Chapter 459 - Far Future Ch. 169 – Let’s Take This Fun to the Next Level... (1/2)

The necrochymists were the masters of the drow biosciences and alchemy, truly twisted mad intellects who'd happily sacrifice whole worlds to their experiments into the nature of life and souls without batting an eye.

They were certain to operate on themselves as well, and couldn't even be called drow in any real sense. Their own bodies had been replaced, mutated, cybered, grafted, and hybridized so that little of their own genetic structure was actually intact. But that was fine, as they were the ones who ran the Vats that the powerful drow reincarnated themselves into. If their bodies gave way, they chalked it up as another interesting bit of knowledge, decanted themselves into a new one, and resumed the process of making themselves into another life form better than the original.

What it meant was that they were scientists of the worst kind, not fighters, but they were so damn smart they figured they could fight anything and beat it with the right mix of technology and genetic weapons.

He was probably right, but I wasn't going to give him the proper time to come up against such stuff against me.

His sprayed adhesives couldn't cling to my Vajra. His monofilament nets were sliced apart and couldn't break my Nog armor, which didn't give a damn for molecule-wide fibers, only kinetic energy could force past it. Poison clouds turned into zesty healing treats. Nanite shotgun loads were scissored apart inside my Vajra before they could start eating me. Power fields were a nice tingling sensation. Whips and tendrils got themselves cut short by Sunder Mode, despite being made of molecularly-hardened materials. Saw blades and snippers lunging and flashing were minor annoyances that went spinning away one after another, to the disbelief of the one using them in his perfect pre-calculated attack patterns that should have left me no way out and no way to deal with them.

I didn't even look the once-drow in his glass eyes after I bisected him, and Lightningphasing combined with shadowfire and banefire blasted through his corpse. His associates might be angry that he wasn't going to be coming back, or curious, or more likely just loot everything he had while laughing in mockery of him. True Death made sure that not even totally independent clones of him could survive; his soul was going to Gloom, and I'm sure the plane enjoyed the light snack.

There were only three of those among the gladiators that had come down, so something so smart being so dumb was pretty rare. I did indicate to the girls that if they saw any of them to make them a priority, as they could take out whole groups of contestants quickly with their gear-ups... and were, in other areas.

We were all performing mass style analysis of these gladiators, although having stolen the experiences of the bikini-bitches, it wasn't all that new. Those bladewitches had naturally seen all the stuff like this many times, and fought against a lot of it personally, too. Thus, while we did have to make adjustments for facing them ourselves... that whole Know Thy Enemy thing was very strongly applying, and we hadn't seen anything that was truly original yet.

The creature most likely to make the thousand by itself was the shoggoth. It was fast, strong, a powerful fighter, hard to hurt, and it healed itself, as well as being simply massive and converting the dead into annoyances it could spit out at its enemy. The oozes weren't all that fast or powerful, but they were lethal if they managed to get on top of you and start dissolving you into more ooze, healing them up nicely and generating more jelly for the continuous fight.

The fact the shoggoth could command them to go after the drow and not the contestants was a minor and subtle boost on our side.

The Kundi and the Mothertree might make it; it basically depended on how the drow focused on them. Since they attracted the drow, they also attracted those hunting the drow, and both mother biovores were taking advantage of it to not kill those attacking the drow, thus helping them kill the drow, and raising their own chances of making it to the end. The girls had explained how it all worked, and the queens weren't dumb. There was only one of each race left alive now, and their job was to live, generate more of their kind, and eventually eat these drow out of existence.

It wasn't going to and couldn't happen, as the drow had solutions to both races if they ever truly got free, but they could still be a nuisance.

The kill counters came down, gladiators and survivors were butchered, and more than occasionally a drow joined them. The gladiators soon realized that if a drow was close to one of us, we promptly went and killed them, and soon they were herding drow towards us if they could, or attracting our attention and making it harder for the drow to move around if they could... which was aided mightily by the fact they couldn't make low-gravity bouncy leaps all about near us.

This kind of thing naturally attracted the attention of the drow, especially when we started sporting a dozen insignias and were obviously going for them instead of anything weaker. The girls prowled in the area of the queens, using them as flank guardians and impromptu butchers when desired, and the queens of all three races had no trouble eating, skewering, or chopping drow apart who came their way somewhat out of control. The girls reciprocated by hunting the drow around them that their massive figures attracted.

But still, the slaughter of the contestants continued unabated, and the magical 2000 number cycled into place.

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The hush was almost reverential, and the drow gladiators actually retreated, snickering and smiling as they did... except for the few who couldn't outrun me and my girls, who died rather messily and got fed to the queens.

The only reason for us to back off is when they started converging together, as one of us against two of them could be quite annoying, and might force us to use our Shields. Of course, once we did that, we were going on a major kill blitz... and if all four of us worked together, we were going to mincemeat these people.

I picked off a couple more drow masters who couldn't join up with their fellows in time, adding their badges flagrantly before the eyes of their own, who had a mixture of amusement, fear, and anticipation in their eyes as they watched me and their own ilk burn in shadowfire. They didn't know the implications of that yet, but they would soon enough.

Then the hunt would be on for the shadowfire only the hyn could cultivate, and wouldn't that be interesting to see what the drow would do for something they couldn't extort or enslave or make themselves... because the Void Brothers were going to feel them coming, and it was they who were at the heart of the process...

Fun times all around.