Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
Minotaur. Has the appearance of a humanoid with various bovine features. Stands roughly three meters tall. Estimated to be a 'level 2' monster with high physical strength, high durability, but relatively slow and simple movements. Normally found in groups of one to three, but eventually accumulate into larger herds. Roar has a supernatural ability to cause paralyzing fear in weaker targets. Highly aggressive and direct manner of attacking, recursive mimicry of charge-behavior from other minotaurs sometimes leads to destructive 'stampedes' that range well beyond their normal territories.
Stampedes responsible for the destruction of rogue forward-operating base 'Under Resort' more than any other cause. Expected floors, fifteen to seventeen. Core value, twelve-thousand seven hundred and fifty. Specific physical parameters unknown, the Guildmeats didn't keep track of that, proving their overall incompetence.
In any case, this was a large number of unknown targets well outside of the loadouts and backup he had prepared for them. Slaughtering them without long term losses would take some elbow grease on his part. They had just crashed into the far-wall, unable to turn in time and kicking up waves of rock-dust. He would assume they were utterly unharmed and act accordingly.
He reached over and pulled Pipsqueak's magic sword out of the sheath, ignoring the sudden paralysis that had overtaken most of the brats. He'd buy a new one for the girl later. He wasn't quite sure how to operate these things, so he just copied what he remembered the Racoon doing. Including calling out the name of the sword, no matter how stupid it felt to do.
"NAGASHIMA!" He roared and swung the pilfered blade, a venomous light in the vague shape of a serpent exploded out of a crescent-arc of venom left in the air before him. It burbled and slithered, racing forwards to crash against the distant mass of cowmeat and roar-hissing as it impacted.
The sword was crumbling in his hands, he dropped the hilt and twisted, grabbing Pipsqueak and Freckles by the back of their armor and roaring out a command. "GET MOVING!" Behind him, the acid-light let out slithy clicker-clacks as it burned through stone and flesh, drowning out the roars of bull-beasts.
Hoisting up the brats he started running, forcing the stationary ones onwards with quick kicks and commands. That acid-blast would last for nine seconds from last time he counted, giving him time to relay a basic strategy to the slackers. He already knew what he was going to do, now it was only the matter of getting it organized and executed.
"Halflead! Spill a bag behind us!" It took an unfortunate few moments for Halflead to realize what he meant and why, but quickly complied by slowing slightly, opening up one bag of marble-like monster cores, and upturning the bag on the path behind them.
Not on par with caltrops, more expensive than ball bearings, but it would work to slow down attackers in a pinch. The hallway was too narrow for them to avoid trampling on it, and the mass of meat that would build up would buy them extra time. That was the most important first step.
Note to self, buy a bag of ball bearings after this.
The little legs of the halfmeats and the brats would slow their pace, he'd have to spill a few more bags along the way. He tossed Freckles and Pipsqueak up briefly, letting go of their collars and adjusting his grip to grab the both of them around the midsection instead. As he adjusted his grip, he barked another order.
"Spearmint, grab foxbrat and bunbrat, move to the Pantry and set up at the top of the stairs to floor six!" That was the longest open stretch, giving foxbrat time to start casting. Spearmint was the fastest overall, having tested it the other day, and could defend those two while they were waiting. Bunbrat to keep them from getting trapped in a dead end along the way.
It took another few unfortunate moments for her to realize why he was relaying that order, but quickly enough she picked up the pace to overtake the brats in front. She grabbed both by their collars as she ran past, hoisting up the brats and racing off with them in hand. Right about thirty miles per hour, by sight estimate, she'd be there in less than a minute.
The walls to their sides were no longer caked in off-green shades. The burbling acid-light had ceased to burn behind them. The pained braying roars were once more utterly audible. The bombsword had bought them about ten seconds so far, the cattle were getting back up for another charge.
He made a note to buy two more after this.
"Wh-why did you tell her to run off?!" Scrappy responded, legs pumping and eyes wide with panic. The brat needed to get rid of that fear response, it was wasting everyone's time.
"Foxbrat needs one minute to cast the wind spell. Minotaurs have hooves. The stairs are the best spot to delay them as she casts."
"But there's not enough time if she stays with us." Halflead called out, no longer weighed down by a full bag and keeping a half-eye behind them as he ran. "Miss Drake is the fastest one here, is that right Mister Adam? So you send her up ahead to get the priestess more time to cast, right?"
