Weeaboo Vol. 2 Chap. 79 Circle Stomp (Patreon)

The boss monster had become temporarily immobilized. I say temporarily, because there is no chance in hell something that big and nasty would just sit still and let itself get hit. It would have some kind of leaping attack, or run around using a few of its arms to lift the whole damn wagon off the ground or something. And until it was ready to do that, it was in full defense mode.

The Dyn Hunlief was huge, larger than the other two I had encountered. If you included the mass of the wagon it was fused to, plus the oxen, it might even out mass a titan sized monster. Its six long arms seemed to flow bonelessly when it wished them to, making those mace-arms into meteor hammers. Right now, the arms were flowing over and around the wagon, tracing a rough sphere in the air. 

The monster was strong enough to deflect a cannonball. Anything coming into the range of the arms would be crushed into a smooth paste. But could we really rely on crossbows and muskets to burn the monster down before it recovered its mobility? It seemed unlikely.

It was a puzzle, and not one I was meant to solve. It was the phase change animation, for lack of a better term. That blasted, blasted, immortal moment when everyone was screaming to kill the thing before something nasty happened, but the game wouldn’t let you do it. 

Doubly unfortunately, those long arms could reach all the way to the ground. I didn’t have a nice weak spot to try and attack. What I did have was Othai, who believed weak spots were made, not wished for. 

“Matchlocks, crossbows, surround and fire at will. Corporal Mika, if you could?”

“Gladly, Commander. CROSSBOW SQUAD! Tower Wall, and burn that thing down for me!”

She had been saving her ult. I hadn’t realized that the mercs… wait. Could the mercs use an ult? I hadn’t seen the faintest hint of anything remotely like magic here, whereas it was pretty out and open in Gradden March and Hidden Moon Mountain.

“What the actual hell?”

Mika pulled together her double strength squad, bunched them shoulder to shoulder, and they planted their shields into the hard ground. “For Genuda, we stand as one!”

“FOR GENUDA, WE FIGHT!” The squad roared back, the white light of Tower Wall spreading from Corporal Mika and wrapping up the squad. I couldn’t see their faces, but the fanaticism in their voice was far beyond what I would expect from a mercenary. 

“Othai, just what is Mika?”

“I don’t know, my Lord. An Awakened Soul. But in Genuda, there were a bare handful of people like Mika or Dora or any of the others. People who had been through so much, who cared so damn much, that something in them snapped. Some barrier broke, and their obsession became something more. Something magical. We never figured out how or why, my Lord, and not for lack of trying.”

The white crenelated wall rose up, and the mercenaries rose with it. It was a little different than when it was five Mikas working together- a bit more disordered, not nearly so bright. But each of those archers were under cover and could fire in a single volley. The swirling defense of the Dyn Hunlief could stop a lot, but not hundreds of bolts a minute. 

Its bellows of outrage were really quite something. I always wanted to interrupt a phase change animation.

“It’s a petty thought, but I always despised these… blessed martyrs. Everyone has been through hell. Everyone is suffering. We have all seen horrors, been disgusted by betrayals, starved, burned with fevers, seen maggots crawl out of wounds. What makes their pain so damned special?” Othai continued.

“One day, I figured it out. I don’t want to talk about what triggered the thought, but it came to me quite suddenly. It wasn’t their pain, it was their love. Not hope. Not determination or anything like that. Just pure love for others. Pain alone wasn’t enough. And Mika loved. I don’t know who, or what, or how. But she loved them enough to hold and fight and die so the ones behind her could run and live a little longer.” 

I could see Othai staring down the monster, her voice reaching me clearly thanks to the magic of the Tower. 

“She loved so damned much. And I never did. Not like her, or Dora, or any of the others. Never had it in me, my Lord, and I don’t regret it for a moment. I have other things to offer.”

Othai looked over at the muskets, who had been shooting as quickly as they could manage into the monster. “Aim for the instruments- those drums and horns!” 

I slapped my forehead. How? How could I have missed that?! OF COURSE you disable it’s weapons! It’s like in bullet hell games- you have to knock off the missiles and lasers before you can blow up the alien spaceship’s core. A sort of positive phase change. 

Well, it often triggered new attacks and new attack patterns, but it usually was a victory pre-requisite. 

“Look at its arms, Tower Master.” Versai, pointed, a filthy grin slowly spreading. 

“I’m not seeing whatever you are seeing. Looks like it’s blocking most of the shots, but some are slipping through.”

“Not that, Tower Master. Its arms are shrinking.” I blinked. The mace-sphere seemed as large as before.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure. The amount of muscle is much less.” 

Ah, shrinking in terms of diameter, not length. “Your dynamic vision is incredible. Which I should have expected, but it’s still incredible.”

“Thank you, Tower Master. For praising my… whatever dynamic vision is.”

