76. Necromancy

  Eager as Serac was to turn the fight into an experiment, her test subjects had other ideas, especially now with numbers on their side. With three Ulvknalls all emptying their ‘pockets’ at the same time, the forest clearing was quickly obscured by thick sprays of dirt.

  “Ptoop! Thpfft!”

  Blinded by tears and reeling from the sheer indignity of pocket sand, Serac failed to react in time as one bulbous paw sliced down and raked her across the chest.

  [221!]

  [Wayfarer Status Effect: LESSER BLEED]

  A not insignificant damage, accompanied by an annoying DoT effect. The saving grace being it was of the [Lesser] variety, which meant Froggy’s [Lesser Regen] canceled it out. In theory, Serac could forget about it and concentrate on fighting back.

  And fight back she did, together with her Manusya companion. Their first priority: reduce the enemy’s numbers. To that end, they promptly ganged up on one of the three Ulvknalls. First, Zacko barged into it with [Pauldron] to knock it off-balance. It prevented the Ulvknall from diving back into the cover of its own pocket sand, which in turn allowed Serac to hit it with the full force of her triple burst.

  [124!], [124!], [124!] -> [372!]

  She would’ve laid a fourth bullet into the same Ulvknall, had its packmate not jumped in from the side for a swipe at the action. Serac instinctively spun and blocked with PULVERIZER ([51!]), before emptying Chamber Six into the newcomer’s slavering muzzle ([124!] plus some chipped teeth!).

  With the first set of Cartridges fully spent, it was time to field-test another upgrade to Serac’s kit, one of a more mechanical persuasion. Thanks to Bea Sattva’s Speedloader System?, REVOLVER’s spare Cartridges sat in neat bundles of six. All a gunslinger needed to do was unclip a bundle and slide the whole thing into the open cylinder, all in one smooth motion.

  Full reload, lightning quick. Serac went right back to blasting, with nary a pause in between cylinders. She rolled away from the second Ulvknall to re-focus on the first. Perfect timing. Zacko had managed to Poise-break the target in the space it’d taken Serac to speedload her gun. And its remaining HP was well within smiting range with one critical hit.

  [Chamber One: EMBALMER]

  This time, the image Serac imagined a skeleton soldier rising from the dead. Along with a flat hit of self-damage ([100!]), REVOLVER spat out an onyx-colored pellet, which then exploded into bone dust upon impact.

  [326!]

  The bone dust rapidly coated the Ulvknall’s body in pale-gray: a phenomenon all too familiar for a former almost-thrall of the Bone Lord. Except now, she was in the driver’s seat, and that fact alone delighted her to no end.

  The freshly dead Ulvknall rose again as an [Enlisted Husk]. And the first thing it did was… throw more pocket sand! It did so in the direction of its packmates—a clear indication REVOLVER’s magic had worked as intended. The 2v3 had (at least for the next 12 seconds or so) flipped around in the Wayfarers’ favor.

  “Go, Temporary Wolf Pal, I choose you!”

  The [Enlisted] Ulvknall also chose. An opponent, that is. It dove head-first for the closest packmate: the one ironically enough, to have come to its rescue only moments ago. Two wolf monsters clashed amidst the settling sand, claws grinding against claws and jaws snapping at each other’s throats.

  Serac and Zacko reacted quickly and in practiced concert. The [Enlisted] Ulvknall was simply a new addition to their team, which meant their strategy remained unchanged. Hunt as a pack. Whittle down the mob, one individual at a time.

  Zacko jumped into the fray with a [Lance] gap-closer, to then pin the living Ulvknall into the ground with a downward [Cestus]. Serac piled on with an unimbued triple burst, shaving the enemy’s Health down to its last sliver. Temporary Wolf Pal stole both Wayfarers’ thunder by dealing the smiting blow: a vicious swipe to tear out its packmate’s innards, along with the last of its HP.

  [840 ?]

  One ‘autonomous’ Ulvknall still remained. It sought to avenge its mates (and punish the traitor) by first dipping into ol’ reliable: pocket sand to mask its approach. Serac snapped her eyes shut and countered with a couple of blind shots. First to make the enemy think twice about coming in too close, and second to cycle out her cylinder.

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  Speedload. Back to Chamber One. By the time Serac could see again, the Ulvknall was locked in a fierce tussle with the Huskbound traitor, making it impossible to aim for one of them with any degree of accuracy. She hesitated, but only for a Ksana, before steeling her softie heart and committing to her best course of action.

  [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

  She couldn’t reliably hit one of the wolves, but she could certainly set both of them on fire. Serac dipped into an ol’ reliable of her own, trading 20% of her Max Health ([235!]) for what remained the highest-DPS spell in her growing arsenal.

  [136!], [206!], [412!] -> [754!]

