The Horde

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“Incoming. Dozens at least.” Again, Qhila somehow detected the threat before they got into sight. This time, he remembered to glance at the minimap as she did so, and sure enough she was even detecting them precisely enough to put a few red dots on it. Not dozens of dots, at least not yet, but impressive still.

He had barely managed to get back into position after dropping off the NPC at the inn door. The inn was located a bit of distance drawn back from the central square of Innsville, with walls on the other three sides, in a way that made little practical sense for an inn to be. From a level design viewpoint, however, it created a stretch of distance where the beasts would all have to traverse after converging at the square. This made it actually possible for a group of two to meaningfully defend it, and for Qhila to put out good trap coverage instead of having to spread thin to protect from all directions at once.

The stretch between the square and the inn had a narrow open path where John had brought in the NPCs. On either side was a row of 3 trap modules, two hobblers followed by a ripcord. John hadn’t seen the last one in action, but it was supposed to be better against the smaller critters that were most likely to make it through a hobbler.

All of them were on tremor-triggers with a full 360 degree danger zone with a bit of overlap between them. Aside from the safe corridor in the center, that created safe triangles by the outer edges of the area that Qhila had covered using tripwires and pressure-trigger mats rigged up to long-lasting alchemical concoctions.

Rounding out the defenses, three more trap modules were sitting on the facade of the inn itself. They were set in bolter mode with motion detector triggers pointed at the area immediately in front of the inn. As the final stopgap measure, they had a limited number of shots each coated in a nasty, but expensive, paralytic.

As soon as the first mutant, a beavergoat, came into sight, John shot an Observe at it, but the only change was that the loot table was replaced with the text “Rolled into Boss Chest”. The beasts came in from all four main roads, converging in the square and milling about for a few moments before charging at the inn.

Part of John would have liked to take more credit for the slaughter that ensued. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t contributing, as he was the primary “bait” moving side to side to pull the attackers into the trap danger zones. Aside from that, however, he was mostly doing clean up. This was, first and foremost, Qhila’s show.

The hobblers were absolutely devastating to the larger mutants. Rattlegeese were killed outright when they hit their head or neck, as were the owldogs occasionally, and anything that suffered a solid hit got crippled bad enough to become a sitting duck for the debris-throwing NPCs in the inn or John’s squirt gun full of alchemist’s fire.

The only times that some made it through the first set were when multiple beasts entered at the same time and one ended up body blocking for the other before fading away. The few times where a formation of three did that, leaving two for the second hobbler and thus one to get through, Qhila had put a dart with something in it to slow one down and screw up the timing before John even realized the potential danger.

Meanwhile, the roostercats and rattipedes were making it through the hobblers mostly fine. They were both small and nimble and the latter were actually low enough to the ground to just not get hit at all. Until they got to the ripcord modules.

Those things were basically swinging around lengths of barbed wire low to the ground. John could see how the bigger beasts might be able to power through that, and how armored foes would probably be able to ignore it, but the smaller mutants were utterly shredded.

’Man, if this is what she can do with about 2 hours of regularly interrupted setup and one bag of materials, I do not want to have to attack somewhere she has had months to fortify. Let alone somewhere where a whole tribe of kobolds has been living for generations. Forget Tucker’s meme kobolds, the fucking Viet Cong would have to take notes.’

This continued for a bit, racking up enough kills for John to lose track. There was a decent risk that these mutants’ EXP reward was subsumed into the overall Boss reward like their loot drops. If not, they were definitely looking at a whole Level from this Dungeon Segment, on top of the Quest.

Suddenly, the mixed animal noises from the square changed character. They grew louder and gained a manic quality to them, and moments later the press of mutants towards the inn intensified. They came in much closer together, no longer paying even minimal heed to dodging traps and most of them were frothing at the mouth. A quick Observe before they reached him revealed a new Buff on them.

Pheromonic Frenzy
This mutant has been whipped into a suicidally aggressive frenzy by a trigger of tailored pheromones.

’No stats on it, so it’s probably entirely behavioral. Not that that isn’t problem enough.’ Stepping forward to meet them in the clear corridor between trap modules, he used a selection of elixirs that he had thought of as the ‘Boss cocktail’ while preparing. It gave him +5 to STR, AGI, and INT, 15% poison and 30% pain resistance, and a heal over time for 2 per minute, all lasting 30 minutes.

