A Survivor's Guide to Planetary Apotheosis [Postapocalyptic Survival, LitRPG, and Dungeon]

A light breakfast, in which he was joined by Captain Pruitt, who Alexander noted with some jealousy looked a bit smug, a bit cheerful. The benefit of a full night's rest with the spousal unit. Well, if that wasn't motivation for Alexander Gerifalte to get this job done, he wouldn't find it anywhere else. They were soon enough joined by a bleary-eyed Captain Miller, whose bun was falling apart in its hasty construction, or from not being undone the previous night before she'd succumbed to sleep.

"Fuck, what a day Marv." She said to her officer buddy.

"So I heard, Grace, so I heard. But you didn't come back empty handed, so there's that." Rejoined the older man, a positive note in his mellow voice.

"I hate it when you get laid and come to breakfast all bright eyed, Marv. Tone down the good cheer, will ya?" Grace complained, which rolled off the older man like water off a fresh wax job.

"No can do, Diane heard what happened from some loose-lips. She put on a show. I'd complain about my back, but it was a Phoenix sunrise, so I'm all good." The older man gloated, enjoying a brief bit of teasing to his junior officer.

Dark eyes took in Alexander and studied him briefly. To judge by the neatly coifed cornrows, freshly laundered uniform, and neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard of the older warrior, Alexander would guess the old boy was ready to roll today. Amazing what a good night's sleep does for a guy.

A runner came in, dressed in the attire of civil guard, one of Boss Bastion's by his insignia. Alexander put down his milk and the last corner of his cream cheese coated toast. The urgency in the man's steps, the slightly crumpled grip on the message he bore, these gave Alexander a bad feeling. Unfortunately, his attention to detail proved prescient. The red-haired Ifrit officer, Mason, and the dark-green haired Dryad who'd been particularly suspicious of him, Siddiqa he thought she was called, took the message and passed it between them. Grimness hardened their faces and a flinty look to their eyes said it was nothing he was gong to be happy to learn about. The lady Captain circled her hand over her hand, summoning a flock of three knotted brooches to start handing out orders. Mason strode over, shaking his head and muttering the whole while. Toward Alexander he thrust the cursed paper, and tersely said, "From Governor Bastion."

Steady handed, he took the missive and glanced at it. Then he dropped it to the table and rubbed his hand over his face. Not completely unexpectedly, there had been casualties. The sweepers had found the safehouse. It was near where he'd thought it would be. The only trouble was, some of Bastion's civil guards had found it first, operating on a tip from some Elves who'd been romping around the woods and lagoon. It was the squad who'd escorted Alexander up to meet the man, and the message requested he survey the scene to learn what he could. No details were present in the message, but after having fought the creature, he could guess what he would find.

"Haaah, this is the fucking part I hate." Alexander Gerifalte announced, standing.

Ninth bell saw him standing inside a boiler room in what had been an elementary school, its dour, juvenile corrections institutional appearance making him feel relieved he hadn't had to experience education in such a place. That was deflection though, from the sight inside the dank basement room, its old, long disused machinery starting to rust from the humidity in the room. One of the walls was leaking water, which had pooled in the southwester corner. That was not the only pool, just the only one that wasn't blood.

Three corpses littered the floor, one of them mauled badly. The Gnome, Korin her name had been, had been cut in half vertically, weapon still sheathed on its belt. The others had fought, or tried to, to judge by scuff marks on the floor from their armored boots. It hadn't mattered much, they'd been massacred with no sign of injury to the Infiltrator.

Their chests were opened, their cores gone, eaten by the Infiltrator. Mary's sightless eyes stared, an expression of shock locked in place from where her head stared in the direction of the rest of her body from across the room. Or, more specifically, toward the big bundle of loose webbing that occupied one corner of the room, now empty, and the torn cocoons beside it.

There was more to be seen, and see he must, even though he didn't want to.

Alexander approached the third body that lay on the floor. While not a medic, he'd killed enough, and cleaned and harvested from his kills to be able to do some limited post mortem examination on the two more complicated corpses. Firstly, both the men had hypodermic injection sites on their necks, so they'd been bitten at some point, paralyzed and horrified by the spider's venom, but not the Gnome or the woman, those had died nearly instantly. Jacobs, who he'd thought of as Bad Cop, had had his arms lopped off at the shoulder, arterial sprays a few yards farther into the room, with a big smear along the concrete to his current location, indicated that had happened while he was fighting, one of the arms held his weapon in its fist still, and his legs were webbed together, not soaked in gore. Alexander figured he had been disarmed, literally, then webbed, then dragged. His guts had mostly been eaten. The bleeding there indicated he'd been alive when that had occurred, which matched the MO from the corpses in Concorde.

The big guy, the Samoan whose name he had never caught, had gone the hardest. That one's corpse was not on the floor. He hung from the ceiling, skinless. By the wide-eyed rictus frozen on his flayed face, and the blood, pooled beneath him, he'd also been alive while that was done.

Both men had been aware as they'd been mutilated, able to feel but not move. As a capstone on the horror show, the brains of the corpses had been exposed, but not devoured. Alexander had a feeling he knew why: So that the Infiltrator could sift through their memories. Maybe having the brain opened up made it easier somehow. Or maybe it just did it for funsies.

There was more, and he had to get whatever information he could, before time did its work obscuring the clues. The Venator picked his way to the corner, to the mass of webs that had drawn Mary's final gaze. It was big. Like a huge California king mattress size hammock of spider silk. Adjoining it, within the cocoon, he found that each had held two human corpses. They were fresh, though not as fresh as the guards. Best estimate, these had been alive forty-eight hours ago. Both corpses had been fed on to the point that identification was impossible. What stood out to him, was that neither had a single scrap flesh over the exposed muscle. Bears liked to do that during salmon runs, just eat the flesh off the muscle of the fish they caught, because it was the most calorie dense. Alexander didn't think that was what had happened. These two had been flayed as well. Did it do it as a sort of instinct? Ritual? No, he was missing something more obvious so he continued his investigation.

