My unit descended on the enemy.
The fact that the original incursion had split into two waves was a point of concern. It meant that there could be more waves coming, and we didn’t want to get caught by surprise, suffering serious damage like Rotuchik’s unit had. If more caterpillars were going to emerge from the miasma to support the surviving five, we would be overwhelmed, but even five was a lot all at once.
In any case, killing at least two should let us withdraw and bide some time to recover, as the survivors should stop and eat the dead.
One of the problems with this war was that it was hard to do anything but face the enemy head-on. They came from below, we came from above. I had faced a motley assortment of monsters and other threats across my last two lives, but even with my reincarnated experience, these things were pretty scary. That was especially true when facing them head-on. Of all their dangers, their mouths were probably the most horrific.
Since the most viable attacks on these gigantic worms was their undersides, my unit split into two, flanking the monsters on both sides. No reason to race right towards their maws, though they would no doubt turn those on us once we engaged. Circling around to their backsides was too risky unless they were further from the miasma, but by that point they would be approaching the ridge, and the entire battle would change. If we wanted to take them out before that, the best bet was a fast, aggressive pincer strike.
I led my half of the unit, and Kukeoti led the others. As always, I worried for them, since I couldn’t protect them while we were split up like this, but I locked those feelings away to focus on the target. We raced down the slope of the flared trunk, practically a controlled fall until the angle of the tree’s surface began to flatten.
As we approached, the looming creatures tried to turn towards us, but the only saving grace was that the giant caterpillars weren’t fast. They were especially slow at turning, unless they raised up their front ends entirely, which exposed their primary weakness.
“Slip through!” I shouted, and the squirrels under my command picked up the pace.
None moved faster than me, though. I sped forward, dodging the beast’s legs, and slamming my arm-mounted crystal blades up into the unprotected flesh. Dark ichor immediately spilled out over me, which was disgusting, but not immediately dangerous, save for our footing as the fluids pooled. We maintained a safe distance from where the tree emerged from the darkness, but a bad tumble could still send any of us straight into the void.
Continuing forward with my momentum, my blades widened my stab into a slice, until I felt the beast dropping its body to try and crush the source of its injuries. I pulled my arm back and the crystal slid out of the caterpillar’s body as I shouted back to my unit. “Fall back!”
I pivoted, taking quick but careful strides back out of the cage of caterpillar legs, slashing hard at the nearest as I passed it by. The beast slammed its body into the tree, and its legs rippled as they sequentially stabbed out, forcing us to pull back out of range. I heard a cry of pain, but had to ignore it as I recognized what was coming. Hopefully one of the others pulled whoever was injured to safety. I would rely on Tikurit to handle it when this was over.
“It’s going to lift! Ready yourselves!”
The front of the creature lifted from the tree and it turned its head towards us. They had no eyes, as they were presumably not helpful in the darkness from where they came. I shuddered as the entire front of the enemy’s face unfurled, revealing a maw ringed with pulsating mandibles designed to pull food down into the voracious beast’s stomach.
I’ll never get used to that, I thought with a grimace. I forced myself forward anyway. While it was “standing”, it was vulnerable. I could see many small wounds dotting its underside, damage from our first strike, but it would take a number of passes before we bled it out, at that rate.
“Spread out!” I ordered the squirrels under my command, while I closed the distance.
With a [Blood-Empowered Leap], I pushed off the trunk and launched upwards. It was a physical feat which most squirrels couldn’t do unless they had the high ground, but most of my unit had seen me in action before. I learned in our first battle not to hold back too much, and the surviving soldiers under my command knew better than to overshare, though my past actions had already elevated me to a leadership position.
It helped that I kept things within reason. Using Blood to empower or augment me was effectively invisible to the squirrels, as opposed to controlling constructs. I just came off as unreasonably strong, but I could somewhat shrug it off as being older and better trained.
I crashed into the caterpillar’s throat, for lack of a better word, with both my arm-blades. The area beneath the creature’s mouth was no more or less vulnerable than any other part of its belly, and it was uncomfortably close to its horrible mouth, but as I slid back down its exposed underside, I carved open a massive gash that was almost certainly fatal to the monster from the miasma.
