Venom.
And a potent acid at that.
They’re gonna be tough to deal with. Vir felt confident he could defeat one of these in isolation, but they never moved in groups of less than six. Only rarely did they ever split up far enough to ambush one, but it was still close enough for the others to respond to.
He also learned why they were called hunter-gatherers. Several carried corpses on their backs. Because of their size, they made good beasts of burden, and Vir suspected it was the hunter-gatherers who retrieved corpses from the front lines, bringing them back to safer zones for the workers to break down and carry the rest of the way back.
Which meant they were incredibly sturdy. While Vir was no expert at estimating Balar Ranks, he put them well above the scouts, which Tia had said were in the ten to twenty range. These hunter-gatherers couldn’t have been anything less than double that.
The only deficiency Vir found was that their sensory range was less than those of the scouts. He’d snuck up to within twenty paces of them without detection.
What intrigued Vir the most about their behavior was how they communicated with the scouts. Occasionally, a group of scouts would meet up with the hunter-gatherers, forcing Vir to retreat.
From afar, he saw the two clack and gesture to each other. Possibly the scouts communicating the locations of new prey.
Which means they’re at least semi-intelligent.
Every Ash Beast Vir had encountered until now seemed to possess a level of intelligence that simply wasn’t seen among run-of-the-mill prana beasts. Not only did they boast absurd Balar Ranks, they were intelligent, too. A deadly combination. However, every record he’d seen said that Ash Beasts in the Ashen Realm were mindless. Perhaps the prana density of that realm simply addled their minds.
It meant that while Ash Beasts outside the Ashen Realm were naturally weaker due to the lower prana densities, they could think far more clearly.
Vir left the hunter-gatherers and pressed on. It wasn’t difficult to know which way to go—at this point, Prana Vision blazed with countless enemies. Vir merely headed toward the area with the greatest density.
As he did, he was forced to rely on Dance of the Shadow Demon more and more to avoid detection. Tia might have considered his mission a success already, but Vir wasn’t yet satisfied. When they eventually fought the Matron, the more information they had, the better. Did it boast combat capabilities of its own? Or was it more of a queen that needed to be protected by its minions?
Vir didn’t have to wait long to find out. A familiar series of wooden spikes came into view, and for a moment, Vir wondered whether he’d gotten turned around. But the swarm of hunter-gatherers and workers told a different story.
The Matron’s lair is fortified!
Just like their own base, an array of palisades surrounded the Matron’s lair, though her walls lacked the spikes Vir had crafted.
Even so, this level of organization spooked him. It spoke of intelligence near to that of humans, or perhaps even on par with it.
Wonder if we can communicate with it?
He quickly banished the thought. One look at the number of enemies that surrounded him squashed that idea. He didn’t have a death wish.
Vir sank into the shadows and settled into the pitch-black realm, observing the Matron inside her lair.
He’d expected a large, bloated creature capable of churning out minions, but what he found looked more like an oversized hunter-gatherer. Standing higher than Vir, its six pincer legs connected to a long, slender body that had even thicker armor than the hunter variants. Two tall antennae protruded from the Matron’s head, which Vir assumed it used for detection. Based on their size, the Matron might have had better senses than even her scouts.
What’s more, her prana was pitch-black, without even a trace of the other affinities. That was in line with all the other Ash Beasts Vir had encountered, except hers was several-fold denser. He noted her minions didn’t share the same composition. In fact, they usually had several ordinary affinities, ranging from Life to Shadow to Earth. But not Ash.
Is it because she’s eating regular prana beasts to birth them?
Right now, the Matron was preoccupied with her food. A pile of Ash’va, bandy, deer, and other animal corpses lay beside her. Judging from the pile of excrement behind her, it looked like she didn’t move overly much.
Then again, her body allowed her to move as freely as she liked, so Vir suspected it was a choice rather than a limitation.
The Matron was supposed to have a Balar Rank between 400 to 700, but that figure represented the combined might of her entire brood and applied to the Ashen Realm and the prana densities there. Vir doubted this Matron would be over two hundred, but that didn’t mean he could take her lightly.
While he’d have loved to analyze her behavior, it was far too dangerous to leave any portion of his limbs outside of the shadow realm this deep into enemy territory. There was only so much he could learn with time stopped, but one thing was obvious. Tia’s estimate of a few dozen opponents had been woefully inadequate. They were up against an army of two hundred or more. Many of those were workers and scouts, and while the former might be safe to ignore, the latter certainly was not.
Between the scouts and hunter-gatherers, Vir estimated there were a hundred combat-capable foes. Plus the Matron herself.
Once his ten counts were up, Vir chose a shadow at the very edge of his range and retreated. He’d seen enough. Being discovered might set the entire brood after him.
Activating Dance repeatedly, Vir rapidly covered ground, but he didn’t return straight to camp. There was still some time before he was due back, and there was still something he could do.
Vir jumped from branch to branch, taking his time to locate a suitable candidate for his experiment.
After what felt like an eternity, he finally found it. A group of six hunter-gatherers, isolated from any of their brothers. Except these six were currently stalking a group of deer. They’d spread out, with twenty paces between them, and their attention was focused entirely on the hunt.
Vir chose the hunter-gatherer at the very edge of the group and moved in for the kill.
With his Talents, there was no need for a flashy charge or the warrior-like roar Vason was so fond of. In his case, he wanted to attract his enemies’ attention. Vir was the opposite.
He Empowered his legs and shot into a shadow, emerging with an Empowered Prana Blade right under the hunter-gatherer.
Even with a seric katar, he normally couldn’t penetrate the beast’s thick armor, but with prana wreathing his blade and Empower accelerating his thrust, combined with the momentum he carried through the shadows, his blade sunk deep into the hunter-gatherer.
Unfortunately, while it penetrated the armor, the blade wasn’t long enough to reach the prana nexus buried inside it. It was a brutal reminder of the deficiency of his reach.
Maybe I ought to consider getting a longer weapon. But that was easier said than done. The only reason his Prana Blade worked was because of the short length of his blade. Any longer and it destabilized.
Vir rolled out of the way and Leaped in for another attack. The hunter-gatherer repositioned itself, opening its maw. In it, Vir saw green liquid, ready to shoot out.
He threw himself aside, narrowly dodging the acid that flew through the air and landed on a tree, burning away its bark. It can throw venom from its mouth, too? Apparently, the Brood Matron wasn’t a picky eater. He didn’t imagine acid-washed corpses tasted any good.