Knights Apocalyptica
Chapter 237: Player 2

The next day was one filled with trepidation. No one knew what to expect when fighting a monster on this scale, and despite the assurances from Sir Matt that if things went to shit he would take care of it, most of the group felt an edge to them, aside from Erec, who brimmed with excitement.

Garin kept calling various birds to him, sending them flying off to be his eyes in the sky. This method made tracking their prey easier over the last few days. Instead of arriving at the destination the monster had marked, they often knew exactly where their targets were ahead of time.

Erec was happy to see his friend using his abilities in a way that benefited them all. Using the animals around him for scouting was powerful, and it had taken Garin ages to realize it.

Now, though, he was doing it like a nervous tic. Calling birds to him every few minutes as they approached the enemy’s position.

"I still haven't found anything," Garin said unprompted as Erec walked beside him, resuming their travel after his brief bird chat.

"Well, it's possible someone else killed it," Erec said, not super happy with that train of thought. A level 7 monster, he knew, would be challenging but something they could overcome. A level 8 monster, on the other hand, was bound to be a threat that would push him.

With his allies and personal strength, he felt they had good odds against such a monster. The scale, though, was rather arbitrary in general. Not all of the level 4 monsters they fought were the same, just like not all of the level 5 monsters they had faced were the same level of danger either. Different things, such as how they fought and their techniques, could rapidly expand into a new, dangerous threat.

The Knights' classifications were based on judgment calls and not personal experience. This means that, like earlier, with the training that Boldwick had given them and that weird glass monster they had encountered out in the wastelands, an initial scouting report couldn't always be a hundred percent trusted. They had to make their judgments in the field, which would come once they knew what they were facing.

"Even if it were dead, we should have found some traces by now," Garin said as he peered over and glanced at the map that Erec was operating off of.

"Maybe," Erec sighed as he patted his friend on the back. "Don't get too nervous about it."

"It's just that I don't have your kind of strength.”

“You’re doing well.”

“But not like you and Bedwyr,” Garin insisted.

"Yes, but you're the reason we've been able to find these monsters, and you handle yourself plenty well on a battlefield. You know, Garin, that raw strength isn't everything."

"Sure," Garin shook his head, "but it makes you feel a lot safer when you're facing down something with a lot of power if you have it too..."

Olivia, who had been overhearing the conversation, grabbed Garin by the hand, leading him away and talking to him to try to calm him down. His nerves were getting a little too worked up, and Erec wasn’t exactly the person to talk to when one wanted to ‘calm down’ before a fight.

Although the desert air around them was foreboding, knowing that anywhere this monster could be lurking as they closed in on the destination, Erec only felt excitement. As if the air and world around him were bright and alive, he appreciated seeing everything to an extent he never could before. Life was amazing, and knowing that he'd be facing something that took him to the brink of life always brought with it an overwhelming appreciation for the things around him.

For example, he stared at Enide walking ahead, her eyes scanning left and right. She saw him staring and smiled, her face gorgeous and beautiful, as if a Goddess in the flesh. Then he saw his brother not far away, pacing near the caravan, that new spear on his back a sign that he'd changed in a way that Erec could have never predicted, but glorious nonetheless.

Moments like this made life all the more worthwhile.

Though he held a certain confidence they could tackle any threat marked by the Knights, short of something on a cataclysm-like level… There was always that wonderful uncertainty.

About fifteen minutes later, they reached the exact point on the map. And found nothing.

There, Erec felt that cold twist of a knife that was concern.

"Maybe someone really did kill it already," Erec muttered, looking at the ground to find any trace of the monster.

The ground wasn't exactly normal. It was more loose dirt, which seemed saturated with water compared to the dry wasteland around it. This place saw a rift that had opened up nearby and had changed it not long ago, which is where this monster must have spawned from in the first place.

