“Margolls again,” Mobley muttered. “Do you think it’s a sign the monster surge is starting?”
“Possibly,” Humphrey said, “but not likely. There hasn't been an increase in overall activity or a sharp rise in pack numbers. The first sign is usually when solitary monsters start appearing in groups.”
After getting details from the man, Vincent addressed the group.
“We’re looking at a large pack,” Vincent told them, “somewhere around ten to twelve margolls. Geller, are you comfortable handling that many?”
“I want it,” Jason said before Humphrey could answer.
Mobley looked derisively at Jason.
“We’ve seen you fight, Asano,” he said. “You can’t handle twelve. You can’t handle half of that.”
Vincent looked contemplatively at Jason.
“Why?” Vincent asked him.
“Because I know I’ve been falling short, even if I’ve been muddling along. If I’m going to break through, I need to be pushed harder. Put myself in more danger.”
Vincent considered it for a few moments.
“Geller,” he said finally. “You be ready to get him out when it goes wrong.”
“You mean ‘if’ it goes wrong,” Humphrey said.
“I know what I said, Geller.”
Rufus, Gary and Farrah had spent hour after hour, day after day pounding Jason's fighting skill into a usable state. He had come further in just a few weeks than he would have imagined possible, but he wasn't close to matching a dozen monsters. As for the essence abilities he had been relying on in the early days of the assessment, nothing had changed. They were still too slow for a fast-paced battle.
“You don’t have to do this,” Humphrey told him.
“Let him,” Mobley said. “I’d love to see that smug look frozen on his corpse.”
Humphrey glared at Mobley.
“What’s so great about him?” Mobley asked. “Sure, he handled the bark lurker and the rune tortoise, but against anything the rest of us could walk over, his powers are useless. So he gives up on the powers and starts just fighting them straight up? Sure, he’s got some skills, but how long is an adventurer going to last when he fights without using his abilities? He’s not even going to pass if he can’t use his abilities and his combat skills together.”
Jason’s eyes shot open.
Was it that simple? Had he really been that stupid?
Jason's mistake came to him as a revelation. Somewhere in his head, he had been putting his martial arts in a box belonging to his old world, and his essence abilities in one belonging to the new. He had been crippling both by subconsciously separating the two.
“I’m an idiot,” he said.
“I know,” Mobley agreed.
Jason spent the rest of the ride with a grin on his face, eyes flashing as a floodgate opened in his mind. He could suddenly see with perfect clarity how badly he had been hamstringing himself. By the time the wagon turned off the embankment road and down a slope towards the farm, he was itching to begin. He was the first to vault out the back of the wagon.
Vincent had stopped the wagon on the outskirts of the farm. In the distance they could see a clutch of mudbrick farm buildings, past fields of a low, leafy crop. Vincent, still in the driving seat of the wagon, tossed Jason a far-sight crystal.
“We’ll watch from here,” Vincent said. Margolls had poor vision and aura sense, but their smell and hearing were highly sensitive. The group would see everything through the crystal without interfering with Jason’s fight.
As Jason marched away without pause, Humphrey followed. He maintained enough distance that he wouldn’t interfere either, but could still intervene if necessary.
Jason neared the farm’s largest building, a big, square barn. As he did, a margoll came wandering out, chewing on the remains of what, to Jason, looked like the family dog. Somehow, the idea of a dog-headed monster eating a dog made it even more disgusting. The monster sniffed the air, then turned to Jason, dropping its meal in the dirt.
Jason had never been this close to a margoll before. It had the face of a pit bull and the body of a power lifter, with sickle-claw hands. Its arms were drenched up to the elbows in blood, as was its wide mouth. It threw its head back, letting out a wild howl.
60
Making Music
Jason and the margoll faced off outside the mud-brick barn. The margoll’s howl called out more, who emerged from in and around the building to join it. As they assembled, Jason and the first one remained where they stood, gazes locked. Jason was the first to move, walking closer to the wall of the barn.
That first step was like a starter’s pistol, the monsters lunging into a sprint. Jason kept walking casually as the creatures closed the distance, pounding over the dirt. When they were almost upon him, he dropped into the shadow of the building like falling through a manhole.
He rose up from the ground behind the monsters, silently emerging from one of the margolls’ own shadows. In the brief but crucial moment of confusion, Jason noticed the margoll in front of him had loose skin at the back of its neck, like a dog. He grabbed a fistful of skin and yanked back, pulling the monster off-balance.
The creatures were already wheeling on Jason, so when his dagger tore the throat out of the monster in his grip, blood sprayed over the others.
You have defeated [Margoll]
Would you like to loot [Margoll]?
He shoved the dead monster forwards as it dissolved into rainbow smoke. The stench was horrifying, but bearable for Jason. Fortunately, he lacked the powerful sense of smell the margolls had. For them, the smoke was like tear gas, the closest ones staggering away with dog-like yelps of misery.
The group of margolls was large enough that those furthest from Jason weren’t disabled, although they were scattered and distracted. Jason moved right into their midst, making full use of his martial skills in the chaos. Another margoll dropped dead, throat slashed open. A forceful kick to the side of the knee sent one dropping to the ground. Jason’s flashing dagger inflicted more injuries, non-lethal, but distracting enough to keep the monsters off-balance while they were still reeled from the smoke.
Weapon [Night Fang] has inflicted [Umbral Snake Venom] on [Margoll].
Special attack [Punish] has inflicted [Sin] on [Margoll].
Aura [Hegemony] reduces the resistances of enemies for each instance of [Sin].
The margolls started to recover from the stench. Jason moved out of the encirclement he had placed himself in but was only a step away from the reach of those razor claws. One such claw swiped at him and he lifted a forearm to take the strike. The claw raked through his cloth armour like it wasn’t there, cutting deep gouges in his arm. Then, like a burst balloon, leeches erupted from the wound to spray out over the margolls.
The monsters panicked, yelping in horror as leeches dug into any available patch of exposed skin. Leeches buried themselves into the monsters’ arms, bodies and even faces. The margolls scrambled to tear them off, but every leech tossed aside took with it a chunk of flesh in its lamprey-like teeth. One margoll pulled a leech from its eye, which burst into goo as the leech came away.
[Sanguine Horror] has inflicted [Bleeding] on [Margoll]
[Sanguine Horror] has inflicted [Leech Toxin] on [Margoll]
[Sanguine Horror] has inflicted [Necrotoxin] on [Margoll]
The leeches that didn’t land directly on the margolls started accumulating in a pile, lurching towards the margolls at the back who had been missed in the initial spray. Jason raised his arm at the margoll that had cut into him and chanted a spell.