Paladin Of The Forsaken Lands (Monster Crafting "Nature" Paladin Lit-Rpg) 134- It Likes You

Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands

The bizarre duplicate of Vrax, comprised of thousands of squirming red forms from the Dispora, lunged at his back while he was still faced off against the bizarre feline amalgamation in front of him. Vrax’s hearing saved him from taking the blow squarely on the back; the swish of its ford spear through the air was enough for him to tilt his body at the last mont.

The spear still landed, scraping across his side and skipping off his armor. It wasn’t terribly powerful, Vrax noted in surprise. Even if he had taken the blow square on his back, he didn’t think it would have punched through his armor, much less his improved resistance. All it accomplished was throwing him slightly off balance and forwards.

Vrax threw a smite at the feline, an unfocused wall of miasma that rolled across the creature, rotting off hundreds of the interlocking forms. The entire feline sagged as its fra shifted, trying to compensate for the loss of so much mass.

Vrax pivoted on his back foot, throwing himself into a fully powered smite aid at his doppleganger. It tried to dodge, but the smite roiled from his spear tip straight through its torso, slagging its entire upper half and causing the fleshy little forms left to flutter about helplessly.

Vrax took a good step back from both struggling opponents. Then threw another wave of miasma at each to keep them useless while he thought.

Okay…not what I was expecting at all! So the tree is just so… lure organ for a colony creature nad a Dispora? It’s not terribly dangerous to ; I could see it being a an bastard if you didn’t have a way to kill hundreds of the little fleshy critters with a blow…Where is the main body then…?

Vrax’s eyes traveled down the trunk of the “tree” and then stared at the ground in growing understanding. “Is this thing a fucking giant antlion with mimic bullshit?” he scoffed and stepped past the feline towards the tree. He gave it a savage kick to the side that sent it careening off, still trying to reform.

“I bet if I... Give you a little wakeup jolt; you won’t stay hidden…” Vrax placed his hand against the tree, about to smite it, then paused for a minute… Oh damn, my mana is too low from all the smites to just try and adapt it… I could stall...no, not doing that. I'll just hope it has eggs.

Vrax let smite roil from his palm in a short arc, nearly rotting the tree clar through around its base. But instead of bark and sap, he peeled back flesh and bone and pissed the creature the hell off. The ground under his feet rumbled and then cracked as an insectoid figure the size of a damned cart forced its way to the surface.

The Diaspora was a bulbous beetle-like creature when revealed from its preferred hiding spot. An unarmored abdon nearly dragged on the ground, set behind a wide head with a pair of mandibles. The now rotten “tree” rose from the tip of the head between its widest eyes. It took one look at Vrax and simply started fleeing through the orchard in slow shuffling steps, flattening trees to get away from him.

Why is everything in the damned forest an ambush predator? Wait, what kind of stupid question is that? I'm an ambush predator too. Walking around in the open is a great way to get eaten out here.

Vrax easily jogged after the creature. It was very much so not ant for aboveground speed or really any kind of speed at all. The strange fleshy creations it had attempted to hunt him with had all scattered the mont it breached the surface and now fluttered behind it like an uneven crimson cloak as it tried in vain to escape.

Vrax was curious, so he let it get a bit further ahead and then lded into the nearby trees. He wanted to see what it would do once it thought it had escaped. The thing either had a very, very poor short-term mory or was not the cleverest creature around because the mont he broke line of sight, it stopped running.

The Dispora slowly crashed into another patch of trees and simply started digging another big-ass hole to settle itself into. Its six long limbs had wide curved tips that acted like damned shovels. Honestly, Vrax was impressed it managed to stuff itself back underground in under two minutes. Its fluttering little minions are flitting around above ground, still smoothing over the loose soil to make its hiding spot look more natural.

I could do worse as far as a road guardian…. With a few changes, these would be aner than hell. The question is, can I even adapt the thing? Its level is pretty high, but its actual power is low. It's an utter grab bag of random abilities thrown together to make…that…

Vrax let his mana slowly regenerate and watched the Dispora’s new hiding spot. The fluttering creatures Vrax decided to call helpers. Because they did everything the main body was too uncoordinated for. After they finished mostly smoothing out the ground around its new hiding spot, most retreated back into its horn.

The helpers that stayed outside the main body fluttered to alight upon the ravaged horn, layering across the damage Vrax caused with his smite. He could barely see the tree camouflage on the horn beginning to regrow.

