Ruthless V6Ch7-The Pigeon and the Slug

The vision faded out after that.

Luna explained that she had moved further away, as she was worried that the dinosaurs would notice her unfamiliar scent—or just as bad, Alan might see her and give her away.

Good decision, James affirmed. Now I just need to figure out how I can get away from here and help you.

Do whatever you believe is best, my King, Luna replied instantly.

He took a few seconds to consider his next steps.

I’ve probably taken these Rulers a little too lightly until now, James thought. I just charged right at the one that seemed weakest, and it still took me a while to win a straight fight. So… it’s time to start fighting dirty!

He sent a quick message to Luna: I think I’ll be done here in about ten minutes. Even if it takes me a bit longer than that, wait for me to go in, unless there’s some immediate threat to our people.

She responded with a Yes, my King, and James turned his full attention to the remaining Rulers. They were leading the battle for their forces, but mainly commanding from the rear. Only the Rat King was actively and consistently engaged in combat out of the Rulers, and that was probably because he was his minions. His body was composed of rats that could operate semi-independently or form one giant rat. The way he fought was by ripping small enemies to shreds in his giant rat shape, and dividing into thousands of rats to tackle every part of larger enemies.

The Rat King was currently engaging the Green Jumper Queen and her children, tearing at the smaller spiders’ limbs with his thousands of mouths while the spiders in their turn tried to catch the little rats and kill them with venom.

The rest of the enemy Rulers were watching James. Perhaps that was why they were hanging back from the battle. They had seen what happened to the Wasp Queen.

Oh. They’re wondering who’s next. Trying to preserve their strength. Maybe even making some preparations for when I attack them. That’s why they didn’t do anything to help the Wasp Queen. They’re each thinking about their own skin. This isn’t any kind of alliance, then. Just a marriage of convenience. You don’t stick your neck out in this sort of situation. You let someone else take the fall if you can. Maybe they’ll even see me as eliminating their competition during this battle.

That changed things a little bit.

Imperceptibly to all those around, James began charging Mana—and he ordered the monsters that he had within him to come out.

Ever since James had been incapacitated some weeks prior, he had taken his experiments with Monster Generation and Monstrous Devotion to a new level. With his recent efforts, he now could—and sometimes did—keep monsters he had created in the past stored in or on his body. With willpower, he could contain his creatures within his flesh indefinitely. He could even do it while he slept, though it undeniably affected the quality of his sleep.

The only telltale sign was that when his creations were merged back into his flesh, they increased his density—and therefore his weight—by the amount that the monsters weighed. It didn’t keep him from moving quickly, as he had access to some of the monsters’ reserves of energy while they were inside him, and his own superhuman capabilities were more than enough to carry around a literal ton of monsters all the time.

But if he hopped on a scale, or someone had to lift him for some reason, he would have to warn them that his weight would be a bit off.

Now, the monsters that he had kept contained within his flesh during the battle emerged: his two remaining wyverns and Doppelganger, whose default form was an exact copy of James’s body—though both James and Doppelganger could use Shapechange to take on any shape of roughly equivalent size to themselves.

Doppelganger had been formed from around a hundred component monsters that were made from pieces of James’s own biomass. The creature could split some of those monsters off at any time.

What is your will, Progenitor? Doppelganger asked, assuming his usual exact-copy-of-James form.

All three of you will wait for my signal and attack the giant slug there as soon as I give it, James sent telepathically. I’ll be hitting one of the other Rulers at the same time. We’re going for a decapitation stroke, trying to kill off the leaders as quickly as we can. The armies should surrender after that. If you manage to slaughter the slug, move on to another Ruler. Don’t worry about me. If I get into trouble, the wasps will help.

If James had given these orders to a squad of humans, there would have been questions, concerns, requests for more detail and context—but all of James’s human forces were already engaged in battle. In most areas, they were winning with few casualties, justifying James’s trust in his commanders—although the possum monsters seemed to be doing a lot of damage to one of the squads, whose members seemed to just be holding their own and hoping for rescue.

But James’s wyverns and Doppelganger asked no questions and raised no objections. They simply absorbed the instructions, understood as much as they needed to understand in order to be effective, and braced for action.

James held still for a few more seconds, while he generated a massive spike of Mana with which to fuel his Complete Illusion Magic. Then he unleashed everything at the key location, that area at the back of the armies where the leaders were concentrated along with a few of their higher level minions acting as bodyguards.

Complete Illusion Magic enveloped the four Rulers that were hanging back—all of the remaining ones aside from the Rat King—and pandemonium broke out.

The great black swan suddenly came under attack from the elite possum bodyguards, the swan’s bodyguards launched themselves at the pigeon Ruler, the pigeon Ruler’s strongest pigeons went after the giant slug, and the elite slugs attacked the possum Ruler.

They were all seeing variations of the same effective sight: betrayal by one of their half-trusted allies. The monsters responded by defending their Ruler and attacking the offending enemy Ruler, which had apparently dragged their leader away.

Even with Complete Illusion Magic, which upgraded Illusion Magic in almost every way—critically, by causing all of the enemy’s senses to reinforce the illusion—the Rulers themselves would be able to put a stop to all this chaos within a minute or two.

All they had to do was use their powers as Rulers to order their minions to stand down. The Rulers themselves were likely too strong-willed to be affected by James’s illusions, though that wasn’t certain, considering how high James’s own Will stat was at this point.