I was always proud of my twenty-twenty vision. Despite everything else, at least my eyes were fine. But Versai could have been a fighter pilot. Or a baseball player. I hear some of them can see the stitching on a baseball and can use that to figure out what kind of pitch is coming. Might be a complete myth, but I kind of believe it.

“It’s been consuming its oxen to heal up to this point. We can expect it to summon minions that it can also eat, or for it to eat the bodies of the dead, or try to snatch up our people and eat them. Othai, don’t let it have its way!”

“Yes, my Lord.”

The monster wasn’t stupid. Locked by the game into certain patterns, but not stupid. It kept its defense running until Tower Wall collapsed. The crossbow mercs fell down. Some managed to crawl back to their knees, but most lay flat. Like the early days- using Mika’s ult imposed a long period of weakness. 

Naturally, that’s when the monster chose to make its move. It flung its arms out with a roar, ignoring the damage being done by the muskets. The mace-ends of its arms pressed down on the ground, all six on the ground to the beast’s left. With a vile burst of strength, it contracted its waist and lifted the whole wagon over its head and back, forming a shield. 

It had gone from an evil war god on a chariot to a satanic hermit crab. I couldn’t see the humor, as its fanged maw was low to the ground, slavering as it looked at the helpless archers. It scuttled forward fast. Faster than anything that big and heavy had any right to. Like something from a nightmare. 

Othai had been living that nightmare for a long, long time. “PIKES, CHARGE!”

She crashed a whole damn wall of pikes into the beast’s side with absolutely no warning. She must have had them waiting, primed for the order. Four rows of stout ash pikes tipped with fine Genudian steel stabbed into the beast’s body. 

“PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT AND SHOVE!” The Ancients roared their encouragement, waving their flags and urging their comrades on. Standing in the very front line, in their bright costumes, waving a flag. The most visible people on the battlefield. Unarmored and unafraid.

The press of pikes. Once the charge ended in the clash, they would set their feet and shove. The weight of the formation pressing forward, crushing the enemy one step at a time. A technology as old as Total War: Rome, or the ancient Greeks if their research can be trusted. The Yari Ashigaru technology that made Oda an OP faction, and made Europe be cool with the Swiss pivot into banking.

“Toblerone is a trash candy bar. Just absolute trash. But it does occur to me that a long row of pointy, mouth stabbing offenses to human rights is on-brand for the Swiss. Does Genuda have a chocolate industry?”

“I don’t know, Tower Master. Oddly enough, it’s never come up, what with the constant death and terror.”

The pikes were shoving the monster to the side, forcing it to skitter to maintain its balance. It was very stable, with its six arms spread wide, but it could only flail one arm at a time to try and knock away the pikes. Given its position, it couldn’t build up much in the way of speed or mechanical advantage. 

When a pike broke, the soldier carrying it was passed back through the formation and sent to the back row. While they were back there, they fiddled with the spear, and then I blinked and they had a brand new looking pike in their hands.

“Wait, wait what the hell? Their pikes repair themselves?!”

“Yes? That’s how pikes work? Tower Master, what do you think happens every time the Dora’s charge into things? Those pikes are sturdy, but they aren’t that thick.”

I had to laugh. Video game logic. The unit wasn’t dead, so of course it had a functional weapon. It just needed to go through an animation first. Program in a disarming effect? Assign a stat penalty for the unit? Do you think they are made of compute cycles? Do you have the faintest idea what multidimensional GPU prices are like these days? And that’s if you can even get them in the first place. Which you can’t. 

“My God. The effects of the Nvidia monopoly are being felt on the fields of Wastet. Truly their dark reach is unparalleled in all of time and space.”

“Are… are you doing alright, Tower Master? It’s just… these last few things you have said seem completely unrelated to anything, and I’m I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I appreciate the worry, but yes, I’m doing as okay as can be expected. Look- some of those pikes are buried inside the monster three feet deep. I can see it’s trying to escape, or jump, or do something to change what’s happening, but it’s stuck. It can’t even eat, because Othai is using the pikes to push it around. Not to mention all the Matchlocks shooting it in the face.”

“It does seem to be holding up to the bullets better than I would have expected, Tower Master.”

“Nah, you clued me in on this. Look at the wagon. Abomination that it is.”

“SUFFERING GHOSTS! YOU ARE ALL JUST GHOSTS, TRAPPED IN HELL! AND WE ARE THE DEMONS! WE ARE THE DEMONS, FEASTING ON YOUR SOULS!”

The wagon certainly looked like it belonged in Hell. Things grew on the underside. Things that looked unsettlingly like organs, or human limbs. Furry patches made of waving fingers, and undulating sheets of blue-black… something. But whatever it was, it was shrinking. 

“It’s trying to maintain its basic shape, and it’s using up all the other stuff it relied on to make that… hell wagon it rides on. Othai, should I have Pomoroi shoot it?”