The caterpillar was already trying to crash down on me and my unit before I reached the trunk, so I kicked off hard to clear the distance needed to avoid being crushed.
It was dead, it just didn’t know it yet. “Keep harrying it until its death curl!”
Now that I could afford a look around, I quickly looked over my unit to check for losses and injuries. I saw a few soldiers leaking that weird squirrel rainbow blood—mostly the younger, newest additions to my unit—but no corpses, which was a good start. If Kukeoti’s unit performed equally well, we would be back in fighting form soon enough.
The caterpillar performed a familiar shudder, then began to roll onto its side and curl in on itself.
“That’s it! Retreat to the support line!” I called.
My team and I fell back far enough to get a look at the other side of the battle, where the other half of the unit was still fighting, but based on how much black blood was spilled, they would be done soon. I considered sending the injured back and taking the rest to support Kukeoti anyway, but then I saw the caterpillar shudder and knew it was unnecessary. The hungry other caterpillars were already turning towards the dead. That would buy us the day, giving us time to restore and recover.
*
We had lost one soldier in Kukeoti’s team, and had another injured squirrel that we dragged back to the ridge who might not have survived without Tikurit’s skill. All in all, that was a good result. One of us for two of them was better than most units could do. The sad truth of this war was that it killed a lot of good squirrels. It was a sad loss, even if they didn’t have very long lives to live.
The other injured soldiers healed themselves if they could, and those in good form who also had [Restorative Growth] donated their Love to aid the unit’s overall recovery. Any lingering damage was bandaged. The worst of it could be healed in a day, when our Love was replenished, but the caterpillars would be on the move again after they finished their meal, and using up their Love prematurely limited how much we could heal after the next engagement. Anyone else with Love at the end of the day used it towards transformation, repairing broken crystal or building on their existing capabilities.
Once supplies started to dwindle, we would need to put some Love into growing food on the ridge, but I wasn’t above taking that role on myself. When I did, I limited it to what I had seen the best bud farmers produce back at camp, converting the rest of my Love to Blood for battle, so that it was mostly within reason. If asked, I told my soldiers that I leveled up the skill in my traveling days before I enlisted, and they could do this too if they survived long enough and put their mind to it, even if it wasn’t strictly speaking true.
“There was no third wave,” Kukeoti said, pulling me from my thoughts. He stepped next to me at the ridge, where I was staring down at the caterpillars cannibalizing their dead.
I nodded. “Three left. We can handle that. All at once, or one at a time?”
A second pincer attack would take out two of the three, after which the full unit could bear down on the final one, killing all remaining caterpillars in one fell swoop. It might mean more losses and injuries upfront, but once the enemy was dead, we could invest fully in rest and recovery. At least, until more caterpillars crawled out of the darkness, assuming it happened while we were still deployed.
On the other hand, picking them off over the next few days was also a viable strategy. The caterpillars would stop to eat, slowing their advance. We would likely take fewer losses and injuries at first, but unhealed injuries would compound with each battle, as would fatigue. It risked more losses during the final fight.
The problem was the unknown. If another wave did show up during our deployment, it was better to wipe out these three early, and give us more time to recuperate. The worst case was we took the slow route, and another wave showed up before we finished off these caterpillars, putting us in a situation not unlike Rotuchik’s unit, if less dire. We were fresh, at the top of a deployment, and thus in a better position than he had been.
Kukeoti grimaced. “There could be more coming. I’m inclined to say all at once.”
That was my take as well. “I agree. Tomorrow, we’ll—” I cut myself off as I noticed the miasma moving behind the remaining swarm. I scowled. “No fucking way.”
Another four caterpillars emerged from the miasma. Two of them headed straight for the swarm, but two paused when they were halfway exposed. Eventually, they completed their exit from the darkness, joining with the first two.
Next to me, Kukeoti’s eyes were wide. “This… this isn’t right.”
“I agree,” I grunted.
Three waves in three days was far from the norm. Worse, it was four this time, unlike the three that Rotuchik reported in the second wave. Had it been two, I would have felt a lot more comfortable with this mess. I didn’t know what to make of this, though.
“Guess we’re pulling another two-kill pincer tomorrow,” I said.
