Chapter 319: Outsmarted
“Poison?! When-?! How-?!,” Frederick questioned as his body began to convulse violently against the substance flowing through his veins. All at once, he felt like he was on fire, on ice, electrocuted and everything in-between over hydrated and under hydrated. Evidently, he didn’t get injected with just one type of poison, he got injected with a multitude of poisons and venoms all at once.
“I’ve been living down here for the past decade or so bro, you really think I wouldn’t harvest the venom of everything down here?!,” Rocko shouted back with fury and defiance in his voice, a surprisingly difficult task due to the several meter long tentacle running through his torso.
“I’m not sure what kind of bugs make up that stupid patchwork body of yours, but I know for damn sure at least several of them are weak against the venoms I just gave you. Just…like I planned from the start!”
“What?!”
While Rocko talked a big game and told Frederick that this entire situation was planned in order to piss him off more, the reality of the situation was that he was totally bluffing in regards to…all of that.
Rocko didn’t initially plan to poison Frederick during their fight at all, he had thought to just make use of his new talking saber to kick the bastard’s teeth(pinchers) in.
However, the moment he got stabbed in the stomach by the abomination’s tentacles, his brain suddenly went into overdrive as he tried to figure out a way to counterattack, or at the very least, make this asshole suffer for daring to attack his daughter.
Funny thing about running on pure emotion to fight, is that one tends to forget about the items that they have on hand.
Like the extracted venoms of over twenty-seven different spiders and insects.
Granted, it also took his new friend to actually make sure this desperation tactic of his actually worked.
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‘FUCKING HELLS THIS HURTS!,’ Rocko mentally screamed as he felt his insides being torn into “outsides”.
Rocko may have been stabbed, bitten and stung by other giant insects before in his long tenure down in Insect Hell, but there was a difference between being stung by a singular boar-sized wasp, and being stung by what felt like a swarm all in one spot.
On the plus side, Rocko still had his saber in hand.
‘Alright, first I need to cut this stupid thing off. Then, I need a painkiller. Now where are my…hold up.”
The funny thing about pain is that it has a tendency to clear one’s mind depending on the situation.
In this moment, Rocko realized that he may not exactly survive this situation, given the tentacle in his sternum at the moment, so a painkiller may not be as big of a help as it could be right now.
However, it might be enough to make this asshole overdose.
‘And if that’s not enough…I got twenty more!’
Rocko grabbed a handful of venom-filled vials from his pockets and was just about to jam them into Frederick’s limb, when he was interrupted.
{That’s not gonna work…not without my help.}
‘Well I gotta-wait, what?’
{Give a me moment.}
‘Ah! What’s with the tingling?’
A moment later, a weird energy began to circulate within the saber and into Rocko’s, going through every nook and cranny with unfamiliar ease.
The energy felt natural, yet decidedly unnatural, like it was always a part of him yet completely alien.
It felt…right.
‘What are you…ohhhh.’
The energy flowing through him wasn’t necessarily for him, as he felt it entering the vials of venom in his other hand. But as a strange and happy consequence of his body being used in such a manner, it felt a little better.
{There. It won’t take him out permanently, but it will severely cripple his ability to fight for the time being. Now inject him with that shit.}
‘Fuck yeah!’
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“Mnnnnn…papa…don’t…huh? Where am I? Why am I mov-wait, what?!”
“Grooaann…”
About part way down the hall away from the horrifying chamber of bullshit and death, Rianna woke up to find herself laying on a pair of shields being carried by a pair of rusty metal men.
If she didn’t have a crash course of kaijin and zako knowledge being forcibly being injected into her brain about several minutes ago, she would have been screaming and freaking out right about now…or trying to kill them.
You can take the girl out of the jungle, you can’t take the jungle out of the girl.
“Why in the nine hells am I being…oh right…shit!”
With her consciousness now returned to her, Rianna recalled how when Zhen Liu and his kaijin broke into the forbidden leg, that during their spelunking of this accursed place, she got her ass hypnotized by some weird song like fly being lured by a Siren Widow’s web. Alongside that, she had managed to remember a boatload of traumatic memories that helped to explained why she hated this place so much.
‘Hopefully that bastard starves to death and I won’t have to come down here and…wait… something’s missing.’
A part of her was about to say goodbye and good riddance to this awful, death-scented corpse hole, when she realized that something very important to her was missing.
‘Where’s papa’s saber?!,’ she realized with a sick feeling in her stomach and wide eyes as she looked to her sides.
‘FUCK! THESE GUYS DROPPED IT!’
With this thought in mind, Rianna rolled off of the makeshift stretcher and bolted back down the hallway towards the chamber and the sounds of ongoing battle.
‘Don’t be broken, don’t be broken, don’t be broken!,’ she chanted to herself like a prayer.
She had just remembered for the first time in years the face of someone she cared about, and didn’t want to lose the only physical reminder she had of him left.
Not to the same asshole who took him in the first place.
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‘All melee zakos immediately retreat away from the main body and those faces, keep yourselves occupied with locking down the tentacles. Ranged zakos and kaijin, please try and just pepper this thing with enough ranged arts to blow this thing sky high!’
[Understood. Eruption Cannon]
[Crystal…clear…Echoing Frost!]
[Of course, Maestro! Sonic Bolt! Barrage!]
Following the advice of Logos and Pathos, Zhen Liu immediately commanded his makeshift army to go with the good old fashioned heavy bombardment tactics.
Jets of molten rock, waves of freezing air and stingers fired at the speed of sound peppered Grub’s bulbous body one after the other. Supplementing the attacks were crossbow bolts and arrows made from bone and metal fired off by the zakos, with some of the more unusual looking zakos firing very weak blasts of death aether mixed in.
That said…Zhen Liu had seen enough anime and movies to realize that this barrage of firepower wouldn’t exactly last forever, and that he would definitely need some really really heavy ordinance to take this thing down permanently.
The only issue was, where the hell was he going to get that kind of firepower in a shitty place like this?
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‘Okay, so not even Frosttusk’s World class art combined with attacks from the other two is enough to take this thing down…how the hell do we blow it up?’
=Normally we’d advise making use of [Harmonize] in order to break the abomination into pieces, but…=
‘Yeah, let’s try to avoid that chance as much as possible. I’m assuming having one of the kaijin possess me, while Frosttusk act as my armor and then using [Harmonize], will probably have the same result?,’ Zhen Liu asked. While he hadn’t the opportunity to test this out, this was something that came to mind after having undergone both in separate instances.
=Your body isn’t strong enough yet to handle the power of three kaijin at once, you would probably end up blowing out your legs in the process.=
‘Cool, so unless I can figure out a way to combine the power of all three of them into one big attack, we’re essentially in a stalemate?’
<=Yes.=>
‘Well it’s not like I have an overly plot convenient tool that let’s me-hold the fuck up.’
Zhen Liu had been so caught up in this battle, that he almost forgot that dangling on the side of his hip was a gourd-shaped chaos tool that had abilities marked as [Mix] and [Cannon].
As he held up the gourd to his eyes, he figured that much like how certain heroes learned how to use their stuff mid-battle, he’d have to do the same.
‘Okay so if this end serves as the nozzle, then this end…okay wow.’
As Zhen Liu observed the gourd in his hand, he soon realized that the bottom circular part wasn’t solid, but instead had a little glass dome with cylindrical slots visible underneath it.
It took him all of one second to realize the [Cannon] function of this thing…and another to realize the [Mix] part.
‘Killer magic centrifuge…amen.’
