Chapter 76:  A Fighting Retreat

I hissed again, shaping the sound into a weapon, causing the nearest bad-thing to stagger and stumble. With a single misstep, it toppled to the ground, all twisted limbs and flailing legs. A number of its mindless companions tumbled over it, their own legs snagging on the unexpectedly downed creature.

Legs. I suppressed my disgust at the thought. Just another design that only a lesser Core would use. The Great Core had been wise - as it always was - in not creating me with such unwieldy things. I would have hated to always be at risk of falling when I tried to move.

The fallen bad-things stumbled to their feet, piercing their bone-tipped arms into the ground and each other as they levered themselves back up. Oddly enough, they didn’t seem to have any remorse about hurting one another in their fumbling attempts to continue the pursuit. While that meant that many of them found their feet before I had expected them to, with their unwieldy limbs, it also meant that they came back up far more damaged and bloody than they should have. Satisfied that I had slowed enough of them for the moment, I curled in on myself again and clamped down on my tail. As useful as [Sound Shaping] was turning out to be, it damaged my throat-flesh terribly.

While my flesh began to reknit, my Coreless - along with the Coreless that would soon be mine - continued to retreat. Every so often, Needle sent a quick flurry of needle-fangs at the following bad-things. I could tell that her aim was worse than usual; normally, her needle-fangs buried themselves in eyes or joints with extreme accuracy, but now she was even missing entirely at times.

It wasn’t like her at all. The screams of the Shrieking Bats had hurt my Coreless more than I had realized, as focused as I had been on the increases to my [Sound Shaping].

That was okay, though. It just meant that more of the bad-things would be able to follow us back to the Coreless’ many-nest.

It was a shambling retreat; the other Coreless, as strong as I knew the warriors among them must have been, were clearly exhausted and in a poor state to fight. Every so often, I sent another wave of [Chrono Fire] to slow down the flesh-twisted bad-things that continued to follow us. To my complete joy, I could tell that the bad-things were wary of the flames; though it hadn’t yet killed any of them, it had done some damage, especially to the ones that found themselves caught most heavily within the slow-spots that they created.

Still, I knew that [Chrono Fire] alone wouldn’t be enough to finish them off, not even if I was willing to make the attempt. It had been effective against the bad-thing that lurked within the flame-water, but that had been a single enemy - and one that moved fast enough to tear apart its own flesh before it realized that it stood no chance against the Great Core’s might.

Unfortunately, the flesh-twisted bad-things had quickly realized the danger of fighting against the slow-spot’s power, and had adjusted their pursuit.

Despite that, the flames themselves had still taken a toll. Bits and pieces of the bad-things’ flesh had melted under the heat, sizzling and dripping down twisted skin.

If anything, it made them look even more disgusting than they had been before. Still, I fought past the repulsiveness of the sight, focusing on what I needed to do. It was harder than I expected; there was just something wrong about these bad-things - something unnatural about them. As much as the designs of lesser Cores’ bad-things always bothered me, the sight of the flesh-twisted ones nearly made me feel ill.

They were just...completely wrong. Poorly designed. Thrown together almost, with little regard for any efficiency or longevity. Even now, I could see places where the bad-things had begun to fall apart, little bits and pieces peeling off. It was almost imperceptible while they fought, but I could see it in the small periods when they balked away from the flames of [Chrono Fire], pausing long enough for me to take a look at their unnatural bodies.

It just didn’t make any sense. Even in Festering Rats, with their vulnerable and rotting flesh, there was a purpose. Their flesh was a dangerous poison, and the ease with which it separated was as dangerous to their foes as any fang or claw.

The deteriorating flesh of these bad-things was different, though. The flesh wasn’t rotting in the same way that the Festering Rats did. It wasn’t a weapon. It was just unstable.

Inefficient. And for there to be so many of them, despite that...

