Mage Tank

Chapter 332: Weasel Stank

Chapter 332: Weasel StankThe ‘further details’ we’d been promised were not quick to follow Baltae’s warning. Team Pio’s mage had obviously uncovered something alarming with his investigation skills, but the Great Mouse Detective wasn’t ready to unveil the trap we’d fallen into.

Then again, it wasn’t really a trap we’d all fallen into. As I surveyed the battlefield, I was the only one drenched in gore at our camp. I could only see about half the Littan defenders from where I was, though. Surely somebody else got some blood on them. I couldn’t be the only one.

Alanor the lightning mage caught me looking around and gave me a sympathetic shake of his head. I lost sight of him as the horde of weasels began to bury me, but he fried them with a spell, leading to more explosions and even more guts n’ glory. I checked for debuffs, but the System wasn’t notifying me of anything. I’d thought maybe the blood was poisonous, but my Toxicity sat at zero and wasn’t moving.

I hopped back and swapped to throwing hammers at the incoming enemies to keep from further splatters. I doubted it would matter at this point. I’d presumably unavoidably fucked things up by showering in weasel blood, but that was no reason to keep doing things the wrong way. There might be something like a delayed trigger, or maybe a follow-up spell that would get buffed based on the quantity of exposure its victims had to the weasel blood, or some other bullshit.

Sadly, throwing hammers was less efficient than gathering the blade weasels into one cuddly murder-pile and casting Explosion! My big-boom spell was a bit of a mana hog, even when I insta-cast it, but it made up for that by hitting everything in a massive area. I actually had to restrict the radius to keep it from hitting the wall at my back or overlapping with the spearman one zone over from us. A thrown hammer would hit a lot fewer targets.

However, trying to cull an endless incoming stream of blade weasels did give me the opportunity to really mess around with my Hammerdin evolution. The Blunt evo gave me an aura that let thrown blunt attacks ‘pierce’ through enemies within its range, which was currently 79 feet. The weasels were small and fast, spread out across a 40-foot lane, and were prone to hopping and jumping off rocks and branches in their way, or even off of one another if needed. They weren’t marching in tidy rows, ready for a throwing hammer to crush through them down an orderly line.

I could make up to 5 fleeting copies with Somncres, letting me toss out up to 6 hammers at once. When I’d been offered Hammerdin, I’d wondered how it interacted with these fleeting copies, which would normally disappear the instant they’d been ‘used’. I’d done some testing on my own, but this was a good opportunity to try some more things out.

I used Homing Weapon to target the most distant weasels I could see normally, threw a wave of dream hammers, and then used Hammerang to bend their arcs into twisting patterns, creating a small hammer storm that ripped through the crowd of assaulting weasels from front to back. It didn’t come close to getting them all, but the fleeting copies continued onward through the weasels so long as they were within range of my aura.

The effect was curious to watch. The hammer would strike the target with all the force of my normal throw, which was significant. A heavy, blunt object moving at more than 2,000 feet per second turned out to be a lethal hazard for blade weasels, who tended to become a meat slurry upon contact with said object. The weapon then continued onward to the next target without so much as a stutter in its flight path.

That wouldn’t have been anything special if they were spectral hammers or something else that didn’t interact with the physical plane, but these were solid hammers crushing ribs and skulls, even the fleeting ones. They phased through things like they weren’t even there, while leaving behind the same devastation they normally would. I wondered how potent that phasing was, and what sorts of skills could prevent it.Regardless, the most important finding was that hitting one enemy wouldn’t make the fleeting hammer copy disappear. Nor would hitting two, or even three. The jury was out on whether there was any limit at all and, oh look, endless weasels to experiment with.

The real trick would be keeping the fleeting hammers within the aura while piercing through as many enemies as possible, but I already had a solution for that.

Alanor cleared out the field ahead of me with a blast of lightning, and I snapped off one more Explosion! centered far ahead of me, giving me space to start building a combo. I activated Gravity Anchor and threw Somncres, using Hammerang to bend its trajectory while making all five copies. Coordinated Thinker helped me balance my toss with the forces being created by Gravity Anchor, locking the hammers into a stable orbit around me. I then summoned the dream hammer back to my hand and did this again.

