Nicolai moved to stand before the cave opening. Here the ground rose up into a mess of spiky rock, a small hill in which there was set a large, dark opening. Thermal vision revealed the faint shapes of Scale Vipers, lurking deeper within.

He unshelled his Soul and thought about murder. Kill kill kill, he chanted happily, imagining he was painting the cave with lead, blowing it the bits with bombs, filling it with poison gas. A grin twisted his face as he stretched out a hand, and beamed all of his bloodthirst right at the cave entrance. The thoughts and feelings were so strong they sent sub-Aura ripples of murderous intent echoing out and diving into the cave.

That done he turned and darted away. He scuttled back to his chosen position fast as his legs could carry him, on the far side of the clearing. There he climbed 'til he was atop a large, thick tree branch which pointed towards the cave entrance. The M99 was clamped into position there, ready and waiting, set into a quick-release tripod which was screwed into the branch. On that same branch he'd used a knife to scrawl rituals that would help muddy the air, spiritually, making any ripples he released move strangely and unpredictably—harder to trace.

He settled to one knee, aiming down the sights, and he saw what he'd hoped to see.

The cave was stirring. The Scale Vipers near to the entrance had felt his Intent, and they were reacting to it. They were worried, but also angered.

How dare some predator come to their home, and think of killing them?!

He saw a head poke up, and the viper took a slow look around. It slipped out from the cave, moving into the sunlight, tongue sniffing at the air. It was a long lizard with scales black as ink, the size of a horse, moving on four legs, but with a body sibilant like a snake, twining in an oddly curving walk across the ground. It was rapidly joined by more that burst from the cave, a sudden horde, fast moving. From what he could tell they were all Tier 1.

Nicolai squeezed the trigger and the M99 erupted, the first round slicing out. Fixed in position, the weapon barely moved.

He fired and fired, finger squeezing faster than his heartbeat. Aiming was merged close with him, and his accuracy was both as fast as possible and unerringly accurate.

A hail of .50 BMG rounds tore out and ten Scale Vipers met death in an instant. But already the rest were moving, charging, worming over the ground toward him. He slammed a fresh magazine in, cranked the bolt, and it erupted in another terrible burst.

The Scale Vipers squealed and shrieked, crying out their rage and confusion as they died, as he went through the magazines. But die they did, with all their numbers and their speed. All except for one.

Tier 2, its scales were stronger. Much stronger, and it had a Symbiote reinforcing them further. He'd noted it and shot it early, but the bullet had merely knocked it back, and it had shaken its head then continued on at him. He'd focused on the others after that, and now they were dead but here it was, leaping through the air, hurtling toward him with claws outstretched.

Nicolai aimed at it and squeezed the trigger three times, all the remaining ammo. Each shot slammed into the creature's chest. One smashed it backwards, two split its scales, and finally the third broke them and tore through, blasting a bloody hole through it that sent it plummeting, lifeless, to the ground.

Nicolai tore the smoking M99 and its tripod free, dashing forward while shoving it into the Big Mouth. He launched himself off the branch, activating all his Pegasi rings and the Spectral Claw which seized at the ground and hurled him forward and down. Landing he lunged into a run. The two Wolf Bug Symbiotes were active in his feet Nodes, and they gave him a noticeable boost in speed.

He arrived at the dead Tier 2 Scale Viper and barely even paused, tapping it with a finger and instantly accepting his Slayers Guild Mark prompt. The Scale Viper shimmered and disappeared while he was charging toward the next.

Nicolai darted amongst the fresh dead, leaving a trail of shimmering Scale Vipers that disappeared in sudden flashes of light in his wake. He had very little time.

He could both feel and hear the anger of the cave. Roars and shrieks of fury, clashing and boiling and venting from its exit along with ripples of murderous Intent.

The nest was angry, and it was coming. An army of Tier 1's led by captains at Tier 2, commanded by Tier 3's.