“Should we report this?” Kukeoti asked.
That would be nice, but sending a runner all the way back to camp left us with one less soldier for the next battle. The camp already knew there was an incursion, which is why we were deployed early.
“Not… yet,” I said slowly, feeling out the words as I did. “This might be the end of it.”
“If more come tomorrow…”
“Then, yes. And hopefully we can hold it back until reinforcements arrive.”
*
We succeeded in killing two more caterpillars the next day, suffering one more casualty in the process. It would have been two, but I invested my own Love into a soldier which kept him from death. Again, that was considered an acceptable loss, until again, a wave of caterpillars came through. This time, another three. At least we had already retreated to the ridge when it happened, as opposed to having them emerge while we were engaged.
“What the fuck is going on,” I murmured as I watched them exit the miasma.
I noticed one briefly hold back during emergence, same as the day before.
Are they… communicating? Reporting details back through the miasma?
Despite being pretty sure these were just animals, or some kind of force of nature, that didn’t necessarily mean it was entirely without intelligence, or at least a form of order. Pack animals weren’t necessarily sapient, but they could still operate in groups.
Sure enough, and a bit horrifically, something must have been communicated, because a fourth caterpillar emerged behind the first three. And this one was even larger.
Did they think we could only kill two at once, since we had set a precedent? Obviously, the caterpillars as a whole couldn’t fully adapt to our tactics, or this war would be a lot less long-term and stagnant. But I also didn’t know everything that happened in this war. The tree was too large and squirrels died too fast, even when they survived battles. There were oral traditions, but if things like this happened before, I certainly hadn’t been informed.
“Send a runner back to camp,” I commanded Kukeoti. We needed everyone we had to fight, but this was officially beyond the capacity of our single unit. “And send someone to the 2nd Ridge and the 4th Ridge, too. We might need their help before camp can deploy aid.”
I didn’t look away from the ridge as Kukeoti sent some of our injured, but fully mobile, squirrels out to deliver the reports. He returned to my side afterward, looking nervous.
The newest, biggest caterpillar approached the dead from our earlier battle, bullied aside the smaller ones, and began to eat the dead.
“At least that hasn’t changed,” I muttered. “We can still slow them by picking them off.”
“We won’t have the numbers for a reliable pincer tomorrow, with the runners out.”
“Maybe. Depends on whether the 2nd and 4th Ridge can send anyone by morning.” There was no use stressing about it. We had expended our Love for the day, and a second attack in the same day was much too risky. “All we can do now is sleep and prepare for tomorrow.”
Well, that was all the unit could do. I had some Blood still, and I could maybe snipe a caterpillar from the ridge with it. I just wasn’t sure feeding the big one even more was necessarily a good idea. It would be better to come at it fresh in the morning, when I had all my options fully available. I didn’t want to reveal my hand, but I was not liking the direction this was headed.
*
I was awoken by one of our youngest soldiers. It wasn’t morning yet, and the monochromatic nature of night had me blinking up at the younger squirrel, trying to make out his features.
“Did reinforcements arrive?” I asked, before I noticed the panic in his eyes. “What happened?”
“The enemy, it’s… doing something.”
A nighttime advance? That was unusual, but as the previous day came back to me, I remembered that the entire situation was unusual. I got up and stepped towards the ridge, looking down to see what had the squirrel spooked.
It took a while to make out the enemy in the darkness of night. They were still down near the miasma, at least, but our lookout was correct. The enemy was doing… something.
Though I couldn’t quite make out the finer details, the smaller caterpillars seemed to be swarming the larger one. They were all over it, fully surrounding it. The caterpillars liked to swarm, but that was more like a herd or flock. This was more like a defensive shell.
I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now, so I sent the lookout away to get some rest, and I watched. The black sun crawled across the rest of the sky, absorbing the light and color from this strange world, and it wasn’t until it set and the kaleidoscopic firmament brightened that I could get a better look at the swarm.
Straining my perception to its limits, with the fullness of my Sense stat, I tried to spot a gap in the swarm, to see through the mass of wriggling miasma insects.
A brief flash of silky white was all I saw within the mass.