That is a fascinating creature. It has a mild psychic effect to make things overlook the main body. Houses thousands of little flying helpers that can shape into combat forms and obviously copy beasts, probably to hunt and scare off predators. It even seems to have a thod of fast healing. It's certainly not true regeneration fast enough for combat, but enough that if it gets mangled, it can still recover with ti.

That’s not even counting; whatever the hell it does to the surrounding foliage to make it act like a camouflage shroud. I wonder how long it takes before the surroundings beco twisted to obscure it. Is it months or just a few days? I don’t see it being too fast. The creature has too many damned talents for any of them to be crazy powerful.

Vrax had a curious thought he needed to check on and made his way back towards the Disporas' old hiding spot. It had been there for an awfully long ti based on the way grass had grown all around its hiding spot. There might well be a batch of twenty eggs if they hadn’t gotten smushed during the scuffle.

Vrax praised all the gods above and below as he reached into his pack and pulled out a small foldable shovel. He had learned his lesson after the first ti he had to dig for treasure with his bare hands months ago. He knelt down into the soft earth and got to work digging down into where the Dispora had lived.

It only took him around ten minutes, his enhanced strength and speed plus the soft loam making the task trivial with the glorious addition of a shovel. One mont he was scooping hearty soil; the next he accidentally flung an egg the size of his fist behind himself, where it splattered unceremoniously across a tree.

“Oh shit… I hope there was a bunch…” Vrax cringed and set the shovel down, clearing away the loam carefully to uncover a massive pile of eggs. They looked more like salmon roe than anything else, each perfectly round and slightly filthy. A dull orange surface quivered slightly like a heartbeat. He grabbed one and channeled Adapt Life, turning the surface to a piercing green.

Vrax smiled; it had only taken him a couple points of mana for a change on the egg. He carefully extracted them one after the other; there were nearly sixty of the things. He had been hoping to find a tree to use as a road guard; these things would probably be better after a few changes. And he had enough of them to guard a pretty damn expansive strip of road.

***

It took Vrax a couple trips to his workshop and back and borrowing a big sack from Jonathan, but he managed to get all of the eggs safely piled onto a table, ready for him to make changes.

Lux wandered through the door and then past him, utterly coated in gore, looking like he was half asleep on his feet. He gave Vrax a half-hearted wave and creaked out, “Hunt! Sleep. Repeat!” Before unceremoniously placing his arms around his tree. His body rged into it like the tree was made of water; the ripples faded, and the tree beca solid again.

The only sign the Spriggan was back ho was the flecks of bark whirring around aimlessly, reshuffling themselves still dripping in gore, and the two dull pits of power most of the way up the tree that serve as his eyes.

Vrax laughed at the absurdity of it. His little apex predator tuckered himself out and needed to co ho for a quick nap. He was still getting used to the unique behaviors of the Spriggan. When they traveled together, the tree was within his nagerie, so Lux slept there. He could roam quite far from the tree from what he could tell, but there was a definite limit to it of only a handful of leagues. Plenty far for Lux to get himself into trouble.

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Or learn new words… He really needed to get Lux to stop hanging out with Jonathan and Duchess so much or the little monster's entire vocabulary was going to be quippy one-liners or deeply disturbing threats. Vrax had heard the little guy shout, “Fuck the nobles!” after hanging out with Jonatha a bit too long the other day.

He didn’t disagree with the sentint for the most part. But he was certain that Lux was going to cause one hell of a diplomatic incident at so point in the future between having a potty mouth fueled by a slightly drunk brigand turned king's guard and looking terrifying.

On that note, Vrax looked around, letting himself fall still to take better advantage of his hearing; he still hadn’t found the damned Erald predators. The only one who had seen them was Red. Apparently, one pounced on him when he went into a privy a day ago. While hilarious, he was a bit worried if it happened again, Red might actually cook the little prankster.

He heard the slightest brush of claws against wood overhead and slowly swiveled his view that way. The mont his eyes roved over where the sound was coming from, it stopped. Vrax huffed lightly in annoyance and slowly started getting up from his Everthirst chair. Still locked onto the spot where he suspected one of the invisible little bastards was lurking.

