Anyways, apparently a pair of hands had appeared beneath our feet, and tried to grab onto us. Aside from myself, one of the elves had noticed in time and jumped out of the way, while the other two had been tripped and crashed into the ground. Moments later, they let out a brief scream before an explosion of blood erupted under their heads.
Near their bodies, a creature appeared that almost made me lose what little lunch I had managed to eat before this battle. This one was all hands… literally. There were tens, if not over a hundred hands along this one, all connected by rope-like arms. At the center was a long insectoid body, making this seem like the freakiest centipede in history. Two of its hands were stained in blood, likely having been what killed the two elven officers.
Hearing a mild shriek from behind me, my attention returned to the monster that I was still in a midair jump towards. Bringing my claws out, I readied myself to fight head on, likely the most reckless action I could have possibly taken. But, since magic doesn’t work, and there’s a chance energy weapons wouldn’t work either, this was our only option. We didn’t have physical projectile weapons like guns made yet, since that would have taken Celeste a lot longer to make and train people to use.
Well, that was what I had thought at first anyways, until slashing down my right claw at the abstract. It easily intercepted it with its own claw, and its hair began to whip around, lunging at me like thousands of sharp needles. Oh, this is going to hurt. I waited for the stabbing pain that was soon to come, but instead there was a loud boom from behind me.
While I was still thinking that I was going to be pierced by a swarm of sharp hair, the creature in front of me was suddenly sent flying backwards, crashing against the wall heavily. From its center, a large metal ball fell to the ground and rolled lightly across the floor, like a cannonball. Looking back, I saw that Celeste had summoned one of her larger pets, which took the form of a stationary artillery.
“I figured we’d need a physical ranged attack eventually… But don’t slack off, I have to eat through the metal in the floor to load this thing!” The Deus Ex spoke, holding the controls for the turret while standing behind it. Meanwhile, Sharon had called out another half dozen horned rabbits to distract the centipede hand monster.
Though, Celeste’s attack did give me a good idea, which I was slapping myself mentally for not thinking about it earlier. These things are all but immune to magic, but who said they’re immune to physical attacks launched by magic? Jumping back a step, I put some distance between myself and the shaggy abstract, and began focusing just as it stood back up.
I would like to use my Magnetism Manipulation and have it pull all the swords towards the monsters. But, it would just eat through the magic magnetism. So instead, I lifted up the two swords from the dead elves with my Metal Manipulation, and brought them in front of myself. Since I didn’t know where in that mass of hair was a body, I just launched the two swords at its center, like Celeste had done for the cannonball.
Out of the two swords, one merely chopped off a good deal of hair and bounced against the wall behind the shaggy, while the other struck something solid. The creature let out a deafening shriek, before it slumped lifelessly to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I let out a sigh and looked back to see how the others were doing.
It appeared that Sharon had adopted my strategy, though on a larger scale. Where I had taken the two swords of the dead elves, she had instead taken twenty swords, and had them rapidly rotating as they cut through the various hands of the monster. Unfortunately, almost all of the rabbits she had summoned previously had been crushed in this creature’s hands, which was likely the cause for her current unfiltered rage.
Curious how she was doing this without the creature eating the magic, I activated my Aura Sight. From what I saw, she was only holding the handles of the swords, and making sure that they did not come into contact with the abstract directly. A good idea, and one I wish I had thought of before wanting to dive in head first.
Off on the other side of the mess hall, the elves and Celeste were fighting the other two abstracts, which must have appeared while I was briefly fighting the shaggy one. The first abstract, being attacked by over a dozen elves, was… a large foot. However, under the sole of its foot were a dozen legs, each with their own feet, while along the sides there were long, blade-like arms. Still… it was a foot. Did they have to appear so random?!
Finally, the last one looked like a three-eyed female, with two of the eyes on one side of her head. There were long, bloody trails down her pale arms, which ended in dark, six inch claws. This one actually seemed to be the strongest of the group, as it displayed remarkable agility by jumping along the walls to dodge Celeste’s cannon fire. In between shots, it would crawl along the ceiling, and then dive down on top of one of the elves in a blur of movement, crashing right through the poor elf and going straight into the floor. A moment later, it would appear outside of the crowd with a wide, demented grin covering its bloodstained face, ready to repeat the cycle again.
Grabbing the discarded sword that had missed the abstract I had just taken care of, I moved to help Sharon finish off the one she was fighting. She seemed to be aiming to ‘disarm’ it at the moment, because every time she moved to strike its main body, it would move a bundle of its arms to block the attack. Lifting my ‘borrowed’ blade with Metal Manipulation, I moved up behind the abstract.