My mind raced through possibilities, reaching beyond what I had learned in this life, both from stories and wartime training. I dredged memories from my life as Mali and Tovar, looking for anything that could explain it.
My tour of the Obdorn dungeon and the insect farming they did came to mind. Felris and Felton’s family’s territory produced a number of goods from the monsters that lived there. Their father, Rikton, had showed me some of them, before I almost died to those damn ants.
I recalled one product of theirs: silk.
They produced monster silk, derived from cocoons of the silkworms, which were the larva form of…
Dread Moths, Rikton had called them.
Of course. I hadn’t forgotten, exactly, I just hadn’t considered the association. I called these enemies caterpillars in my head, which probably wasn’t accurate, but caterpillars were just the larval phase of the lifestyle of insects like this.
It’s pupating, I realized with abrupt and total horror.
The big monster had formed a cocoon. I had no idea how long this phase of development was, but whatever came out of that cocoon would be something new. The adult form of this creature.
Something which, unless I was wildly mistaken, would almost certainly be able to fly.
I tried to relax, but my heart was pounding hard, only exacerbating the ache in my Blood. If the enemy could fly, it could bypass the lower branches entirely. I had no idea what the adult monster could do, but the upper branches would be helpless in the face of it.
At least they seemed unable to pupate inside the miasma, or their adults couldn’t penetrate the barrier, or we would already presumably be overrun.
“Okay, don’t panic,” I muttered to myself. “It takes time to grow. Once reinforcements arrive, we can…”
I trailed off as I sensed something change. The swarming had stopped. One by one, the caterpillars creating a protective shell were rolling onto their sides and curling up on themselves.
Death curls? But why would they be…
Like a lightning strike crashing into me, everything I knew about this world flashed through my head, again. The powers in this world were about transformation and growth.
They’re being used as sacrifices to speed up the transformation. I couldn’t be positive, but I knew it in my gut.
“Everyone up!” I roared, causing a bunch of startled squirrels to jump in panic.
Kukeoti was at my side immediately, looking down at the ridge. Horror dawned on his face as the dead caterpillars fell away, revealing the cocoon of the enemy in all its stark white splendor.
“What is that?” he hissed.
“We have to kill it before it…” I blanked on the squirrel word for hatch. “We have to kill it. Immediately.”
Kukeoti didn’t second-guess me. Whether he heard the panic in my voice or just trusted me fully, I had no idea. He immediately started snapping orders to the unit, getting them to fall into place.
Maybe I was rushing things. Maybe we should wait for backup, if not from camp then from the neighboring ridges. But the caterpillars were all dead, so if the cocoon wasn’t about to hatch, we could just rip it apart, hopefully killing whatever was inside. Waiting would only give it more time to hatch, or allow even more caterpillars to crawl out of the darkness.
“Let’s move!”
I didn’t wait for the rest of the unit. I threw myself off the ridge’s edge, letting myself fall towards the cocoon, and snapped my patagia open before I could hit the trunk where it started to level off, gliding down to my target while my unit raced behind.
Crashing into the cocoon was like hitting a brick wall. I had expected it to be soft, but the silken shell was hard as steel. I slammed my crystal blades down, hoping to cut into it, but they couldn’t penetrate.
I really wish I had the ability to make fire right now, I thought in dismay as my unit arrived. They joined me in trying to destroy the cocoon, but they were just as ineffective.
“Incoming wave!” someone shouted, and I lifted my eyes to the five new caterpillars that were exiting the miasma and beginning their approach.
“Do not let them reach this!” I shouted to my unit. I hated to sacrifice my soldiers, but I hardened my heart and made the order, knowing it was necessary, no matter the losses. “Kill them all!”
As my unit raced towards the caterpillars, I pushed all the Blood I had into a [Blood-Empowered Blow], and slammed my arm-mounted blade down on the cocoon. It still only partially penetrated. The defensive power of this silk was too high.
We should have killed the big one when it emerged, or killed the smaller ones faster. If I couldn’t get through the cocoon, I didn’t think there was a squirrel that could. We’d have to kill it when it emerged, while it was, hopefully, still weak from hatching.
Turning towards the miasma, I leapt forward to join my unit against the new caterpillars.
