SoK Chapter 199

Swarms of buzzing, thrashing, writhing bugs entered into the domain of TJ’s influence, moving like a slow-motion tsunami of legs, segmented carapace, and general grossness. The word “swarm“ didn’t begin to cover the horror that was the hordes of creepy crawlies that approached. Thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of bugs flowed forward in an implacable body, and only then did TJ realize that he hadn’t been hearing or seeing any of the omnipresent insects in the marshy expanse. Somehow, whatever was controlling these had pulled them all back before the little group came down, and was now using them as a cover or distraction or maybe even some separate threat he couldn’t yet identify.

With an idle thought and several hundred MP, TJ crushed a huge swathe of the creatures, but it didn’t seem to make a dent in their overall numbers.

“What’s going on?“ Sarah demanded as she looked everywhere, not yet aware of what approached, and TJ growled as he checked his Attributes. They’d all been raised by 25%, so whatever was controlling these things was at least an elite, if not a Silver.

“Some damn monster thing is controlling all the bugs that’re supposed to be here.. We’re about to have a lot of small, skittering company. Hope you don’t get scared of any of them, cause there’s not much I can do to take care of them as a whole. Don’t let them in your mouth, eyes, nose, or ears."

Seth squinted, unhappy, but didn’t say anything, while Fareed grimaced. Sarah’s reaction, however, was much stronger than the other two’s. After taking a second to make a theatrically disgusted face and shuddering while repeating, “Not in the eyes,”, she asked, “Do you think they give any experience when we kill them?”

“No they— actually, yes, some do.” TJ cut himself off before he finished speaking to the negative. A small cluster of kill notifications flashed through his mind as he made another sweeping pass of cutting winds through one of the swarms. The only experience gained from the bugs killed was level one, but their descriptions gave TJ pause.

Yaga Thrall (Untiered 0), Level 1, Slain. Experience gained.

“Yaga? Like Baba Yaga?“ TJ whispered to himself as he evaluated the notifications.

“These things have something to do with Baba Yaga?“ Farid demanded as he looked at the notification himself.

“Maybe?“ TJ hesitated. “It just says Yaga here, so maybe Baba Yaga was more of a title? Maybe even some creature that rose to godhood in some measure?”

“So killing these things, it isn’t even worth the effort!” Sarah cut them off. “I don’t get any good experience from all this, and that’s super lame.”

“How about, instead of talking about how things are super lame,” Farid snapped at the Zealot, “you get ready to kill thousands and thousands of bugs before we get eaten alive, how does that sound? Or did you want to have them eat your eyes while they’re still in your head??”

“Booooring… but smart.” She answered as her helmet went into what TJ could only call “battle mode,” though how a plate metal helmet could become more battleready was a surprise. The visor pulled together and morphed until there was only a narrow slit that went from that left edge of her left eye to the right edge of her right eye, giving her a wide field of vision while keeping the rest of her face entirely inaccessible to the horror of thousands of bugs eating her face. Then, she raised her shield and ax, raised the ax to the sky, and lightning flashed into being on the weapon, coalescing from the air itself as she grumbled at the bugs for the affront of being alive in her presence.

“Ooooh, that’s new.“ Sarah said, as she looked at the crackling lightning. Then, there was no more time to continue talking, as TJ’s methodical, but not especially costly, efforts at staving off the enemy, came to naught. A literal wave of bugs exploded out of the undergrowth into the small area the four waited in. TJ, still a snake, felt his tail begin to get touched and crawled over by the insects. Nervous, he kept an eye on his Status, but saw no indication of any new affliction being applied to him, just general discomfort. He whipped his tail through the masses of bugs, getting another dozen kill notifications about level one thralls he’d slain. How were the bugs getting levels? Was it just a manifestation of the System, and could they, potentially, become Deities? They ranged in size from centipede to ant, so it seemed there wasn’t any particular size that seemed to be required to become level 1, and the fact that bugs could gain levels was particularly terrifying, given how many there were in the world.

All that said, there was no more time for TJ to think about anything else unrelated to his current situation. These bugs posed no threat to him, but they were harbingers of something else, and the fact that they remained thralls worried him. He continued to kill as many of the bugs as he could manage while Sarah and her self–proclaimed electric flyswatter went to work. The sizzling sound was punctuated by the acrid smell of burning chitin, and TJ‘s nose demanded some reaction, at least his human side did. As a serpent, he lacked the facial musculature to make the faces the other half of him demanded, and while the human part was a coward, the coatl had a brilliant idea.

“Everybody stand together. I’m about to try something.”

As soon as he said it, Sarah threw herself backward and out of the extermination zone of ants to be near the other two Acolytes, and all three watched as TJ slithered to position his hundred foot long body around them before making lightning flow over his entire body. A creative application of Divine Manifestation drained his resources, but he rolled several times away from his people standing in the middle of his encirclement, his thick body serving as what was effectively a rolling pin of electric death. The flow of kill notifications swelled to an overwhelming tide, and TJ couldn’t pay any more attention to them, instead checking every 10 seconds or so with the System if he was under the effect of any new affliction, though that paranoia gave him no leads. Once he reached the edge of being able to completely encircle his allies, he rolled back and looked at Sarah and Farid for any comments.