But even assuming that they were immune to the illusions themselves, fixing their minions’ misapprehensions would require that the Rulers be able to collect themselves and respond in a rational way to this sudden turn of events.

Go!

James and his monsters shot forward in two separate directions. He had no intention of giving the Rulers any time at all in which to gather their wits and stop the friendly fire he had initiated with his powers.

He used Lightning Strike to fuel his movements with Lightning Mana, the fastest magic he knew of, as he streaked across the sky toward the pigeons’ Ruler.

It’s your damn birds’ fault I had to show up here at all, James thought irritably. If the birds had just minded their own business, maybe I would have been able to keep Alan and the other safe.

The pigeons had been responsible for attacking the two wyverns that were no longer with James, after all.

The boss pigeon was distracted by the madness James had caused, and its head jerked back and forth as it simultaneously fended off attacks from multiple sides and tried to comprehend what its minions were doing going after the giant slug.

Still, once James got within thirty feet, the pigeon took notice of him streaking toward it. The beast’s eyes turned fiery with wrath, and James saw Mana begin gathering in its throat. It was probably preparing some sort of sonic attack to off-balance him with.

But James still had one monster left inside himself to surprise enemies with. As his momentum carried him to within twenty feet of the pigeon, he ripped open his own left arm, and a blood slime surged out and threw itself at the pigeon Ruler’s head.

Building on James’s own velocity, the blood slime hurled itself too quickly for the pigeon to have any chance of reacting.

The enemy Ruler had been in the process of intaking a breath. Now, with its head suddenly surrounded by a sphere of blood, it had instead aspirated blood slime.

The monster beat at its own chest, eyes going wild. Then the feathers went for the blood slime, quickly tearing the jelly-like substance off and hurling it away to clear the pigeon’s airway. The slime would reform—it could not be killed by physical force so easily—but it was out of this fight. It would not be able to catch the pigeon Ruler again, unless James managed another similar surprise.

But the slime had distracted the pigeon for a key couple of seconds.

James had closed to within a couple of feet, and the Soul Eater Orb had already transformed into a dagger in his right hand.

Predator’s Strike!

He threw himself into the fastest lunge his body was capable of, holding nothing back.

The Roscuro dagger pierced where James knew the pigeon’s heart must be—James had just seen it beating its chest in a way that strongly suggested it had the sort of anatomy he understood—and then, just to make certain, he had Roscuro transform into a large spiked ball that extended spearpoints in all directions. The sudden growth of a large metal ball inside the pigeon’s ribcage expanded it outward.

The pigeon’s mouth opened in a final, terrible scream, its body began to disintegrate—Roscuro was taking the poor creature’s soul—and James got the System notification of its death.

But there was no time to celebrate.

He instantly turned and threw himself into the skirmish with the slug Ruler that his other monsters were attacking.

They were already tearing into the creature’s soft, vulnerable flesh, the wyverns ripping off large chunks in their jaws while Doppelganger hacked at the slug’s body with arms that he had transformed into blades.

Unfortunately, the slug seemed to have some Skill similar to what James had endowed his blood slime with, except much quicker than the blood slime’s ability. The slimy body kept reforming as if it could simply ignore physical hits.

No one’s going to see this, right? James thought.

He didn’t see a lot of options for how to quickly kill off the slug. He had one Skill that he felt certain could reliably do it—the idea had occurred to him as soon as he saw how much trouble his monsters were having—but he was very reluctant to ever expose that Skill where someone else might be able to copy it. He knew that Mina could copy Skills she witnessed being used with the Skill Quick Study, and he assumed that some others had that Skill too.

James quickly reminded himself that his spellcasting was completely invisible now, an ability he had acquired by fusing two powerful Skills into Hidden Magic. Even his Mana should be completely transparent. No one would have any idea what he had done, let alone being able to visually dissect it.

And he needed this fight to be over quickly, before the other Rulers could come to the slug’s aid.

He quickly charged a burst of Soul Magic, wrapped it around one fist, and took a powerful leap forward.

As he flew through the air, his monsters continued distracting the slug with their physical attacks—which it feebly parried with tentacles it could materialize from anywhere on its body—until the last possible moment.

Then they jumped aside.

James landed and slammed his Soul Magic-coated fist down into the center of the slug’s mass. He felt his Mana soak into the enemy Ruler’s body, and he waited a moment for it to take effect.

It did not disintegrate, as was typical. In fact—did it pull a little more energy out?

James made a small jump backward to get off of the body.

As he landed, he heard a feminine voice.

“Mm, your Mana’s spicy!” it declared.

James only belatedly recognized the sound as emanating from the slug—from somewhere on the slug, though James could not see a mouth. The voice sounded well-sated by the power it had just absorbed—and not at all as if the speaker was in peril of her soul exploding.

James gritted his teeth and tried to think of his next move. The slug spoke again before he could do anything.

“Why don’t you have a taste of your own power?” she said.

The Ruler suddenly shot a burst of Soul Magic back at James—not invisible this time—and he simultaneously leaped backward and conjured a shield of Soul Mana to protect himself.

The flare of energy struck. He felt his own power strike itself, and the strength of the two opposing forces, both in contact with his body, rattled his teeth. The force of the collision threw James another few feet back before it dissipated. He managed to stay on his feet but shook his head with a mixture of irritation and grudging admiration.

Of course the slug can absorb physical attacks and Mana. How the fuck am I supposed to kill her?

This might take more than ten minutes after all.