All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG

Book 5 Chapter 30: (Almost) Buried Alive

The whistles came from a particularly dark corner of the cavern. Everybody instinctively swung that way. Arthur beamed his flashlight in the same direction, squinting hard to see through the dark.

Horatio gathered up all of the light around him and cast it out in that direction, too.

What at first looked like the pitch-black curve of the hollow eruption was actually the mouth of another tunnel.

It probably leads past where the ice reached, Arthur thought, his stomach sinking. He made a snap decision.

“It looks like we have a fight on our hands. Anybody who doesn’t want to do that, get back up and reconvene with Sams and Joy. Everyone who does, gather up around me.”

Because one thing was for sure: He was here to harvest shards, and even cards if he could get his hands on any. He wasn’t running anywhere.

“Cressida,” Arthur said, “see if it’s possible to block up that tunnel using one of your shields, or at least delay them a little.”

She nodded and jogged off to the tunnel mouth.

Behind him, purples lifted into the air with their riders. He wasn’t surprised to hear them leave. He suspected many could take care of themselves, or at the very least, they had self-defense cards. That’s how they had survived so far in Blood Moon.

The real surprise was that Griff and Squish decided to stay, though Griff looked decidedly pale. His jaw was set in a grimace of determination.

Catching Arthur’s gaze, he nodded once in acknowledgment. “Squish and I can help out for a while. But if it gets too hairy, we’re getting out of here.”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“I understand,” Arthur said.

Steve and his dragon hadn’t immediately leapt up into the air, either, though the little Common danced around nervously, and Steve looked uncertain.

“What do you want me to do, sir?” he asked Arthur directly.

Arthur thought for a moment. “Get on your dragon and continue harvesting. There are a lot of corpses stuck high up on the wall and on the ceiling. There’s no reason you should waste the chance to harvest. Steve,” he added, “if things get bad, use Bolt’s ability and flash out.”

As a Common, he was naturally at the bottom of the pecking order and needed all the shards he could get. Steve nodded, and with a faint look of guilt mingled with relief, he mounted his dragon.

Arthur turned to the tunnel. The whistling was getting louder.

I wonder if there’s going to be any Rares in there, he thought, thinking of Cressida’s quest notification, and he had to hide a grin.

“Wait,” Griff said suddenly. “There’s too many people. Squish can’t take everybody, and I don’t think that your Rare can hold two passengers right now.”

Arthur hesitated. He hated giving away any of his secrets, but Griff had a point.

“I have an extra-dimensional space large enough to store a person. If we need to evacuate, you take Horatio, so that way you can see on your way up. Cressida,” he called, and jogged to the mouth of the tunnel. “How is it looking?”

Behind him, Brixaby followed, though he remained a step or two back, still collecting shards from the dead scourglings as he went.

Cressida was standing in front of the tunnel with her hands on her hips, assessing it. “I’ll be able to put up a shield large enough to cover most of this,” she said as Arthur approached, “but I won’t be able to keep it up for long, especially if there are a lot of them. Too many hits will drain my mana.”

And judging by the whistling down the tunnel, it certainly sounded like there was a lot of scourglings.

Brixaby grinned a fearsome dragon grin. “Arthur, I believe that some of them are carrying Rare shards. I can smell them.”

“Well, that would fit with Cressida’s quest,” he said.

He touched her on the shoulder to get her attention. “If this turns bad, then I’ll need to take you out using my Personal Space.”

She nodded, but then looked back to the tunnel, distracted.

He needed to make sure she completely understood. “Cressida, when the time comes, you need to give me permission, or it’s not going to work. So if you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed, I want you drop the shield sooner rather than later.”

I just want you to be safe, he wanted to say but couldn’t quite figure out how without coming off as too corny.

“Yes, Joy will not forgive me if any harm comes to her rider,” Brixaby said.

He supposed he could have just said it like that.

Arthur turned on the flashlight and swept the beam down the tunnel. He could not see any of the oncoming scourglings yet, though the opening of the tunnel sloped forward, showing even more frozen bodies attached to the ceiling and the walls. Many of them were arranged blocks—though, unfortunately, not enough to stop up the tunnel, only enough to narrow it.

