The outlook is looking quite grim, so poor Randall P. Cho, well he jumps out to go, bemoaning the threat to his shins.

Maybe he quails at stabbing maggoty tails – but to abandon his friends? That’s a sin.

Holding his [Mercury Rod] in a white-knuckled grip, Randall stumbles off-balance on one foot as he wheels the other leg high and out of the way. Hopping and lumbering further away from the safety of allies in a top-heavy janky ballet, Randall dodges claws and stings. As he goes, he’s attracting a squad of hungry bugs that break off from the larger group in search of easier prey.

Todd lashes out in redoubled haste, his shaky hands driving the point of his weapon astray as often as to its mark. Yellow and black bile slicks the floor and spatters the leggings of his gi – but while the distance to his friend shrinks by inches, it grows in obstructions.

Randall flinches back from a crab as it rears back in turn, then he kicks out forward in a lunging stomp and clips it with his soccer cleats. Hissing, the other bugs hesitate as they measure up jumps at his back side but fail to take them. It strikes Todd again how the redburrs’ primitive instinct for self-preservation has actually made them less dangerous.

Nerves faltering, Randall shouts a high pitched yelp, winds up a kick and simply punts the nearest creature. It arcs over the better part of thirty feet, and Randall (practically on his tiptoes) sidesteps into the opening its launch left behind.

Spotting movement from behind, Todd jabs at and under one of the (ten) armpits of a roach that’s slunk too close to the wounded man. He tips his head back with a pinched brow at Candra. “Is he gonna save us or do we gotta save him?”

With a hasty string of guesses of arc, direction, and distance, Randall edges a foot to the left and shoves his weapon tucked into the front of his trousers. Then, slapping his wrists together and holding his hands out and slightly down, he slides one foot back to brace himself.

Todd’s shoulders droop and his frown digs deep enough to classify as trench. “No, don’t you fucking dare,” he groans.

“[Igneous Bouquet]!” Randal howls, and a roaring plume of fire shoots out from his palms. Candra jumps back with a tiny yelp to get out of the way, while a rolling combustion overtakes dozens of bugs. Todd feels the flare of heat, hears the sizzle, smells the unspeakable. Then the fan of flame spirals into itself in the way a normal fire might bleed out to smoke.

Most of the creatures in the path of the attack are heavily damaged or dying: their bristly body hair either consumed or still alight, their russet shells a lusher shade of red, a hiss of bubbles leaking out of breached joints. Randall collapses to one knee, overborne by a ghastly paleness.

“I can’t believe he yelled the attack name,” Todd groans, unceremoniously grabbing one pale leg while Candra smacks away a lingering crawler with her mace, then grabs a trouser on the other side. The two run and pull the wounded Cultivator with them. He wails, and leaves a blood smear, and his pants are falling down somewhat, but they drag him safely to Randall. Stopping only long enough to drive off a few crabs away from his friend, Todd thrusts a shoulder underneath Randall’s arm, lifts to get him back on his feet, and then grabs a trouser leg again.

“That was awesome Randall,” Candra wheezes, “nice work.” The two of them pull and drag their charges back safely over to the Alderman and his band before the redburrs regroup.

“That doesn’t look good,” Donnellson observes, clubbing a thorax and then a few legs. He looks down on the injured man, who’s hands, face and back are starting to tense up. If it’s a symptom of the venom, then Todd might guess it’s a bad sign.

“What do we do? I literally know nothing about first aid.”

Candra, with an expression of revulsion, picks up a nearby redburr carcass by a leg and pitches it at one of its fellows. “I don’t know much either. I think we need Nayira.”

“Or Chowdhury,” Todd reminds her. “Mr Donnellson, we need help.”

Hands shaking and scored by shallow cuts, Donnellson glances over at the trail of broken, broiled bugs then fixes the three of them with a severe look. “I’m kind of feeling like we need you more than you need me.”

A widening ring of vermin probes at them, held at bay by the stabbing rapier and crushing mace. “Randall, make sure the guy has taken a healing pill,” Todd grunts. “Is he awake?”

“I don’t do well with blood, oh ugh, it’s on me, it’s on my hands –” Randall stammers at first. “He says he’s taken it!” He shouts, getting his voice under control. “He’s real weak though.”

Yanking backwards, Todd struggles against a redburr that’s wrapped it’s four fore legs around his spike. Holding there, it drags in closer to Todd as he pulls back and arcs it’s pulsing sting round at him. So he stabs forward instead, using the floor as back leverage to pin and puncture its shelled belly. “Tell him he needs to Cultivate!” Todd growls hoarsely, flinging viscera off the tip of his [Mercury Rod]. “Cultivate and don’t stop! Got it?”

“Got it!”

Donnellson swings and misses, then backs up and collides with Todd’s shoulder. “We can push to the crystal. If we get everyone back grouped up there, we’ve got a better shot.”

Candra makes a bug into a pancake, wipes the back of her hand against her nose. “I was gonna do a wine tasting today.”

“Yea?” Todd grunts.

“Boxed wine, but still,” she swings again and scores another crunching kill. “Make a hole?”

“Will see what I can do,” Todd pivots around to the direction of the crystal and stokes at the energy inside him with deep breaths. He can feel a trickle of it recovering, but without the calm focus of his Cultivation technique he can get little purchase on anything but what his own body produces.