The combined side effects were -2 to INT, WIS, and CHA for 6 hours plus two counts of increased calorie burn and one count of increased sleep requirements for 24 hours. Also, taking another of the Abyssal painkillers within the next 6 hours would give him a headache instead of any benefits. He kept the faux-lycanthropy one in the back pocket for now, because the side effects lasted for days and they might run into silver-using foes later on.

The first foe to reach him was an owldog, which got a swift kick to the shoulder that it didn’t even try to dodge. Instead, it tried, and failed, to bite into his pants. More were hot on its heels, so he took a single step back and delivered a wide spray of congealed lightning to the horde. That left them stunned for a moment, which he spent addressing Qhila, “They got hit with a pheromone trigger. Can you find out what caused it?”

“On it.” Qhila deftly climbed on top of one of the taller stone walls flanking the stretch between the square and the inn. John didn’t have time to follow that much more, though, as the mutants had recovered and were converging on him again.

In their frenzy, they were actually individually easier to handle. The mindless aggression made them eminently predictable and their complete disregard for defense made it easy to hit them in crippling ways or knock them into one of the traps. The problem was the relentless flow of more, forcing him to deal with between 3 and 5 at a time.

At least he quickly discovered that the rattipedes actually couldn’t get through to deal damage to him as long as he kept moving. Since avoiding their debuffing aura for more than a second or so at a time was more or less impossible, that let him just ignore those beasts until they got into ripcord range and died on their own accord.

“Large rat-creature by the well.” With guidance from Qhila, John managed to spot it over the throngs of other mutants as well. The thing looked like someone had dressed Master Splinter’s raggedy cousin up in a chemistry lab.

There were probably a lot of interesting implications to all of that, but he didn’t have time to worry about that right now. What mattered currently were the top two boxes. “That creature is the Boss. Stack venoms on it.”

“On a ra- John!!” Qhila’s surprised question was interrupted by a beavergoat knocking John over and into the danger zone of a Hobbler. Fortunately, ‘knocked over’ also left him just barely flattened enough not to get smacked in passing as the mutant that was trying to follow up on its successful attack got hit in the side of the head, rupturing an eye and leaving its skull slightly misshapen.

Not wanting to find himself on the receiving end of its next round trip, John rolled back into the safe zone. That instead left him grounded with roostercats nipping at his legs and an owldog trying to maul his face off.

He ignored the small ones for now and jammed the Alchemfist’s spike between the ribs of the big mutant. It showed no reaction to that, but getting acid injected directly into the chest cavity proved painful enough to override the pheromone frenzy and make it pause the **** to cry out in pain.

Seizing the opening, he got back on his feet and looked around for the next threat. Discovering that the closest cluster of mutants was struggling against sticky goop that was no doubt Qhila’s work, he took advantage of the moment she had bought him to say, “Not rat. [Guinea pig].”

“Roger.” Clearly picking up precisely why John had thought poison stacking worth a try, she let fly an injection dart without further ado. The Boss reacted to getting shot by pulling out the dart and throwing it to the ground. Then he returned fire with an arcing throw of a vial that was glowing red.

Except it wasn’t aimed at Qhila. It also wasn’t aimed at John, though he’d thought it to be for a moment. Instead, it landed among the glue-trapped mutants, unleashing a thin, wispy cloud of red gas. The reaction was instantaneous, with the beasts suddenly tearing free as though from paper shackles, while the froth at their mouths intensified.

Observe revealed that their HP was dropping rapidly, along with a new buff.

Pheromonic Hyperfrenzy
The frenzy has been heightened to a degree that overtaxes the mutant’s body but grants a significant boost to physical ability until the strain kills it.
+50% to all physical Ability Scores.
-5% HP per second.

John tried to back up a bit, as every second he could stall them out was free damage, but the boost had made them much faster as well and they were on him in moments. So boosted, all John could really do was stay on the defensive to minimize the damage and outlast them.

18-ish seconds later when the last of them collapsed and started fading, he had at least managed to avoid getting bit by the rattlegeese, but he was still down a third of his HP, putting him at about half.

He was not going to be able to handle much of that, meaning they needed to either end the boss quickly or come up with a countermeasure. “Can you frag him?” The grenades packed an absolutely devastating punch, and one going off point blank from the boss might take it out in one go. Or at least take him far enough down to finish quickly by other means.

“Not reliably. He’s too far and on the move.”

John sidestepped a not hyper frenzied beavergoat and broke its leg with a kick. Then he grabbed it by the horns and tossed it at the other incoming mutants, buying a moment to look around.