He would have walked in to get a closer look and see how far the tunnel went, but the ice was thicker in patches, as if the cold had collected here. He only took a couple of steps before he started to slip and had to back up.

Why didn’t he have ice clamps in his Personal Space? Once he got back to the hive, he was going to find a way to locate some.

The whistles were getting very close now, and Arthur figured they’d see the first of the scourglings any moment.

Cressida gestured for him to stand behind her. Then she cast not only her kinetic shield, but also several of her animal summons.

As she had said, she couldn’t make her shield large enough to cover the entire mouth of the tunnel. There was a gap wide enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder on each side, so she used her summons to fill in the caps: Wicker, her bear made of flame guarded one side. Her hedgehog toddled to the opening on the other and crouched down, his spines on full display.

Above, water cranes circled at the low ceiling. Arthur imagined that they would dive down on anything that got past.

Arthur looked on with slight amusement. “What, you’re not bringing out those kittens?”

She shook her head. “I might if a higher-level scourgling shows up, but the lower-ranked, littler ones don’t have the brains to be taken in by them.”

“Kittens?” Griff muttered, walking up to them.

“Oh yeah, don’t look straight at them if you ever see them,” Horatio said, and stepped forward. The light around him simultaneously seemed to dim and also take on a bluish cast. That was an indication that he had transferred his attention to his ultraviolet light card.

Arthur nodded to his friend and then looked at Griff. “Do you have anything that you can cast long-range? I’d rather just hit these things from afar.”

Squish must have overheard because he said, “Griff can fight! He can fight from a long, long way away, and he can fight from close up. He’s very good at fighting.”

Griff winced and gave Arthur a hard look that silently said, I am trusting you with my secret, so don’t make me regret this.

Then he manifested a golden spear in his hands. Arthur was close enough to his aura to pick up the spell using his Counterfeit Siphon.

New Counterfeit spell obtained: Spear of Justice

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Remaining Time: 11 hours 59 Seconds

Arthur’s eyebrows rose at the name, though he, of course, didn’t comment and give away that he had just copied the spell.

“I do have a ranged weapon card,” Griff said, “but I’m a little worried about the stability in this hive. This will work just fine for close-up work.” He absently twirled the spear in his hands like a master and turned away to face the tunnel. Though it was only an Uncommon power, it glowed with a menacing light in the darkness.

Meanwhile, Arthur brought out his butcher knives, which circled in an orbit around him. He pulled on his chainmail shirt, buttery soft on the inside so as to not catch on skin or clothing. The rings on the outside were hooked with pieces of razor-sharp shrapnel. He jingled every time he moved—at least until he exerted the power in his Nice Shot card, which made them stay in place.

Griff eyed the knives. “Telekinesis?”

“Something like that,” Arthur said, which was true. It was actually part of his Butchering and Knife Work skills, enhanced with telekinesis once he had reached level 50.

It had come quite in handy, and he hoped to get an extra couple of skill levels from slaughtering scourglings tonight.

“Here they come,” Cressida called. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the terrible whistles.

Arthur had seen something like this play out before in one of the challenges of the Dark Heart. It seemed that a favorite scourgling tactic was to group up in a number, rile themselves up, and then attack in a wave.

When they finally became visible, these scourglings were different than the ones that had been frozen to the floor and walls. They were of the same body type that Candy Floss had brought to him. So round that they were almost ball-like, with bodies bristling with sharp thorns—almost all of them weeping with infection. Giant gaping mouths took over half their forms as they opened them up and whistled-screamed a challenge, and they were propelled forward by short, squat legs.

They would almost be hard to take seriously, except for the rows of razor-sharp teeth that went all the way back into their wide throats.

Arthur caught a glance at the nails on those front feet and wondered if they were the ones who had tried to scale the inside of the cone and failed. And now they were trapped down here and starving.

And Arthur had brought with him a bunch of tasty treats.

The scourglings charged at them at once . . . only to smack right into Cressida’s shield. Because of the kinetic aspects she had imbued in the shield, the front line was instantly blown back into the rest of the group.