Ragged strips of gore in the opposite corner of the hell nest proved to be the remains of those cocooned victim's hides, ruined, torn, with stretched rips that looked like someone a couple sizes too large had tried to fit into them. Six Otherkin, two Humans, and, now, this last guardsman. That's a lot of eating. Enough to put on a little weight?

Sour stink of death in the room was loud in his nose, and he'd seen what he needed to. He pushed the door open, his usual grace slightly compromised by holding onto the contents of his stomach, and saw Captains Miller and Pruitt standing with their lanterns casting orange glows into the dark concrete tomb outside. Most of his willpower was devoted for a few seconds to keep from donating his breakfast to the floor. A gagging sound with a female octave to it let him know he wasn't the only one.

Alexander was not unused to the stench of corpses, nor the scat of predators. But what scene lay behind that maintenance door was a charnel house. He could almost hear echoes of the pain that had lived within. A last shudder, and he turned to address the Peacekeepers.

"It's our guy. He got a breather, a fresh coat of paint, and a meal." Alexander told them, a touch breathlessly, the morbid jest coming reflexively.

It wasn't funny, and he knew that, but his brain was twisted when it came to the harsh reality of Gaia. Grave yard humor was one of those coping mechanisms that was fairly wide spread amongst the survivors, especially the ones who spent their time out in the Green face to face with death.

Both the Peacekeepers nodded and poked their heads in to witness the scene. Grace, with her pale complexion being a little more honest, went a little green around the gills but, other than that, they took it pretty well.

"Learn anything useful?" Marvin Pruitt asked, swallowing back a touch of bile at the gruesome set pieces.

Had he? He knew from its Scroll the Infiltrator liked to consume the cores of its prey, the initial request for his services had been prompted by the gory preference of the killer for entrails and organs, and, from his encounter the day before, he knew it wore the skin of its victims for camouflage. Was there anything else this tragedy told him?

"It's deliberately cruel." He told the Peacekeepers, angry, furious at the savagery on display here.

"Two of them it killed pretty much instantly, to keep itself safe I would guess. The other two it kept alive. One to eat fresh, like living sashimi. The other to harvest its new suit. They didn't have to be alive for that, but it wanted them that way. Godsawful motherfucker that it is." Alexander concluded.

The young man slid down the wall to sit on the concrete, eyes that saw too much sometimes closed. Images inside his mind he could do nothing about. Those flickered back and forth between the living versions of these poor souls and, resisting his efforts otherwise, the dead.

"Nothing more you could have done, Ranger Gerifalte. The both of you made the right call returning to base last night. Only third-rate forever Iron's go to their enemy's den hungry, hurried, and exhausted. That's sloppy. Sloppy is dead." Captain Marvin Pruitt said, his calm remained intact, cool, almost emotionlessly cold, the benefit of his class's mind stabilizing abilities.

Cool was not in Alexander. He burned. Rage, hate for the dungeon spawn, for the malevolent crystal hearts that gave them passage into this, his world. If he had the power, he'd wipe every single one of them out in an instant. But he didn't. Just like he hadn't been able to catch the Infiltrator out in the wilds. Like he hadn't been able to kill it when it had attacked him. Or caught up to it before it eliminated its trail thereafter. Failure stung. It was acid in his veins when that failure cost people their futures.

"Gonna kill the fucker, Captain. Mark my words." Alexander told the older man, eventually.

"Gonna help, Ranger Alexander." Marvin agreed.

Grace Miller had her head inside the doorway, surveying again the scene of the massacre, taking it in.

"I don't get it." She admitted to the other two, "Why'd they chase? Orders were explicit. Don't engage, send for backup, keep your distance."

That was in response to the signs above that the guards had actively run after something, had left markings and boot prints that showed them pursuing as fast as they could. Alexander gnawed his cheek, contemplating the question. It was a good question. A dead bolt on the door had been snapped, a dent in its metal surface matched the boot print of Jacobs, so he'd kicked the door in, and the guards had poured inside in a hurry, the men taking point, and the Gnome closest to the door. She'd been hit from behind, by the way the pieces had fallen, with a forward momentum.

But why? Why'd they gone after it? And into a room with no way out. They'd gone in head long, been cut off from escape, cornered. A successful trap laid, but they hadn't given him the impression of being so naïve as to walk into so obvious an ambush. It didn't make sense.

Considering the dead Gnome, he was worried the intelligence folks might be right about the monster being close to tiering up. That was a damned heavy slash to have got through well-made light armor of the guards in one whack. The Infiltrator hadn't tried any slashes before, just spearing attacks, but then, it was a narrow alley. Damn thing was strong enough to carve Alexander's armor, whose to say it wouldn't have the oomph to split a Gnome?

But what exactly the fuck had made the guards chase a monstrous spider down into a basement? What had made them charge into the room, to the extent that they'd forced the door? Unless they hadn't been chasing a demonic spider. What if they'd been following a person, what if they'd been trying to help someone? Only, when they rolled into the boiler room, there was something else waiting for them, something behind them, or, because they were dealing with Rasatalan spiders, from above as well.

Suddenly realization bloomed in his consciousness. Brig, with her love of animal behavior studies would have been proud.

