AA. 186

{Apologies. I didn't realize my scheduled chapters had run out. Sleepless nights because of baby and what not.}

There were four of them. 

A giant woman with orange, scaled flesh came out first. She carried a giant stone club covered in luminous red and orange veins. Nil's sixth sense detected its explosive heat from fifty meters away. He couldn't tell much about the Scourge Champion's ability, but the size of her muscles and the ease with which she carried her weapon suggested a strike would break most of the bones in his body—assuming he didn't have Absorb active.

The woman held up a calloused hand as she exited the gate, glowing eyes scanning the path ahead. Nil held his breath, hoping the chains hidden by rocks and dirt would escape her notice. After several suspenseful seconds, she seemed to relax and waved her companions forward.

A spidery man followed. He was unnaturally pale but carried no other sign that would give away his allegiance or power. Nil had detected something from everyone in the party besides him. Chipper accurately described his demeanor. He worried Nil the most, and his instincts told him if given the opportunity, he’d take out Zora first. The man's fingers traced the nearby stone. A familiar-feeling pulse spread from the touch. He nodded and continued with his casual gait.

Sound waves? No. He'd sense the chains if that were the case.

Then came the obvious mages of the group. The first wore flowing robes, and purple luminous veins rose across his neck, over their jaw and cheeks before converging around the jaws. He, much like the giant woman leading the part, looked drained and worse for wear. Nil detected the man's energy center pulsing around his solar plexus. It faltered and flickered. The energy waves weakened on their way to the eyes.

Meanwhile, the final Scourge Champion looked like an innocent teenage girl. Her skin wasn't pale, and no dark or luminous veins gave her away. However, the winged pink, black, and gold serpent wrapped around her neck had Cursed Energy as dense as the monster Nil had not long eliminated.

Summoner. She needs to go first.

The party of Scourge Champions paused at the tunnel’s exit, where Nil had narrowed the passage. Bits of the Sunmetal chains were visible. The spidery man yelled a warning, but the muscled woman was already midswing. Her giant club moved through the stone. For a moment, it looked like a phasing ability, but then the affected stone melted like the hot black sludge that filled Cursed Beasts. The cavern didn’t collapse as Nil had hoped. However, Selia’s chain snapped free of their restraints, closing in on the enemy vanguard and the spidery man. 

Both swiftly moved out of the way, escaping any harm. Then, gurgling sounds drew their attention to the gate they had not long exited. The summoner fell to her knees, clutching her throat. Crimson speckled with luminous pink and purple flecks seeped through her fingers. Alien words cried in panic rose from the party’s second caster, and he fled to the scaled frontliner’s side.

A hand rose from the floor under them, grasping at the spidery man’s ankle. He disappeared in a puff of black smoke and reappeared outside the chain barricade. Black smoke condensed around his forearms, forming long, scythe-like blades. They sat on little black appendages that sprouted from the wrists. His eyes also darkened. The long, gangly limbs made him look even more like a mantis.

The man blinked away again when Nil dropped on top of where he stood, a Chaos Dagger extending from his clenched right fist and a three-finger blade primed in his right. The weapons sliced and cleaved respectively through nothing but a cloud of thick black smoke that left Nil coughing violently. Energy Instinct screamed at the back of his mind, warning him of the condensed Cursed Energy flying toward him. Instead of dispelling his constructs and switching to Absorb for an Order barrier, Nil wrapped the weapons in electrified Balance and swung violently.

Screamed words that Nil was sure were cusses flew at him as the Cursed Energy signature retreated. Unfortunately for the man, Selia hadn’t changed targets after he fled. She left the scaled woman and mage trying to break the Sunmetal chains and defeat an enemy that wasn’t there and lay in wait. Nil couldn’t tell how she figured out where the man would blink next. Energy Instinct struggled against the smoke cloud but still managed to track the mantis blades. They winked out of existence, and the energy bursts that followed Sunmetal Chains flashed.

When Nil finally got clear of choking darkness, he found the man still alive but struggling against the grey chains that ran through his torso and abdomen. He had shaped more black weapons, but they struggled to maintain their form against the rare metal known for disintegrating Cursed Energy. Nil guessed Selia partially owed the Weave for the help she received in procuring the material.

The Scourge aren’t human. They’re worse than Pietro ever was, and his surviving co-conspirators ever will be. 

The words helped Nil stomach the decapitation that followed. The three-finger blade faced no resistance as it cleaved through the smoky weapon thrown up in defense. Nil couldn’t tell whether his constructs were more potent or the sunmetal had weakened the enemy to such a ridiculous level.

“What’s going on?” Zora asked through the badge. “Are you done? Should we assault the next site? Do you need us to come back?”

“Almost done,” Nil replied.

“We’re just cleaning up.” Selia’s words were a soft whisper.

