Chương 186: Chapter 262: Wirehair Gorilla

"North side!" Will shouted, solidifying the air so his voice only reached the Party rather than the monsters in the distance. They didn't want to make any more noise than necessary with how close they were to the watering hole. The creature charging them moved with a strange gait, with two front limbs that were longer and more sturdy than its shorter hind limbs, giving it an odd lope. It had steel-grey colored fur that covered it's entire body.

It was about two-thirds the size of Aguilion, and its massive fangs were bared in a snarl as it rushed towards the vanguard of Rias. That's the wirehair gorilla Aguilion mentioned, isn't it? Braided wire snapped out of the ground and sliced into the wirehair gorilla, denting the fur, without sinking into the creature's actual flesh. Will swooped down and caught a better look at the creature. Interesting. Will hit it with half a dozen cannonballs, causing the monster to tumble backwards with an angry roar.

"My traps aren't doing much damage," Loth said, arriving beside him.

"I have passive defense reduction, so I'm wondering why."

"It's the fur," Will said, studying the creature with the Uru Drake's Eyes. Loth's defense bypass for her traps only worked with things that had Miasmatic structures reinforcing them. It didn't really make the traps any more effective on things that were nonmagical. Typically that wasn't a problem, because almost everything had a bit of defensive magic in it at this level.

"It's fur is literally made of wire," Will said. The wirehair's actual miasmatic structures were tucked safely away beneath a layer of nonmagical hair grown with magical intervention. Slashing damage would be blunted by the creature's fur, before it even reached the creature's Resistance. It was an excellent layered defense, and Will wouldn't be surprised to learn that there were more layers under the surface.

"Piercing weapons, then," Loth said, following his train of thought. She pulled out a satchel full of tools and withdrew a drill bit half the width of Will's wrist, and longer than his forearm.

"By the way, mine's sixteen inches." Loth said without looking away from her work, affixing a firing mechanism to the back. Did she just make a joke? Aside from the comment, Loth was completely focused on her task and gave no sign of levity.

"…" Will stared at Loth for a moment before shaking his head and turning to Ria.

"Boar spears!" Will called to them. Brianna's current kit was designed to strengthen her copies and allow them to summon phantom weapons for themselves. Ria preferred a halberd, but a boar spear was more appropriate for the opponent. The three Ria nodded, their halberds changing to extra thick spears with oversized cross-guards a couple feet back from the tip, meant to catch a massive charging monster.

"Do you have a spare one of those?" Will asked, pointing at Loth's drill bit. He had stored a chakram and a cannonball which worked well for slashing and brute force, but he didn't have anything great for piercing armor. Loth grunted and tossed him another Blessed Steel drill bit before dropping the firing mechanism which was drawn into the earth in the blink of an eye by her legion of minions.

Will could vaguely follow the progress of the trap as her Draconic domain rippled through the environment, allowing her minions to move faster through the ground. Will snatched the drill bit out of the air and stored it. Dimensional Storage 253 Charges remaining. Manifestation. Focus 296 -> 240 Will manifested four of Loth's drill bits and shot them out of Phantom hand in a rapid stream, dismissing them after they pierced the creature's hide, to fire them again.

The Wirehair Gorilla gave a shriek of rage and pain, causing the flying birds and snakes in the canopy to startle and flutter away. Crap. We made a bunch of noise. They were only about a hundred yards from the watering hole. You could even see some monsters moving around in the distance between the trees if you got lucky. The question was, would the noise of a wirehair in pain attract more enemies or would it drive them away? In any case, it would be best to move back towards their fortified fallback regardless.

Best play it safe.

"start pulling back!" Will directed Ria and Travis. RRRRRRRR The ground rumbled as something, or perhaps a lot of somethings charged towards them. Crap. Meanwhile the wirehair gorilla was thrashing wildly, moving too fast and unpredictably to get a perfect shot as it charged towards Ria and Travis. I've got the Ring of Explosive Doughmaking on, so my options are limited…. or maybe not? Will took out the Clay Idol of ouroboros and smashed it against his knee. Sourdough.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. 239 Charges remaining. My, how you've grown, Will thought as the Immortal Serpent manifested, big enough to swallow Aguilion, it's coils wrapped around their Party and the Wirehair. Form a wall, Will gave it a mental directive, and the snake moved to obey, looping over itself to create a wall of flesh isolating their battle from the rest of the forest. The massive gorilla smashed against Ria's boar spears.

One spear snapped, but the other two held, digging long furrows into the ground and shoving the three of them violently backwards as they held on. An instant later, the wirehair gorilla smashed the two boar spears aside and lunged towards Ria, coming face-to-face with a wall of bristling spikes, courtesy of Travis.

"Man, you suck at this!" Travis shouted from behind the wall, his voice laced with luring magic. The wirehair's eyes widened for an instant before it went even more feral, smashing through Travis's illusion with minimal damage, crushing Travis into the earth with a single oversized fist. Even if his illusions are stronger than the real thing, they're not quite keeping pace with the monsters, are they?

Will was a bit conflicted over how much he enjoyed watching an illusion of Travis get plastered across the forest floor. It was probably an indirect side-effect of his Taunt Ability. Outside, a stampede of monsters broke around the Immortal serpent coiled around their fight.

Some were giant flightless birds with teeth the size of Will's palm, while others were low-lying crocodile-looking creatures with opalescent scales> The unicorn pigs made an appearance as well, along with a snot-monster with tentacles leading its every move. Quite the variety. This is exactly what I was afraid of happening. The flightless birds leapt forward, leading with their claws and teeth, biting into the immortal serpent's side. Better it than us. Will happily welcomed the delay.