"They didn't chase." He told the Red Cloaks, jaw set in anger, "They were led. I don't think we have one, I think we have two. An Infiltrator, a master of disguise and stealth. A hunter. That's not what got these guards. Look at the wounds. Dismembering cuts, all of them. Clean, like a big axe, or your great sword, Grace. No stabs at all. I think there's another one, a heavier melee type."

Careful steps, avoiding the pools and splashes of gore took him to the webbed up, half eaten husks in the corner neither of which bore their hides. Alexander's eyes hadn't failed to miss that the exposed tissue was moist, it had been covered recently, not drying out. Those had been alive, undisfigured, only recently.

"Your guys hypothesized the monster being close to a tier up. They might be onto something. But I think our killer is growing rapidly too. It looks like the one we encountered probably was outgrowing the camouflage available, it drew them in because it needed somebody bigger. The guards, they were investigating a person acting suspiciously, or who was pretending to be running from something. Those shredded skins, I figure it was wearing one of them and it didn't match the reports we made so they didn't know they were being pulled into a trap. It lured them in, then the second one hit them from behind. Also, look, they chose the biggest guy they could get to peel. They're outgrowing their clothes."

His companion's mouths twisted at that notion. A second one, that was one thing. But an even more dangerous close quarters fighter? When the first had damned near killed them?

Sick dread filled his stomach at a new, even more horrifying notion.

"What if, it's like the slimes? What if we're dealing with a breeding pair that's ready to spawn, just as soon as it tiers up? That, all of a sudden, have to start eating heavy, only that blows their camouflage so just the smaller one leaves the den to get food? Except, I fucked them over up north, they didn't get to feed well enough. Then we hurt the only one that's bringing in food. Now, they're desperate, eating up the last of their reserves, those extra two chewed up bodies. Some things, they don't eat enough when they lay their eggs, they have to eat the eggs or die from the lack of energy." The Venator wondered aloud.

Grace and Marvin were rightly alarmed by that train of thought, but not convinced.

The Oread asked, "If there's two, if they're in a tight spot, why not eat all the bodies? Why only the one?"

"Time, Little Lady." Captain Pruitt answered his fellow officer's question, throwing a bit of an old joke to break the tension, even if his tone was edged from the atrocity in the boiler room.

"No time."

Captain Pruitt looked again toward the dented metal of the boiler room door, lips pursed as he put pieces together aloud.

"The victims were here around day break, we have the patrol assignments, this is inside the starting area of their sector, not long after they set out. Reports flagged them fail to check in just an hour later. Forty-five minutes after that, there's a squad of Peacekeepers here, surrounding the place. We get here about an hour after that. This goddamn mess, it can't be much more than a couple two, three hours old. You remember that Scroll our exterminator here wrote down? They're smart. Real smart. If the one can read memories, it might have done so with the guys they skinned and ate, separately, no telling how long that process takes. Maybe awhile, given how long the venom seems to last. I'm thinking, as soon as they learned they were about to be surrounded, that they were out of time, they beat it before they could do more than stuff themselves on that poor bastard." Captain Marvin hypothesized.

It was virtually impossible to know for certain if they were on the right track, but a lot of hunting was knowing the habits of your prey, knowing the terrain, and then trusting your intuition. To Alexander, it felt correct.

"Got to spread the word guys. It didn't grab one of your guild mates, but one of them is trying to pass as a patrolman. My gut says the Infiltrator, what did these guys, it's the big one, it tried to fit in one of the two John Does and tore the shit out of the hide trying to put it on. Even with their flesh alteration fuckery, it's too big to pass as human anymore, doesn't have a cover. The one we hurt, I think that one is still playing the field incognito." Alexander outlined, piggybacking on the older warrior's assessment.

Grace saw the immediate issue that would arise from his proposed scenario, said with alarm, "There're thirty thousand odd people in this city, somebody is going to see a freak spider skittering around. There'll be witnesses. If these bastards are as smart as you're suggesting, they'll cover their tracks however they can, and that means offing anybody who can point fingers."

He nodded, grimacing. Yeah, there were going to be more victims. Nothing subtle, the monsters would slaughter whoever saw them and move on at top speed, unless they can snag somebody fast for eating later.

"Better get up above, gents. The quiet part of this contract is over, it's going to get loud now." He predicted.

Half an hour proved him right. Runners brought word that contact had been made at the wall, something had tried to carve its way through the patrol there and had been repelled, with casualties. Three Peacekeepers maimed, but they'd lived, and their attacker had been forced to flee before reinforcements closed in on it. They described something vaguely arachnoid, with front legs that had huge axe blades on them.

Running, it took the trio less than half an hour to reach the city wall. Another runner found them and reported an attempt by someone wearing civil guard uniform trying to talk their way past a patrol just a mile north of the attempted breakout. The "man" fled when the Peacekeepers tried to hold him there for questioning, stabbing one badly and webbing the other two to the wall.

Two encounters at the wall, tracking north. Two dots were enough to plot a line. Together, he and his companions ascended a set of spiral stairs hidden inside the wall that took them to the walkway atop the wall, where patrolling Peacekeepers held a bird's eye view of the city inside and out, and where, just barely, the Guildies had repelled an attempt to climb over the wall by their mysterious killer. Once they'd arrived at the scene of the skirmish, lo' and behold! Alexander saw that the injured included the two jerkoffs who'd accosted him at the gates to the Guild Hall. They'd accounted themselves well, had actually managed to lightly wound the monster, to judge by a splash of the same sickly yellow green fluid that Alexander had drawn from the Infiltrator.

