BlueShear
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Chap. 32
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 18:29:00 +0000 UTCCHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The forested glen was wide and spacious.
Covered in moss and vibrant greenery, with a languid stream carving a line down its center, it was verdant, wild, though still clearly inhabited. Well trodden animal trails radiating out from the center of the secluded little oasis like the spokes of a wheel. The quiet burbling of rushing water competing with the twitter of bird song, in a bid to create the most peaceful atmosphere imaginable. High above, the midafternoon sun beamed down it’s glorious rays, casting everything in an almost heavenly radiance. Hemmed in by steep cliffs to either side, it was a quaint little slice of calm tranquility.
It was also, most notably, inhabited by a metric crap ton of man-eating monsters.
From his elevated vantage, Richard could make out at least twenty of the Candy-Hide Boars, each of them in the lvl 27 ~ 30 range. Snorting, snuffling behemoths, closer in size to fully grown bulls than they were pigs, which vacillated between eating, sleeping, or shuffling over to the stream for a drink. Sometimes dragging the remainder of their meal along with them, so they might try their hand at all three. As for what they were eating, well, it was kind of hard to make out too clearly.
What with the copious amounts of glitter and all.
What was clear, however, was the fact that these were no peaceful herbivores. No, they were predators, just like everything else in this forest. And if he wasn’t careful, he may very well end up as just another of their prey. Because at the far end of the glade, reclining beneath a mossy overhang, surrounded by bones and half eaten carcasses, was the elite.
+—|-ALPHA CANDY-HIDE BOAR -|—+
•[Lvl 30 ELITE]•
It was three times the size of its regular Candy-Hide compatriots, with sturdy looking red rope—lengths of licorice like thick roots or vines—sprouting from its sugar dusted hide. Yet he knew it wasn’t just its size, quasi-armored hide, and spear like tusks he should be worried about. This was an elite, and a relatively high leveled one at that—for Lower F Grade at least—which could only mean one thing. Skills, abilities, and the knowhow to use them. And when you paired that with the two dozen high leveled beasts also populating the glade, well. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t going to be relying on his “combat prowess” and meager stats to see him to victory.
Maybe he could win that way, and maybe he couldn’t. Either way, he’d much rather prepare prepare prepare until his success wasn’t even in question. And so, carefully edging away from the ledge he’d been using to scout from, Richard quietly made his way back to the little recess he and the kids had appropriated. Crawling through tiny crevices and crab walking through narrow passages, until, fifteen minutes later, he arrived inside the grassy hollow they were currently using as home base.
That’s one good thing to come from being so tiny. It’s a lot easier to fit into small places.
The scene he was presented with no longer resembled the verdant oasis, touched by neither man nor beast, which he’d left.
Resembling a hole in the ground or the bottom of a well, the hollow was completely surrounded by soaring cliff faces. Once covered in a dense carpet of grass, weeds, and wildflowers, now the vast majority was trampled, where it wasn’t littered with the detritus of man. Sleeping bags had been laid out, food trays sat baking in the sun, while snacks were in the process of being digested.
He’d been forced to offer the promise of dessert to anyone that braved the cramped convoluted confines—like a spelunker’s dream or claustrophobic’s nightmare—which led the way here. Only serving to further dip into his dwindling points reserve. The spot had originally been discovered in his attempts to scale the cliff for the perfect vantage without attracting too much attention, and now would serve as his war room, workshop, and base of operations all rolled into one. First things first though.
<Watcher> And how are you doing this fine day, my dear? Do a good job holding down the fort while I was gone?
<Penelope Green> … mmm…
<Penelope Green> … more…?
Of course this was in reference to the slice of chocolate cake he’d given her before leaving on his little errand. And while, in hindsight, maybe introducing sugar to an unpredictable four-month old, fully capable of wiping him from existence with a sneeze probably wasn’t his brightest idea, in his defense, he never claimed to be great with kids! Besides, he’d figure it would’ve been far worse toexclude her.
Nobility tend not to take too kindly to that sort of thing. Leastwise imperials.
<Watcher> Uh… later. You’ll get more later. I promise.
That was striking a healthy balance right? Between the deference you’d show to your empress, and a mentor laying down the law. At least he sure hoped it did. It did, right?! The little girl frowned, and Richard fully expected to be reduced to his composite molecules right there on the spot. Thankfully, after a moments hesitation, she nodded her head in agreement, before floating up and away to scrutinize a wildflower growing from the cliff side—clinging some several hundred feet off the ground. He tried not to let the wave of relief show in his body language.
Instead, he tamped down a spot for himself amidst the field of untamed grass, and began to concoct a plan.