So the signs were there that it had come into this world like this, but the signs weren't there of anything else. There weren't footprints, nor any discarded bones from something that ate. Just the wet patch of land. And that was it. The map didn't give detailed scouting instructions for what they found on the ground, meaning identifying and flagging threats was part of the hunt. As Erec's eye scanned the ground around him, he saw nothing. No indication that there was a monster here, aside from this weird anomalous ground.

"Or it went somewhere else," Enide suggested.

Garin shook his head. "If it did, I would have seen it. My birds have been circling this area for the last few hours and haven't seen anything."

Erec nodded to his friend and then hunched over, running his gauntlet through the dirt. He watched as it slid off, some of it sticking, still wet.

"How long ago could the Rift have opened up?" he wondered. They'd been in the wasteland for days, and the Knights had flagged this threat before then. Surely, if that were the case, this should be dried by now.

[Tremors.] VAL buzzed in his head.

Erec instantly sat upright. He looked around and couldn't see anything at all. Then VAL clarified. [There are tremors beneath you right now that suggest something is moving beneath the earth, but disturbing it at a minuscule rate. The displacement is severely low.]

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Something below.

Though he was a Knight Initiate, he’d already seen his fair share of combat. And that combat had brought hard-won instincts. That information was all he needed to know before shouting, “Retreat! Something's coming from beneath us!”

They ran toward the caravan—only for the earth to erupt and confirm Erec’s statement a second later. A long, lanky, scaled monster broke the surface. Fins on its back and black scales everywhere—it looked somewhere between a snake and a fish, and as it stared at them, its fins moved, churning dirt like it was swimming in it.

The dirt beneath their feet shifted, turning into something between mud and water as it suddenly became a lot less solid than it had been seconds before. Erec’s allies cried out in fear as they were inexplicably drawn into the ground itself by this odd, liquid-like change.

Terrifying.

Erec grinned nonetheless as Fury began to burn. He yanked his foot out of the sinking ground, needing a burst of Strength to prevent it from drowning him… Thankfully, with the embers catching inside, he had plenty to spare. He shot at the fish, and in a burst of speed was upon it, swinging his axe in a wild arc.

The monster didn’t expect it as he made a clean cut in its flank, spilling swamp-like blood across the liquid ground… As Erec touched the surface once more, his foot began to sink within it again. Although he saw the ghost of the fish flinging its body his way as predicted by Q.A.P. he didn’t have enough time to get free with the ground holding him in place.

It landed a blow, sending him flying twenty feet, landing clear of the altered soil as he bounced across the wasteland. Armor sparking and denting until he came to a stop.

That’s some force. Erec thought as he pulled himself up to his feet again.

VAL provided a couple of error messages telling him that systems in the Armor had been damaged by the hit.

If it could throw around power like that, this was indeed a level-8 threat. And now it was headed right towards his friends.

Enide vanished from her trapped position and sat on the caravan, firing a las-rifle shot that glanced off the monster’s scales. It roared and swam through the ground, liquifying it even further as Garin, Olivia, Gwen, and Bedwyr dragged further down its depths. With them so far away and knowing that movement would be tough once he got close, Erec narrowed his eyes and pulled deeper at that blazing inferno below

Before he could act, Bedwyr was there, stepping out of the liquid ground and somehow standing on its surface. He ran between the monster and the rest of them. He ignored the roaring beast and stabbed it twice in the face with his spear.

When it moved to crunch down on him, he darted out of the way with precise steps, stabbing it once more.

Then, it got him with a fin, also sending his brother flying fifteen feet.

Not only could this thing dish out damage, but it could take quite a bit of it.

With the last stab, the fish pulled back, darting into the depths of the air and vanishing below. The liquid-like dirt on the surface solidified, letting his friends pull themselves out of it. The fight wasn’t nearly done, Erec knew, feeling his bruised ribs even as he rushed back to the ground. Somewhere below, it was lurking. He’d seen this type of monster before—that Giant Worm that had tried to swallow him whole before had similar tactics.

And he knew what it would do.