Howard, the guy who Alexander had given a Chaos Strike dick punch, had put his sword into it, said he got an eye before it cut his legs off at the knee with one stroke. He was lying with torniquets on both thighs, pale from blood loss, and doing well enough to look pissed at being taken down twice inside a week. Gibbons had gotten gutted, it had come over the crenellation and hit him first, and wasn't conscious, similar story for the other Guildie Alexander hadn't met, whose name he didn't know. Gibbons had, according to his gate partner hit the critter with that axe hard enough to carve a steel door, but the Eximius had shrugged it off.

"Don't you fucking try to parry one of those swings, you fucking hear me? Especially you, Mr. Gonorrhea. You fight like a flanker, and that cocksucker took a giant shit on forty percent Soak, so whatever you're packing, it ain't enough." Advised Howard with especial concern for Alexander, propped up on his elbows from his stretcher, to impart his earthy wisdom to his comrades, even through his injury.

That was strangely touching, considering the nature of their meeting and he decided he'd been too harsh in his initial estimation of these two. They were meatheads, sure, but not bad people. A medic was readying a syrette of morphine or morphine adjacent and the downed warrior was reporting before it took effect.

"After the bastard got Gibbons and Roger, I jabbed it one of those eyeballs while it was reared back to put them down for good, figured I might be able to fix its attitude with some steel in the brains. Didn't get deep enough before it threw me, tossed me off like a dog shaking a rat. Then it went through me like I wasn't there, one stroke, big orange glow, and *Whack*! I barely even felt the goddamn cut that lopped my joggers off. Right through the fucking armor too, and the quartermaster is gonna dock me for that, you can bet on it. Anyway, Roger, he was charging a lightning bolt, one of the big ones, he must have figured we were all cooked, might as well take it with us. It ran. He passed out before he could smoke us. Good thing too, I got Gibbons higher on the dead pool, gotta outlive that ass or I'll never hear the end of it from him." The injured warrior recounted, bemoaning his daily bread and friendly wager in a sour tone that almost made Alexander smile despite the situation.

Some guys had a way of staying locked onto priorities no matter what was happening around them.

"Line of duty, Howard, your pay stub's safe." Captain Grace rolled her eyes as she assured the wounded man, and he actually smiled at that piece of information before laying back with his eyes closed. A thumbs up from the attending medic, who assured them he'd put enough happy juice into the Guildie to make transport back to headquarters little more than a bad dream, and those were all in route to base on their stretchers.

From the top of the wall, Alexander surveyed the city, peering across rooftops, cleared fields, pastures, gardens, and the various holdings of the settlers of New Chicago. Five miles distant, he saw running forms, folk wearing the garb of the laborers, the noncombat classes and they were getting the hell out of dodge from a patch of green which surrounded a ribbon of blue that had to be a small river that ran parallel to the coast. Blue uniformed guardsmen were closing in on the area. Alexander pointed, shouted "There!" his gesture drawing the attention of the two Peacekeepers who squinted trying to see. They shook their heads, "Too far Ranger, can't make out what's happening." Admitted Captain Marvin.

Alexander made a knife hand gesture and waved it north, tracking the river that flowed not far inside the protective wall of the inner city, and the pronounced woodland that enshrouded it.

"There. That's where it's going. North, along the river, it'll stay inside the woodland. Heading away from the fire line of Peacekeepers to the south and away from the city center. It'll keep going until it finds a weak spot in the wall to cross." He told his less keen-eyed compatriots.

"Over by O'Hare there's a gate," Captain Pruitt told him, worry etching his features, "A small one, used for our harvester and agricultural classes to pass through. "

The once pilot aspirant looked yonder, saw the expanse of terminals, runways, empty aluminum frames of planes, the onetime beating heart of air travel that was O'Hare airport from his perch on the wall. He remembered his earlier survey from the northern gate tower, remembered seeing this gate, barely wide enough for two men abreast to pass through. There wasn't another exit, not until the main northern gate several miles distant.

"Jackpot!" He cried, "I think our killers are headed for O'Hare, that spot's got a big open space, but the woods along that river are giving it cover all the way up to, with the one masquerading as a guard, they might be able to bluff the guards into opening the gate. Or, the Infiltrator will probably slaughter the guards and the big one will be right behind it."

Captain Pruitt, frustration showing on his face, for once, was shaken.

"My Diane's on patrol that way." Fear for his partner plain in his voice.

The deep brown eyes locked onto Alexander's and he saw the gears working in the older man's head before he ever spoke, running the numbers.

"We'll never make it. They've got too big a lead on us." The veteran soldier declared, an edge of hopelessness in his tone.

Alexander shrugged out of his pack, letting it drop to the stones of the wall walkway, where it thudded heavily with the weight of its contents. He needed to be light now. From here, the wall made a virtually straight line, clear of obstruction, all the way to the airport. He looked to his companions, good people both, worthy champions for humanity. A clap of his gauntleted hand on their shoulders and he told them sincerely, "It's been an honor, the both of you. Drinks are on you tonight, Flatlanders."

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Ignoring the confusion turning into realization on the faces beneath their helmets, Alexander was in full flight even before the two Guildies had time to internalize what was happening.

When he chose to, when it became necessary, Alexander Gerifalte was one of the swiftest movers of all the scouts in Falcon's Rest. It was rare for him to use that speed, because his usual approach was one of stealth, which necessitated a more measured pace. Now though, he was extending himself, legs blurring, wind in his feathered hair, and the terrain of the south side of the city grew distant quickly as he ran. Patrolling Guildies barely realized he was closing on them before he blew past, air rustling their cloaks in his passage. Startled shouts behind him faded and he gathered himself, a hard step, a double legged launch to vault a twenty foot high guard tower, his rolling landing maintaining most of his velocity and he was onward. O'Hare, and the small gate, was five minutes away at this pace. The spiders had had a half hour lead, but he would close the gap, now that he knew where to go. Following the river, using the cover of the forest they were fast, but Alexander wasn't tracking now, he wasn't following their breadcrumbs, now he was cutting them off. They wouldn't escape him again.