If not killed at that point, many were injured—at least a couple dozen within a second. But Cressida’s shield could not stand up to the abuse for too long.

Every hit was a drain on her mana.

That was when Brixaby stepped up in front of her and started to swell up as he prepared his Stunning Shout.

“Cressida,” Arthur said, “keep it up a few more seconds and then drop it when I give the signal. Brixaby,” he said, lower, “make sure that shout doesn’t hit the walls here.”

The last thing they needed was to cause an earthquake.

Brixaby nodded, and Arthur held the moment for a few extra seconds so the scourglings would gather up again. Grouped targets. Many scourglings were starting to make their way around the shield, and while Wicker and the Hedgehog were battling them off, within a few seconds they would be overwhelmed.

Arthur signaled for Cressida to drop the shield.

The moment she did, Brixaby sent out his Stunning Shout. Brixaby had really been practicing that skill, as it was quite loud and brought him a lot of attention. Arthur knew that by now he could practically direct the terrible noise like a blade.

Standing behind his dragon, he felt the air warp, and he suspected that if Cressida had not dropped her shield in time, the Stunning Shout would have blasted right through it. After all, it had originally come from the power of a Legendary card.

As for the first rank of scourglings . . . one moment they were there, and the next they were bags of goo. As if they could get more disgusting.

The ones behind them were flung back or knocked to the sides. Some simply dropped where they were, stunned, and blocked the scourglings behind them from rushing forward and overwhelming Arthur and his friends.

Brixaby had directed his shout with precision, and no noise leaked out that Arthur could hear. But as it ended, Arthur heard rocks crashing down farther in the tunnel.

Despite his best efforts, it seemed Brixaby had caused a mini collapse.

Many scourglings had fallen, but some were still on their feet or managed to shake off the stunning effect and regain their balance. They rushed forward . . . even if it was at a limp.

Wicker the flame bear gave a crackling roar and batted at anything that came within his range. Apparently, that weeping pus was flammable because he set a few scourglings on fire.

Arthur unlinked shrapnel shards from his chainmail vest and shot them forward. Cressida’s hedgehog fired spines that were as thick as a man’s fingers.

Arthur’s knives cleaved through the air, and he concentrated on butchering anything that got through with his skill . . . though he made a mental note to dunk his knives in a strong cleaning solution afterward. These scourglings were really gross.

As for Horatio . . . it was hard to tell what he was doing exactly because apparently the light Horatio used was either too high energy or too low energy for humans to see—Arthur couldn’t remember which it was because it didn’t make a lot of sense to him.

Still, Horatio used his light card to burn the oncoming scourglings. The Dark Heart had given him more precision with his light-based cards than he’d ever had before. He had once told Arthur he could send the light out like invisible needles or sweep it in a wave.

Boils erupted on the scourglings’ faces, and when it hit their eyes, they were blinded and staggered around.

Even blinded, suffering, and stuck like pincushions with razor shards of metal, they still blundered forward with jaws open.

When they got too close, Griff stepped up with his spear spinning in a golden blur. Anything the spear touched fell into pieces.

With all of that, the scourglings did not have much of a chance.

The oncoming wave ended, but many scourglings were left injured, and the hideous whistling was getting on Arthur’s nerves.

“Kill them all,” Arthur directed and stepped forward to do just that.

“Excellent,” Brixaby said with satisfaction. “I have been looking forward to testing this out.” Then he grabbed something from his Personal Space.

Arthur did a double take. “Is that a sword?”

It was a rough piece of metal shaped like an elongated knife, and looked distinctly odd being held in the dragon’s hands. Swords were generally meant for humans, and while Brixaby could approximate the grip, it wasn’t exact.

“Yes, I am a weaponsmith, and this has runes enchanted with sharpness on it,” he said, and brought down his sword in an easy chop that cut through a blinded scourgling like butter.

Then he reached down with his other claw and gestured for the shard harvest.

“Could you . . . make one for me?” Arthur asked.