A slight tumbling noise right next to him snapped his attention back to the pile of eggs. One rolled off the table and splattered across his shoes. The guilty party was halfway up the pile of Dispora young, a comically large egg clutched in its grasp. The erald predator hatching looked so insane it was kind of cute in a horrifying way.

Tiny eyestalks peeked up from behind its colorful frill. The two bulbous main eyes were pointed in different directions, one straight at the egg it was holding and the other right at Vrax. Its long tail trailed off the edge of the table. They both froze, staring at each other for a second.

Vrax went to lunge for the capricious little monster but was knocked off balance as the one on the ceiling dropped onto his head with an awful, hissing chuckle. “I still need those!” Vrax shouted pointlessly as the Predator scuttled off his desk with its prize. He managed to get ahold of the still invisible one running around on his head and wrenched it off his faceplate in a shower of bark.

“Goddammit, calm yourself!” Vrax jumped slightly when the form in his hand abruptly beca visible, all its eyes trained straight on him. It did not calm itself; instead, the bone on the tip of its tail started flickering with green mana as it tried to ignite its main weapon.

Vrax looked around in a panic, trying to figure out how to placate the little shit before it figured out its skill and stabbed the hell out of his hand. With a deep sigh, he scooped the remains of the Dispora egg off the floor and unceremoniously stuffed it into the little guy's tooth-filled maw.

It froze, then chewed slowly, starting to bob its head in happy excitent. After a few seconds, its tail blade flickered back to being inert, and Vrax loosened his grip until it was just clinging to his upturned arm, chowing down on the rest of the egg.

There was a light knock on the outside of his workshop wall. “h, co on in. Be careful though if you have anything shaped like an egg.” Vrax didn’t even look up; he was busy pushing his luck, giving the erald predator a light scratch between its insane-looking eyes. One stared straight at his face, the other's eyestalks wiggled to track the new arrivals.

A pair of n practically glided into the room. Each wearing light and dark leathers and shrouded under chaleonic cloaks that made their forms incredibly hard to focus on. Vrax whirled to face the deep stalkers. “Hey! I’m glad you guys finally made it. I was hoping for your help with sothing!”

“Your highness, I apologize for the lack of decorum, but we have news. My na is Bromwick. The captain in charge of the rangers sent here to join you. On our way here we spied enemy forces moving this way. The paladins appear to have rcenaries combing the forest as we speak, backed up by so hunting parties of considerable power.” He said gravely

The poignant pause that followed was ruined by an erald predator peeking out from beneath Bromwick’s hood. And making an awful glass-breaking cooking noise. Bromwick sighed. “Also, I believe this is yours; it managed to delay us considerably as we thought we were being hunted by an invisible predator. It turns out it just wanted to ride in the cloak.”

Vrax stifled a laugh, “It probably thinks you’re its mother…”

“Pardon?” Bromwick said with obvious alarm.

“Ehh, don’t worry about it, alright guys? Let’s go gather everyone else and make so battle plans. I say we evict the rcenaries from the forest, and then you guys can give a hand with really putting the squeeze on Hope's End. Oh, did anyone see more mbers from the Abyssal Guard? or the magic swordsman knights?”

Bromwick nodded. “Yes, we were accompanied by another pair of the guard; they stayed behind to aid our other compatriots in delaying the invaders.”

Vrax looked thoughtful for a mont. “Scratch the war council; we can talk and walk and grab everyone on the way. First things first, though. I need to send a runner back to those guys and have them fall back to this area.” Vrax pointed at a roughly drawn map on the wall indicating a tower on the outskirts of town.

“My lord? Why would we let them get so close to the city on purpose? Wouldn’t it be better to whittle their numbers down before it descended to alleyway fighting?” Browmick seed concerned about Vrax’s logic.

“Oh, normally I would totally agree with you…but that happens to be a dungeon entrance…and the dungeon is sort of on our side… Or we could lead them to the hag…that would work too; it’s a bit farther away, but she’s on our side as well…mostly. The Crazy Spriggan is also an option, but that thing scares the shit out of . Oh, or the fourth tier mimic!” Vrax excitedly listed off possible “allies” to lure the enemies to.

Bromwick visibly paled and reached over his shoulder to pet the erald predator scrabbling at his ear; it was starting to get agitated about being ignored. “Uhmm, no, never mind, my lord, the aid of a dungeon sounds fine.”