First things first, he had the children retrieve the bags of mana crystals they’d gathered.
Dumping them all out into one big pile, he was met by a glittering hill of thumbnail sized gems. There were unsolicited ooo!’s and aah!’s chorused from the crowding peanut gallery, before Richard shooed them all away so he could focus. He spent the next fifteen minutes looking for a rock that would serve as impromptu mortar. Eventually settling on a flat stone with a smooth-ish depression at its center. Richard grabbed a handful of mana stones, retrieved Shaper’s Legacy from a pouch in his onesie, and, without a seconds hesitation, began to grind the crystals to dust between the two items.
He had to be careful not to powder the stone of the mortar itself in his enthusiasm. He really didn’t want to mix any mundane powdered stone with the sparkling blue, mana-dense powder, but alas, with such lackluster tools as these, some amount of impurity was unavoidable. Only once he’d ground the crystals down to a decent enough consistency did he move onto the next step. Dipping once more into his dwindling points supply—with all the spending he’d been doing lately, he was already back down to triple digits—Richard bought up a whole bunch of cheap daggers, axes, swords, and clubs.
Selecting a simple club as his prototype, he snagged a freshly sharpened dagger and began to carve runes directly into the wood. It’s twisted, knotted shape served as something of an intellectual challenge at first, though not one that stumped him for overly long.
He sped through three consecutive failures before he finally managed to find success on the fourth. Pinching a small bit of the mana-rich powder, he packed it into the carved channels he’d dug into the club. Careful to make sure he wasted none of the reagent, while also pressing it in tight.
Another fifteen minutes passed before he was done—the unremarkable club now inlaid with arcane lines the color of azure. Holding the club in both hands, he fed a bit of his mana into one of the filled channels. Blue light raced across the string of runes, racing all the way from the handle to its tip—casting his face in an arcane hue. For the final test, he picked up the same knife he’d used to carve the channels in the first place, reapplied its sharpness with a whetstone token, and promptly stabbed it into the wood of the blunt instrument.
It left a scratch, but nothing more.
Then, he began to dig its tip into the channels of glowing blue powder, only to find that those too were nearly invulnerable to his strikes. Puffs of blue powder springing up every now and again.
Both binding and hardening runes are working as they should. No problems with activation, though the mana conductivity is simply atrocious. Nothing for it, I suppose. These items simply were not made with mana in mind. They’re completely incompatible. I even have to be careful with these pathways, since the more mana I put in, the more I risk overloading the base material which… actually, that’s not a bad idea.
Richard took one good long look at the crappy pile of weapons he’d purchased, inspiration causing his eyes to alight with feverish intensity. Without a thought for the outside world, he threwhimself into his work.
+++
The Alpha Candy-Hide Boar dozed beneath the shade of its stone overhang without a care in the world. Within the peaceful glade that was his domain, all was good, and just, and well. The herd was strong, the food was plentiful, and gnarled sticks were raining from the sky.
Wait, what?!
The sticks landed with dull thumps and splashes. Impacting the rushing stream with wet slaps, and the backs of his herd with dry ones. Falling—or, at least, so it seemed—from the very sky itself. Either that or from very high up. Heights that were conveniently obscured by the noonday sun. Each kicking up sprays of dirt, fresh water, and irate boar-folk, as they landed. Many of his herd leaping to their hooves disoriented—snorting angry clouds of powdered sugar from their nostrils.
They grunted, spun, seeking the intruder, and squealing their indignation when one could not immediately be found. With guttural sounds they voiced their eagerness to gore to death whoeverdared to wake them on such a beautiful day. A bestial fury which quickly turned to confusion, when all they found were sticks.
One of them stepped forward, prodding one of the glowing sticks with a hoof. Nothing happened. Tentatively, it placed one foreleg atop the stick and began leaning its weight onto it. Much to its surprise, it didn’t break. It groaned a little from the sustained pressure, but did not snap as the boar had been expecting. Not even as it put the whole of its considerable girth to the task. Several more tried the same with similar results, until. Unsure of what to do, they went back to what they did best.
The beasts settled back down to sleep, even as more objects rained down from the sky. Short pointy things, and long pointy things, and short long pointy things rained down without cease. Doing little damage, even when they landed blade first on their thick and tough hides. With no immediate threats, and seeing no cause for concern—either that, or they were incapable of such mental acuity in the first place—they blithely went on ignoring the rain of armaments.
The Alpha Candy-Hide Boar, an Elite, and so possessed of a facsimile of critical thinking, had a sneaking suspicion that all was not as it seemed to be.