Taking a note from Sharon’s attacks, I began rotating my blade in a similar manner, and chopped into it from the back, earning another shriek. However, my attack did not seem to cut deep enough to kill it, before several tentacle arms grabbed the blade, handle and all. These were likely arms which already had the hands cut off by Sharon, leaving it with only the wriggling stubs. Does that make this a one hundred armed octopus? A centipus? I’ll call it a centipus from now on.
Anyways, the centipus had grabbed the blade, ripping it away from my control by negating the magic on it. With that, I was entirely out of ammo, well almost at least. There was still one thing I could do, but it would probably hurt like hell. Using my Toybox power, I grabbed the blade from within the mass of tentacles, and set the other portal away from it. Did I mention that this would hurt like hell? Because I was gripping my head from the sudden pain by the time the sword was completely out of its grip.
Deciding to change tactics, I made two thin portal rings around the handle of the blade, to grip it without transporting it. This let me move the blade in a manner similar to telekinesis.
New Ability Unlocked!
Toybox: Toy Hand - Psychic Power: Toybox - ★☆
By placing portals in the proper manner, it is possible to grip objects with your power, and control them as if with an invisible third hand.
Not now, blue screen. I’ll look at you later. Right now, I was surprised at how natural it felt to hold the sword in the portal grip like I was. It was as if it was actually just a third hand, like the message had said. Taking advantage of that fact, I once more began slicing and dicing at the creature, stabbing at anything I could. With just moving the portals, I only felt a minor increase in the pain in my head.
Sharon seemed a bit surprised when she looked at me, but instantly her face became one of worry. “John, stop it quick!” I wasn’t sure why she was saying that, but I had to at least help take this one out so that she could help deal with the freaky girl abstract that was practically toying with Celeste.
Of course, I began to understand once I started tasting copper in my mouth, but by then the sword was at the head of the monster, stabbing into it. There was another shriek, and the centipus fell to the ground, its tentacle arms falling limply to its sides. Rather than going to help Celeste, Sharon quickly ran in my direction. “Are you alright?”
I looked over to her and nodded my head, cancelling the Toybox power and using the formula Celeste had taught me for psychic stress relief. “I’m fine, go help them.” I nodded towards the other fights, and Sharon soon ran off. I would like to say I was the co
ol guy that stayed focused and watched the entire fight. But does that sound even the slightest bit like me? No, I didn’t think so either.
Although the headache was lessened with my casting of the spell, it was still quite powerful, and easily enough to knock me out the moment I relaxed enough to allow it. Why do I have to miss all the cool action sequences? I could vaguely hear various shouting around me, which only further agitated the headache. Such as ‘the statues are moving, the rabbits around them died’, or a panicked scream of a dying elf. The worst was the high pitched, crazed laugh that I had to assume came from the little girl monster. Seriously, who the hell thought of that one!?
It only took a little while before I was completely out of it, and likely to die if another monster shows up to step on me. However, I did wake up safe and sound in the medbay, eventually. There was a worried Sharon sitting next to my bedside, slumped over asleep in a chair. Looking around, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. Was nobody else injured? Well… aside from those that died.
Wow… I must be a seriously shitty captain. I haven’t even gotten to a planet yet, and I’ve already started losing crew members. Pulling up the Ship Management Window, I decided to see how many people were left. Before, it had shown two hundred and fifty elves, along with myself, Sharon, Celeste, Yin, Yang, and Yo. So, a grand total of 256 people.
Crew Members: 237
Names
---
I furrowed my brow, thinking that through. Yin, Yang, and Yo were all still in my grove, so they might not count as crew members on the ship at the moment. That still meant we had lost sixteen people. Celeste?
“Ah, John, you’re up!” I heard a voice cheerfully calling back to me mentally. “We were starting to get worried about you. You’ve been out for a couple of days now.”
“...Seriously? I even missed the aftermath?” I could just imagine the gods laughing at me. I barely contribute in the fight, lose sixteen of my crew, and pass out before the battle is even over. “You better have a very good report for me to look over…”
There was a slight giggle, and I could just imagine Celeste nodding. “I’ll come up with something, Captain. It’s good that you’re alright.”
Chapter 25 - A Review
Crew Member : Officer Demuril Ackbar
Position : Tactical Officer
Incident Injuries : Minimal
It all started with the faces that couldn’t be there. Several of us would see them, lasting for only a few blinks at a time, before they would vanish into subspace. We thought it to be a unique form of dementia at first, triggered by the unfamiliar atmosphere. However, when I made the report to Vice-Captain Celeste so that I may be relieved of duty until my mental health improved, she took it remarkably seriously.
Our scanning technology had been focused primarily on looking beyond the veil of this ‘subspace’ region to look at possible planets and systems we would be passing. The Vice-Captain instead issued an emergency order to have them scan the exterior of the ship for life signs. What could survive out there? Even with our technology, we have yet to make an organism that can survive in the vacuum of space, let alone this hostile environment.