He was halfway through the field of slaughter when the first erupted from the cave. Blinding fast, it seemed to almost skate over the ground, claws tearing up clumps of earth as its legs worked madly, propelling it towards him.

Nicolai spun and threw out his arm, and the Spectral Claw came around. The Scale Viper tried to dodge but he and Simulations read its movement, predicted it from the bunching of its muscles, the flicking of its eyes, the leakage of its Soul.

It was caught mid-leap, torn from the air, thrown into the jungle where it slammed against the tree.

He kept moving. He was sending the dead Vipers with their Symbiotes, too, rather than harvesting the Symbiotes himself. As a result the Slayers Guild would collect them for him, and hold them. They would charge him for that, but with what he was gaining he anticipated making it back and more.

After all… Scale Viper scales were 100 points each.

But now they were emerging in a dark and scaly flood, emanating waves of fury. He took in the dozen-odd remaining corpses regretfully, knowing that his time was up. He caught another with the Spectral Claw and hurled it at the mass of shrieking, murderous creatures boiling towards him. The flung one punched into their leading edge, knocking them back, and at the same time he reached behind him, hauled himself away with the Spectral Claw and all the Pegasi rings, activated in a surge that drained his Oma staggeringly fast.

Stolen novel; please report.

Behind he felt powerful Soul Senses, felt them reaching and hunting, quick-fast after him. Soul Senses with Tier 3 Scale Vipers on the end, powerful beings from deeper in the cave. Scale Vipers with strange and dangerous Symbiotes. Already they were closing on him, Soul Senses close behind. These things were unbelievably fast. In only moments something would catch up, slow him down, and they would tear him apart.

Nicolai performed a quick hop, squeezed his legs together, and activated the Wriggler Symbiote.

At the very same moment, the Big Mouth opened wide, and a boxy shape made of folded metal launched out. Mid-air, it sprang open into the bipedal shape of one of his off-brand GRECKON-style LDI's, a droid.

His feet bored into the ground like it was water, squeezed out the way by the Wriggler Symbiote, and he vanished into the close and pressing darkness of the earth. He immediately Shelled his Soul and activated the Lurker Symbiote.

Above, at the same moment, the droid's form had fuzzed as Aiming, who was controlling it remotely over Local, utilised the emitters he'd installed over its form to generate a hologram.

Now it bore the exact appearance of himself, equipped with all the same things. Its spindly feet tore at the ground as it killed its momentum. In its hands unfolded an assault rifle which it slotted against itself.

'Die, die, die!' screamed Aiming jubilantly from the droid's speakers, opening up on the Scale Vipers.

The Soul Sense of a Tier 3 arrived and the droid froze, locked in place by a yellow glow. The leading mass of Vipers arrived an instant later, scything claws coming for the drone from every direction.

But that was when Aiming pulled the self-destruct, and the droid detonated with a blast that saw the nearest Vipers launched smoking into the air.

The furious creatures gathered in a mass where the droid had been, for a moment shocked into confusion.

Nicolai, below, continued his descent into the earth. He could feel the ripples of all those Soul Senses above, searching, squeezing. The smarter ones knew they hadn't killed the real him. They were looking into the jungle, into the air, and into the ground. Beginning to worm their Soul Senses deeper.

But at that moment, observing through drones posted in the sky and listening with their microphones, he and the others made out roaring. He felt a thumping all around him, from heavy steps above. From the jungle a monstrous Toothbearer appeared with a great crack, a deafening, endless crunch and splintering of wood as it barged a tree apart and out of its way with a shove of its shoulder.

He recognised it. The Clubtail Tyrant, and it was right on time. He'd spotted it with drones prior to engaging this operation, and had anticipated it would show up, banked on it.

So much death in so short a time had released a large number of powerful spiritual ripples, and any jungle creature so confident in its own strength would have felt a need to come and investigate.

But even the Clubtail seemed shocked, undersized eyes widening as it saw the mass of furious Scale Vipers. Many of them were still boiling out the cave and rushing in its direction, the others were in a tangled mass where Nicolai had been.

