Chương 3: The Strength Gap Was a Bit Wide

"The earthcore beasts are here!" The planks at the platform's edge groaned under a weight they were never built for. A hunter with a raised torch had barely reached the front when a scythe-like foreleg sprang out of the mist and swept flat across his chest. Hide split. Beads of blood spattered into the flame. The hunter went down on his back. The thing rode the motion up onto the platform.

The first part of it to clear the edge was a head sheathed in hard black shell, flat and broad, eyeless, with mouthparts taking up most of its face. Rows of fine teeth opened and ground shut, making a clicking that set your jaw on edge. Its abdomen was soft and white, contracting and reshaping itself as it climbed, now drawn out like a snake, now bulging into fist-sized knots of meat. A thick reek of turned earth rolled over them, laced with the sour ferment of rotting flesh. Wang Pu's face went green.

"That thing looks like a cockroach and a rice cake eloped." The earthcore beast lunged at the wounded man off to the side. Gu Zhiwei grabbed Wang Pu by the back of his collar and hauled him into a sideways roll. The black foreleg passed over their heads and drove half a foot into the planking, showering them both with splinters.

"What are you standing there for? Run!" Wang Pu scrambled up on all fours, made it two steps, and looked back.

"You-you be careful!" Gu Zhiwei had already snatched up the spear the wounded hunter had dropped and was driving it with everything she had into the earthcore beast's flank. The point sank into soft flesh. It felt like stabbing a wad of waterlogged leather. The beast curled up against the pain, its dorsal plates flipping open to either side, and out of its belly squeezed two new stubby legs that clamped around the shaft and wouldn't let go. The web of Gu Zhiwei's hand went numb. The Strength gap was a bit wide.

The next second, a vine shield came slamming in from the side. Matt braced his shoulder against the face of it and threw his whole body into the earthcore beast. His Strength stat clearly wasn't low, he forced the thing back a good half meter.

"Pull your spear and fall back!" She yanked it free without hesitating. Not far off, the head hunter put a burning bone arrow into the beast's mouthparts. A wave of heat burst outward; a strange crackling ran along the black shell. The thing shrieked, forelegs thrashing wildly, and retreated toward the platform's outer rim. Matt raised the shield and rammed it again. The earthcore beast went over the railing and dropped into the cloud.

A shrill scraping welled up from every direction at once, as though dozens of blunt knives were sawing at the great tree's bark all together. More black legs groped faintly out of the mist. The head hunter's expression changed.

"Other years it's a dozen at most." He kicked a broken plank aside and barked over his shoulder, "Light every fire basin on the lower levels! Seal the gathering paths, get the children up top!" Bone whistles rose one after another. After a short scramble, Cloudperch moved fast. Women hoisted small children onto their backs and ran for the wooden ladders. Elders hauled out clay jars packed with grease. Hunters converged downward along the vine bridges.

The lamps swung crazily in the wind, and burning grease gave off a choking, scorched-nut smell. Gu Zhiwei watched a hunter lift a longbow down from the wall, and a strange certainty rose in her. She felt as if she knew that weapon well.

"Lend me the bow. Let me try." He gave her a look.

"You haven't been in the hunting grounds in a long time."

"I used one all the time while I was out honing myself." This body was her own, obviously; not long ago it had been sitting in an office hammering at a keyboard. But when the bow settled into her palm, the rough grain pressing into her fingertips, odd fragments of memory surfaced with it. How to hook the string. How to correct an arrow's path against damp wind. How to judge a quarry's distance through cloud. Scattered. Blurred. And in the instant she drew and aimed, suddenly clear.

One shot, and an earthcore beast went down with it. The hunter took one look and tossed her two quivers.

"Don't waste them." Gu Zhiwei slung the quivers over her back and pushed against the current of people, down. Wang Pu chased after her, hugging a jar of grease to his chest.

"Sis Gu, Sis Gu, slow down…look, I'm not joking, I've been terrified of cockroach-type things since I was little."

"Then why are you coming down?"

"I dunno, I just felt like I still wanted to help with something." Chen Li arrived by another vine bridge and shoved a torch into his hand.

"They're short of hands passing fire down below." Wang Pu looked at the grease jar in his left hand and the torch in his right, and was quiet for a second.

"Brother Chen, I suspect you have a serious misunderstanding of the word 'safe.'" The lower levels were already one long brawl. The vine bridges spiraled down hugging the great tree's trunk, and at the very bottom they linked several gathering platforms. Daylight never reached here. The moss was slick, and the air was thick with root and mud-water. The fire basins had only just been lit, and already they showed the cloud packed with misshapen black shapes.