Five caterpillars against a tired unit that had already suffered losses, and had soldiers missing delivering messages. One at a time, they died, but so did we.
Kukeoti and I fell back, alongside the remains of our unit. There were still two caterpillars left, and they were getting close to the cocoon.
“You take one, we take the other?” my second-in-command asked, giving me a wry, tired grin.
“Fair enough,” I grunted. This was no time to pretend I couldn’t take on a caterpillar solo, though I didn’t want to deplete myself with the giant unknown that was the cocoon behind us.
We raced forward, and I split off from the rest of my force to throw myself into the dangerous, one-on-one battle. I fell into battle, relying heavily on my martial skills and lifetimes of training, slicing the caterpillar over and over, until the sound of a squirrel crying out drew my attention.
“Kukeoti! No!”
My head snapped over, and I saw my second pinned by a leg of their caterpillar, pierced right through his crystal breastplate.
The distraction allowed my own opponent to slash at me, and I felt the burning of a cut open in my side. Furious, I opened the tap to Mother’s Love. I wanted to save it for the cocoon, but at this rate, we wouldn’t last that long.
I converted two-thirds of my Love into Blood, my heart pounding in my chest as the fire of the foreign energy raced through my veins. I snapped off a [Blood Lance] at my caterpillar, piercing it through entirely, then empowered my legs to leap from my caterpillar to the other.
[Blood Blades] shredded it apart as I landed next to Kukeoti, and I ripped the now-severed leg from his body. He was still alive, but only barely.
Squirrels died against the enemy. That was, perhaps, what we were even for. Mother’s immune system, her army against the invaders.
But Kukeoti deserved more.
I pushed the unconverted Love into [Restorative Growth], pushing it through me and into the dying squirrel. Even with only the remaining third of the full Love I had access to, it was enough to seal up his devastating chest wound.
The pain on his face faded, and he relaxed, unconscious but breathing.
Looking up at my unit, I saw them staring at me with wide open eyes. That was unsurprising, since I had just blown apart two caterpillars with my magic blood, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. A resounding crack drew my attention to the cocoon.
For fuck’s sake. “Get Kukeoti back to Tikurit,” I ordered the soldiers, snapping them out of their reverie.
“What about…” one soldier gestured to the cocoon, which was now shifting slightly as whatever within began to emerge.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said through gritted teeth. Then, hedging against failure, I shook my head. “At the ridge, concentrate healing on whoever’s fastest, and get a report back to camp immediately. In case I fail.”
I wasn’t sure what command could do about this, but the fact that the tree wasn’t overrun by caterpillars meant it had handled threats like this before, since this couldn’t be the first or only time it had happened. Maybe it came at the cost of hundreds or even thousands of squirrel lives, but that was better than letting the enemy get a foothold in the tree.
Of course, by that measure, I probably shouldn’t have saved Kukeoti and invested all my energy into this fight. If I failed, he would likely still die. The cocoon had still been intact when I made that decision, insofar as it was a decision and not an emotional response; I might have made a different one if that first crack was a few seconds earlier, but it was too late for that now.
My soldiers grabbed Kukeoti and, after shooting me an uncertain look, withdrew.
I took a moment to collect myself, but another crack drew my attention back to the cocoon. I couldn’t break through the silken barrier, and the fact that whatever was emerging was breaking out meant it was exceptionally strong, but it wasn’t necessarily as resilient as the cocoon itself had been.
Plus, I had a lot more Blood racing through my veins right now to try and kill it with.
Something was already emerging, and I raced forward to close the distance before it did. Leaping up onto the cocoon, I headed for the cracks where it would be, momentarily, vulnerable.
A wing unfurled at a speed that absolutely battered me, sending me flying.
I shot through the air away from the cocoon, horrified at the power of the miasma butterfly and the speed at which it was breaking free from its confines. My arms opened almost automatically to arrest my fall, but pain shot through me as I spun out of control. I glanced down to see one of my patagia torn through. The caterpillar’s last attack, I realized.
[Blood Restoration] wouldn’t heal my transformed patagia, and I had already used up my Love healing Kukeoti, so I couldn’t restore or transform myself. I wasted some Blood making a compressed parachute, like I had used to slow my free-fall from the upper branches, only to realize how far I had been flung. I had been knocked too far from the trunk. I was falling towards the miasma.