I took time concentrating with each throw, trying to give each hammer a slightly different orbital distance and elevation. With two throws, I now had ten fleeting hammers orbiting me, all at different heights, meaning at least one hammer would hit something approaching me so long as it was within seven feet of the ground. The blade weasels launched off the ground to make their attacks, but the move had them spear forward. They didn’t get much vertical clearance.

When I was planning this move out, I hadn’t properly appreciated how fast my hammers would be going. While I was keeping the hammers in a fairly close radius to my body–forty feet or so–the Somncres copies were doing about 500 revolutions per minute. That was without Homing Weapon, which would add even more speed.

To most observers, the hammers were a blur, like the blades of a box fan running on low. The air was tinted with the suggestion of an object, but the more obvious hint that you shouldn’t stick your finger in there was the gale of wind the hammers created and the roaring white noise of their passage.

In the time it took me to make two quick tosses of my hammer and create my hammer-nado, the weasels beyond the range of my last cast of Explosion! were already upon it. The creatures braved the noise and wind, and though they were fast, they weren’t nearly fast enough to avoid the weapons.

The first weasel was obliterated on contact. It happened so suddenly that the rest didn’t seem to notice, and they plowed into the storm wall for several seconds. Some took a glancing blow that sent them hurtling away for hundreds of feet; others took a hit dead center on their small bodies, making them disappear in a quick mist that was immediately scattered by the wind. Most were dashed open and widely scattered across the field they ran in from. The secret, exploding weasels were brief stutters in the murder tableau, barely noticeable as anything more spectacular than a normal weasel getting vaporized by the wall.

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Seeing what I’d made, I felt excited about its potential, but also realized it was useless for my current task. First, the move wasn’t cheap. I could keep it going for seven minutes and change, which was more than enough for most fights, but these weasels had been assaulting us for longer than that already. Further, the weasels had already shown they’d avoid my Elemental Barrier when it proved impassable. This wasn’t much different. After killing thirty or so, the rest of the blade weasels were taking a moment to reevaluate this path of approach.

The survival rate of leaping into the hammer-nado was the exact same as when they could walk right up to me and attack–zero–but I doubted their little weasel brains cared. Or maybe they didn’t mind dying so long as they got close enough to bleed on their enemies.

Speaking of which, I was still sending blood just absolutely flying. It wasn’t directly splattering me or anyone else, but the spearman next door was backing away from the cloud of bloody mist and giving me a look. I took the hint and wound down Gravity Anchor, letting the hammers launch away from me down the weasel lane, scoring another handful of kills and one exploding weasel surprise. ℝＡNǒ𐌱Ę𝙨

After ending the move, Grotto wordlessly opened a Closet portal beside me and floated out, his slightly larger octo-form now clad in articulated plates of armor. They clinked and clacked as his feelers undulated. He gave me a judgmental look up and down, then ignored my filth to summon a team of five combat golems. All of these were Grade 15, much lower than his pinnacle works, but more than enough to spread out and handle the weasels that began pouring in, now that my hammer-nado was finished.

A pair of shields appeared and began floating around Grotto as he watched the mustelid massacre. One was a replacement for the shield Varrin had split in twain, a rectangular tower shield custom-made by Papa Junior to help cover the little octo’s lowest defenses.

He flicked a feeler, and another portal opened over my head. A torrent of scalding hot water poured out of it, the liquid crashing over my gore-encrusted body. This went on for a full minute before Grotto cancelled the portal. It wasn’t enough to leave me clean, but I was a lot less gross.

“Thanks,” I said, shaking some of the liquid out of my gauntlets. Another portal opened, blasting me with a pillar of flame large enough to encompass my entire body. This incinerated the rest of the weasel goop and dried me off. It wasn’t magical fire, so my beard was safe for the moment.

Once the flamethrower portal closed, I stood in a burning field for a few seconds, composing myself before speaking again. “Okay, the water came from the hot springs, but where in the Closet do we have a giant room filled with endless fire?”

