114. Whack-a-Mole

  First, the outrealmers had to take stock of their limitations.

  “My PULVERIZER arm is useless!” Serac announced bitterly. Indeed, the whole thing had popped out of its socket and locked in place. It burned something fierce, but at least it didn’t lose her any HP. The pain she could deal with.

  “And I’m still pretty low on Health,” Zacko said, considerably calmer. Activation of [Sinner Aspect] had brought his HP down to 1. Despite borrowing Serac’s [Frog in the Well], it hadn’t been long enough for the passive healing to give him a significant buffer.

  The upshot was that neither Wayfarer could afford to take many hits. Which meant they couldn’t rely on their usual division of labor. Both had to draw and evade the Jotuneter’s attacks, while both tried to answer with lethal damage. They’d also have to play it completely by ear. The Jotuneter pressed its advantage, giving the Wayfarers no time for a sidebar. A flurry of tentacle swipes, flying in at once from all directions.

  Duck, jump, and slide. Serac did three things all but simultaneously, narrowly escaping the kraken’s wrath. Big loss of Stamina and more pain for her bum shoulder, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through it, knowing the enemy was under similar constraints.

  Push off her good arm and hop back on her feet, fingers ready on the trigger. But by the time Serac was ready to fire, her target was gone. Slithered back underwater where no bullet could reach.

  “That’s not fair!” she cried. “We hustle to dodge the tentacle attacks, then when it’s our turn to fight back, the thing gets to hide underwater and rest up!”

  “This is where the Yakshas have a clear ‘fin’ up on us,” Zacko observed. “That manta girl back there managed to drive this thing onto the surface for her boyfriend to roast. Want me to try? Not that I’ve the faintest idea how to go about it, mind you.”

  “No, too risky. Instead, we should try to get the jump on the tentacles. We know they have to come out of these holes eventually. If we each cover half of them, we should be able to react before they get a chance to attack.”

  “Ah, so it’s a game of whack-a-mole. Got it!”

  The Narakite had no clue what the Manesferan meant, but she trusted he was on the same page. The two now stood back-to-back, each readying their own hunting ‘tools’. Serac kept her head on a swivel, alert to the slightest movement from any of the openings upon the ice.

  Only… the Wayfarers had forgotten the holes hadn’t always been there. The Jotuneter had to punch them into existence in the first place, and nothing stopped its Stamina-replete tentacles from doing it again. With a loud crack, the ground at Serac’s feet split apart. She did react, but not in the manner she’d hoped. She was forced to dodge-roll out of the way, only to land heavily on her injured shoulder.

  An explosion of pain broke her concentration if not her Poise. The momentary slowdown left her exposed to the rest of the Jotuneter’s ‘combo’. One tentacle, two tentacles, then three. The game of ‘whack-a-mole’ quickly became ‘whack-a-Wayfarer’ instead, as a kraken batted a defenseless Rakshasa between its plentiful appendages.

  [116!], [131!], [155!] -> [402!]

  Poise-break! As if the pain, damage, and humiliation weren’t enough, Serac was now helpless on top of defenseless, left completely at the Jotuneter’s mercy. A fourth tentacle descended then, poised to deal a critically-multiplied finishing blow.

  Thunk!

  Thunk? That didn’t sound like a tentacle slapping a Rakshasa to death. No, it sounded more like…

  “Pete! The hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Focus flooding back along with Poise, Serac sat up and assessed just how she’d survived a sure fatality. Where the tentacle would’ve landed instead stood a [Javelin], tip buried in solid ice. As for who’d thrown the damn thing, simple logic told the story plainly enough.

  Once again, an Anchored had taken a reckless risk on her behalf. Serac forced herself to stay present, pushing aside a painful memory from one Realm below. She couldn’t let Petter’s heroics go to waste.

  By then, most of the tentacles had slithered back into hiding, having exhausted their Stamina reserves. Most, save for the one knocked back by the [Javelin]. The lone tentacle was delayed in its movement, leaving itself within range of a Poise-mended gunslinger.

  Serac knew what to do. The sight of Ash’s [Blood-tipped Javelin] had given her a spark of inspiration. Or rather, a timely reminder of the tricks she had up her sleeve.

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  [Chamber One: BLOOD FOR BLOOD]

  [JOTUNETER Status Effect: BLEED]

  [Wayfarer Status Effect: BLEED]

  [Chamber Two: HARVEST]

  [83!]

  [JOTUNETER Status Effect: EARMARKED]

  Two imbuements from successive chambers. The bullets just barely took a piece off a slithering tentacle, right before it slipped back into the water. As far as Pathsight was concerned, that was enough to afflict the whole kraken with a steady DoT for the next minute.

  Serac had afflicted herself with the same effect. She knew she didn’t have enough HP to tank the projected loss. Not to worry, however. She’d come prepared with several things of dried-up [Ulvknall Liver], sharing the same pocket with the [Frostkrillbane].