“Perhaps,” Brixaby replied diffidently. “When I get the appropriate metal. And you are never to use it when riding on my back. This is quite sharp.”

Arthur sighed and mentally added whatever type of metal Brixaby wanted to his shopping list. He waded forward to help dispatch the last of the scourglings and start the harvest.

Soon, Arthur realized he had become nose blind to the smell in here. Because the new smell of freshly dead scourglings was somehow even worse.

As Cressida had promised, about one in every twenty scourglings yielded a Rare shard. And quite a few yielded Uncommons. That was quite unusual, because they were all Common scourglings.

“I think they’ve been consuming each other,” Brixaby said when Arthur commented on it. “Then they would be combining the shards.”

“Makes sense,” Horatio said. “That would be why they came at us with teeth and claws and not additional card power. Maybe give it a few more weeks and they would have gathered enough to make cards.”

Griff shuddered. “I’ve changed my mind: I’d rather not explore very old eruptions.”

Arthur had no complaints. Frankly, it was the best of all worlds: an enemy that could be easily killed but gave a great reward.

They moved forward, wading through what was left of the scourglings. There were even more in the tunnel, either pulped by Brixaby’s Stunning Shout or the effect of being blasted back by Cressida’s kinetic shield. Some bodies were so utterly destroyed it was hard to tell where they began and others ended. Those usually were too damaged to harvest a shard.

Several dozen yards beyond, the tunnel ended in a freshly collapsed wall of rock and dirt. Arthur looked warily at it, knowing there had to be another wave of scourglings trying to dig their way through to get them right now.

So far, Arthur had found two Rares, and he knew that Brixaby had gotten at least that. Cressida ended up with three. It was a good day’s work.

Even Griff ended up with one Rare shard. He looked like he was ready to cry when Arthur told him to keep it. To someone from Blood Moon Hive, those shards literally meant an extension on their life. It was a good day’s work.

Later, looking back, Arthur would curse himself for letting greed lead him too far into the tunnel.

Brixaby’s Stunning Shout had bounced around and completely decimated the scourglings in the back of the tunnel near the cave-in, so Arthur was hard put to try to find a chunk big enough to harvest. He drifted closer toward the wall, concentrating too much on what was harvestable and not enough on what was happening around him.

So when he felt the eruption cone start to shake again, he was taken completely by surprise. The hollow part of the eruption cone was rock, but here in the tunnel, it had moved to soft dirt again. Dirt that started to fall apart before Arthur’s eyes.

He straightened, horrified, then turned to yell at the others, “Get out—get out of the tunnel!”

Only then did he realize he was the one farthest in. Everyone else had drifted to the mouth of the tunnel.

Rocks and dirt started to rain down in earnest. A big stone smacked him on the shoulder, bringing him to his knees. Distantly, he heard Cressida cry out his name. A second later, the air was full of choking soil.

Arthur shut his eyes and activated his Phase In, Phase Out card. Instantly, the weight of the soil lifted.

There was a crashing sound from above him. The tunnel completely collapsed, and everything went dark as he was cut off from light.

He was somewhere within tons of rock and soil, completely blinded, and his card would only let him phase in between it all for thirty seconds.

He shot to his feet, picked a direction he thought led out, and ran.

If he went the wrong way, he could go farther into the tunnel or sideways straight into dirt and rock.

It was just dark with nothing to see, nothing to hear, and no tactile sensation from all around.

At the ten-second countdown, he knew he must have headed in the wrong direction. There was only blackness all around him. Within a few moments he was going to phase back into the middle of rock and soil.

Arthur put on a final, desperate burst of speed. His only hope was that somehow, he could escape the boundary of the eruption cone and come out the other side. It was a vague hope, a dim hope. The eruption site was huge.

Then, with two seconds left, his eyes registered light, and he stumbled into an open space. He let his Phase In, Phase Out drop and gasped in air.

Then, immediately, he wished he hadn’t.

He hadn’t stepped into daylight, or even moonlight. He was surrounded by a blue bioluminescent glow. He was in a cavern, and clinging to the walls on the front and the sides were clusters of wet, baggy ovoids.

Scourgling eggs.