A blue uniform exited the wood, unnoticed by the milling guardsmen and the disgruntled farmers arguing about being denied passage to the outside, where their tasks awaited them. Outsider's eyes saw the veins bulging on necks, made out the obvious anger of the shouting men, even though he couldn't hear them. He could very nearly read their lips from a mile out. None of them paid the approaching figure in blue any mind. Alexander was already at full tilt, no more speed could he summon. A twitch of limbs, bushes moving against the wind behind the treeline marked the hulking form of the assault variety of Rasatalan demon spider, the partner of the Infiltrator striding with its awkwardly constrained gait, a mark of its efforts not to split its undersized disguised.

Singer came off the Venator's back as he sprinted, his breath coming harder now for the sustained effort. Peak humans from before the Pulse could run less than half as fast as he was now, for about three seconds. He'd held his pace for five minutes and it was breaking down his legs to do it. He'd be useless tomorrow, useless an hour from now, but neither tomorrow nor hour from now were his concern. An arrow, red fletches denoting the Mind Flayer Tears coating its spear tip, he pulled to grip, ready to let fly at the Infiltrator as soon as he came within range.

The Infiltrator shoved its way through the crowd of objecting, milling townsfolk. A look of confusion passed between the blue uniformed guardsmen, three of them, with two Peacekeepers in their white cloaks, three knots of rank to each of them, in attendance as well. One was obviously the Oread lady who'd scooped Marvin up in fervent greeting, the Marid Captain's wife. Ten seconds out, he wouldn't be able to take his shot before it started killing them.

A shake of the helmet of the man in charge of the gate, denied the monster its stolen voiced request to open the gate. Crimson sprayed. The man fell, holding his throat. Alexander ran, burning legs and knives driving into his sides. Singer could put an arrow into a target with killing force from four hundred yards away. Alexander called to his core's strength, let the magic infusing him through Gaia's gifts take hold. He slid a dozen yards across stone to a halt and readied his bow.

Within the island of focus, there was only Alexander's body, his target, black outlines drawing its intended path, to bury the guard woman who stood by the portcullis lift mechanism, and Singer. Arrow fitted, full draw of the war bow to his cheek, and release, one after the other. Three bolts flew and he knew before he'd loosed the first they would fall on his prey. From this deep inside his focus, with his powers at their fullest expression he could sometimes read the flow of combat. Could trace its course like a map. Today he was at his zenith. The woman went down, stabbed by spearing hands through her chest and neck, as he knew she would. Another death he had failed to prevent. The Peacekeepers were drawing their swords when the third guard was dispatched by knifing jabs of the Infiltrator. Behind them, the bulk of the other dungeon spawn was skittering from cover, rushing, and it was a bigger, bulkier, heavier armored cousin of the first. An assault class. Shouts from the gathered crowd, already in flight from the sudden violence erupting before them, would give warning too late to the distracted warriors.

Alexander lurched back into motion, slower now, muscles strained beyond their optimal function protesting. A violet feathered arrow, one of three in his quiver, two hafts split with ball bearing arrow heads useless at penetration fitted to his string as he ran and he made and adjustment to the length of wire that connected the compound bolt. This shot he took on the fly, not needing the precision of the others, as became clear when the bola split and spun forming a whirling circle of cable ten feet in diameter, cable that caught on the spider's back pair of legs, wrapping them in steel wire as the bola did its job marvelously.

Strong as it was, the beast hadn't been ready for someone to kick its legs from under it and it spilled to the ground, digging up gouges of soft earth beneath its mass. He'd bought the soldiers at the gate a precious handful of seconds, no more, and he ran on.

The Peacekeepers were in melee now, and the Oread sergeant took a deep gouge to her leg, trading that blow for a hacking slash at the monster's chest. The ring of her blade stopping on its hardened carapace was loud in the air. Her comrade smashed his shield into the Infiltrator, matching his strength against it.

Against most creatures that rush would have blown it prone, granting them the advantage. The Might of the dungeon spawn twisted that scenario, it grabbed the man and slung him, three hundred pounds of man and plate armor, to smash into the portcullis gate and he crumpled, did not rise. It received another stroke of the Oread warrior's sword for turning its back on her, and this time she'd put her class to work. Her blade shattered into pieces on its spine, a wicked blow showering sparks that did damage to its hardened armor even through its Soak. Flying shards of silvery metal, instead of bouncing uselessly into the turf and mud, froze midair and rocketed into the creature's head and neck as if aimed. Gouging shards of hardened Ur-steel fabricated by the gifted smiths of the Peacekeepers pierced the carapace beneath its stolen flesh, stood proud, and elicited a shriek of rage from the monster at the Oread's effective Arcana.

Arms split into three spear like clawed spider limbs, one short thanks to its earlier wound, and it prepared to impale Marvin's wife when three arrows fell from the sky and dove into its chest within the space of Alexander's fist. These grooved speartips were made of the same stuff as his Talon and they delivered their toxic payload deep into its body. Poison resistance it had, but that only halved the potency of the Mind Flayer Tears, as it discovered now when the Mandrake root based substance attacked the Infiltrator's mana and burned its brain with agony. Its limbs spasmed, knocking the Oread woman to the ground in their flailing and its violent convulsions ripped apart the Samoan guardsman's flesh, revealing the creature beneath. It ripped away his arrows without care for the wounds their tips left, desperate to stop the envenomation.

