Chapter 43 - A Big Enough Lever

  The other two at my back, I advanced on the remaining two crabs. Off to my right, I saw another set of the things approaching the police line, and I knew there were four more just around the curve in the road. They were going to carve the police up in those spots. The shitty thing about having these magical powers was that as much as I could do, I still couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  “Send runners to the other two defensive positions,” I shouted over a shoulder. “Tell them to fall back. There’s four more giant crabs headed for the other two sets of steps. I’ll go help as soon as I can, but the cops defending the stairs won’t be able to hold them long enough.”

  “We’re on it,” someone shouted from behind the concrete barriers. I heard orders being shouted and figured that meant someone would pass the word along.

  I could take the others down, just like I had the others. I just needed time. With them striking multiple locations at once, there was only so much I could do. I focused on the here and now. There were still two of the enormous monsters here, and a couple dozen lobster fighters escorting them. The sooner I took care of them, the sooner I’d be able to go help with the others.

  Still walking forward, I spotted a sign embedded in the concrete a few feet away. I stepped up to it and ripped it free from the ground. It came loose with a big lump of concrete still wrapped around the base, but a quick slam on the ground broke all the remaining bits away. I ripped the street sign off the top, too. That left me with a hollow steel pole taller than I was—perfect for poking at annoying monsters.

  Marion came up alongside me. “What do you need us to do?”

  She’d clearly gotten over any initial shock at seeing me drop one of the things from altitude. That was good. I’d noticed that some people were adapting faster than others—making the mental adjustment to the new world we’d found ourselves in. I had a hunch that people who were able to make that leap more easily would be better off in the weeks and months to come.

  “Can you drop one of those Fireballs right in front of the lead crab?” I asked.

  “Sure can.”

  “Good. On my signal, do that. Alex, get ready to pepper it with Ice Blasts, okay?”

  “I can hit it with a good one,” Alex replied. “The spell’s tier five now.”

  I glanced his way and grinned. “You made tier five! That’s awesome.”

  He smiled back. “Not quite caught up to you, yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “We’ll all get there,” I replied. I strode forward, holding the pole in both hands like it was a lance.

  The crab, predictably, lowered its head. That presented the back shell, the toughest part of the thing’s carapace. Even with my tier seven Strength, I’d struggle punching through that. It was a decent defensive posture, allowing the crab to get dangerously close to us while blocking ranged attacks with its armor. The lobsters advanced, too, using the shell as cover.

  But as good as that position was defensively, it had a serious weakness, too. The crab’s eyes were in the front of its body. With its rear end elevated and its mouth close to the ground, the crab’s vision was deeply impaired. And we were about to make that a lot worse.

  “Now, Marion!” I called out.

  There was a roaring sound before me, and a Fireball shot past me on my left, streaking directly at the crab and bursting on the ground. Marion had nailed the aim just fine. The blast exploded right in front of the crab’s face, startling it into stopping its advance and even more important, tucking its eye stalks under the shell!

  I rushed in, angling the pole low. It cracked into the pavement two feet in front of the crab’s face with a sound like a gunshot and scraped along the pavement as I shoved it forward. The crab heard the sound and pulled its eye stalks back out, but it was way too late.

  The pole slipped into the narrow gap between the shell and sidewalk, screeching as it punched through the narrow gap and gouged a groove in the cement. Two massive claws reached in from either side to grab me, but I wasn’t going to give it enough time to finish the attack. The pole was a couple of feet under the crab’s body, and that was all I needed.

  With a grunt, I pushed up on the pole, driving it forward as I did. The whole thing acted like a lever, lifting the front end of the crab into the air. Its claws slashed by wildly over my head as it tried to recover its balance, but a crab standing on its rear legs had no real leverage.

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  Alex knew his signal when he saw it. An Ice Blast shot past my shoulder and slammed into the crab’s belly, blowing its way through the more fragile armor there. He didn’t stop there, either. A second blast followed the first, striking close to the crab’s mouth.

  Both blows finished the job I’d started and flipped the beast over entirely. It crashed into the street behind it, legs wriggling wildly as it tried to right itself. I jumped, landing square on the thing’s belly armor, and then drove the sign pole down through the plates once, twice, and a third time just for good measure.

  The crab gave one last convulsive move of its legs, then went still.

  An Ice Blast smashed into my chest. It hurt, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. The crab’s body wasn’t the easiest perch, and the Blast knocked me clean off my feet. I slipped and landed on my back, still atop the crab.

  “Castle! You okay?” Alex called out.