“My Lord may do as he wishes.” 

“That’s a ‘No.’” I muttered. I’d never been called several expletives and a congenital idiot so politely before. 

The crossbow unit was struggling to its feet. You could see they were still utterly wiped out from using Tower Wall, but they weren’t dead. They would be fit to fight in just a couple more minutes. And in the meantime, the pikes pressed on. 

I kept waiting for something to change, something that would give the monster a chance to counterattack. Nothing came up. Othai just kept pushing forward and letting the musketeers shift around to keep up the barrage of small arms fire. The flesh pulled back from the wagon, organs thinned and vanished, and the horror of it all diminished with each firm pace. It wasn’t that the monster couldn’t stage a comeback. It was that Othai wouldn’t allow it any opportunities.

“Watch for when the wagon falls off. That’s going to be its next big phase change. The wagon, and if any limbs get absorbed.” I muttered, but I knew Othai heard me.

“You think it will be able to push itself off the pikes, Tower Master?”

“Or something even more ridiculous, yes. I fully expect there to be something when that wagon falls off. Wings, more legs, tentacles, giant screaming maw that tries to inhale everyone on the map, something.”

Versai looked like she wanted to object, hesitated, then frowned. “It looks like we will find out in a moment.”

The wagon fell off the monster’s back with a crash. 

“I hope you enjoyed your dream of victory, ants. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Tentacles. Octopus like tentacles, but I couldn’t count how many. More than ten. Maybe more than twenty. Long, whipping, writhing, they wrapped around bunches of pikes and started ripping them away. 

“My Lord, if you wanted to do something-”

“POMOROI!”

“By Imperial Decree!” 

The cannons crashed out. The monster swung its arms around again, aiming to smash the cannon balls out of the air once more. There was the most incredible snapping sound. Then screams. The monster had either forgotten it was a lot weaker now, or was simply desperate. It wound up cutting one of its mace-like forearms clean off with the flying cannonball. The other ball got through.

The second ball ripped a big piece of the monster’s shoulder off. The matchlock troops kept up their steady fire, and I knew we were in the death spiral now because each volley was having a visible effect. The monster wasn’t healing the damage straight away, like it was before. They couldn’t do much damage, but it had been very steady. 

Never would have thought of muskets as a DOT weapon as opposed to DPS, but here we are. 

“Though if you think about it, Damage over Time and Damage Per Second, while referring to two very different damage models, are both named essentially the same thing. No, don’t worry about it Versai, just taking the inside voice outside. How are the crossbows doing?”

A volley of light bolts came whistling in. Most were blocked by tentacles. Some stuck in tentacles. And some went through entirely, landing in the torn up shoulder. The monster loudly informed us how it felt about that.

“Never mind, they’re doing great!”

The monster lunged for the pikemen again, then coiled its limbs under its wide body and lept towards the Crossbow Squad. I swore. It moved much too fast for Pomoroi to intercept. Too fast for the pikes too.

“GENUDA!” The scout cavalry charged the monster. Crouched over their saddles, lances tucked firmly under their arms, they came flying over the hard scrub and threw themselves at a monster three times their size and ten times their weight. 

A single blow from one of those mace arms would be enough to crush man and horse together like a cockroach under a heel. But those proud young men came charging in, screaming their war cries and kicking their horses to go faster and faster, as though they couldn’t meet their maker fast enough. 

The monster saw them coming, and smiled. Who wouldn’t want snacks that delivered themselves? It turned for them, reached for them- Pomoroi gave it two shots to the back. The tentacles could crush pikes, could crush people, but they couldn’t slap away cannon balls. They knocked holes clean through the monster. I could see the scouts through them. Then the scouts turned sharply and threw their lances at the monster. 

They never had the slighted intention of getting within crushing range. They were scouts. Their whole job was coming back alive. You want a glorious last charge? Ask a knight. The mercs were on wages, not salary. 

They had good aim, too. I couldn’t see where they all landed, but the monster was moving very, very slowly now. 

The pikes caught up with the monster. The few tentacles that were left couldn’t fend them off. They jammed straight back in and pinned it in place once more. The archers and the musket units poured on the fire, while Othai kept them all coordinated. I held back Pomoroi. More risk of friendly fire than a finishing shot. The mercenaries had it in hand. 

The final moments of the Dyn Hunlief, the monster that orchestrated the terror here in Wastet, that spread that horror to Verton, that killed and slaughtered and maimed and humiliated and defiled uncountable thousands of people, was to be surrounded and bullied to death. 

No great final stand, no heroics, no eldritch powers from beyond. No weeb with desperation and a looted knife. Just people. Tough people, ruthless, disciplined, well equipped, trained and led people. But people. And they were enough. Without all the traitors and idiocy, they would have been enough. Under the glowing fireworks and the floating VICTORY sign, they could finally take the flowers for the triumph they should have had.