I stopped at a flat stretch near the edge of my Sense range, just far enough that no serpents would reach imdiately, but close enough to still map the area where the cluster was if I pushed it.
The glowing moss thinned out here, the dark compacted soil gradually giving way back to the pale color of sand. Behind the terrain was open and clear. Ahead, the vegetation thickened and the ground changed color.
I could not see the sinkhole from here. I could not see the lake. I could not see any serpent. It looked the sa as any usual stretch of the wasteland.
But Sense told a different story.
I pushed it outward to its limit and felt the territory fill in my perception like a map assembling itself. The pack was distributed through the tunnel system below. It spread across a central presence, bigger than everything else. The seven headed serpent was not moving. It was coiled sowhere deep in the central cavity.
I took the cube from my inventory and held it in my left hand.
The plan was straightforward. Grow the barrier large enough to contain most of the serpent’s main body. Position my hand carefully at the barrier’s edge so only the dirt in my hands crossed the barrier. Switch the serpent into the barrier. Shrink.
I wouldn’t be inside a barrier filled with fifteen Corruptors again.
I activated the cube and pushed the barrier outward, shaping it to the right size. The green light held steady around , dormant and ready.
I left the cube there and walked to the periter. After that I extended my right arm into the barrier so that only my hand and the fistful of dry soil in my palm crossed the edge into the inside.
The rest of my body stayed outside the barrier.
I closed my eyes and let Sense reach forward at full extension, past the visible terrain, past the moss line, down through the soil, to where the serpent sat coiled in its underground chamber. It was sitting close to my maximum range. I felt its shape in the spatial field, the seven heads arranged outward from a central mass, each one had a distinct shape, the body coiled beneath them like a compressed spring.
I focused on the center of that mass.
Switch.
The serpent arrived and the dirt was no longer in my hand.
The displacent was the largest single Switch I had ever attempted with a living being, and I still felt no backlash from using my ability. The serpent was now there, inside the barrier, and for a fraction of a second I thought sothing had gone wrong.
The seven heads had been distributed around the periter of the serpent’s coiled body. When the body arrived inside the barrier, three of the outer heads were outside the barrier wall.
I was worried they would attack , but the barrier cut right through them.
A clean cut. The barrier wall simply occupied the sa space that a section of those three heads also occupied, and the barrier won that argunt without negotiating. The leftmost head got separated by the neck, the silver scales parting along the outer wall with a wet sound, dark blood spraying outward across the green surface before falling to the ground.
The second one caught the barrier edge at the base of the skull and the head tumbled free entirely, landing in the pale soil two ters from my feet with its jaws still open, still moving, the red eyes still catching the light as if it had not registered yet that the body it belonged to was sowhere else. The third was partially inside and partially outside, and it separated unevenly, the cut was straight, the darker interior material spreading across the ground in a radius around where it landed.
Three silver heads in the dirt around ... well, two and a half.
Three pools of dark liquid spread from the barrier’s outer edge.
The remaining four heads inside the barrier started shrieking with a sharp, loud sound.
"SHHHAAAAAAA!."
It was not a hiss. Four serpent voices at different registers colliding simultaneously produced a noise that made my skin chill. A layered shriek that made the air feel wrong. The barrier surface flickered with the force of four heads and a tail striking it from the inside at once.
I looked at the heads on the ground for a mont longer than I intended to.
"I did not think it would go like that." I said to nobody.
The serpent’s body thrashed inside the barrier, coils smashing against the green boundary, scales scraping and leaving no marks on the surface. Blood continued to seep through the lower edge of the containnt.
Usually the vital organ of the serpents was in the center of their body. I wasn’t sure if this one had seven hearts or if it only had one, but that didn’t really matter for my plan.
I stopped trying to answer the question.
Shrink.
The barrier compressed inward. The four remaining voices escalated together as the available space reduced, each head striking the walls from a different angle and finding the sa answer every ti. Its body folded against itself as the compression built.
The ground beneath my feet was already vibrating from this serpent’s movent. But then the tremor intensified. The rest of the pack was answering its call.
Below , through Sense, I felt the pack moving through the tunnel network, dozens of bodies accelerating toward the surface in the sa direction, drawn to my location.
The barrier kept closing.
A final compression. The center of the serpent’s body folded in on itself, the vital mass giving way.
Dark liquid fell in a ring around the base of where the barrier had been. The silver material, the scales and structural elents, settled into shapes on the ground that mostly held their form.
Then a notification appeared.
[You Slayed: Acolyte Silver Snake - Level ???]
[Soul Fades.]
Acolyte. That explained everything I had seen it do yesterday.
I picked up the cube and activated it again, planning to use the barrier as a shield while the pack broke the surface and lost their coordination.
The green light pulsed outward a little.
Then it slowed.
Then it stopped.
The light contracted slightly, flickered once, and went out.
I held the cube and looked at it. The runic patterns had dimd their glow, the passive light of sothing that had simply run out of whatever it ran on.
Around , in a wide ring, the ground began to crack.
No light.
No barrier.
I’d just lost my shield.
Right as the fight actually began.
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