But sure enough, there were readings from the scans. I didn’t know whether to be impressed that the Vice-Captain knew about this, to rejoice because I was not insane, or to dread what was out there. She called them Abstracts, and described them as one would describe a terrifying monster to a young child. And I was glad she did, as well. Without her explanation, we may have all been killed the moment we left subspace.
After she informed the Captain about the situation, he decided to have Sharon Bradbury’s small rabbit swarms patrol the halls to lock the creatures in a solid state. While I did not approve of the blatant waste of resources, the person in question didn’t seem to mind it. However, that did not solve the larger issues, which were the crew’s lives and the safety of the ship.
As such, I proposed a plan the the Vice-Captain. First, I verified that these creatures were capable of sensing the ‘souls’ of their prey. Then, I proposed that the crew place itself in a single, large room capable of easily holding them while maintaining a line of sight with all entrances and exits. Although it was not possible to see them through the floor and ceiling, this would drastically limit their paths of approach.
The Vice-Captain readily accepted this plan, and when the Captain himself showed up(a rare sight for sure), she conjured over a half dozen small metal spheres that floated above the ground. The Captain took these into his mysterious inner space, and went back to his room for ‘training’. While I do not question his morals, I believe the Captain is unfit for leading a large group of people such as this, though others seem to not share my opinion. Nonetheless, we have our orders. I am merely thankful for his decision to leave the regular operation of the crew to the Vice-Captain.
For the next several hours, those who were able to sleep did so, while the rest prepared for the fight that was to come. As for me, there was little that I could do to prepare. My own class was Huntsman, and I had yet to acquire any of the combat pets that would serve to enhance my ability. As an addition to this report, I am also submitting a formal request to be allowed on the away team to the next inhabited world, so that I may rectify this.
In order to avoid the risk of being stranded between systems, the Vice-Captain chose a nearby star system which was rich in asteroids. With any small amount of luck, we would easily be able to find the minerals needed to replace any damaged sections.
When the Vice-Captain produced a sword and hammer for me to wield, I was at a loss for what to do. I have wielded a sword before, but not since basic training. As for this large hammer, I could not even see how such an implement would be useful for combat situations. My preferred weapon was a bow, but against these creatures I had my doubts if that would be useful. As such, I refrained from requesting a new weapon, and merely accepted what I had been given.
The preparations, what little there were, went exactly as planned. Several dozen rabbits had emerged from Bradbury’s body, which then began to patrol the hall in an orderly manner, the likes of which I had never before seen from an animal. I wonder if it would be possible to ask for the use of one of her animals as my Hunstman companion. I will inquire about that after this report has been filed.
The following day, we had all gathered in the mess hall, and were ready to encounter these creatures. Given my own lack of combat ability, I assigned myself to a rear scouting position, so that I could keep eyes on the Abstracts at all times. As such, I would like to take this time to list the various abilities demonstrated by the four Abstracts that appeared.
The first, identified as a Needle Hair type for the purpose of this report, appeared to have the ability to manipulate its excessive hair, and seemed to be able to use the hair as a stabbing implement. Although it possessed four limbs with long claws on the hands, it did not use them as proper weapons.
The second, identified as a Hundred Hands type for this report, was a long insectoid with a hundred hands attached to it by what appeared to be tentacles. These limbs were capable of exerting great strength, as demonstrated by when it effortlessly crushed the skulls of two of the elves who had foolishly charged ahead with the Captain. They are also capable of forming a shield to evade attacks, shown while fighting against Bradbury.
The third, identified as a Large Foot, had a peculiar appearance, but its only offensive power appeared to be the blade-like arms protruding from its sides. It may have hidden combat abilities, but there were not shown during this encounter.
Finally, the Demon Child type, which proved the most difficult to deal with. It had a great agility that far surpassed that of the other three. According to the Vice-Captain’s information, this should be due to it having not absorbed enough souls so far. Nonetheless, it was the most troublesome enemy. As with the others, it was capable of fading through walls at a whim, and would toy with its opponents.
Now, I shall de
scribe the order of battle, as I saw it. After the Needle Hair charged into the room, the Captain, along with three other elves, recklessly charged forward while brandishing their swords. With my position and duty to scout, I noticed hands rising up near their feet, and quickly shouted out about the trick that the enemy was using. The Vice-Captain showed obvious disappointment at my words, likely due to the group of people that had charged forward, only to succumb to such a maneuver.
After two of the crew were tripped, their heads had been gripped from below by the Hundred Hands type Abstract, and instantly crushed. The full creature itself then floated up from under the floor, and Bradbury engaged it in battle. To my surprise, she first fought by summoning another series of horned rabbits, directing them to engage with the enemy. Afterwards, several of the crew had their swords float up into the air. At first, we believed this may be due to an unseen enemy, but Bradbury seemed to be controlling them.
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