The Core: The First Guest

47. Sparks of power

Overpower

tr.v. o·ver·pow·ered, o·ver·pow·er·ing, o·ver·pow·ers

To overcome or vanquish by superior force; subdue.To affect so strongly as to make helpless or ineffective; overwhelm.To supply with excessive mechanical power.

"Invicta, why didn't my pheromone deterrent keep this spawn away?" I asked as I leaned up against the nearest wall, covered in splattered blood and mud. I wasn't injured, just shaken a bit with how close I had come to death just a moment prior.

I had decided to head back in the direction that I had started, determined to head down to the lower level of the mound and to try my hand at PVP when I ran into my first spawn. The creature, sized like a Doberman, was agile like a cat and acted like a dog with the zoomies. On the front of its head, it sported a small array of antennae and had a lengthy body that resembled a thin maggot. The mouth was the same as the adult Fomys, except this one didn't have loose lips, instead, it sported very tightly drawn back lips over a circular array of inward-pointing teeth. I could clearly see the resemblance between the spawn and the adult. All I needed to do was to remove hundreds of pounds of flesh and fat and you would have this ravaging smaller beast. It hadn't launched any teeth at me, probably due to the fact that those glands didn't seem to have fully matured yet.

I breathed through my teeth, trying to get my nerves down before I continued on. My battle with it had happened and ended way too fast for me to fully deal with what had transpired. It had come at me like a rat jumping out from a burning dumpster. It had barely made a sound as well. I had just spotted it with my forward-positioned cr eye a moment before it was springing at me with its front claws extended towards my chest. I yelped, instinctively swiped at it with one blade of cr while throwing my body to the side. I crashed into the wall of the tunnel and spun around, slipping down the wall as I tried to get my eyes locked on the spry alien. My blade had missed most of the beast, instead of cutting it in half, it had just had given it a manicure, chopping off a bit of its long hind claws.

With the two remote cr eyes in play I had very little extra cr to work with... just dual 2 feet long blades of cr. The extra range on the blades made me more confident in keeping claws away from my body.

I swung both of the swords in rapid deadly strikes when the spawn landed and rolled like an Olympic gymnast made of butter.

Cr blades moved very fast in relation to human speeds but when trying to hit this randomly zigging and zagging spawn I suddenly got chills down my spine. It felt like I was trying to crush a cockroach with a shoe. The dang thing seemed to feel the movement of the cr coming towards it with its antenna, allowing it to spin and roll right before my blades could make contact. Its flexible body bending like rubber out of the way of my strikes.

"Just die! Why won't you die?!" I shouted as I flicked and jabbed the blades at it, always somehow at where it had been rather than where it was bouncing off the wall right now. I summoned my cr eyes back to me, turning them into tiny blades to try to help me in getting rid of this overly agile menace.

It sensed one of my longer blades approaching its flank and it jumped towards me, extending its right forefoot to try to rake against my calf. I backpedaled along the ground as quickly as I could, my alien flesh barely avoiding getting torn up.

"Oh, you dirty little cheat!" I yelled when I spied the dirty flecks of liquid on the tips of its claws as it withdrew them from the ground and sprang back to avoid getting cut by the speeding blade returning from being a sentry down the hall.

The spawn jumped up and ran away. At least I thought it had run away until it turned, using the curve of the tunnel wall to zip back towards me again. I hadn't even had time to get up.