Alexander had reached the towers to either side wall above the gate and jumped without hesitation, leaping down with his bow thrown to the side, his Messer drawing while he descended. He did not shout, did not call, or give any warning to the creature as he did so, just gripped the weapon hammer fisted to drive it through the monster's head and end its predation. Its dozen compound eyes saw his dive at the last second and it rolled, seven legs awkward, uncoordinated thanks to the usually lethal poison tearing at it. He knew his strike would miss, saw the evasion through its own mana, and knew also that he could not change his trajectory mid fall, so he called Entropic magic, and fired a salvo of Chaos strikes to intercept the creature, three bolts that smashed into its thin abdomen, splashing grey-black chaos flame over its hairy carapace.

Pained legs absorbed his landing from the forty-foot drop and immediately launched him toward the creature staggering to its seven clawed feet. Warding claws, coated in the paralytic venom that was causing the Oread behind him to fall twitching while her muscles refused to obey, waved menacingly and the Entropic Venator charged heedless. A lancing motion tracked before it started, he slid aside from a spearing limb, flicked his Messer with a twist of his wrist to clip the attacking leg from the spider and he advanced, driving the creature before him. Six to go. His Entropic aura he freed to bath the prey, and saw it shudder as its Soak was stripped away, its innate magic battered under his influence, and the poison running through its blood.

Across the monster spider's thorax was a dense swath of webbing, the bandage it used to close his earlier wound. They were locked together now, predator and prey, its more wary, measured attacks, fearful of losing more limbs to his blade easier to evade. He had no such compunctions, would trade a minor wound for a killing one since the vaccination against its poison meant it could not incapacitate him the way it had before. Time was not his ally, the second one would be here in half a minute. Less.

Aggression, ferocity, all out offense, he threw himself at the wounded, poisoned Infiltrator as hard as he could. His Talon was infused with his magic and he shot Chaos Strikes from point blank at every opening, of which he'd created a half dozen as they fought, each one savaging the Infiltrator's body.

Step by step, he drove it back on its six legs. Spearing stabs to kill him he slipped, faster than most Adventurers could follow, an errant claw hooking at his temple he hacked off, bringing it down to five, all within a few breaths. It was losing. Another Chaos strike from his offhand burned into the slash he'd given it yesterday as it dodged another thrust aimed at its fanged face. Green-yellow goop weeped from the ragged web bandage and it flinched back. Another Chaos strike, entropic flame whirling to life, broke its will to fight and it gave way before him.

For the first time, it took its eyes off the Venator, turned to flee, and he punished it for its cowardice. Entropic mana from his core infused his blade and his weapon hand blurred, a full armed throw that sent Talon into a spiraling flight that hit the routed spider's thorax cleanly.

Through the creature passed his enchanted war knife, which buried to its hilt in the earth behind the monster. The top of the spider fell to one side, the bottom to the other. Its twitching legs folded, its innards spilling onto the cool earth beneath an April sky. Behind him a keening rose up and he leapt aside, rolling. When he rose, panting from the exertion, the drain on his energies and body, he thumbed the slice cleanly taken from his cloak, having lost the majority of it. Ruthless and Greater focused still, he locked his eyes on the assault variant that had pounced, and the axe-like limb buried two feet deep in the soil where he'd stood, like a splitting maul. He couldn't keep this up for much longer, the use of his abilities was taxing him badly.

A dozen minus one baleful eyes stared at him from the monster and he returned its hate with his own. It stood just outside the sphere of his Greater Entropic Aura, hesitant to enter the space where its defenses were crippled, but filled with malice for its resisting prey. A force of will, a concentration on its foul being pulled its Scroll from Gaia's mana, and he read the imprint of the dungeon spawn that tainted his world with its presence.

They were at an impasse, somewhat. Alexander stood between the monster and the gate through which it wanted to pass. He also stood between the creature and the surviving guild member, so he was somewhat constrained. If he were to allow himself to be pushed back it was likely she would be killed as a target of opportunity. Nothing for it, this was his stand, no Singer, no Talon. And he was so, so tired.

Seeing the creature, really seeing it, through its Scroll, revealed how those poor guardsmen had been slain with terrible ease. Had this creature managed to join its companion, the two of them would have blown through the soldiers guarding it in seconds. Had he arrived even a minute later, they would have made good their escape, would be out there still preparing to evolve into something even worse.

The corpses behind him soaking the ground with their blood, precious human lives, lives willingly given in the name of duty to their fellows, didn't bring him any peace with that knowledge. Standing here, the Human hunter and the monstrous enemy, neither moving, both held on the edge of mortal struggle, waiting for the other to show a single opening, to discover an advantage to exploit, a singular question nagged at him. Why?

Why had the pair fled ahead of him through the wilds, instead of even trying to turn and fight? The Infiltrator was outmatched, yes, Alexander was the greater hunter, but it was still incredibly dangerous. Paired together, with this one, they stood a good chance of taking him down. But they hadn't even tried, something had compelled them here, some desperate need had driven them. Why? What?

Nobody knew what motivated the dungeon spawn, not truly. That they were malevolent was a constant, all of them were hostile. Never had even an intelligent, sapient creature been found from within a dungeon, not even the ones that were willing and able to communicate, that did not expend its every effort to kill every human it encountered. These creatures were sapient, Alexander knew it. They didn't think like a human, but they did think. They were aware. So, that they had their reasons, he was dead certain, and he needed to know them, because his instincts were screaming at him that there was something vital he was missing. But he couldn't see it.

Time for consideration ended, his few breaths of badly needed rest ended, the enemy was initiating, had a strategy to execute. Six spider feet with less grace than its companion, but plenty of speed, scrambled, launching itself at him with fangs bared and cleaver arms held high, cocked, ready to dismember him. Almost a dozen broken glass images of himself staring with cold wrath grew larger in its eyes as it closed on the weaponless cloaked man.