Some of the earthcore beasts had seven or eight jointed limbs and could race along the bark at speed. Others were nothing but an armored lump of meat, inching forward by pumping their abdomens in and out. Farther off, a long creature slender as a centipede had wound itself around a vine bridge, its dorsal plates opening and closing as it spat gray-white slime. The slime hit the planks and smoked with a hiss. Matt held the very front with a spear, his vine shield already gouged with deep scars.

The hunters beside him had locked spears and shields into a narrow line. They'd just driven off the one on the left when another black shape lunged in from the right. Too many. Gu Zhiwei stepped up onto the railing and lifted the bow. She didn't rush the shot. Firelight shivered in the mist. The earthcore beasts had no eyes; before each lunge, the membranes on either side of the head flared outward to catch the wind stirred by a moving hunter.

And the seams of the belly plating would contract briefly, baring a thin line of gray-white flesh. Membrane flaring. Belly tightening. Gu Zhiwei let go. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. The bone arrow passed through a gap less than a palm wide between two hunters and drove into the beast's flank, pinning the thing outright to the railing. Matt rode the moment and thrust, shattering its skull. He glanced back.

"Nice shot!" Gu Zhiwei drew a second arrow.

"Duck." Matt dropped low instantly. The arrow shaved past over his head and hit the black shape lunging in behind him. The head went in through the spread sensory membrane; the beast's shriek cut off mid-note and its body slid away down the bark. The head hunter blew his bone whistle.

"Hold! Don't let them climb!" Black shapes came on and on. Gu Zhiwei stood high, her line of sight passing over the churn of bodies. The bursting crackle of torches, the piercing rasp of earthcore beasts scraping the tree's roots, the groans of the wounded thrashing in pain. All of it crammed onto that lowest gathering platform. Smoke stung her eyes dry. Sweat ran down her spine. The bowstring left her fingertips buzzing. And little by little, she began to see.

The earthcore beasts moved without pattern, and their bodies deformed without warning, but every time they gathered force, some particular section of shell moved first. That faint rise and fall landed in her eye and folded in with the noise around her, the wind direction, the firelight and assembled itself into the path of the next lunge. Left. She shot. An earthcore beast had just flipped up onto the platform; the bone arrow was already through its mouthparts. Upper right.

The second arrow severed a limb gripping the railing's vine lashing. The creature lost its balance and took half the ruined railing with it into the mist.

"Matt, half a step back!" Matt didn't ask why. He pulled his spear in and gave ground. A gob of gray-white slime landed exactly where he'd been standing and ate a fist-sized crater of charred black into the wood. From behind, Chen Li hurled a clay jar of grease. It struck the long-bodied earthcore beast square across the back. Gu Zhiwei turned an arrow around, smeared the head with grease, and scraped it along the rim of a fire basin. The head took on a coat of flame. The jar ignited in an instant.

Fire went roaring out along the grease. The long earthcore beast twisted in a frenzy inside the firelight, its coils peeling off the vine bridge inch by inch. Hot wind carried the burnt stench into everyone's faces. Wang Pu covered his nose, but still remembered to hand a fresh torch to the hunter beside him.

"If it reeks this bad cooked, that meat is definitely not edible."

"Right-hand fire basin's out!" Chen Li shouted.

"Coming, coming!" Wang Pu ran over hugging his grease jar. His shoes had gone missing somewhere long ago; he crossed a floor of splinters barefoot, teeth bared in pain, and dumped the grease into the basin. Flame shot up and pushed back an earthcore beast trying to creep in close. From the upper levels came the long cry of a cloud beast. Pale blue-white light came through the leaves. Su Ye reached the edge of the lower platform with two priest's attendants, the cub keeping tight to her shoulder.

It clearly didn't know how to fight; all it could do was puff out its wide transparent wings and push water mist toward the burning basins, very nearly snuffing out a whole row on the spot.

"Do NOT put out the fires! Sweetheart, no…" Su Ye grabbed its head, her voice cracking.

"Help them see where the monsters are, can you understand me? Look for monsters!" The cub gave an aggrieved little burble and swam off toward the gloom. The earthcore beasts seemed to be keeping away from it. Its tail fin and broad wings flared bright. The thick mist wasn't driven off, but several black shapes hidden beneath the tree were suddenly outlined in faint blue-green by the cloud beast's light.

"Nine o'clock!" Su Ye yelled. Gu Zhiwei's arrow was already gone from the string. One arrow. Another. The bone arrows were nearly out, and the ache in her shoulder had sharpened into real pain. Every draw felt like a dull knife cutting into muscle. Her hand had begun to shake, and every breath tasted of salt sweat and bitter pitch. Three left. The ground shuddered hard. An earthcore beast several times the size of its kin broke up out of the soil, its dorsal plating thick as two black stone doors.