Behind them, out of the cloud of rock-dust and half-melted stone, a horde of half-damaged bovines burst forth, clattering bones and stomping flesh from their fallen comrades in the process. Yet more were behind them still, a stream of angry meat weighed by the ton. The acidlight had killed maybe ten, at best.
Well worth the price of 'free'. They disappeared from view as the party rounded a corner and kept up the furious pace.
He started counting seconds.
"But what about the monsters in the Pantry?! Won't it be refilled by the time we get back?!" Scrappy pointed out. "Shouldn't we just run back up to the surface?!"
"They're faster than us, running will just get us killed." Adam snarled out. "I'll keep the horde busy on the bottom floor of the pantry. Spearmint will defend foxbrat from her vantage point. The rest of you will be shooting down everything else from above."
"You think that'll work?!" Halfchain responded with an energetically worried shout.
"Best option we got." Behind him, he heard the braying roars again, this time a note of surprise. The flashes of light in the corner of his visor indicated quiet shockwaves from meat crashing into stone again. They had just started hitting the spilled monster cores, hooves providing little stability against the tiny expensive marbles. With how many there were in the relatively narrow corridor, there was no way for them to step around it either.
Sixteen seconds to clear four-hundred and sixty or so feet, twenty nine feet per second, that put them at around twenty miles per hour.
Doable.
"Y-your gonna handle the entire horde alone?! Are you crazy?!" Freckles managed out, even being jostled around harshly by his furious pace. "You need backup!"
"None of you meatbags can keep up!" Adam snarled, cutting off other potential arguments. "Deadweight is only going to slow me down while I'm keeping them busy, all of you fuckers are getting out of my way!"
Behind him, another wave of meat and bone crashed into the far wall, a pile-up of bovine that clogged the hallways again. A wall made of their own collapsed bodies, it would keep them busy for yet-more valuable seconds. The pantry was still around down another two hallways.
"Halfred! Dump your bag!" Adam commanded, and was fortunately obeyed faster than last time. Unfortunately she slowed down too much to get her bag open, so he made the executive decision to start juggling.
"Woah!" Freckles wailed as he threw her into the air ahead of him, reaching down to grab Halfred by the collar and toss her forwards. "Scrappy, catch!"
Scrappy turned, holding his arms open, staggering and almost falling from the unexpected weight of a halfmeat woman. "Ooph!" He managed to adjust himself before collapsing, getting back into a running pace.
Reaching up and hooking an arm, Adam caught Freckles on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, prepared for the weight about to come down on him and thus only staggering slightly as she landed. Every second not spent moving at top speed was another second that the horde of angry meat behind them had to catch up.
"Halfchain, be ready to pour when I tell you!" He growled, getting that order ready as they moved down the hall, reaching the end and taking another turn.
"I hear ya!" Halfchain responded, adjusting his grip on the laden bag and unstrapping it, ready to dump at a signal. They could always go back and collect whatever survived afterwards, and make more money later. Losing a worker when his operation was this small would be an unacceptable loss in rep and short-term profits.
He glanced behind them. The wall of meat was still picking themselves up and a few stragglers had escaped. Stomping forwards with heads low and covered in gore-wounds from their fellows crashing into them. Stragglers followed by more and more breaking out of the pile-up of braying flesh, copying their fellows and rushing forwards with little regard.
They'd hit the next section of dumped cores by the time their party had made it to the end of the last hallway and into the pantry. He snorted as they rounded the corner down the next hallway. Slow and simple indeed, he had time to pull this off.
"Halfchain, be ready to dump the cores at the mouth of the pantry, Scrappy, take everyone up the stairs when we get there." He relayed commands ahead of time.
They passed by a ground of monster corpses, heads and torsos turned to mash in a familiar manner. Spearmint had cleared out the groups as she passed them. A good sign.
"W-we'll be r-ranged support, right?" Pipsqueak managed to get out from her constantly-jostled position under one of his arms.
"Yes. Focus fire on everything that isn't a Cow, the less variables I have to worry about, the easier this gets. Make sure Foxbrat knows to focus fire on the groups of Cows and nothing else. Got it?"