He holds out his arm again and drops to a knee for a low angle. This time, Todd doesn’t leave his [skill] to choose how much of his energy it wants – no, he pushes. Drawing in from his legs, his other arm, his core, his heart, Todd wrings stubborn energy out of his body and shoves it into his skill fractal. He can actually feel the strain as it tries to push back, but the fractal engages anyway.

Condensing, not-quite water vibrates unstably in front of him, but only for an eye-blink before it bursts into a high-pressure jet. The [Water Spear] clips one, punches right through a second, crumples a third, and smashes the thirds into a fourth and fifth.

Candra lays a hand on Todd’s shoulder and pats it consolingly. “Four’s okay,” she croons in a sickly saccharine tone. Exhausted as she is, she manages a wicked grin at his expense. “You got four, right?”

“It’s got good range,” he mutters a little defensively. It is strange though, Todd would have expected that doubling the energy would double the effect, but the attack doesn’t seem to work that way. Something to think about for later.

Despite the joking, the [Water Spear] has actually done a great job of clearing a narrow path towards the crystal and the safety of numbers. Maybe his attack doesn’t have the pure damage potential, but as he looks at how far his secondary targets have tumbled, Todd’s gotta say: it’s got one hell of a knock-back.

Running on a wish and a prayer, he and Candra, and even a few of the level-ones, bludgeon and skewer the last ten yards to safety while the Alderman holds the rear.

Randall collapses, red as a cardinal in spring from dragging the hurt man along the floor. He’s not happy, that’s for sure. But he’s breathing and he’s not being chewed on. “Don’t you have a [skill], Candra?” He gasps out wearily.

“Mine’s,” she sways unsteadily, “kinda complicated? I’m worried I can use it wrong.” Her knee buckles and recovers.

Todd sticks out an arm for Candra to hold on to, then as she keeps falling, he drops his weapon and grips her shoulders instead. Guiding her carefully down to a seated position, he glances around. “Worn out already?” He whispers.

She snorts. “I’m a little tired.”

“Sleep is important,” he chides.

“Thanks mom,” she rolls her eyes.

Todd directs a nearby level-one to take care of his friends and then shouts for medical help. In a few seconds Dr Chowdhury wedges her way through the crowd and barely acknowledges him before kneeling down next to the bleeding man.

“Dr Chowdhury, ma’am. Make sure he’s Cultivating, I think it helps.”

She catches him out of the corner of her eye. “With the poison or the bleeding?”

“Bleeding, but I’m hoping both,” Todd replies, then he pushes around the edge of the rough circle to find Joe.

Silver and mercurial, Ranger Drew’s sword carves a flashing line through a large redburr and its shell pops open like a split lobster tail. He fades back, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He holds, head bobbing as he lines up his gladius shaped blade. One hand is on the grip, one palm pressed against the pommel, then he explodes forward in a lunging strike. His point slips just into the soft joint where a fore-leg joins the body, and in to a hand’s depth. A noise like a muffled ringing bell sounds out, and a pulse of force lacerates his target from the inside out.

Officer Bernice whirls, keeping her back to Joe as they carve a wide circle of bugs to mulch. Her weapon curls with a cutting edge like a cavalry saber. Joe’s has produced a heavy knob extended on the end of a narrow metal spindle. He lowers the weapon down, then swings upward in a brutal upstroke that sends a flailing, broken arthropod sailing through the air across the plaza.

“You turned your weapon into a golf club?” Todd stomps, stabs, and swats his way towards the others.

“I dunno,” Joe laughs, wrung out but beaming an endorphin-y smile. He hefts the club once and then whips it around in a long drive that flings another victim out back to the upturned mounds they emerged from. “Feels pretty natural.”

“Do we have a plan?” Todd asks, grinning as he struggles with a glancing blow off of a thicker shell.

“We’re actually doing pretty great,” Joe exclaims. “It may not look it Drips, but we’re probably past the halfway mark. Mike’s been adding up our kill scores and comparing them to the total.”

“How many?”

“Started with plus two thousand,” Joe clips the sting neatly off of a nearby bug, and it brings its tail around its face as if in disbelief. “But Drew’s done in like, two hundred all by himself.”

“Hey, I’ve got 70 something at least!” Bernice interjects, shearing an opponent into two gooey halves.

“You wanna know something stupid?” Joe hesitates. “The crystal was an optional quest.” He admits.

“Optional!” Todd seethes. “Optional?!”

“Can you believe that?” Joe chuckles tensely. “But that’s not the problem. Can you and the others hold down the fort here?”

“Yea, sure.”

“Quest says there’s a boss monster and Drew wants to take it on.”

Bernice interrupts exasperatedly. “Andrew, we need you here on the line.”

Dripping with horror movie levels of goo, the bearded one man wrecking crew launches overhead and upside down, striking a cutting arc at his relative up and slashing through three in one blow. “I don’t do defense!” He bellows as he lands back upright on his feet.

"Well I fucking refuse to believe that just happened," Todd whispers.

“See what I’m dealing with?” Bernice complains. “How does the Army not do Defense?” She hollers louder. “What, you skip a class at boot?”

Drew answers only by grunt as he continues his rampage.

“We can’t have him going alone,” Joe warns. “Drips, get me Teo and Walter, they can back him up.”

Todd screws up his face in disbelief. “Walter? Walter can barely walk!”

Joe clobbers a fat roach that had been gotten a little too close to Todd. “Oh man Drips, you didn’t look at your [title] yet did you?”