[The boiler,] Grotto thought to me, before opening the hot water portal once more to extinguish the fire and pressure wash the soot and scorch marks from my body. I was now some version of clean, although I smelled like hot metal.

“Are you bypassing Earworm’s psychic relay?” I asked. There hadn’t been a Grotto signature before his psychic message.

[Yes, but only for you. Our soul bond is sufficient proof that I am no imposter. Otherwise, I do not intend to psychically ‘speak.’ My presence tends to cause non-natural psychics, such as this Earworm person, a degree of discomfort.]

“Should I keep shooting?” Alanor shouted from behind us. I turned to see the mage stuffing a slice of fruit into his mouth.

“Do you have some skill that gives you buffs for eating all the time?” I asked

“What?” he said through a mouth half full, spitting little bits of fruit. “No, I missed breakfast. You take meals when you can out here.” He squinted at the next piece. “That is not a bad idea, though,” he chomped.

I watched him munch for a moment, then turned to evaluate the golems, seeing they had no trouble handling the weasels. Only one of them was out front and getting bloody. Hopefully, whatever Baltae was worried about didn’t affect golems, or if it did, Grotto didn’t mind sacrificing that one.

“I think you’re good to stop casting and regenerate for now,” I said, answering Alanor’s earlier question. The mage immediately sat down, pulled out a large cloth, and began laying out a full spread of cheese and bread. He’d barely gotten started when something grabbed his attention back inside the Littan camp. He hastily stood, scattering his partial picnic and firing off a bolt into the camp itself.

“Kai: Team one, base defense! We’ve got weasels crawling out of the roots at our rear. Lord Ravvenblaq, you are clear to assist.”

“Guar: We need his stamina regen, sir. We’ll lose it if he fights and half our guys are tapped.”

“Tomomaru: Team three can fall back to help. I’ll handle the northern half of the wall.”

“Kai: Make it so.”

The sounds of explosions came from the camp, then kept coming. It was a nonstop, overlapping thunderous rumble, like every weasel behind us was a member of the detonating breed. Several Littans called out that they’d been splattered.

“Kai: Baltae, we need to know what this blood does.”

“Baltae: As of now, it induces paralysis, then unconsciousness. I am still in the process of determining what else it does, sir.”

“Kai: How do you know the blood is the cause?”

“Baltae: I am amending that initial theory. It is not the bear’s own blood that is dangerous, but avoiding the blood is still the best practice.”

“Kai: Bear?”

“Baltae: Apologies, we are all facing different creatures. Ours is a fist-sized bear that drops from the canopy. Colonel Tavio is dealing with ants.”

“Guar: We’ve got weasels!”

“Baltae: Yes, Guar, I am aware.”

“Kai: Please continue, Sergeant.”

“Baltae: If you capture one of your exploding weasels, I expect you will discover that its fur has been streaked with something else’s blood. This is true for all of the exploding monsters I have captured. None of the ordinary ones that I have examined so far have been bloodied in this way, so I suspect it is the source of… One moment.”

“Guar: How long does it take for somebody to pass out? King Xor’Drel was bathing in a pit of the stuff, and he looks fine.”

I turned to see Guar on the palisade walkway. He gave me a wave, then tossed a massive hammer into the camp. The move was followed by several booms, dirt and debris rising into the air from beyond the wall.

My liberal use of Explosion! while fighting the weasels in one spot had resulted in a significant crater, which I judged much too wide to be considered a pit. Plus, there wasn’t even a pool of blood inside it. The spell had jettisoned most of it away, just leaving behind a healthy coating of viscera. I grumbled, but this wasn’t the time to point out Guar’s hyperbole.

“Kai: I now have three men down. All of them were sprayed only a minute ago.”

“Baltae: There could be many factors for why Arlo is unaffected. He has very high Fortitude, his anatomy is unusual, and he is resistant to several afflictions.”

“Kai: Cleanse does not help. Heroism has no effect.”

“Tavio: I am at camp 3 with Xim Xor’Drel. Her use of Cleanse purged the affliction.”

“Baltae: Then she has a variant. Healers at camp 1 also cannot cure it with Cleanse.”

A shot of alarm went through me as I started putting the pieces together.