  But that could wait. First, she needed to kickstart the next phase of the fight. To that end, she rose to her feet and… beat a hasty retreat.

  “Come on, Zacko! We’re gonna hustle back onto Ash, and we better do it fast, before the tentacles come back!”

  Ash the mobile fortress had taken it upon itself to hang around the battle’s periphery. Its reasonable proximity had allowed a skinny mackerel to fling a [Javelin] into the thick of the action. And now, it allowed the Wayfarers to join him in short order. Just as soon as Serac and Zacko clambered over the ramparts, Ash itself rumbled into action.

  Not a moment too soon. The ice cracked open in Ash’s wake as the Jotuneter punched new holes, now hell-bent on dragging a whole castle into the Netherpool’s frigid depths. The game had morphed into an amphibious race. A landbound castle on one side and a sea-dwelling kraken on the other. Ashvanaga proved up to the task, matching the Jotuneter’s velocity, churn for thrust.

  Up on the battlement, the Wayfarers finally had a chance—though not really the room—to breathe. Munkfred took up nearly the entire space, squeezing Serac, Zacko, and Petter into the gutters formed between tortoise shell and castle ramparts. But instead of moping about the discomfort, Serac chose to focus on the task at hand. The fight was far from over.

  “Nice one, Petey,” she spoke with a mouthful of [Liver]. “Really saved my ass back there.”

  “D—d—don’t mention it, Miss!” Petter yelled from the other side of the tortoise shell. “But w—w—what will you do about the Jotuneter?”

  “I’m working on it,” Serac said with a calmness that belied her predicament. Her calm was genuine, however, for she finally had a concrete plan to defeat the enemy. “As long as Ash can keep outrunning the tentacles, the full duration of the [Bleed] should put a real dent in the Jotuneter’s Health pool. We just need to get a few more hits in to finish it off. Zacko, you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Way ahead of you, Princess.” The Manusya’s voice was already muffled by VISAGE. “Back to the basics, isn’t it? Fitting a square peg into a round hole?”

  “Exactly. It’ll be a lot messier than how the locals might do it, but as long as it gets the job done, I won’t nitpick. A smite is a smite.”

  That sounded like something Serac had said not that long ago. It felt good to have backing from her recent past self. She dragged herself into a half-standing position, digging her heels into the rampart and pushing her back against Munkfred to achieve stability. Not the most dignified position, and a real bitch on her injured arm, but as long as it got the job done…

  A minute passed, with the Jotuneter having [Bled] for every second of it. The four souls up on the battlement remained safe from reprisal, thanks to Ash’s tireless skating to elude the kraken. But the castle couldn’t keep up its frenetic pace forever. It was time to give the good Steed a well-deserved break.

  Serac gave the rampart a light kick, just enough force to get Ash’s attention. The signal, along with the intent behind it, got through to Ash. It promptly slowed its churning, until it came to a complete halt.

  Now, the castle and its over-capacity occupants were ‘stranded guppies’ at the mercy of a tentacled stalker. Tense silence fell, broken up only by Petter’s choked whimper. Serac sympathized with the man’s fear but didn’t share it, for this was all going according to her plan. A hunter using herself as bait.

  The Netherpool opened its jaws. At least a dozen tentacles, dark and glistening, rose from all sides to latch onto Ash’s ramparts. From the Jotuneter’s perspective, this was no different to what it’d been trying all fight long—to punish landbound souls and their inability to be one with ice and water. Yet, after a long and messy fight, the kraken’s Health had dwindled to a manageable chunk. And that made all the difference to the landbound souls atop their castle with their hunting tools at the ready. Because now, one or two whacks would put an end to this mole’s antics.

  [DREAMER Aspect: HAMMER OF JUDGMENT]

  [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]

  The sequence had been timed and sequenced to perfection. First, Zacko with his Erudite-imbued headbutt, channeled and charged for long enough to be a one-shot Poise-breaker. He needed but to connect with the nearest tentacle to enervate the whole kraken. The Jotuneter instantly lost its grip on Ash, tentacles flopping back toward the holes whence they came.

  At nearly the same time, but staggered just enough to follow the Poise-break, Serac unleashed her high-DPS finisher. The timing had to be precise for her to A) take advantage of Poise-break’s critical multiplier and B) catch the tentacles before they slid back into the water and doused the black flames of [Catharsis]. The result was a ‘trade’ that would satisfy any Pretjordian: [235!] points of self-damage in exchange for:

  [367!], [661!], [1,322!] -> [2,350!]

  Maybe a bit overkill? Not if Serac’s shoulder had anything to say about it! Forget dousing any flames; the ‘mole’ didn’t get a chance to retreat into its hole before it faded into Souldust—on both sides of the ice.

  [2,820 ?]

  [Realmhunt Score: 10 + 100 -> 110]

  do kids these days still play whack-a-mole? My second thought: new story idea, LitRPG about an arcade mole rising up against its whackers...

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