"Doesn't her spell only reach fifty feet?!" Scrappy pointed out, causing Adam to pause in step, snarl furiously, and immediately start making mental adjustments to his planning. He had forgotten that little limitation, treating his artillery like artillery and not the burst-flamethrower that it actually was.
"You're right. Scrappy, you'll take over for Spearmint when it comes to defending Foxbrat. I need her to help me hold on the stairs while foxbrat is chanting. The rest of you will still be ranged support."
"Why the stairs?!" Freckles asked from her position on his shoulder.
"Minotaurs have hooves, those don't do them any favors when it comes to stairs." Halflead growled out, glancing behind him again. A braying roar caused him to shudder mid-run and turn completely forwards again, ignoring the frumious echoes of cowmeat crashing into the next set of dumped cores.
"How will you avoid getting hit by miss Momiji's spell?" Halfred called out from her place in Scrappy's arms. "Won't you be in the way?"
"Jumping."
"Off the stairs?!" Pipsqueak gave a panicked response.
"Over the spell!" Adam refuted. "It's a cone and we'll be closer to the origin point than the cows will."
"What if it's not strong enough to hurt them?!" The damage was on par with the magic sword from the times he had seen it used, which means it absolutely could hurt the Cows. Of course, even assuming that it wasn't strong enough to do so…
"Then you weakmeats run away and I kill them the hard way!"
"You're going to kill them yourself?! How?! That's a horde of minotaurs!" Freckles asked, smacking at the front of his armor. "You're level 1! You've had a Falna for less than a month!"
"I've survived worse."
The conversation was quiet for a time, the hallway filled with heavy breathing, stomping boots, and the distant roars and trampling hooves.
"Adam. Hestia-sama will be pretty upset if you die, so you're definitely not allowed to, okay?" Scrappy called out with a serious tone in his voice.
"Remind me to beat your ass later, for implying a bunch of cows have any chance of killing me."
There were a few scattered but strained chuckles at that, but not from him.
He was being quite serious when he spoke, brat needed to learn some respect.
The pantry entrance was just up ahead, the corpses of monsters becoming more and more frequent as they passed along. There were too many at the entrance for the cores to hinder movement too much, so they'd have to be dumped off earlier.
As in, right now. "Halfchain, dump them."
Halfchain slowed his pace slightly, getting to the back of the group again and pouring out his bag of cores. Right about two million valis worth of loot from today's delving dumped from three bags as a set of improvised traps. The cost effectiveness was dogshit.
He adjusted his grip on the females he was carrying, moving to hold them by the collars and letting them hover over the ground slightly long enough for them to get the gist and start kicking their legs. Dropping them so they could run on their own, he immediately reached back to grab his crossbow again and get it ready.
Twenty shots, he could handle firing it about three times a second, but he needed to make sure he hit the eyes to secure a kill. Once per second, giving him time to aim, potentially twenty cow kills without reload. Two extra magazines, twenty shots each, three seconds to mount a new boltcase. Plus however many monsters there would be in the pantry already…
At best sixty monsters in sixty-nine seconds. At best. He needed better equipment. The roars echoed behind him, tinting the edges of his visor a pale blue.
"Be ready, firing advance up the stairs as we emerge."
A "Yes!" of several variations came out as the brats and halfmeats readied their respective ranged weaponry, mostly crossbows with the sole exception of Scrappy's sling. Technically the Supporter Squad shouldn't have to fight at all normally, but this situation fell firmly under the 'unexpected adversary' emergency clause, so the contract was without violation.
Bursting out of the tunnelway and into the pantry, illuminated by the giant spike of glowing crystal in its center, they were greeted by a small swarm of monsters making their way up the stairs and towards the rest of their party. Spearmint fending off the waves with blurring silver arcs, backed up by the occasional crossbow shot that made the moths drop from the air.
He grimaced as he approached, the roars of pained and hateful cattle behind them. "Hold my crossbow!" He commanded, tossing the weapon to Freckles. Unburded, he burned forwards harder, outpacing the rest in short order and rushing towards the crowd of monsters.
He didn't have time for these fuckers.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" He roared, bringing eyes of monsters in the back towards him. Frogs, the slowest, lethargically turned to face him.
His limbsshook.
A frog half-turned away.
His left fist smashed it, a spray of gore that blinded the next two frogs. They flinched back, suddenly blinded.
His right fist smashed one. His left fist smashed the next. He carried the momentum onwards.