One foreleg was already charred through partway, and still it came at the crowd straight into the firelight. Matt brought the shield up to meet it. The vine shield caved in. He was driven back sliding, his soles plowing two deep furrows through the wet moss. Hunters moved in from both sides, and bone spines snapped out along the beast's flanks. They were wounded before they even got close.

"I can't hold it!" Matt's voice came out through clenched teeth. Gu Zhiwei fixed on the thing. Black plating sealing the belly. Sensory membranes tucked away at the sides of the skull. From the front there was nowhere for an arrow to land. It was still coming. Three steps. Two. Gu Zhiwei jumped down off the railing, ran for a vine rope hanging at the side, wound it tight around her waist, and used the pull to swing herself up.

She passed above and to the side of the earthcore beast, close enough to smell the rotten hot air venting out of its plate seams. The creature caught the sound of the wind and turned its head slightly, and the gray membrane hidden behind the hard shell finally spread open. Now. Gu Zhiwei twisted midair and drew. The first arrow went through the membrane. The beast reared its head, and a gap opened between plates. The second arrow drove into the gap. Matt roared and heaved the vine shield upward.

The creature's head was forced high, its soft lower jaw laid bare in the firelight. The last arrow. Gu Zhiwei let go. The bone arrow entered through the mouthparts and came out through the skull. The huge body lurched half a step forward, a bone spine grazing past Matt's shoulder, and then it went down with a crash. The bottom platform shook violently, dust and grit sifting down. Gu Zhiwei hit the ground too, her elbow banging numb.

Before she could get up, Matt flung away the shattered shield and grabbed her, hauling her back. A bone spine the earthcore beast had fired in its death throes buried itself in the spot where she'd just been lying. They looked at each other.

"Thanks." Matt nodded, breathing hard. His shoulder guard was dripping blood. The shrieking of the earthcore beast swarm suddenly broke apart. The few surviving creatures careened back and forth between the firelight and the cloud beast's glow, then abandoned the platform and shoved past one another to burrow into the thick mist below. A hunter jumped down to give chase and was called back with a shout from the head hunter. The drums slowed. Gu Zhiwei pushed off her knees and stood.

Her palms were striped with red weals from the string. She'd barely steadied herself when the half-transparent panel surfaced on its own. 【Player detected completing high-intensity combat. 】 【Physical adaptation increased. 】 【Strength: 10→15. 】 【First-combat adaptation bonus applied. This bonus will not recur. 】 The savage pain in her shoulders and back was still there, and her fingers shook like they belonged to someone else. But the number had gone up 5 points, solid and real.

Gu Zhiwei stared at that 15 for two seconds, then closed the panel. Around her, people were slowly coming down out of the fight. Maria arrived from the upper levels with a medicine pouch on her back, knelt beside a wounded man and cut away the bloodied hide, brisk and efficient. Chen Li took a group to count which fire basins were still usable. Wang Pu sat down flat on the ground and started picking splinters out of his soles. He looked at Gu Zhiwei, then at the vine shield in Matt's hand, now split in two.

"Are you two not a little overpowered? Sis Gu, is our Strength really only one point apart?" Gu Zhiwei laughed softly.

"Not anymore."

"Your archery's seriously good. Are you a pro?" Matt asked, curious.

"I trained, a while back." Gu Zhiwei couldn't think of how to explain it, so she went with vague for now. Matt didn't press. He turned to Wang Pu.

"Not bad yourself, kid." Wang Pu sat bolt upright.

"Obviously. I'm famously unshakable in a crisis." Su Ye looked down at his scraped-raw feet.

"You were screaming the entire way over there."

"That was a battle cry." Nobody called him on it. The hunters began dealing with the corpses. Once an earthcore beast died, the soft flesh of the abdomen lost its spring fast and collapsed like melting wax. Blades went through the joints with a dull thud. The tribe's bone arrows came mostly from these bones. Gu Zhiwei was gathering up the arrows still fit to use.

She walked over to the giant earthcore beast, meaning to pull out the second arrow she'd sunk into its plate seam, and found that the soil near the arrow's nock seemed to have been pushed up from beneath, a long, narrow black fissure. A thread of dense hot air was seeping out of it, carrying sulfur and scorched ore. Gu Zhiwei crouched and brushed the loose stone aside. From deep in the fissure came a muffled sound. Thud. The whole stretch of ground under her feet trembled faintly with it.

Slabs of rock humped slowly upward. The surface tore into dozens of long thin gullies, and beneath them showed a dim red glow. The White Feather priest had come up behind Gu Zhiwei at some point. She bent to look at the ground, and the color drained out of her face bit by bit. Deep in the darkness, a vast slab of "rock" opened its eyes.