However, before it could convince itself to act, the show had already begun. The long sticks were the ones to go first. The gnarled sticks with glowing marks all along their length flashed brightly with a blue light. The small crystals tied to their bases with knots of twine growing dim and gray, even as the light of the engravings grew blinding—as if they were being drained of something.
BANG!
Explosions rocked the picturesque glade, sending sharp splinters of wood flying every which way. Boars squealed in pain as they were either caught by the brunt of the explosion, or peppered by it’s deadly shrapnel. Hides were riddled, eyes were punctured, and the entire herd was thrown into full on panic. They charged in random directions, disoriented by the bright flash, loud noise, and sudden pain. Colliding, bowling over, and trampling one another. A full on stampede contained within the walled confines of the glade.
Hooves splashing through the gentle stream, only to slip on slick rock, and spill head over heals into the brisk, icy mountain chill. Of course that was when the small daggers, carefully tossed into the stream only moments before, came to life. The light of their mana engravings growing brighter, even as the mana stones wrapped to their hilts grew dimmer. Muffled explosions sent geysers of water skyward, though this time, the potent explosions were joined by the snap of electricity.
The beasts unfortunate enough to find themselves crossing the stream in that exact moment, going stiff immediately. Arcs of electricity racing across the waters’ surface—leaping from boar to boar in a successive chain of burning meat and convulsing bodies.
BANG!
More explosions, the long swords this time. Sending waves of heat and a hail of burning metal shrapnel hurtling in every direction.
BANG!
Clouds of ice formed, the creeping patterns of frost crawling across moss and nearby plants. These clouds didn’t do physical harm, so much as they exacerbated the pandemonium going on all around. Lowering visibility just as many were beginning to blink away stars. The stark change in temperature only serving to confuse the senses further. With waves of scorching heat followed freezing cold and white hot agony.
And finally the axes went off like actual grenades. Their dull rune-work, strategically left inactivated for just such an occasion. The arcane scribblings growing from completely unlit, to blinding radiance in mere microseconds—the mana crystals primed to dump all their mana in an instant—before massive detonations sent several unsuspecting beasts flying.
It was utter chaos inside the glade for ten interminable seconds. And, by the time the explosions had stopped coming, and the stampede lost all its momentum, what was left when the smoke cleared was nothing less than utter devastation.
The once verdant oasis was now pockmarked and scored. Littered with metallic shrapnel, patches of ice, and unmoving bodies. Scorch marks marred the otherwise vibrant greenery, and the stream still hummed with an electric current. Of the two dozen odd Candy-Hide Boars that had been a fixture of the glade, very few of them were dead, though nearly all were either injured or incapacitated.
Easy pickings then, for a timely Richard, as he strolled into the beasts’ inner sanctum, and began stabbing monsters through their vitals. He worked with impunity, moving from one beast to another. Most were prone or still twitching, while some attempted to rise, unthinking hatred in their eyes. He targeted these ones first. A spear through the eyes socket saved him the trouble of piercing their impossibly tough hides. Of course he could still do it, he’d merely snap his spear off in the process.
A prospect for which he wasn’t exactly enthused.
And so, eyes it was. In and out. Thrust and pull. In short order, he’d worked his way through the entirety of the herd, leaving only one last specimen.
The elite had most certainly seen better days. Richard had made sure of it, in fact. Of the weapons he’d rained down on their heads, at least half were aimed directly at the elite. Its body was covered in pockmarks, puncture wounds from the myriad bits of shrapnel that had pierced its flesh. Parts of its licorice covered hide were frozen stiff, while others appeared as if it’d been fired under a blowtorch. It’s left eye was a gooey rainbow mess, while it’s other eye was unfocused and half closed.
A chain of the bigger explosions having apparently knocked him out cold. Taffy tongue lolling, and with a massive dent caving in the side of its tough skull, it looked like it was dead already. But, considering he hadn’t gotten the notification, the elite had to be clinging onto life somehow. Well, not for much longer, Richard decided, as he marched within spitting distance of the gigantic creature. It’s giant maw more then capable of swallowing him down in one big bite. It was almost intimidating, looking up and up and up.
Actually, hold on a moment. How am I going to kill this thing? It’s huge! Do I just scale its face and crawl into its cranium? Do a little jig while I’m in there?
Figuring that was as good an idea as any, Richard reached out to grab onto its bottom lip, making ready to climb, when it’s working eye snapped wide, and it’s body exploded with light pink energy.
Comments
Monadologist
Renaming Watcher -> Shaper was an editing mistake I assume?
Nimps
Yeah I was wondering the same thing
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
Liam Cassilly
Why does the MC name change from watcher to shaper in this chapter?