Alexander waited, then, when it was too late for the creature to escape, inhumanly fast his left hand dipped into a pouch, pulled free a golden yellow jewel, while the right clasped over his eyes. He crushed the gem in his grip, liberating a burst of brilliant solar mana, a flare of light that annihilated sight not ten feet from the spider's fast approaching fangs. As he did, the hunter from Falcon's Rest concentrated on his core's magics forcing his presence to disperse, scattering the awareness of himself to entropy.

From the spider's senses, the Venator vanished, at the same time, darts of agonizing sunlight blasted its eyes. It screeched again and continued its charge both weaponized limbs swiping in vertical cuts that would cleave the human easily, passing through either side of its target. Cunning, experience slaughtering human prey had taught it well, it knew the agile enemy would choose to evade rather than receive its stroke. It was right. And wrong.

Alexander didn't evade to the sides, the answer to fighting creatures with so many limbs wasn't to be found that way. They turned too quickly, rotated easily upon so many points of contact with the ground. The way to put them off balance was from below and so he had launched himself into a diving roll that took him under the Slayer, which, for an eyeblink, had lost sight of its opponent.

Without his Messer or bow it had probably thought him disarmed, for which mistake he was going to reward it by hurting it badly. The dungeon spawn did not feel the magic tearing disorder of his aura as he darted beneath the slashing arms because he had contracted it. Greater Entropic aura allowed him to spread the field of antimagic, increasing its range, thinning its power. And that had been all he'd used it for, for the longest time, until Annita Nguyen had asked him if he'd ever contracted it. A cloak of skintight Entropic mana covered his body now and Alexander punched up into the Rasatalan monster's abdomen. Soak evaporated like a pricked soap bubble and its hardened carapace fairly well evaporated as the connections holding molecules crumbled apart under his chaos magic, bolstered by the synergy of his gifts, because he was Lethal.

Alexander had thrown his knife when it was prudent, when it served him. His powers didn't require a weapon to function, just as the demon spiders' skills didn't demand they hold some implement to exert their murderous prowess. He and they alike, their bodies were the only weapon they required to hunt. His fist tore up into the flesh of the beast and he unleashed chaos magic into its innards, teeth gritting at the sudden expenditure of a majority of his core's reserves of mana, forcing from himself the monster destroying magic.

The Slayer flinched and spasmed, whirling away from the sudden agony of entropic magic ripping through its vitals, and Alexander, anchored to it as he was as his cloak of magic dispersed, expended, was jerked from his feet to spinning flight. He hit the soft earth, gasping at the air blasted from his lungs, rolled painfully across the stones of the road leading to the gate and terminated his gambit in a ditch, soaked to the skin in cold April runoff, where he rose dripping to snarl breathlessly at the screeching Slayer, gladdened that several of its organs were dissolving in chaos flame.

Most of the time, there was a certain amount of emotional distance between what he did and who, or what, he did it too. Not today. Today he enjoyed hurting this godsdamned monster, and he was going to enjoy more tearing its core from its corpse and using it to make somebody's life better, because that's all these fucking things were ever good for.

But gloating would come later, for now, Alexander concentrated on slaying the Slayer. He reached for his quiver, still attached to his belt and pulled the other two bola arrows, breaking them apart and sending them into a quick spin before flinging them at the spider trying to web its blasted guts shut before they finished falling out of it. Steel cables tangled half of the eight spider limbs, and the monster howled a high pitch shriek of rage at him in response, even though its powerful legs snapped thumb thick cables after only a few moments of effort.

He was out of magical juice, so he would have to finish this the old-fashioned way. From the back of his belt, he pulled one of the three road flare looking sticks, each wrapped in caution tape. Quickly, he ripped the top from it, striking it with a slap of his palm and hurled it like a baton toward the spider, who was just now coming free of the bolas. Wynona Saki, pyroclastic cannoneer and prime alchemist of Falcon's Rest had made these with all of her art, and had given them a measure of her own class's gifts. With incredibly little fire or light produced, the detonation of a kilogram of plastic explosives and liquified lava elemental cores loaded to the gills with her concussive mana blasted Alexander back into the ditch.

A loud ringing and moment of confusion greeted him and he felt like he'd been swatted by a giant fist. Hands slid through mud, not finding traction, and he wondered why he was looking at this blue, blue sky instead of being home in bed. Then reality set back in and he started the process of rolling over onto his stomach in the frigid water and mud. Coughing, he dragged himself out of the muck again, and spared a second to wonder how the other guy had liked the pyromaniac chemist's cooking.

Not much.

The Slayer was alive, missing three legs, including one of its cleavers, and most of its eyes were mushy green-yellow wounds. It lay sprawled, smoking, thirty feet farther from the gate than it had been when it had received a taste of Saki's Boomstick. It looked like a hairless tarantula that had been put in a hamster ball and tumble dried. But it lived, and it was getting to its arachnoid feet faster than Alexander had, courtesy of unnaturally resilience, even absent its Soak.

Legs exhausted, strained beyond all reason betrayed him, he saw the stream of filaments coming, but thigh and calf muscles seized into cramps, his left knee gave way, when he tried to dodge aside. One single misstep, but that was all it took sometimes.

Nanoweave webs glued across his torso, helmet, left hip, and arm and the Slayer seized the web anchor and jerked viciously, snapping him toward it along the ground, reeling him in at high speed. He tried to peel off the threads, and failed. Swift hands discarded his helmet to free his head being pulled to the side, but he couldn't break free without completely stripping his clothes and armor, and parting with a significant amount of skin, an impossibility. Tried to dig his feet into the soft earth, kicking to slow his capture and failed again.

