67 KING CALEOPTERAN

They could smell the first attack before it came.

A wave of cicada's. They came like a roaring tide of black fog.

Ms. Oracle shielded them in her aura. The bugs smashed into the multi-colored surface but didn't splatter. They shattered like glass. No blood. Only black and purple dust.

At the same time, thick black worms and ants dug their way to the surface inside their protective bubble, smelling like pungent burnt oils and rotting flesh.

"Claude! Your armor." Gil said— as one of his ears flickered in his direction.

At the same time, he instructed Frosty, the island-dogs and Ren to squash the bugs.

"Solid armor— especially wood, won't work. I'll lose focus and the bugs will get me. I'm sure they're poisonous. Thankfully, I have I better alternative." Claude thought before tearing away his wood and vine armor. "Ms. Oracle open the shield."

"Are you nuts?"

"I'm good."

Ms. Oracle looked to Gil.

"Do it."

The shield opened with a burst of aural spikes, killing the mass of undead bugs.

Claude took off for the cut down trees. Like a child at play, he hopped from one platform to another. Trails of sap stuck to his feet and climbed up his leg. Turning him once again into the dark-wood slime skinned brawler.

When the bugs tried to leech onto him, they burned and exploded as he ran.

Claude skidded to a halt in the forest, spinning to face his father and friendly witch who were fighting off the bug wave.

Tendrils unfurled from his back and slithered through the air, slammed into the backs of his teammates to give them sap suits.

Bugs died all around, no longer able to reach past the thick coating to puncture flesh.

Something let off a buzzing roar in frustration. It echoed from above.

They all looked upward just in time to see the boss walking down the tree in some betrayal of gravity.

Claude wouldn't have assumed it was a goblin if not for the tangent they inhabited. The green leathery skin was hidden behind a dark carapace of sectional bug armor and extra bladed appendages. It had two pairs of giant wings at its back. A sort of horn in its bug-shell mask and one of its arms was a black shell sword covered in dark glowing runes.

DING!

[Tangent Boss Located!]

[With your allies, overpower and defeat the Necromantic Insect-Shaman, King Caleopteran!]

From the wall of caves surrounding them, giant nightmare beetles and slaughter-slugs crawled out into the sun, spewing foul green and black bubbling gases so vicious it was melting the stone, turning the stone walls into an avalanching slide leading straight to them.

Gil roared.

Existence embraced another.

VWOOMP!

VWOOMP-VWOOMP-VWOOMP!

"Shit!" Claude panicked, "Heroes— they're in here with us."

Gil was already on the move, grabbing Claude to drag him away to a hiding spot. Thankfully, Claude was planning to do the same already and locked the boss into place with his tendrils of sap.

The boss roared as its wings and armor was melted down.

Ms. Oracle and the hounds followed close behind as the heroes filled the Tangent and took note of the signs of slaughter.

They found a grove of bushes. As soon as Gil let go of Claude and set him down on the ground, he pushed the growth of the nature, making the bushes a dense covering of nature for them to hide in.

They listened.

"We've got signs of infighting. Keep your eyes peeled for a Deviant-Boss."

Claude split his thumb and pointer finger. A string of sap connected the two digits like an arrow string.

He pulled it back with his other hand and shot a glob of sap into the distance. He did it multiple times, forming sap web blockages as the worms and beetles attempted to follow their scent, only to be burned and caught in the thick slime.

[30% Mana Remaining]

"I still don't even get how I have this…." Claude looked down at his sap suit of slime.

Gil's ears flickered in response to Claude's voice before whispering a reply. "Your uncle. He was a very skilled water element user even when we were young. They called him the Sea-Lion. That probably increased your elemental-crossover mutation percentage quite a bit."

"Cool."

"He was an asshole."

"They all are, is what I've been told." Claude replied.

"Attaboy." Gil patted Claude's back. His hand sounded like sandpaper against his slime-skin.

The gremlin-cat in Claude's arm bit his father and got a mouth full of lupine fur.

Silence fell again— but only in their bush circle.

War spiraled elsewhere.

"Nightmare-beetle coming south-end! I don't see a colony. Expect extra abilities to compensate!" One of the heroes yelled.

A bug hissed and the smell of blood hit the air.

"I'm hit! Healer, move your ass!"

They scrambled, clearly disoriented and afraid of the change in the Tangent.

"Still no sign of what ate the other goblins?"

"It doesn't look like it was the boss!" Someone replied midcombat based on their heavy breaths and grunts between words.

"There's no gremlin-cat that could do this either— unless we've got an evolved pack-leader in hiding somewhere— like the orc-dog things."

"Don't speak that into existence, Steely boy!"

"We need to get out of here!" Claude whispered.