  The black flames of Penitence were too hot for an [Enlisted Husk] to handle, melting Temporary Wolf Pal into Souldust (it was nice knowing you!). Its flesh-bound counterpart was no better off, as it dropped to the ground, Poise-broken. A perfect set-up for Serac’s other teammate, he of the more permanent variety, to deal the smiting blow: a gleeful [Blade] into the wolf monster’s neck.

  [840 ?]

  [560 ?]

  Even after the fight had ended, Serac learned something new about her own spells. [840 ?] twice, and [560 ?] for that last one. That means I receive the bonus if it’s my [Enlisted Husk] that finishes off the Aberrant. And when the [Husk] itself dies, that also counts as my smiting blow.

  “That. Was. INCREDIBLE!” Petter Svensen hopped higher and skipped faster than ever as he rejoined the Wayfarers, beaming from earhole to earhole. He jumped and danced around the whole clearing, looking for all the world like he possessed infinite Stamina. “Miss Serac! Mr Zacarias! You don’t understand what this means to me! All my life… all I ever wanted… and to think I got to witness Wayfaring magic inches from my scales! I can die happy now, knowing nothing else could match the—the—magnificence of what I experienced today… in this life or the next…”

  “I’m, uh, happy for you?” Serac said uncertainly, more than a little taken aback by Petter’s zeal. “But maybe tone it down some? How do we know there aren’t more of them wolf things waiting around the corner?”

  “On that count, you have nothing to worry about!” Petter stopped on a dime and puffed out his chest. “I haven’t been idle while you two fought; there’s nothing to trouble us for as far as I can read the ripples.”

  “You sure about that, Pete?” Zacko cut in then, finally sounding a little more like his usual self. “Not that I don’t believe you, but I don’t easily trust things I can’t see. Still, I take it our ‘mission’ is complete, as far as the townspeople are concerned. And all thanks to your handy little spell, Princess. Never thought I’d ever work with a bona fide necromancer. Or should I say… Bone-a fide?”

  Serac snorted, then regretted it immediately. Her reaction had given Zacko’s rubbish-tier ‘joke’ far more credit than it deserved, but she supposed she could forgive herself her moment of weakness. After all, [Hunger] could make anyone a little loopy. Speaking of…

  “What should I do with this?”

  Serac referred, of course, to her [Harvest] from the first smite of the fight. The Ulvknall liver continued to hover in the air, remarkably untouched by the battle that had raged all around it. It looked as repulsive as ever; Serac hesitated even to touch it.

  “That’s easy, Miss!” Petter piped up, eager to be of use. “You ought to take it back to the market and trade it. It’ll net you turtleloads of lesser ingredients, I’m sure. Enough to keep you and Mr Zacarias well-fed for days if not weeks.”

  “Or”—Zacko again—“we could just eat it ourselves. Right here, right now.”

  Petter sputtered, round-eyed and speechless. Serac, on the other hand, met the Manusya’s even gaze with a nod of approval.

  She’d just been thinking the same thing. Yes, the liver looked disgusting as it was, but if someone else were willing to handle it, she’d gladly try its culinarily elevated version. Maybe it was just the [Hunger] making her loopy, but right now, a hot meal sounded orders of magnitude more enticing than a profitable trade.

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked on our behalf, Pete,” Zacko continued. “You just saw us ‘cook’, so you know we’re capable of rustling up more Ulvknall livers anytime we want. And besides, don’t you wanna try it?”

  If Petter had been shocked by Zacko’s earlier remark, he was downright scandalized by its sequel.

  “M—m—me, Mister? Try the Ulvknall liver? B—b—but I didn’t do anything to deserve it!”

  “I think you did plenty, Petey!” Serac chimed in, giving her Manusya partner a thumb-up as she did. “You were the perfect guide and an even better cheerleader! We’d love for you to share a meal with us.”

  The mackerel looked far from convinced. He took a hesitant step back, as if terrified by the very idea that a pair of Wayfarers wanted to include him in their victory.

  “Enough with this pauper act,” Zacko insisted, now with a note of impatience. “I’m sure you have your reasons for being so overly humble, and I won’t pry as to what they might be. But sometimes, you just gotta say ‘no’ to that part of your brain that keeps telling you ‘no’, and instead say ‘fuck yes’ to what life offers up on a silver platter. Or, I guess in this case a floating invisible platter, but that only proves my point. It’s up to you, Pete. Do you wanna make this magnificent day of yours even more unforgettable, or what?”

  Serac did a double take, eyeing Zacko as if to say: where did that come from? She then turned back to Petter with what she hoped to be an encouraging smile.

  It took the timid Yaksha several more moments to argue with the part of his brain that kept telling him ‘no’. In the end, his mackerel mouth with its surprisingly sharp teeth split into a wide, assertive grin.

  “In that case, Wayfarers, I’ll take you up on your generous offer. You’ve already shown me how you cook, so now, it’s my turn to return the favor.”

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