Upping The Ante

102. The new Croc on the Block

[“Eat up, gang, not long until the next wave is here.”]

Crinis has already eaten, stuffing her face with ten crocas and an entire titan-croc. If I get my hands on that Dimensional Stomach during my next evolution, I swear I’ll dance for a week straight.

I’m so envious!

Also, where the heck is my food?

I’ll have to settle for nibbling on some of this next group coming our way. With my omni directional eyes I can see there are crocs approaching from multiple sides. Having seen us shred the weaker ones so comfortably, the smaller croca-beasts are staying back, cowering behind their more powerful siblings. Titan-crocs, the massive, lumbering six-legged beasts are the bulk of what is coming our way, but they certainly aren’t the biggest.

Mixed amongst them are clearly more highly evolved children of Garralosh. Even larger than the titan-crocs—will I have to rename them!—their dark green scaled bodies ripple with strength as they ponderously move on their six limbs. The larger legs and somewhat prehensile arms sport vicious claws and their long jaws bristle with razor-sharp looking teeth.

Where they differ from their slightly more diminutive siblings is firstly the eyes. Just in front of their regular eyes is an extra set which gleam red with some sort of energy. Secondly, their tails. Right at the base of their tail it splits into two, both tails almost shifting independently of each other.

It kind of makes me wonder what was going on in Garralosh’s head when they designed these evolutions for her children. More isn’t necessarily better, you lousy croc! Just slap an extra set of eyes and tail on them and call it quits? How lazy is that! All the effort and thought I poured into shaping the new generation of workers is being mocked by this slack effort.

Wait, no. Don’t judge too quickly, Anthony. The titan-crocs had the surprising inclusion of their fire Mana gland, there’s a chance these guys will have something interesting going on besides just an increase in size and new tails.

I have to say, the crocs look right at home in this environment. The lush greenery, dark brown earth and muddy waters feels like the perfect backdrop for these monsters as they slide through the water, mostly submerged, or lumbering between the trees. I can see why they like this Expanse.

Too bad I found it! Soon all of this land will belong to the colony! Muahahahaha!

[“Tiny and Vibrant, you guys take on that side together. Begin with an acid bombardment, Vibrant, then nip at the flanks like we discussed. Tiny, don’t hold back, I want to see some sparks, you understand?”]

“Yep-yep! I’ll get ’em!” Vibrant declares cheerfully, snapping her mandibles at the approaching enemy.

[Hmm,] Tiny grunts as sparks begin to crackle across his body.

[Ok, Crinis, you and me on this side. Watch out for more fire. We don’t know what these bigger crocs can do, so we need to be careful and go full force from the start. Don’t hold out on me!]

[Never, Master!]

[That’s what I like to hear!]

Drawing out my Gravity Mana I begin to compress it. I’m not going to play around with these unknown evolutions. I’ll take one of them out before they can even start the fight.

Flipping control of the water Mana construct to one of my sub-brains, I task the other with feeding me a steady supply of the purple Gravitational Mana from my own internal supply. Within my body, the energy pulses vibrantly and begins to flow out, responding to the direction of my thoughts. Next to the Mana gland, my core glows brightly, already recharging the Mana I spent on water bolts earlier.

As the gravitational energy is delivered to me, I start shaping it, crunching it down, pressing with the weight of my consciousness, then beginning to outline the structure of my spell. All of the hours of practice I’ve put into this task are bearing fruit as the spell fluidly takes shape. It’s still hard, like painting a three-dimensional masterpiece with only my thoughts, but my mind isn’t what it used to be. Almost double my normal human Cunning means my mind is able to move in ways it simply wasn’t able to before. More precise, more powerful, my mind slides the compressed Mana into place then starts powering the spell.

This one is special, a new trick I worked on during the last week. I tested the spell on a few monsters and was entirely disappointed with the effect. For the Mana invested and the difficulty of the spell to construct, I’d hoped for a lot more. Even so, it might come in handy.

The spell shape is a double layered sphere. A small, dense ball of gravitational energy, inscribed with arcane sigils that slowly rotate within a shell made from the outer sphere. The inner sphere is hard to make, but the outer one… yikes. Suffice to say it looks pretty impressive floating in my mind.

During testing I learned how to fire it. Essentially it manifests in front of my face and flies forward in a straight line. Once it impacts the target, the energy contained within the inner sphere flows to the outer one and the target becomes surrounded by a gravity field that pulls them in all directions.

It’s… nasty.

But other than making monsters uncomfortable and inhibiting their movement, the spell didn’t do a whole lot of damage. Then I thought about the Forceful version. What would be different with the spell powered-up?

That one’s really nasty.

I call this spell of gruesome death, the Gravity Sphere!

BAM!

With a surge of Will, I manifest and fire it toward the closest double-croc; so named for their new eyes and tail. The beast didn’t expect that to come flying at it from such a harmless looking ant monster and failed to dodge.

I feel sorry for you, buddy.

The spell takes effect immediately, the outer sphere expanding to encompass the entire form of the croc in crackling purple Mana as the energy from the inner sphere is discharged.

Then the horrific pull of gravity begins to exert itself on the monster from every direction. The creature roars with rage as the monsters around it step aside, unsure of what’s happening.

I wonder how long he’ll be able to resist it. At least that’s one croc taken out of the fight.

[Let’s go, Crinis!]