129 – Beware the Old Soldier

While the arena was visually unremarkable, he knew he had the advantage. It was circular with a domed ceiling, and every little sound seemed to echo a dozen times before it faded out. A smile upturned the corners of his mouth at that gift, fully aware that the dungeon was trying to help him with enhanced acoustics.

They wore tattered Pateirian uniforms, one even had a salvaged Ikesian chest-plate, dirtied and tarnished, but nearly pristine in terms of battle-damage going by the lack of bullet marks save for the one that proved it could stop a bullet at all. A couple scrapes, some rust, but it was in good condition. Good enough that Strol actually considered taking it for himself. This locust’s hands had been twisted into hammer-like lumps of chitin, perfect for crushing.

Another one had an Ikesian war-knife, in equally good condition, whilst his left arm had been turned to a heater shield, his hand doubtlessly folded away under the massive plate of chitin.

The third one held a pair of dented, tarnished bayonets. It didn’t wear any notable armor, but its body shape suggested it to have been a she before the mutations. It wasn’t that she was small - to the contrary, she was taller and bulkier than either of her allies. Strolvath just knew what to look for in the torso shape, and either this had been a woman, or an unrealistically full-bodied young man.

Then again, he wouldn’t have put such barbaric practices beyond the Pateirians. He’d lost count of how many stories he’d heard of young men who had castrated themselves to try and get into a prestigious eunuch-cultivator order, only to be rejected and forced to turn to wearing fake testicles and consuming Rubedo-based elixirs to maintain their masculine outward image. No, he wouldn’t lose focus to a mental tangent. Not like this. Not here. This was bad. When he felt himself mentally slipping like this, he knew he was running out of Rubedo to burn. He had to get himself riled up, and fast.

Beyond their obvious appearance, there was something a little off about the coloration of their chitin - every plate a little different from the last, almost as if they were walking mosaics.

“Which of you fuckers wants to get head-exploded first, eh?!” he taunted, shifting his strumming from mournful nostalgia to a fast-paced flamenco. They charged at him all at once, even though they should’ve frozen still. The scarred veteran was forced into a frantic dance of dodging and kicking his enemies out of the way, smashing both them and their weapons out of the way using his artificial leg.

He dropped the lyrics altogether and started throat-singing, cycling through sound frequencies until one worked. It was fast, but the result was a worrying explanation for why the three Locust Nobles looked like their chitin was a patchwork - it was. Every plate reacted at a different frequency, as if the Queen had specifically changed these three just to counteract his abilities.

Of course, this was far from unexpected. There was a reason for the cold-iron spike inside his artificial leg, and it wasn’t just so it could be used as a glorified boot-knife. The prosthesis contained a simple mechanism designed to allow for the engagement of a kinetic redirection glyph that fed directly into the spike, in practice letting him transfer all the force of a kick into propelling the stake out the bottom of his foot. Moreover, the stake itself could resonate at a particularly violent frequency.

It wasn’t exactly convenient, but it filled the biggest gap in Strolvath’s combat style, and could be concealed effectively enough to be functionally undetectable unless someone went out of their way to break his leg open.

The first one he dealt with was the Shield-bearer, for this locust was the most aggressive. Whilst the one with daggers kept using her wings to jump around and try to catch him off-guard, whereas the armored one kept trying to fight him in hand-to-hand as if this were a boxing match, screeching incomprehensibly whenever Strolvath just punted him away.

The Shield-bearer at last tried to charge him head-on, in response to which Strolvath threw himself into a front kick to the locust’s shield and willed the mechanism in his leg to activate. There was a word associated with it, a word that shot through his head every time he did it. A word that he had no choice but to say out loud, even if he was singing. It annoyed him to no end.

“BUNKER!”

He felt himself instantly lose the vast majority of his forward momentum, a violent buzzing pulsing through his stump in the moment when the cold-iron stake slammed forward with all the combined momentum of his own body mass and the mechanism’s amplification.

There was a crack followed by a meaty impact, yellow blood gushing out from under his foot. He’d hit a vein, it seemed. Perfect.

Now, it didn’t matter what frequency each individual plate resonated at. Hemolymph and organs had a uniform-enough consistency that he could just use the stake as a probe and shake the bug to pieces from inside out. It only took moments before the bug froze in place and began frothing at the mouth, then dropped to the ground as its own bodily fluids leaked from every which orifice.

Strolvath managed to pull his leg free just in time to dodge, stomping on the bug’s head to both finish it off and force the stake back into place without having to dedicate time to engaging the retraction mechanism.

Once again, the armored one was trying to smash his head in with its bare hands.

Once again, the winged one had dropped right behind him and lashed out.

He could’ve dodged, but he waited. He waited until the boxer fully committed to a haymaker, then sidestepped out of the way so that the Locust Noble decked his ally instead. Spinning around on his heel, he used the centrifugal momentum to drive his right foot into the boxer’s back at full force, once more exclaiming, “BUNKER!”