While he had been focused on not getting shredded, thin vomit-colored mist had shown up at the trap modules on his flanks. Despite being frenzied, the mutants were avoiding it, giving John a pretty good idea what it was for even before confirming with Observe.

That had split the stream of mutants between a larger mass heading down the centre towards John and smaller crowds heading towards the inn while hugging the outer wall. Those had in turn triggered tripwires of tarfire and shardoil, slowing them down enough for the fire support from the inn to hit them. Which, in turn, explained why John had had to manage without that assistance.

Finally, the walls themselves, or at the couple of strides’ length closest to the square, were ablaze with more tarfire. This made it harder, but not impossible, to notice the purple haze hanging around there. Observe told him it signaled the roostercats and rattipedes to go in that direction, which in turn explained why Qhila had started those fires.

The Boss itself was still in the square, moving sideways relative to the Inn. Presumably, this was to make it a harder target, not that it had stopped Qhila from tagging it with another two darts judging by the number of debuffs. Another positive was that it was down to 3 MP, ticking up to 4 during the moment John spent looking in its direction.

None of that provided him with a way to deal with the hyperfrenzy pheromone vials, though at least the Boss’ mana situation suggested that he had a bit of time to work it out as he returned to crippling mutants and tossing them to the traps.

That, he quickly locked into a good rhythm, letting him think while fighting. He didn’t have anything that could just lock down a cluster of mutants for most of the duration. The best bet would’ve been the glue bomb that had failed to contain the first group.

That left stopping the vial in transit or finishing off the Boss before he could use another two of them. For the former of those, their only real play was shooting it down, but he was very much not confident in his accuracy to do it with the squirt gun and the spray from the Alchemfist didn’t have enough range. Finally, Qhila couldn’t be ready to try while stacking debuffs on the boss, even if she was confident in her accuracy to do it. Which left the shotgun.

For bursting down the Boss, putting a frag on top of him would probably do the trick, but they would only get one shot. With Qhila’s assessment ruling that out, the other option was for John to try to rush through and wreck it with the shotgun. The problem with that was that he would be left very exposed if it had more tricks up its sleeve. That was why Qhila was debuffing it now. Unless it had giant rat levels of poison resistance, that full battery of debuffs made a good insurance policy against anything short of a full clear and/or hardcoded phase transition.

’Really though, I don’t need the full clip for the burst strat. Half should be plenty,’ he concluded as he punted a rattlegoose into one of the tarfire patches. That was the play. Try to skeet shoot the next vial. If it worked, stall for up to 4 more or until Qhila filled out the debuffs. Then move in for the kill, or do so immediately if the skeet shoot was a bust.

With a timed shove, John put an owldog into the danger zone of a hobbler just in time for it to cave the mutant’s forehead in. “Buy me 10 seconds, and call out red vials.”

She did the first by way of another glue bomb, letting him back off for a moment to cast Enhance Muscle. Casting it with the buff already active ended the last casting prematurely, essentially letting him switch at a mana cost. Arm AGI should give his aim a solid boost.

He got back into the fray opening with a blast of alchemist’s fire at the glue-stuck cluster. Even with the fire turning the glue dry and brittle sooner, they should be burned out by the time they got free.

It took a couple of minutes of going at the regular mutants before Qhila called out, “Red!” John delivered a spray of congealed lightning to stagger the mutants and buy a moment to shoot. Taking a half-step back, he pulled the firearm from his inventory. He tried his best to aim quickly, attempting to manually pull on the muscle memory of Squirt Gun Proficiency but point a bit higher.

Yet when he pulled the trigger, the hail of pellets passed somewhere near the vial without hitting, and it sailed unerringly into the same cluster of mutants he had just lightly electrocuted. Making the snap decision that HP was a more precious resource than ammo, he fired a second shot into the cluster.

The hyperfrenzied mutants still made for an onslaught he could only defend against and outlast. But outlasting it was substantially faster this time around, and enough of them had suffered bad enough wounds to make his defense more successful.

Still, his HP wasn’t looking too good afterwards. Between that and the skeet shoot fail, there really was only one thing left to do. “Going in hard!”

Another two shotgun blasts mostly cleared the area between the trap module zones. That left him with 6 shells and enough space to build momentum. Breaking into a sprint, he ploughed into the looser throng of beasts in the square itself.

Through a mix of brute **** and angling to avoid direct collisions, he managed to break through and hit the mutated guinea pig with a football tackle. While a sardonic part of his mind noted that finally something he had learned from Frank was actually useful, he thrust himself back up into seated position. The Boss tried to squirm out from under him, while digging out another vial.