"We have to let them kill the boss or else we're stuck until they die." Gil explained. Seemingly knowing somehow that they wouldn't win on their own.

"You want to risk that?" Claude asked.

"I will for you. A thousand times. And then a million more." Gil said as he crouched low on all fours.

"You won't need to. There's a way around this….. Can you…. You know? Lose the fur and fangs?" Claude asked.

"Ye—"

"Chronah!" One of the heroes yelled.

A woman screamed and the sound of torn flesh split the battle scene into one of grief and shock.

Someone was just impaled.

"Yes." Gil replied.

When he turned his head, Claude was already gone, silently swinging through the trees on sap bungee ropes.

Gil looked to Ms. Oracle.

"Well, do it!" Ms. Oracle replied.

Gil shut his eyes. "Don't let my boy do something foolish."

"What— and be like you?"

"Ouch…" Gil said as he began to shrink and shed his fur.

Claude's animal kin shuffled nervously as the tide of the tangent changed.

Further ahead, Claude finally stopped swinging through the Tangent and hit the grounds in another clearing. He smelled it when he was talking to his father.

It was stone— meaning no undead bugs could come up under him. As he shed his sap-skin suit, his subconscious mind rattled off monster factoids.

"The undead is made with one goal— what? No— two goals. Spread undeath and eradicate life. The stronger the source of life, the stronger the urge to destroy it. That's why undead creatures kill the plantlife of their biomes until humans arrive. It's the next best thing. With that in mind, any nature user can be a magnet to zombies. I can be a destraction. I just hope my dad can fill in the holes in this plan."

The sap collected in Claude's hand. With his manipulative drive, it began to move less like syrup and more like water. Like a liquid storm of life-energy and essence. It spun in his hands like a hurricane. Green arcs of nature energy pulsed and burst off the currents, hitting the forest around him and blooming new clusters of sap-soaked forestry. Shimmering flowers, silky bark, crystallized bushes.

And whatever the ultra-charged sap touched grew exponentially.

From above, it looked as if a second wave of life was overtaking the tangent from a once dead spot of land.

[10% Mana Remaining….]

"C'mon….. I know y'all feel this." Claude grunted as his stomach turned and his skull throbbed.

The heroes continued fighting in the distance.

[9%…..]

More than anything, he hoped the heroes didn't die in vain while he failed a parlor trick with flowers.

"Nope. Not possible. This isn't a trick." Claude found his confidence.

Another arc of life magic burst through the treeline and hit someone in the distance.

"Woah!" Someone yelled.

The bugs hissed.

The boss roared. It's damaged wings fluttered— sounding like a tornado of blades.

"They're… running?" One of the heroes questioned.

"Don't question it, finish them off!"

"Yes! Please!" Claude's nose bled as the newly grown forest swallowed him up in its beauty and virulent life.

[0% Mana Remaining....]

Claude fell onto his back. The stone ground was gone, now surrounded by flowers and grass blades.

If he wasn't so exhausted, he would've ran as the beetles, slugs and boss ripped and crushed their way through the forest.

Due to the sap coating that worked like acid, the trap was almost maniacle in its cruelty. Beautiful flowers and inviting bushes sprouting fruits and seeds only to function as a blazing hell to the enemy.

[+300 EXP]

[+200 EXP]

[+130 EXP]

All the while, the heroes cut them down. But they were down a couple members. He could tell by the lack of steps. And the sniffles. Someone was crying as they cut down the undead wave.

"Is it enough?" Claude asked as he sat up.

The answer came clear as day as the tree grown in front of him was suddenly cut in half.

As it fell over, the boss remained. A goblin shaman in bug shell armor. Only the shell was destroyed by his sap. Half of its mask had fallen, revealing a dark brown-skinned goblin with full purple eyes and rotted fangs bared in a disgruntled grimace. It's arm was a burned mess down the bone, revealing the runes there being destroyed.

It wasn't enough.

"Dad…" Claude felt fear.

The goblin raised its bladed arm and smiled.

"Fey..." It called to him— assumedly in some other language. It didnt matter. Claude shielded himself in grass. A last attempt.

The boss swung.

Flesh split. Blood splattered.

Claude gasped at the pain.

The assumed pain.

DING!

[Tangent Complete!]

[+400 EXP]

[Congratulations! You have slain King Caleopteran! Collect your loot and exit the Tangent before closing!]

[59 Minutes and 59 Seconds Remaining….]

"What the hell are you doing here, kid?"

He opened his eyes. The boss never hit him. It stood, twitching with a great sword ripping through its chest. The armor fell away like broken glass in the wind.

As the blade came free, a hero stood in its place. A brute of a man with metal skin and fiery orange eyes.