On the trunk, the butterfly had both wings unfurled. They were iridescent, but unlike the leaves of the Mother tree or the firmament above, it was an oily rainbow over pitch black darkness.
Maybe I could send a long enough [Blood Whip] back at the trunk, or the creature, and save myself, but it would burn up the rest of my reserves. I barely had time to consider. As it pulled the rest of its dark body free from its metamorphic shell, I realized that I didn’t have a choice I could stomach.
Repurposing the blood in my parachute, I let myself go. Compressing it, and every drop of Blood I could gather, into a deadly thin and sharp [Blood Lance], I turned my attention and the strength of three lives onto the invader.
For Kukeoti, Tikurit, and the others. For Rukechi, my mom, and my dad. For the Mother. I hope this works.
The massive pin of Blood fired like a missile away from me, into and through the butterfly’s body, nailing it to the trunk of the tree.
And I fell into the miasma to die.
AN: This could, and probably should, be two chapters, since it's long enough. There's even a scene break where I would have split it, if I wasn't wrapping up the first book. Ultimately, I decided I liked the idea of ending it on Chapter 100, especially since Tovar's life ended on Chapter 50. It nicely splits the book down the middle; the first human life, and the other, non-human lives, contained by metaversal chapters on both sides.
I suppose that's a bit of a spoiler for Wednesday's chapter, since the end of this chapter could read like the MC might survive and explore the miasma, but no. If this were in real book format you'd realize as much because you'd see that the book is 99% complete and there's only one chapter left. Since I've already drawn the comparison to Chapter 1, you can surely guess what's coming.
Some of Mali's chapters were too short, IMO, so there's a chance I edit some of those chapters together, reducing the number of Mali chapters by one, and ultimately split this chapter in two, increasing the number of Cheokit chapters, but it won't really change anything, so we'll see. In terms of word count, Cheokit's life was only 28k words, which was the short end of my expectations, but not particularly outside of them. I did kind of speed through it, but that wasn't because of laziness or because I wasn't enjoying exploring it; rather, as the final life before meeting Detective Jeb again and finishing this book, it served its purpose like this. Functionally, it was to give MC [Metatransmutation] so that MC's magic is no longer "reset" with each reincarnation in the next books, for progression purposes. Narratively, it was also to explore gender a bit, and a few other things which I'll hold back on talking about until after final chapter. I know some commenters had bigger expectations, and if that was you and this let you down, sorry!
Ultimately, with what I expect from Chapter 100, this is approaching 250k words. (At least, I think it will. I haven't written the next chapter yet, since you're getting these as they come, for better or worse. I expect it will be a full chapter, but maybe I need to rework part of this chapter into it for RR if it winds up far short of expectations. We'll see on Wed.) I realized I didn't want volume 1 to end up exceeding 1000 pages. (On RR, I believe that would be 275k words, but I think Kindle is 250 words per page. Not 100% sure. It varies for print based on certain factors which I can control, if I take it to print.) Even 1k pages is maybe too long (especially for print) and an argument can be made for splitting it down the middle into two books, but I've always considered these first lives as one full entry.
Anyway, you just read a very long chapter so you probably don't want to read a long author note about technicalities. Suffice it to say that Wednesday's chapter will close things out. After that, I'll probably post a long and rambling Afterword/blog (but not gated to Heroes Only, it'll be for everyone) where I'll go into more details on how I felt about everything. If not on Friday, in place of a usual chapter, then expect it on the weekend sometime. After that, I can now confirm I will be going on hiatus. I do not know how long the hiatus will be, so if you don't want to have to keep on eye on things and haven't already, you may want to consider ending your membership, although I hope you'll return when I do. I will be pausing billing, which should nicely push everything back until my return, but it's possible I'll lose track of that if the hiatus runs longer than expected (since Patreon, stupidly, only allows you to pause billing one month at a time, instead of it just being an on/off toggle).
Beyond the hiatus, I'll save discussing what I think the future holds for the Afterword/blog. I also want to get a chance to read your comments on this chapter and the next before I sort my thoughts out fully.