Physical exhaustion and aetheric combined, he was pretty close to tapped out, but he managed to draw a single red fletched arrow like a dagger in his fist while he was being pulled inevitably toward the spider. Adrenaline and freak tier three physiology had carried him well outside human limits, he was almost done. Almost. But he wasn't completely out of options. An intrusion in his thoughts, flickers of recent memories dragged through his consciousness unbidden, suddenly halted as the spider mistakenly tried to rifle through an Outsider's mind to disorient and discover any final traps, not knowing that that was a trap all its own. All it found in his Fractal Mind was pain, broken glass in its alien thoughts. Another pained screeched and it flinched back, frozen for a few seconds. A moment of reprieve, no more, and then it would finish hauling him in to hack him apart.

Grim faced, eyes locked onto the spider as it had brought him too close to survive another Boomstick, he reached for the last pouch on his belt, fingers working the complex catch that kept it sealed. He drew the weapon of absolute last resort, and a deep breath as he hesitated. A cleaver-like spider limb raised to cut him apart, alien fury in the few remaining arachnoid eyes, and he knew he was truly out of options. Needs must when devil drives. If this didn't work, for whatever reason, then the arrow in his other fist he'd try to drive into its brain when it killed him.

Granny Nguyen, bush witch that she was, had come into her passion for growing malicious gardens of nightmare fuel plants late in life, but had compensated through sheer perverse talent. A swipe of the spider gore covered hand over the spiky bulb of what looked like hell's own dragon fruit, giving it the scent, and he fast balled it into the spider's crippled form. A soft thud, harmless, where it bounced off an armored thorax. Harmless, except for the writhing tentacles that were already emerging from the pulsing seed, seeking the source of its growing hunger. The seed gave a banshee howl and black thorns emerged along the two score tentacles that were reaching for the savored taste of blood that had wakened it from its slumber.

Witch kiss, his Dryad wife's awful creation, latched onto the Rasatalan Slayer Eximius and sought immediately the open wounds in its body, shooting barbed vines into them hungrily, drinking of the spider's life like a camel from a desert oasis. The spider panicked, five limbs trying to stave off the rapidly growing murder plant already rooting within its body. Powerful Slayer limbs ripped, tore, flailed with terrible strength at the vines, and in vain.

Once the Witch kiss had you, that was the end of it. Till death do you part.

From his back, mostly incapacitated by metallic strength spiderweb, he watched the Slayer start to roll, desperate, and he was dragged around by the cable that connected them. The bulb had grown into a stalk, was spreading black and green veined leaves, mostly decorative as it fed not on sunlight. The top of the writhing stalk began budding, forming a single large flower. Alexander, half netted by the steel strong webbing, started climbing away from the fast-approaching end of the Slayer. He'd seen this part before, once, and had demanded of his wife why she would have ever knowingly created something like this. Her beautiful, mysterious Vietnamese features had only granted him a slow smile, a wink of her lovely, golden almond shaped eyes, and a wag of the wedding ring on her hand in answer.

The flower, glorious, vibrant violet with dots of darker indigo opened. Vapor poured from the Rasatalan demon spider's twitching form, and Alexander knew its fluids were being replaced now by a magically potent acid that made piranha solution look like a mild disinfectant. It took twenty seconds for the Slayer to become a slurry of carapace and vile green fluid, steaming on the ground where it fell as he watched, a place where nothing would ever grow again, not until the contaminated soil had been dug away. The mature Witch kiss dissolved in its own fluids, leaving behind two seed pods identical to the one Alexander had initially thrown, one of only a few living things known to be immune to the mana laced turbo-acid. Near them, the core of the monster sat immersed in the remnants of its owner.

Threads once binding the enemies together dissolved as well, and he crawled a few feet, climbed to a wobbling stand that almost failed, replaced the arrow in his fist in the mud caked quiver, then limped over to retrieve his Talon. On his way, he stopped to rip the core from the Infiltrator corpse and stuff it into the pouch that had held the Witch kiss.

With the super surgical edge of his Messer, he carefully cut away the webs to free himself of the loose silk threads, ending tangled entrapment of his left arm to his body. His clothes were ruined, he'd never get the fibers removed from the webs that had latched onto them, but that was fine, clothes could be replaced. The skin he'd probably lose would regrow in a couple days. He'd be losing some of the feathers from his scalp too, victim to the stray threads of web, but those would grow back as well. As he self-assessed, he figured he'd come away from this scrap on the fortunate side. Not so the rest of the warriors.

At some point, the surviving Oread partner of Captain Pruitt had succumbed to the nightmare inducing hallucinations and was quivering in a semi-conscious fetal position, the last that her paralyzed limbs had managed. He checked her over, but there was nothing he could do for her. In his condition, he could barely roll her over to get to the wounded leg to bandage it. That was a minor flesh wound, barely an inconvenience, except for the venom that had entered her blood stream through it. The Peacekeeper thrown into the portcullis was dead, neck broken by his impact with the gate. Within his mental tally he added the three gate guardsmen who were already definitely dead, and then the four who'd escorted him to see Boss Bastian.

Eight survivors of the Pulse, gone in a morning. Eight good men and women, which included a Gnome, who'd given their lives for the common good.

Alexander sighed into the air. A heavy toll paid this day, to see this job done. Worse, it wasn't over. Something had pushed these bastard hell spawn bugs to do as they had done. None of it was accident. He had the answer, he just had to sit down and think, which is how the Peacekeepers who had set out with him found him, sitting in the middle of a battlefield, forehead cradled in hand, lost in thought.