“Great! Alright, let’s grab everyone who can be spared from town and get going then, oh, and you!” Vrax pointed at the other deep strider who was nervously standing behind Bromwick, his eyes trained on the shifting walls of Everthirst. He kept touching the Mark of Vurune on his wrist to make sure it was still there.

The knight jumped a bit at being addressed directly. “Uhm, yes, my liege?”

“Go see our houndmaster and pick out a nightmare conductor, or well, more accurately, have one pick you. I would say the sa to you, Bromwick, but you seem to have won over one of my newest super weapons.” Vrax said affably he was still in full armor though, so it all ca out in a bizarrely ominous tone. He was getting a bit annoyed at how damned malevolent the armor made him sound, and he kept forgetting to just drop the helm when he talked to people.

The knight looked to Bromwick, who just shrugged, then back to Vrax. “My lord, what is a nightmare conductor?” Vrax just gestured towards the doorway.

“Just go find the drunk dwarf; he will explain it. I’ll et you guys in a second. I need to wake up the Spriggan.” Vrax cringed inwardly. Lux was going to be fucking cranky about getting woken up. When he was cranky, he was an, and he wasn’t looking forward to what that ant for a bunch of unprepared rcenaries.

***

Gregory – Hopes End

Gregory, William, Cedric, and Rafael all huddled around a table in a dimly lit backroom of the Hog’s Trough Tavern. The door was warded and locked. William had used his laughably expensive antiscrying device on the room, and Rafael had a few n with classes geared towards espionage watching for spies. It was the best they could do in the present circumstances for a private conversation.

Cedric started first; his gravelly tone had only gotten more severe lately with how hard being the guard commander of an occupied town was. “There are people missing, five by my count. None of them were powerhouses, but Kindra was an upper first-tier mage. They are starting to chip away at us.” Cedric had to visibly reign in his anger and force his voice to stay even.

William let out a sad sigh. “Make that six, Cedric. No one has seen Ulric in nearly a week now.” I searched his shop for him—nothing, and there was an unlocked safe left unattended.”

Gregory blew a low cloud of smoke from his pipe. “That’s not right; that uptight fucker would die before he left unattended goods. William, we need to do sothing.” Gregory almost pleaded.

“I know. At this point we are just trusting in my idiot child; he’s gotten the border all the way back to the wall. And seems to have the Paladins shitting themselves; I don’t know exactly what the hell he’s been doing to them, but it’s left an impression. Before you say we can’t wait much longer, I agree. I sent Feldwin out to bring Vrax that exact ssage.”

Raphael leaned forward in his chair, his belly scooting the whole table slightly. “The boys’ plan is insane …but I have begun preparations for the ‘Harvest Festival,’ like he asked.” William nodded in thanks.

“For now, get the word out no one goes alone; get the truly weak into Abernathy’s house quietly if we can. Even Candor hasn’t pushed his luck that far yet. I don’t think he knows what Abernathy truly is, but if he’s as high tier as I am, he can tell that, that is an intrusion that can’t be undone.” Gregory cleared his throat in response to Williams' orders.

“Couldn’t we just ask Abernathy to deal with them?”

“Yes, but that is a horrible idea; he has stayed relatively secret dealing with bandits and riffraff. No one cares about myths of a vampire preying on people on the edge of the country. If he openly fought the Church…no…there is no way that wouldn’t get back to the Shade Bane. Their order isn’t what it used to be, but we can’t afford another powerful enemy right now.” William offered back, obviously unhappy with it as well.

Rafael looked serious. “When the ti cos, who will fight the strongest among them? I saw the batches they are bringing in for reinforcents. They aren’t fucking around this ti. Candor is, I'm guessing, third-tier. That new paladin commander might be as well. Not to ntion the creepy bastards from the Ricktus order.”

Cedric answered instantly, “Gregory and I will deal with the leaders of the paladins.” Gregory nodded heartily in agreent.

“And I promised to show Candor what class a disgraced paladin gets,” William said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“What actually is your class?” Rafael said with an almost greedy curiosity.

“Oh, dammit, not you too. Vrax can’t pry it out of . What makes you think you can!” William shot back.

“Cedric shook his head. “The Ricktus?”

William focused back to the conversation that actually mattered. “Our resident pyromaniac has volunteered for that job; he seems to really want to see what their god of magic is all about.”

Cedric grimaced. “Make sure that fight happens outside the town…”