“On the caravan!” Erec shouted, pointing to where Sir Matt was.

"They scrambled as quickly as they could, and seconds later, the fish popped back out, mouth wide open, where Bedwyr had stood only a couple of heartbeats earlier. It roared, its full length extending out of the ground. It was like a giant building, scaled and furious as its maw turned to face their steel caravan. The wheel began to sink into the earth. It’d failed to swallow Bedwyr, but by the looks of it, the monster had not given up on its plan.

It darted in with its mouth wide open, its sharp fangs threatening to spear them and chew them to pieces.

Fury burned bright at the challenge. Erec beat it to the punch, throwing himself into the air and, with an overhead swing, cleaving into the side of the fish's face."

His axe stuck for a second, giving him just enough time to shove his hand in the wound and grab onto the cheekbone. A fine enough grip for what he intended to do.

With a yell, he jerked his axe free and then slammed it again into the monster, chopping it as he held on for dear life with one hand. His muscles strained and burned as the heat of the moment only ramped up—it smashed him against the side of the cart, his insides bruised and in even more pain as his Armor dented. In a second, it pulled back, whipping him through the air again.

Once more, Erec slashed his axe in it, letting the Fury and anger roil through him. Despite all the cuts and pain that had been dished back and forth… This thing just seemed capable of taking more and more.

It suddenly shifted, realizing it wasn’t going to be able to bash Erec off its face, and dove into the ground. At this, Erec let go, freeing himself only waist deep in the dirt and not entirely buried. With a grunt and a force of strength, he shoved himself back out of the hole as the monster vanished below.

Once more, the damned thing had gotten away. Erec cursed, anger roiling out of him in waves of heat. He felt it then, deep down in the inferno. That flickering silver fire.

Its hit-and-run tactics were annoying and dangerous, which meant he needed to do something decisive the next time it surfaced.

He reached for the silver flames; it wreathed his axe as an entirely new power began to fill him… And then, he felt it resonate. He looked over to see Bedwyr, his brother’s eyes wide as he too grasped his mantle. Bedwyr jumped from the caravan, rushing to Erec’s side, even as the inferno inside of Erec burned into its glorious silver fires.

“It is good to hunt with you again, Erec,” Bedwyr said, his voice distant.

“Thou do me an honor, and bring our prey free?” Erec asked, his tongue once more slipping into that odd historical Knight’s tone.

Bedwyr raised a hand… And once more, formed a massive earthen glyph. The ground beneath them shook, and Erec braced, slamming the handle of his massive silver-flamed axe into the dirt to support himself… More and more dirt pushed free, until a massive plate of stone rose to their feet, revealing the giant flopping body of the fish, now removed from its element.

With a single glyph, his brother in arms had formed a giant plate of stone and manually raised it above the ground… All to catch their prey.

Erec grinned.

He stepped forward and got to work, chopping away with his axe as he spilled swamp-like blood over the earthen rock. Whenever it looked like the fish was about to escape, Bedwyr bound it down with more stone restraints. Once he was confident that the fish could no longer move, he joined Erec, stabbing it in the face with his spear until it stopped moving.

It took a grand total of five minutes. The end result was a cleaved apart fish on an earthen plate. It had quite a lot of vitality, but between the two knights of the round, it had been a worthy hunt.

Matt stood up from the caravan, clapping his hands as he looked at them. "Well done," he called, his voice shaking the earth. Keep that up, and you'll be going somewhere.

Erec felt the silver fire retreating, and with it came a notification.

Soul (Aspect: Fire): Rank C - Tier 9 → Rank B - Tier 1

Vigor:Rank C - Tier 8 → Rank C - Tier 9

He almost gasped at it. His Soul had broken through the bottleneck, and as a result, he felt closer than ever to claiming that mantle. He could also see the round table then, its presence overlaying his current reality; he had taken a step. And now, he understood what it meant to be a Knight of the Round Table. What it was to fight with your brothers; your soul sworn brothers.

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