“You’re a crazy bastard.” Sarah laughed. “Damn good idea!”

“I don’t know how many of these bugs there’s gonna be, I can’t see the edge, so I don’t know if we should stick around.” TJ said as the wave began closing back in and he rolled back into mass extermination. “Maybe we just cut our losses and try to explore somewhere else.”

“Hell to the no.” Sarah snapped back. “We’re down here to kill some monsters, time is ticking on this new ritual of yours, and I’m not going to just roll over and accept a bunch of wasted time. Seth, what do you know about this Yaga?“

“Well, it’s not too far off. I’d guess it can probably see us, though I don’t know how much further it would be able to see through this place than we can. After all, this is where it lives, and I get the impression that it’s much more magical than most any other thing that we’ve fought until now. I'm not saying that in the sense that it’s stronger or whatever, but more like that what it does is more like magic. You know?”

“This guy just turned into a massive snake, covered himself with electricity, and rolled over like a hundred billion bugs. I’d say that’s pretty fucking magical.” Sarah almost shouted at Seth.

“Do you really need to swear that much?” Farid asked with a strangely relaxed tone. “Your curses begin to mean nothing when you use them so much.”

“Yes, I like to swear! I try to keep the ‘potty mouth’ under control when I’m around kids, now that we’re just adults, I’d like to fucking swear, sometimes, OK? Also, we’re in a shitty situation where all the bugs in the fucking world are trying to eat me, so it merits some damn swearing!”

Farid shook his head, but didn’t engage further on the topic as Seth tried to better explain, “The Yaga is more like how TJ did the rituals than how he turns into a snake or you make your hits all explodey. Does that difference make sense?”

“Yes, it makes sense.” TJ cut off whatever Sarah was going to say, whether she understood or not. “I’m gonna need something to work off of to make this unstoppable wave come to an end. To that, have you got anything workable for me?”

“If I knew more about the monster, then yes. As it is, just about everything I’ve got is plain guesswork. Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” TJ said, wanting to continue but unable to.

“So you just need more information? Let me get you some information.” Sarah interrupted, excited to do something active now that she had a workable, direct objective. Find the Yaga, get information. She swung her ax down and sent lightning exploding forward in a cone on the ground, tens and hundreds of thousands of bugs definitely dying to the attack, maybe even millions. The shockwave spread out at least 50 feet ahead, and she darted into the opening and looked around.

“Any idea what she’s looking for?” TJ asked as he continued to fend off the bugs. Realizing he wasn’t making any progress towards the real enemy, he stopped using any MP to fuel his electrical discharge, instead just using the sheer mass of his body to crush the bugs. It wasn’t as immediate or perfectly effective, and some managed to survive the crushing weight under his rolls, but that was ameliorated by instead slithering in a circle around the two Acolytes while they dealt with any bugs they thought needed their attention.

“It’s going to have a main body. Whether that looks like a human or something else, I don’t know, but there is one body that’s in control of all this, or at least several ruling bodies. Maybe a ritual? Whatever it is, the Yaga has to be spending a resource to do this, or it has spent that resource. How many bugs were around here and being normal when you were down here last time?” Seth asked TJ.

“It all seemed to be regular yesterday, bugs everywhere and so on.”

“There’s no way that keeping this all going isn’t costing them something. It has to, whatever the cost is. I don’t know how much, because this isn’t as directly powerful as most of the Skills that you’ve shown, but there are so many of these damn bugs that it’s got to be difficult to keep up. Probably an ongoing cost, so they’ll have a longer-term goal that they’re working towards while doing this. Otherwise, they’re throwing away resources for no reason. What could they be trying to do?”

“A distraction?” TJ asked, just in time for Sarah to shout, “Fucking shit, but you’re an ugly bastard!”

Then, before TJ could react, an absolute cacophony of lightning and thunder erupted, crashing again and again so fast it almost sounded like a continuous scream of lightning as, presumably, Sarah smashed her ax into the enemy, ideally the Yaga, time and time again. TJ thought to go back her up, but Sarah’s excited laughter was the only sound beyond that of her lightning that TJ could hear, so he just watched until the flashing lightning almost blinded him. Of course, the Nascent Storm Serpent got the impression that lightning would never be truly able to blind him. But there was no other way to describe the absolute eruption of divine theory from the ambushed Valkyrie.

Just as he started to go to try to find out if she needed help or anything despite Sarah’s evident excitement, a kill notification flashed in his eyes.

Yaga Coven Witch (Copper, I), Level 32, Slain. Experience gained.

Then, just as he opened his mouth to ask what just happened, Sarah shouted, “Hey, that’s a cool Skill!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” TJ called back as he reared back to be able to see the woman where she’d evidently dispatched one of, or the monster responsible for the swarm of insects flowing towards the group of four. The bugs still milled about, but seemed to be reverting to their more natural states. Seeing that and still without providing any answer to the questions coming her way, Sarah seemed to have picked the Skill, even with so little time to consider it, as she shouted in what seemed to be excitement. Then, she flared with even more electricity as she cackled, “I’m a Neophyte!”