Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

I hopped on her Disk, and Princess Kristie charged right out of the barn, while I left my own Disk behind to anchor the flotilla of Disks with our loot there. Lady Vundanewall, the Olthoi Hunter, was right behind us, a gleaming bolt already in her Olthoi Slaying Crossbow and sticking magically in place.

Looked like… maybe a hundred of them. I glanced at their colors, and told Kris calmly, “Swarm variants, and they aren’t Summons, either.”

We both glanced at the Olthoi Hunter as she bee-lined it for the Bronze Statue’s pedestal, slapping it before backing up a few steps.

There were creaks and groans as the Statue came to life, orienting on the olthoi it could doubtless see incoming over the ruined buildings. It hopped off instantly and went charging out to meet them.

At almost the same time, the Olthoi Hunter crouched and jumped up onto the pedestal the Statue had just vacated, giving her an elevated sniping position which she promptly used to send a quarrel winging out to impale a flying olthoi and pop it out of the sky.

“She’s using full-grade Item Magic at Eight on that Crossbow, too.” Didn’t have to worry about using stuff intrinsic to your Gear if you could still get off the Eights that had been almost impossible to Cast after the Fall.

“Surprise, surprise. Start shooting so we can get this kill task over with.” Princess Kristie painted my targets in the shared Markspace, and I promptly flicked out my Darts and sent them on the way.

All of these olthoi, regardless of what they looked like, were Swarm variants, and so had better Stat lines across the board, as well as increased natural armor and at least +1000 Health.

It didn’t save them from Kris, who wasn’t going to get in a scrum with them as she accelerated, greatly outpacing the Statue and zipping towards the horde of incoming olthoi.

The first targets she picked were all Cleave targets. Going for damage, I didn’t bother to Chain yet, letting her take the lead.

She was doing the One Strike thing, slamming into the lead Eviscerator for double damage, x4 for the charge, and the crit went off as Quaver smashed into its thorax like a bar of steel, clotheslined it. The next three were already smashed off their feet, and a combination of Cleave and Wolf takes Rat Opportunity attacks on prone enemies swirled in arcs of cutting Lost Light and glowing green-yellow Olthoi Slayer light. They were cracked, shattered, and died on the ground while she peeled away, drawing most of the olthoi after us instead of the Statue pounding up to also do battle.

The olthoi couldn’t match her speed, and the position of the Disk freely pivoted around her as she circled the horde of them, dipping in and out as she followed my Darts, the impacts of them plowing dozens of them at a time off their feet, and a bunch of those Burning bugs never got back up.

I also professionally noted stragglers coming in at the same exact pace as the Statue and the Olthoi Hunter were taking the olthoi out.

A hundred kills wasn’t nearly as onerous as it might have been for others in this situation, but they were likely to get swarmed, surrounded, and if not killed immediately, exhausted by unceasing attacks and overwhelmed by attrition.

“Chain that line!” Kris ordered. My Darts became a Ray and Split, two crunching impacts became a long double line of bugs smashed both off their feet and out of the sky, Kris reversing course so sharply my Disk turned vertical as it was dragged after her.

The line I’d pounded down off their spindly legs was two dozen Burning bugs strong, right through the heart of the horde. Crits roared as Quaver’s Biting Strike found the weak spots, Crushing Blow blew them open, Wolf takes Rat basically turned a One Strike into two, and Cleave attacks looped and swirled too fast to really follow at the speed we were moving, here, there, and everywhere as Lost Light plunged and battered, and olthoi shrieked while glowing acidic ichor sprayed.

We were abruptly out of the back of the swarm, and half of the swarm was now dead and dying.

Kris circled left, a hunter’s prowl on her face as the running olthoi all turned around to face us, driven to attack, uncaring of how many others were already downed and gone. They were trying to catch us, converging as she circled and drew them into a nice cluster.

She painted the rest of them. A Split Dartray lanced out, smashed into the lead ones, Chained to those behind in the wedge forming there, and even as Kris was charging at them at the speed of a courser, they went falling and tripping wildly from the impact of Force Magic and a bunch of Holy Kickers.

She tore through the collection of flailing pincers, pedipalps, bites, spraying acid, writhing legs, and twisting carapaces to shatter and crack everything around her explosively, dealing mortal wounds with catastrophic criticals and double-taps on everything on the ground.

Quaver exited the skull of a Swarm Mutilator, the small and deadly white olthoi trying to get a bite out of her with its mandibles, failing utterly as its thorax blew out explosively, and then we were outside the swarm and prowling for more targets.

The only olthoi left were the ones harassing the Bronze Statue, which was already getting chopped and blistered apart by acid, and a dozen or so around the Pedestal, clawing impotently at it as it refused to allow them to climb it, while powerful quarrels drove down into their skulls and dropped them in two or three shots.

A Dartray leveled those around the Statue, and Kris basically ran through them. They’d already been pummeled by the impressively fast fists of the Statue, and shattered and broke with even more speed than our own unfortunate victims.