  “Fine!” I shouted. I pushed myself back upright, using my hands to brace myself against the dead crab’s body. A tier five crystal popped out into my hand and was immediately absorbed. The rush of memories made me dizzy as the stone merged with the other tier five Natural Armor spell I had socketed, which in turn then also merged with the other tier six spell of the same type. They’d all combined into a single tier seven stone.

  If they’d thought I was hard to kill before, they were in so much more trouble now.

  The last crab had stopped in its tracks. Beside it, lobster warriors were trying to coax it forward, but the creature wanted nothing to do with it. I could understand that, and I wondered if there was a way to get it to leave on its own. From what I was seeing, the lobsters were intelligent. This invasion was their doing. But the crabs seemed to be creatures they’d domesticated, or had under their control somehow.

  I sped forward, pole in hand, and swung the weapon like I was trying out for the Major Leagues. The first swing took down three of the lobsters, blasting them to pieces with the impact. I swung again and took down two more.

  Alex and Marion saw my focus shift and joined in. With the leading crab dead, there was little cover remaining for the lobster warriors. Each Fireball Marion launched sent lobsters flying, and every Ice Blast Alex fired off found its mark, killing another foe.

  In just a few minutes, the lobster fighters were all dead or fled. The crab still stood there, though, slowly backing away from me and acting like it wished it was anywhere else.

  I frowned, thinking. Maybe—just maybe I didn’t have to kill this one. And yeah, maybe it was stupid to think that way. It was a tier five monster, after all, and it would drop a tier five stone, probably in something I could really use.

  All I could see when I looked at it was the obvious fear. It was smart enough to know that I was a deadly threat, and it was terrified. That made the decision for me.

  I turned back to Alex. “Listen, I’m going to deal with this one and then go help against the other crabs. Loot all the lobsters you can and then make your way north to the main police force. I’ll catch up with you there once I make sure the other defenders can get out safely. Oh—take these, too.”

  I fished some of the crystals I’d gotten earlier out of my pocket and handed Alex the Lightning Bolt stone. “That ought to help you a ton.”

  His eyes lit up when he saw it. Now that he was tier five, he could identify crystals, same as I could. “Tier three Lightning Bolt? Oh, yes. I can absolutely use this. Thanks, Cameron.”

  “These, too,” I said. I handed him all the Ice Blast stones I’d managed to collect. “Probably not enough to rank you up, but every little bit helps, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Alex replied, taking the crystals. “Here, you can use these better than me.”

  He handed me three tier two Strength stones and a pair of tier two Stamina stones. I slipped them into my pocket. “Thanks!”

  Then I stepped forward and touched bits of the two dead crabs from my ‘flying crab’ experiment. Both had been killed by the impact, and they dropped a tier five Strength stone and a tier four Agility stone that was immediately absorbed into my grid. That in turn merged with another one turning into a single tier six Agility stone. The tier five Strength stone was then absorbed into the newly opened slot.

  The rank-ups were coming fast and furious. It was these giant crabs doing most of the heavy lifting, as far as that went. With each one dropping tier four or five stones, they had a massive impact on my growth.

  I had a few seconds, so I slipped the Will stone I had socketed in Point 4 into the newly empty Point 1 slot. That left Point 4 entirely empty, which meant I could slot a new color of crystal. Without hesitation, I dropped in the Water Breathing stone I’d found. Maybe that was dumb, but we were getting a fair number of blue stones from these invaders, and since we were fighting an aquatic army, I had a hunch breathing water might come in handy sometimes soon.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Strength

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Stamina

  Point 1, Third Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Agility

  Point 1, Fourth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Strength

  Point 1, Fifth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Will

  +

  Point 2: Yellow Stone (Tier 4) - Flight

  +

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 7) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Second Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 2) - Regeneration

  +

  Point 4: Blue Stone (Tier 2) - Water Breathing

  +

  Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 1) - Strength

  Spare Stones

  Clear: Strength (Tier 1) x1, Charisma (Tier 2) x1, Will (Tier 2) x1, Will (Tier 1) x2, Strength (Tier 2) x2, Stamina (Tier 2) x2.

  Yellow: Air Elemental (Tier 2) x1, Gust of Wind (Tier 2) x2

  Grey: Natural Armor (Tier 1) x1

  Then it was time to deal with the scared crab. I glanced back at Alex. He was already gathering up the crystals from the dead lobsters. Marion was, too, further cementing in my mind the idea that she was a survivor-type.

  “Stay safe,” I told them.

  Then I rushed forward toward the crab, ducking under its claws, and grabbed it by its shell. I had recovered enough mana to do a little flying again, so with a burst of magic I sent us both airborne, the crab’s legs and claws slashing through the air wildly as we rose into the sky.