All those Vipers turned murderous gazes upon the Clubtail. Nicolai felt the sudden Killing Intent like a stab in the heart.

The Clubtail took a heavy step back. Nicolai had by now sunk so deep into the earth that his connection to the drones was fading. He started moving forward, travelling directly beneath that Clubtail.

Over the next minute, through the vibrations of the ground and the muffled sounds that reached him, he had the distinct impression that it was having a very bad time.

As he got further away, he was able to rise higher, closer to the surface, and thus regain his connection to the drones he had spread through the area.

Observing the mess he'd left behind, he saw the Clubtail was already dead. The Clubtail, and numerous other creatures which had turned up shortly after it. The swarming Scale Vipers were killing anything that moved. The clearing around their cave was a blood-soaked battlefield and their frenzied forms moved in dark rushing masses across the torn earth, leaping and tearing into anything that dared to show its face.

At first he considered going back. He imagined himself sliding stealthily through the earth, rising until he was able to reach out with a finger, tapping the mangled form of the Clubtail and sending it to his Slayers Guild storage.

But the Scale Vipers were already dragging its corpse into their cave. The Clubtail, and everything else they'd killed.

The brief stampede had ended. Why? Because they'd killed everything that turned up, and now they were going to eat. But even from this distance he could still sense their anger, arriving through ripples.

They would be on the alert, and he'd already avoided them once. He hadn't expected them to be quite so instantly vicious and vengeful, to emerge so rapidly, in such number and with such fury. He was very glad the Clubtail had been nearby, to absorb their rage.

Returning and trying something sneaky wasn't worth it, too risky and the odds of payoff were too low—the Wriggler Symbiote couldn't move him through stone, and much of the walls of the cave were formed of such. It was unlikely the corpse would end up in one of the few places where passages of earth led through that stone. Plus, he'd already gained plenty. He opened the Slayers portion of his UI, checking the stats.

Claimed Kills

2x - Gold-fur Ape

1x - Gorothune (Tier 1)

27x - Scale Viper (Tier 1)

1x - Scale Viper (Tier 2)

Claimed kills were those he'd sent to the Slayers Guild butchery, or turned in via some other fashion.

The question on his mind was: How many scales were there on 28 Scale Vipers? He would find out when he returned to the Phantom City, which was in just a couple days. There was no need to try and work it out now.

But he was curious, and the Modules were curious, and coming up with a reasonably accurate guess would be easy.

He and the Modules summoned up some recorded footage. Aiming chose the pictures, picking from among various Scale Vipers for the most average looking ones, getting some good shots from several different angles of those chosen. Simulations did what it did best, creating a 3D 'avgScaleV' model, and then Threat Analysis, who enjoyed this sort of thing, counted them. Peering over the Module's metaphorical shoulder, Nicolai noted that the scales were quite large in size. Fortunately, so were the Scale Vipers.

Approximately 120 scales per viper, Threat Analysis reported happily, and immediately performed the calculation. 120 multiplied by 28 equals 3,360. The M99 put some pretty big holes in them, so there's definitely some breakage. Rounding it down to an optimistic 3,000 scales remaining, multiplied by 100, brings us to 300,000!

Nicolai blinked. Not bad. Not bad at all. A nice chunk of change for what had amounted to less than thirty minutes' work.

He'd be back.

###

In the Scale Viper hive, there was still much chaos and viciousness as they fought over the food they'd claimed. Gradually, they grew full and calm. Something had come. Some of them had died. But they'd won in the end. And now they had food.

Overall, a pretty good day.

They had just begun to settle down from the recent turmoil when they felt something.

A sudden sense of disquiet. A disturbance in the Aura.

The greatest of them, the strongest Tier 3, shifted uncomfortably. It felt unaccountably concerned. As if some terrible distant predator were considering its destruction. As though the winds of fate had turned against it.

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