All three of them moved to escape the Inquisitor’s tornado. Really, it would've been a good tactic. Only, it miscalculated. Or I should say it failed to calculate at all.

The weight of its original body was enough to keep it held down even as it was surrounded by the water tornado. Now that its mass had been divided into three chunks? The same couldn’t be said.

The tornado lifted the three forms, swirling them around as they were continuously attacked by the shark storm. They crashed and slammed into each other with such force that their bodies quickly turned into mangled chunks of wood.

A minute passed with them in such a state, going long enough that the original forms of the three couldn’t even be seen anymore. Nor could the corruptive aura. Chunks of black wood lay scattered all across the cavern, thrown far and wide by the tornado without care. It was dead. As easy as that.

During the entire time, Insight continuously warned me as projectiles flew in my direction. I dodged the worst of them, though a few small ones managed to slip by. Several small cuts lined my extremities.

I felt a chill go down my spine as I took in the destruction the Magus wrought. I’d only seen small-scale spells. Even those were scary. This though? On a whole other level.

If I was targeted by the storm… yeah, I’d just die. There was no chance I could live through all of that. Unless Quick Healing could repair my body from a single drop of blood, which I highly doubted.

Maybe if I killed the spell caster before I was caught up in it, it’d destabilize the storm? It’d taken him several minutes to cast it, so that wasn’t out of the realm of possibility… kill them before they even got the chance. As I expected, I wasn’t suited for frontal battles. Ambushes and traps were the way to go.

I… I also take back everything I thought about the Inquisitor not helping. If anything, I was the one who didn’t do anything. Except for acting as a distraction, I guess…

“S-squire!” A weak shout came behind a stack of crates. “You s-still in one p-piece?!”

”Chek!” I looked around the half-destroyed storage cavern, trying to spot him. Nothing. Where was he? He didn't sound too good from his shout...

A small shark swam up into the air, acting as a signal flare for me. It had been materialized at some point, taking on a physical form so I could see it even without Aetherial Perception. It was near the middle of the cavern, just barely outside the field of destruction. I rapidly made my way over.

The shark spotted me as I closed in, swimming down to guide me. Unlike normal though, it didn’t try to act cute. If anything, it had a rather serious expression. Still, even that was cute in its own way.

As I followed it back to its summoner, I spotted why it had a serious expression. The Inquisitor lay on a shattered crate. A piece of rusted metal impaled his shoulder, seemingly pinning him down as he tried to breathe deeply and calmly. 

The rusty piece of metal stabbed entirely through the silver chainmail armor, which was terrifying. Crusade armor was good, like really good. Sure, his chainmail was on the light side, but the piece of metal must’ve been moving with some serious momentum to cause this much damage.

About a dozen other deep cuts covered his body, leaking blood profusely. His choice of armor left plenty of gaps, though thankfully his chest seemed entirely free of wounds. Organs should be fine outside of blunt impact… then again, there was no telling what hit him. Seemed I was the only one to get out of the storm relatively unscathed.

His mask lay off to the side, revealing Inquisitor Varus’s face. I half expected it to be malformed and vicious, but he looked like an average guy. Maybe a bit on the handsome side, but nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except for the severe bruising all over his face and the blood pouring from his mouth as he coughed.

“Damn,” I muttered as I stared at the bleeding wound. “How bad is it?”

He groaned. “N-not t-too bad. Glad I got my t-tetanus shots.”

I forced a laugh at his attempts to lighten the mood and closed in to get a better look. It didn’t go too deep, at least as far as I could tell. Looked like his bones caught it before it could go all the way through… he could probably still move around, though the pain looked to be quite severe. The blood loss was another matter, though.

“I’ve just got bandages.” I rifled through my bag for my med kit. Unfortunately, I was rather low on supplies. I’d used a lot of stuff up on Lily Lower and hadn’t taken the chance to resupply. Stupid.

“I’ve g-gotta stim- ugh- in my b-bag. Should h-help with blood loss, but I lost it in the s-storm.” He chuckled weakly, raising a weak hand to wipe blood from his lips. His lips pulled into a grim grin. “It’s about r-right that I took more damage from m-myself than that thing.”

Stims. Right, I needed to get some of those. Add it to the list… as for his bag? Little chance I could find it with all the destruction and clutter. Still, it was better than nothing. “What’s it look like?”

While waiting for a reply, I stuffed disinfectant and gauze into the worst of his wounds. I also shifted the canteen to start producing Pervider venom. Its stasis-like effect could help stabilize him long enough to get the Inquisitor up to proper medical help. He just needed to hold out long enough for the canteen to generate enough venom. Maybe fifteen minutes?

”Ugh-“ He waved to the shark sprite. It worriedly hovered over him like a fussing parent. “Th-this little guy will g-guide you to it.”

The shark nodded its head to me and began to swim through the air in a certain direction before looking back at me. “Chek. Just- just hang in there. I’ll be right back. You’re going to be fine.”

”S-sure hope so. It w-would suck to die before my- ugh- vacation.” He made another attempt to lighten the mood, though it didn’t work. His face was quickly turning white as he coughed again. “I’ll t-try to stay awake.”

I quickly turned to follow the shark and look for his long-lost bag.