A frog, leaping to bite him.
His right fist smashed it.
A frog shooting its tongue out at him. He twisted, grabbing the appendage, letting it pull him. His feet smashed its skull. He leapt forwards.
A frog, a frog, a frog. His fists blurring, the stairway becoming slick with fresh gore as he reduced their bodies to red.
Internal temperature rising. The sounds of trampling hooves in the distance. His body blurring.
Then an ant, another ant, and another ant. Then a half-dozen more. Left, right, left, right. Piston-thrusts, starting from the back, into the shoulders, then the arms, and carried down into a reinforced set of knuckles.
He did not slow his run as he ascended the stairs, he just forced his arms to punch faster to keep up with the thickening crowds of monsters that he was flanking. Darkness around the edges of his vision, the helmet was restricting his breathing just enough for it to be an issue at full burn. He ignored it, he'd take a breather once he was at the top.
Fucking meat.
The ants ended. Then came the rabbits, turning and leaping to face him, sometimes stupid enough to jump off the stairs and to their deaths in the effort to reposition around.
Smash, smash, smash, smash…
Arcs of silver flashing through the crowds of monsterflesh and sprays of gore. He was getting close to the-
-His vision went black at the top of the stairs, returning immediately as he face-planted into the stone.
Snarling, he threw himself up and took in the situation. The meat wasn't getting enough air. A weakness he had to correct later, however possible. For now, he lifted his visor and forced regular and heavy breathing. Burning lungs worked overtime to get his cells resupplied while the situation was clear.
No monsters in the immediate vicinity. Spearmint was there, mostly free of red paint that he had so thoroughly covered the stairs in. Foxbrat and Bunbrat were shaking in their boots, crossbows ready and air-facing eyes wide. He turned behind him.
Stairs covered in gore, the rest of the party already halfway up, running to try and keep pace with him. Good enough, they'd cover the flanks while the fighting was going on.
"Foxbrat, start chanting!" He forced out with a glare.
"B-but they're n-not here yet!"
Distantly, the sounds of roars and hooves echoed through the tunnelway they had exited through. They had hit the last set of monster cores then. The distances involved and delays from the last times…
"Start chanting." He ordered again, this time making sure to communicate through his look that he wasn't about to tolerate a 'no'. Foxbrat, tears in the corner of her vision, put her crossbow down, picked up her spear, and started chanting.
"Set up firing lines!" He belted to the others as they reached the top of the stairs. "They'll be here within thirty seconds, I don't want to see a single thing that isn't a goddamn cow by that time."
He snatched his crossbow from Freckles, turning towards Spearmint as he did so. "They'll be slowed on the stairs, we're holding them back long enough for Foxbrat to throw wind at them, got it?"
"How do we avoid being hit by her spell?" She immediately asked.
"Jump up." He simply stated, receiving a confident nod in return. He crouched down, getting into a steady firing position and aiming at the tunnelway. Now ready to fire at any moment, he stayed completely still and allowed his meat to recover.
…He reached into his bag and pulled out a healing potion, downing it at once and letting the white-pain drown out the black around the corners of his vision. Best to top-off while he could.
The roars were getting louder. The trampling shook the ground. The chanting behind him hitching occasionally when either of those things were too audible. Occasionally a crossbow would fire, and some distant enemy would fall. He had already delegated that particular task, he had to focus on the main event.
Giant Cow eyes, about twice the size of a quarter. Effective range of this crossbow on a moving target, about two-hundred feet. Distance from here to the tunnelway, about three times that. No wind to worry about, no rain, and nothing in his way.
There wasn't a chance he was missing.
A minotaur, covered in goring-wounds and braying furiously, trampled out of the tunnelway, snorting as it charged forwards.
It staggered as his bolt crashed into its eye and sank to the fletching into its brain. He pulled the lever to load another shot.
Unfortunately, it reached up, grabbed at its face, and roared furiously before continuing its charge towards the stairs.
The second bolt in the other eye made it stagger again, before finally collapsing forwards. Two bolts to the brain to actually kill.
Thirty at best, not sixty. Adam's grim frown deepened as the rest of the horde started to emerge from the tunnelway, each covered in goring wounds and cracking stone with their hooves.
A chorus of chest-deep roars shook the pantry-room.
Positive note, it made the other monsters scatter.