"Steely-boy." Claude remembered someone referred to as such.

"Did... did you do this?" He asked.

Claude tore through the grass binds, "I….. yea."

"You…. aren't human!" He raised his sword, "I found the goblin-eater! Some sort of feral forest creature!"

"Gods be damned— he's ignorant. Dad, now I really need you to save me. Come on— you're a charmer. Do something. Use the social skills I never could." Claude held his hands up as his beast-trait appearance faded, "No— wait!"

"HEROES! Oh heroes! My valiant saviors, I owe you my life!" Gil yelled in the distance. "If you've found my son, I'll be in your debt forever. He helped you slay these bugs. Him and his wild hungry hounds! So hungry they eat goblins like they're werewolves on a full moon!"

"He can't ever be serious…" Claude tried not to facepalm as the steel-skinned hero listened.

"He with you?" He asked.

"Yes." Claude replied.

"Come with me."

Claude and the tank cut their way through his forestry. As they walked, he repeatedly looked back at Claude.

"Kid, how old are you?"

"Fifteen." Claude replied.

"Huh…." He looked around before they were officially free.

Gil stood naked beside Ms. Oracle— who was also naked, clutching animal skins to their privates as the remaining hero team faced them.

When Gil saw Claude he cheered. The animals approached him.

"My boy!" Gil hopped over and hugged him with Ms. Oracle.

"Our little hero!" She said with zero enthusiasm.

"Play along. This is what you wanted, right?" Gil asked.

"Yes—- could you lay it on any thicker?" Claude asked sarcastically in a whisper before they disconnected.

"Alright, one of you needs to explain the situation to me in great detail before I hand you over to the Enforcer's for performing Tangent excavations without a license. That includes theft of loot, resources owned by the District and disloyalty to the Grand Magus Enclave." The team leader said. She was a swordsman covered in scars barely hidden beneath a kobold skin poncho and black hand wraps.

"You see— me and my lady here were getting a little experimental out in the wild—"

"Not that much detail, you degenerate!" The lady-hero interrupted with a hand on her sword hilt at her waist.

"—Anyway, some goblins found us and dragged us in here."

She looked back to her archer. A taller old man with sharp eyes in a brown cloak. "There's no sign of more than one goblin tribe in here."

"Are you lying?" She asked Gil.

"No. Lying is for... liars." Gil cleared his throat and looked to Frosty. "He….. he made quick work of them. I wasn't able to get his usual breakfast this morning….. so yea."

It was like Frosty was seen for the first time. Heroes didn't like Pitwolves. The sight of them could be ptsd inducing due to how horrifying Orcish Tangents can be.

The archer drew his bow.

A sap tendril yanked the bow out of his hand.

The hero team went on the offensive as they faced Claude more directly.

"Don't touch him." Claude said firmly as he held the archers bow.

The steel skinned tank beside him tried to draw his blade only for Ray to perch on his shoulder and raise his talon right over his eye.

"And why wouldn't we kill an Orc slave-dog? Or an unlicensed hero threatening to kill one of mine?"

"Because under the Glorian Greater-Species Division Accords, Pitwolves pre-evolution are considered battle-pets outside of city limits until tamed by a Beast-Tamer of the appropriate level. I just hit that. I'm also defending family." Claude explained.

Gil smiled, "You've done your reading."

"All I do is read." Claude replied without looking away from the leader.

"And how do you fit into this dog eating up our tangent?" The scale cloaked woman asked.

"He's my son." Gil said. "He tracked us down and did what any aspiring hero would. He's a Beast-Tamer and canine handler and musician and explorer."

Ms. Oracle had to kick Gil to make him be quiet.

"Selena...C'mon." A young man wearing a longcoat and belt full of healing salves and potions said from behind them as another hero stood with an arm across his shoulders, "The way I see it, he's the only reason Chronah is alive right now."

The tank sighed and dropped his sword, "He's….. not wrong. The bugs were swarming her— then they just ran."

"What did you do?" Selena asked— not accusingly but with genuine curiosity, bringing Claude back to his noting that the tank was ignorant. Swinging his blade at suspicions and hearsay instead of known fact.

"They didn't graduate the from any Reborn Academy. Late awakeners." He realized before speaking, "The undead— they're drawn to life. So they can destroy it and spread their own. It's why they attack humans. We—….. our life force is strong. I drew them away from you by... well, I don't know what exactly to call it. I concentrated life here by growing the plants and stuff."

"And stuff." She repeated.

"I just learned I can manipulate sap— which is part water part nature. It's a mutation. It also works like acid on the undead."

"The sticky stuff— your sap, it was burning them. Giving us weak points in their armor." The archer realized.

Selena turned and looked to her archer— who she seemed comfortable putting all her faith in.