I found it hard to believe that even a lesser Core would waste the mana required for something that fell apart on its own like this, not without keeping them close enough to reclaim their bodies when they died. Eventually, though, I pushed the confusion from my mind. I already knew that Lesser Cores couldn’t match the Great Core’s might or intelligence, and it wasn’t worth being distracted from the fight.

Not when I needed to focus.

I sent another blast of sound, more tightly shaped than before, when one of the Coreless cried out in agony. My hiss, amplified and aimed at the injured Coreless’ attacker, forced it to stumble backwards with a cry of its own. The motion allowed the Coreless to escape, a single hand clutching the arm that hung at his side, limp and bleeding. The other warrior Coreless pulled him behind them, closing their ranks again with a practiced motion.

As he stumbled back, I managed to catch his eyes. I thought that he looked grateful.

Good.

Behind us, the weaker Coreless had slowed as the tunnel began to narrow. I tried to hiss, urging them to move faster, but the sound came out choked and bloody after my most recent use of [Sound Shaping]. By the time that my throat-flesh had repaired itself, reknit by [The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail] again, another of the warrior Coreless had fallen. As strong as I knew they were, with their skins and fangs of ore-flesh, they were already tired; they shambled and stumbled along, their long legs shaking in exhaustion.

I pulled more light and heat from my surroundings, realizing that the chaos of the fight had distracted me enough that my stores had begun to run dry. Fortunately, there was more than enough to devour. My reservoirs filled again, and I flashed another illusion in front of the-female-who-was-not-Needle’s eyes.

She jerked back for a moment with a sharp cry, startled by the sudden light, before turning towards me and bobbing her head up and down.

“Okay!” She yelled at me, as if I wasn’t close enough that a light hiss would have been enough for me to hear. The overwhelming shout nearly made me lose my grip in shock; only a quick [Clinging Grasp] kept me from falling to the stone below.

I hissed back, annoyed and very tempted to match her volume with a bit of [Sound Shaping] directed towards her ears - but no, I couldn’t afford to disorient the Coreless while she was carrying me. Maybe later.

Instead, I stewed in my displeasure as the-female-who-was-not-Needle pushed her way to the very front of the Coreless. She joined the front line, ducking under stabs of sharp bone with a grace that I had to admit was impressive. Every so often, one of the flesh-twisted bad-things overcommitted in their attack and one of their many arms fell to the ground, separated from its body with a quick lop of her shining ore-flesh fangs.

Still, the bad-things had many more, and the tunnel behind us was quickly narrowing. Where once, the Coreless had been able to retreat six abreast, now there was hardly room for three.

And then two.

And then hardly more than one - us.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle moved even faster than before, with only a mixture of [Clinging Grasp] and a coiled death-grip on her body allowing me to keep my perch as her body seemed to blur. With no room to dodge, and the other retreating Coreless too close behind for her to dance backwards, the bad-things’ many arms became even more dangerous - the only saving grace was that they too were affected by the narrowing of the tunnel.

Still, when a single one of the flesh-twisted bad-things had a full six arms to attack with, that was only a small comfort.

Her fangs blurred, tracing lines in the air as they forced the creature’s attacks away. Sharp bone skittered off her skin of ore-flesh at awkward angles, able to draw lines across its surface, yet unable to pierce through entirely.

And then, finally, we had gone far enough.

I reached into my mana core again, directing most of what remained. [Mana Fire] gathered in my throat, twisted into [Chrono Fire] in the moment before it spilled from my open jaws. It coated the tunnel around us, and the bad-things balked.

With such a high concentration of flames in a small space, only a few of the bad-things managed to slip through before the slow-spot became too powerful to pass. Though that also meant it would burn out faster, I knew that it would be enough.

The many-nest was close by, and now we would have time to reach it.

When we finally arrived, I would be able to show the Coreless of the many-nest a small amount of the Great Core’s strength.

As tired as I was, I couldn’t help but hiss in anticipation.