“Cleaning up? Done?” Shawn sounded amused. “You two are going full-on assassin. Aren’t you?”

“Two down,” Selia answered.

“And the other two might as well be dead,” Nil added.

“I hate you guys.” Zora sighed. “I swear it's like working with children.”

All the chains simultaneously dissolved into grey vapors. Most diffused into the environment, but some returned to Selia’s soul weapon. In the meantime, the scaled woman and her ward had broken free of the caven by melting open a hole through the walls. The pair stood with their backs to a wall. 

One chanted loudly, making the ground ripple. Stone spikes sprouted in concentric circles around them, emerging from the ground and walls. Meanwhile, the woman’s club glowed blinding white. The spikes closest to her seemed to slump, black droplets running down their length. A yelp burst from her throat as she got yanked into the ground.

Did they think that was enough to stop the Shark Specter?

Nil couldn’t help but feel amused. With the scaled woman no longer a threat, he called out Meatball and threw her like a cannonball. A wall of spikes rose, blocking the projectile. Nil had expected as much. The stone barrier blocked the mage’s vision. He didn’t see the attack that came next.

The several weeks of training leading up to the Cleansing had taught Nil that thrown spheres were inefficient. Balance struggled to contain them for long enough to make them effective. No matter how much Nil worked on his manipulation and emission, the spheres refused to fly far, regardless of whether he threw or launched them. So, he had to find another option. Noah had Nil train in dart and javelin throwing, and they came up with the next best solution together.

Dense Chaos Spikes no longer than the gauntleted halves of Nil’s arms formed in either hand. He threw them in quick succession. A crimson lightning trail followed them. The first, thrown with the left arm, went wide as it had during training. Nil wasn’t ambidextrous but had learned to finely julienne vegetables with his left after once slicing his dominant hand on a meat slicer and refused to quit trying. 

Fortunately, the spike thrown with his right found its mark. It shrunk to two-thirds its length before reaching the spike barrier, and it lost even more energy while ripping through it. There was enough left on the other side to kill the mage. The projectile disintegrated his left shoulder and half of the right side of his face. 

Wield the Source has progressed to Bronze 2!

“Holy shit, that was a good throw!” Selia said, rising out of the floor next to him. She smacked his bottom, bouncing excitedly. 

“I wouldn’t have pulled it off if he weren’t immobile.”

“Status?” Zora asked, clearly annoyed. 

“Three down,” Selia answered. “I left the fourth in a pool of slag, twenty meters under the ground. She’ll be dead any second now.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” The team leader sighed while Shawn whistled. “Make your way over to us. We’ve found a Well of Power and intend to purge an assimilator.”

“Got it, boss,” Nil replied. He turned to Selia. “Did you really have to leave Scaley in a pool of slag? Couldn’t you have just put her down?”

“It's not like I didn’t want to,” Selia replied, rolling her eyes. “The club kept getting hotter, and the stone melted faster. I had no option but to ditch her and get away.”

“What now?” Nil scanned the floor, looking for any signs of an angry Scourge Champion rising from a pool of molten lava. Sweat clung to him and his girlfriend, and despite purifying Cursed Energy and cultivating, he felt slightly drained. 

Fucking humidity.

“We do what we planned?” Selia shrugged. “The team is crippled. We move on and try to get points elsewhere. I don’t see—”

Team Forge has scored 1 point and needs 4  more to make it through the next checkpoint.

“There we go!” Selia cheerfully clapped. “Old Scaly just needed a few extra minutes to suffocate.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I should be terrified of you.” Nil sighed.

“Don’t be silly.” She pecked his cheek. “I’d never hurt you.”

“Good job, you two,” Shawn said. “We’re going in.”

“Just because it worked out once doesn’t mean it will again,” Zora added. “You better not pull shit like this without warning me a second time. I want to be able to trust and rely on you. Don’t do things just so I won’t waste energy or because you think you know better.”

“I get it, Zora,” Nil said. “I’m sorry. We should’ve made our intentions clear before you set off. Good luck. We’re following you now and will scan for other energy signatures. Ping twice if necessary, and we’ll reorient toward you.”

Selia chuckled as they set off. “You’re such a suck-up.”

“Team harmony is important. She’s supposed to be leading us and shouldn’t feel undermined. We need to work together if we want to win.”

“Do you really think we can take first place?” Selia asked.

“Watcher thinks our chances of making it to number one are low,” Nil replied. “But I’d bloody well like to try. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.” She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at the corpses they had just left behind. “I love you, but I don’t think you have the cutthroat attitude necessary for it.”

“I’m willing to put the work in to change if I have to. It won’t be easy, but it's necessary for our future.”

“Our future, as in you-and-me future? Or encompassing all of us? Or our world’s future?”

Nil didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up Selia, braced, and threw.

Expend has progressed to Bronze 9!

Brutal Battery has progressed to Bronze 9!