They all looked between eachother for a while before soundlessly settling on an answer.

"Alright. Everyone stand down." Selena said before raising her hands.

Claude clicked his teeth and all of his animals calmed.

Ray flew over to Claude's shoulder, cackling knowing full well he wasn't going to touch the tank.

"You saved us. It's bad luck to bite the hand that feeds you. Perhaps I judged you all wrong. I'm sorry." Selena gave a short bow.

The others followed.

"You fought hard to save your parents. As any of us would."

"As others wish they could've." The healer holding up the wounded Chronah added.

Claude returned the gesture, "You saved me as well. I was toast before you showed up."

"You had me fooled." The tank said, "I've never seen nature be used that way."

"Me either to be fair." Claude said.

"Do you attend the University of the Phoenix?" Selena asked.

Claude nodded, "Just finished the Island Gauntlet."

"My brother died in that when I was twelve." Selena said.

"Damn. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you. I've processed his loss. I do this for him. Let's get you all out of here." Selena said.

"Sounds good to me." Claude said.

"Steel-smith, collect the loot."

The tank took off, unfolding and opening up a massive leather bag at his waist.

They walked in silence for the most part with some of the heroes asking Claude questions about the university and his unique array of animals.

The more he talked to them, the more he respected them. To journey into the unknown as they had— some as old as fifty-five years old, took courage. They filled him with something he couldn't describe.

VWOOMP!

The outside world welcomed them in a flash of immense change.

The sun had actual warmth. The trees had life. Natural life.

The waters were full of fish instead of death.

"Well. That was quicker than planned. We could probably do a couple more runs before sundown." Selena said to her group.

"Sure." They nodded eagerly at the prospect of more money.

"I'll buy my daughter a set of dance shoes with these spoils." The archer said as he approached Claude. "She's thirteen. Perhaps when you graduate you could meet her. I'll tell her all about the young hero who saved her old man…. And took his bow."

"Oh shoot— my bad." Claude handed back his bow.

"Oh don't worry. As far as I'm concerned, you were holding it for me." The archer grinned beneath his pure white stache.

The archer backed away and shared a nod with Gil and Ms. Oracle.

Selena stepped forward, "Once you're out, find me. The names Selena Scales. I'm only good enough for Low-Silver Ranked Tangents now, but in a few years, I'll be a powerhouse like the rest of them. And I want you to join me. Whatever you did in there looks like only the beginning."

"Whatever I did…." Claude repeated in thought before shaking her outstretched hand, "Thank you for the offer. I'll find you."

Selena nodded and walked off. The others followed except for Steel-smith. "Make it quick, tin-skin." She said in passing.

The tank came to a stop in front of Claude and dug into his bag of loot.

He shuffled for a few seconds before pulling out a canister of sorts. It was made of a smooth glasslike grey stone with golden fissures in it that moved like water.

"I don't know what this is, but it came from the boss."

Claude took it, "Thank you." Before thinking, "I'll have to go to Beargrin's Blades and figure out what this is."

The tank laughed, "No, thank you. Because of your help I got this badboy!" The tank pulled out a giant war hammer. "I call it…. The fly-swatter."

"Of course you do." Ms. Oracle mumbled behind them as he ran off.

Claude sighed and turned to face his naked allies.

"What a day."

Gil nodded, "I've had worse." He said before walking off.

They all followed.

"Of course you did. You're two hundred years old." Claude replied.

Frosty trotted ahead, moving as if the day was no different for him.

"You calling me geriatric?"

"No. Geriatric is like eighty. You're a pile of dust." Claude said.

"Ohahah! Hero-boys got jokes now!"

"Oh dear. He follows in his fathers footsteps." Ms. Oracle added as the island-dogs played with the young gremlin-cat.

"Hey! Double-teaming isn't allowed. Unless it's two big beautiful bust—"

"Say it and you're malformed." Ms. Oracle replied coldly.

"ERHM— I was saying big beautiful bust sized portraits of my lovely witchy woman!" Gil said.

Claude laughed as they all headed home.

It felt crazy to laugh. Wrong. His father was a monster. He was human by a failure to amalgamate the magic in his dna. He just illegally completed a tangent for the second time.

And they had visitors.

Claude caught them first. Gil and Ms. Oracle we're too busy joking around.

Until they saw them through the break in the trees. Across the clearing. Leaned up against their door and seated on their porch.

They wore all black. Faceless black glass masks covered their callous visages. Legendary weapons were the only color on them.

Three of them. That was all it took to silence the whole forest.

He didn't notice it until he realized he could hear his own heartbeat.

Gil no longer had any jokes.

Ms. Oracle shivered.

"Dark-Eaters…"