As for the ones around the Pedestal, well, they were in a tight circle. The Dartrays lit them up and smashed them down in a buggy flower around it, and Kris ran the circle of them, Quaver swirling with beautiful petals of Lost Light and olthoi blood to accentuate them. Not a one of them made it back to their feet.

The Olthoi Hunter looked down at us in disbelief as Kris glided to a halt nearby, but before she could say anything, Kris called out, “Come on down and point out what needs to be salvaged on these things for standard armor and Slayer Weapons, Lady Vundanewall!”

Her face worked, caught between impassivity and glitching with real emotion and desire flickering through for just a few moments.

“Of course!” her flat voice called out as she jumped down to join us.

---

Kris had just handed over her fourth piece of steaming, hissing olthoi shell when I asked, “So, Lady Vundanewall, how often do these olthoi swarms come running in to bedevil you?”

Her impassive face turned to regard me, but there was another glitch. “I would not expect another one for a week,” she replied to me after what seemed like a moment of thought.

Or for a new quest timer to be slid into place.

Kris glanced up at me as her Gold-wreathed hands plunged and steely carapaces cracked while olthoi meat sizzled and dissolved to their ichor, and nodded once.

Now we just had to see if that timer was by people or Fellowship or whatever, or an absolute timer. Which meant Briggs and a whole bunch of very heavily armored fellows would have to come up here ready to fight if needed… possibly a big waste of time, or possibly finding an easy way to get salvage kills off a hundred non-Summoned olthoi without having to dare the unpredictable depths of an Olthoi Hive.

I was going to have to bring up more Disks to satisfy our haul. The mundane olthoi armor we were pulling here was alchemically treated and could warp to fit those it was fit to with little problem, unlike the Paradox armor.

We also knew how to acquire the Paradox armor. Just needed an Uber Paradox Sentinel’s shell...

“Do you also have the method for treating and molding olthoi armor, Lady Vundanewall? You can hand it to Ryin,” Kris asked as she moved to the Noble, her hands like metal cudgels and fingers like Golden razors.

“Of course. As-as I promised, K-Kris,” she announced, turning to me and holding out a text in the standard format used by alchemists and crafters who were Empyrean-trained. “It is in the original High Empyrean. Indeed, the usefulness of the olthoi in forging weapons may have been a reason that the Empyreans returned to the olthoi homeworld, to further pursue the alchemical uses of the olthoi.”

“That’s fine. I read High Empyrean.” Her face glitched as she blinked in surprise at my reply, watching as I flipped the book open and began to scan each page, painting them into my Visual File, and Mira promptly started studying them. “Kolloqui acid baths. This must be the only reason why that stuff is in the Empyrean lexicons of alchemical formulae, the crap is utterly useless anywhere else. There’s something in the olthoi’s resistance to acid that triggers the PH reversal of the stuff and it temporarily softens the shell after being immersed.”

“That crap actually has a use? Wow. Thought it was just an idiotic trivia question they sprang on those testing for the Master Alchemist license here,” Kris said over her shoulder.

“Same here. Acids with a weak PH reversal after running a lightning charge through them are unique, but what’s the use of them? Softening up incredibly acid-resistant chitin, apparently. “

“Huh. Is Kolloqui a derivation of grievver acids?” Kris wondered aloud.

“Huh.” That was a good observation. “Nobody likes to work with grievver acid because of the organic poison components. The poison starts pre-digesting olthoi flesh without allowing their blood to slurry it. Olthoi basically recycle themselves when they die, setting themselves up to contribute to the olthoi acid pits. The poison aspect basically combines with olthoi acid to stop that. Now we’re going to have to figure out a filter to get the poison out of the grievver acid,” I sighed.

“Totally explains why they have electrical abilities when olthoi are almost immune to such, right?” Kris conjectured, and I nodded.

“Clever judgment by someone.” I flipped to the back of the book, and frowned. “Lady Vundanewall, why is there no accreditation? Is the name of the inventor or inventors of this method unknown?”

“I-I-I,” she stuttered, eyes widening. After all, if it was translated like this, in the accepted format, that included accreditation to the original discoverers.

“I’m assuming the copier got lazy and didn’t want to include the names of his predecessors?” I arched an eyebrow.

For just a second, the glitch showed glee in her eyes before it was wiped away.

“My apologies.” She held out her hand, and I returned the book to her. It vanished from her left hand, and a slightly bluer covered book appeared in her right. “This has the original accreditation in it.”

“Excellent.” I flipped it to the back, and there were indeed ornate and flowery names there… along with the dates of their discoveries.

Who knew what might be done with those things… and it showed that Kris’ Null was having an effect on NPC’s that couldn’t be denied.

At some point, we were going to come back here and free this woman from her status as a Slave of the System… if she wanted it. Which, judging by all the glitches, she certainly did.

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We left Lady Vundanewall holding onto half a skin of Freehold wine… half because we’d made sure she got to drink the other half with us in several toasts to the death of olthoi and olthoi queens in the future. By the look in her eyes, it had been ages since she’d gotten a chance to eat or drink anything...

Then we ran off, waving to her, telling her we’d be back in a week, and she might be getting more visitors soon enough!