Every second they weren't adding their attacks to the mix was a blessing. The crocodiles were similarly stopped by the wall, but the snot-monster began slipping through the crack between the two layers of snake. All three Ria were charging forward with their spears held high when they suddenly stumbled. Will traced a gossamer thread of miasma back to a handful of unicorn pigs in the back, their heads lowered, horns glowing with miasma.

Since their heads were lowered, Will figured it would be rude not to take advantage. He shot each of them with a chakram directed straight at their spines. He got two of them clean, causing them to flop to the ground, but bone caused the other three to deflect off, leaving them heavily wounded, their concentration broken. Ria snapped back to consciousness an instant before a massive fist clobbered the three of them, sending them tumbling to the side, slamming up against the immortal serpent fencing the battle in.

"Now." Loth said. The wires sprung out of the ground, and this time they were barbed. They caught the wirehair gorilla's neck and dragged it down to the ground. An instant later, the drill bit nearly the size of Will's arm shot up through the top of its head. Okay, that wasn't so bad, Will thought, turning his attention to the battle at large.

The monsters of the watering hole might treat each other like rational animals, but upon noticing Climbers, they became enraged, as though Climbers were an affront to everything they stood for. For a brief slaughter, they were putting aside their differences and trying to kill Will and company. The Unicorn pigs have some magic to watch out for. The opal crocodiles… I could stand to make some really gaudy bags out of them. The birds… they're especially sharp. The snot monster?

"Travis hit that spot with lightning!" Will said, pointing at where the snot monster was about to come through.

"Got it!" Travis reeled in the shattered illusion of a wall of spears and returned it to a bangle, before shooting it back out as an arm-thick bolt of lightning. At that very instant the yellow-green slime creature's leading tentacle emerged from between the immortal serpent's coils, accompanied by wafting smoke as it burned its way through the snake. CRACK! The crack of lightning was immediately followed by an acrid stench as the snot-monster collapsed.

Despite being an illusion, Travis's lightning could deal direct damage nearly on par with a Nuker. The only problem was… The acrid smell redoubled as the snot monster's corpse burned into the side of the immortal serpent, and Will spotted a glimpse of the outside, where the birds and crocodiles were tearing away chunks of the immortal serpent to widen the newly created tunnel. The frenzied monsters didn't even seem to notice the acid damaging their bodies as they climbed deeper and deeper into the back.

"Back up!" Will shouted.

"Back to Loth's defensive line!" Make a door, Will instructed the summoned snake. Behind them, one of the coils lifted off the ground, creating an exit. Instead of staying and plugging the rapidly widening hole in the wall, they instead abandoned the temporary fortress altogether. Travis and Ria leapt into a sprint while Will and Loth rose into the air. Even the birds and floating snakes seemed to want to join the fun, swooping down around them, harassing Will and Loth with razor-tipped claws and venom.

They were monsters, after all. Will switched to running in midair and whipped the flying ones out of the air with Phantom Hand, creating a safe zone above their retreating Party. Will dismissed the immortal serpent as the party dove behind a line denoted by several trees marked with a large black 'X' drawn with charcoal. Loth made a drawing gesture and one of the wounded unicorn pigs swelled up grotesquely before exploding with ravenous wasps who began tearing into the monsters around them.

This blunted the charge, and rather than a solid wall of monsters, they were attacked by a broken stream of creatures. About ten feet before the black line, traps began catching dozens of the frenzied monsters. Blades, wires, and projectiles tore them to shreds, allowing only a handful to make it past, and certainly not unharmed.

Will watched as Ria caught one of the charging land-birds on her boar spear, planting one foot on the end of the spear, her muscles bulging as she raised the monster off the ground before tossing it aside, fluttering and snapping, still trying to reach her even as one of Loth's traps dragged it underground. What can I do? Will thought, sprinting down to rejoin the Party, keeping his attention on the sky above as Loth landed beside him in the backline.

Will kept the fliers at bay while they carefully marched backwards, with Loth activating a new set of traps every time they crossed a black 'X'.

"I'll work on your expended trap-lines" Will said, tapping Loth on the shoulder and pointing without turning his attention away from the sky. It was strange for her shoulder to be so high. Loth nodded in the corner of his eye and Will stomped down on the ground.

The ripple of his terrain control tore apart Loth's Draconic Domain, sinking deep into the earth before re-emerging at the furthest black 'X', creating a flurry of spikes that killed a handful and wounded many more before the spikes returned to the earth the blink of an eye, merely the result of warped space. Between Brianna and Travis, they were able to handle the trickle of land-bound creatures that slipped past Will and Loth. The opalescent crocodiles were the trickiest.

Their thick hides seemed to interact with miasma on a fundamental level, similar to the giant bone. Will's manifested projectiles, Travis's illusions and Brianna's phantom weapon all crumbled against the monster's skin. Loth's traps worked well enough to slow them down, but their hide was nearly impenetrable. They discovered the best method when Ria punched one in the brain in a fit of frustration.

After that, they created another row of Ria whose sole job was to finish off the crocodiles through brute force as they came close. Half an hour later, the Party was sitting back on top of the cliffside. The pursuit of the monsters had dwindled about halfway, and they carefully made their way back up to the camp to rest.

"Look at that," Brianna said, pointing to the watering hole. It seemed to be just as crowded as it was an hour ago. The 'nibble' they'd taken from the side of the watering hole hadn't even been enough to make a visual difference. I'll have to give Mother my thanks for showing us such a good levelling spot. Will was aware that it was granted on the condition that they hurry up and get off the Floor, but he was still grateful. As long as we don't get killed.