Mark 2.0: Book 2: Hate

by Prax Venter

  The large-breasted Lagomorph shattered another one just as Sasha zapped a scurrying black crawler with her Arc Bolt.

  Mark shifted his magic weapon into more of a spear with an exaggerated arrowhead top and quickly dispatched the next shadowy creature. This time he felt the tiniest sliver of essence inter his body.

  “Klax didn’t mention these things,” he said. “I thought we had to fight sprites or something. The good news is I’m starting to get essence. Not a lot, though.”

  The strawberry-blonde satyr next to him put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Perhaps those that come to gather the raw reagents didn’t report them. They seem weak.”

  After she finished speaking, another one crawled up out of the ground, and Jezebel shifted into her bear form to take out the next foe- Mark was instantly struck with a shadow of sharp pain through their bond.

  The half-formed bear let out a horrible mix of roar and scream before shifting back. Mark reached to grab her arm before she fell onto the sharp shards that covered the farmland.

  He looked down to see blood and gashes on her hands and instinctively bathed her body in his powerful healing glow. Falling stars erupted around her, and Jezebel’s stinging cuts were replaced with sensuous pleasure. Once she was healed, Mark made sure she was okay but continued to hold her hand.

  “Shit,” Jezebel said, lifting one of her dainty hooves and inspecting it while Abby deftly Lacerated the approaching black crawler. “Those crystals are awfully sharp! My bear feet can’t stand on these things.”

  Their hooves and his boots seemed to be protecting them, but he took a mental note to not touch the harmonic yellow shards. Mark kissed the tan satyr’s palm before glancing back at Learis’s progress. She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, but he heard nothing. Yet, another of the small shards shattered.

  That was- what, four tiny clumps popped out of millions?

  “New plan,” Mark said, looking around the sparkling infestation under his boots. “Abby and Sasha, you’re on crawler duty. Jez, back out of here for now and hit any that get past with Vines.”

  “Sounds good,” the still-shaken satyr said as she carefully crept back out. “What are you going to do?”

  Mark reshaped his spear into a two-handed sledgehammer.

  “Speed things up and make room for Mama Bear,” he said before lifting it up over his head and bringing his ethereal smashing stick down as hard as he could.

  The sound of broken glass was music to his ears as he reduced one of the sharp formations into gravel. He looked up to see Learis staring at him open-mouthed, and his emotional antenna picked up two things.

  She’d never seen any weapon capable of destroying the ever-growing infestation of harmonic crystals, and second, a deep sensual need that he might also be able to help with. His eyes moved down to the furry balloons pressing against her shirt and saw a small circle of wetness there over her right nipple. The sight reminded him of the Lagomorphs being milked while fucked in Starglade’s industrial area.

  With a sigh, he tried to put all that out of his mind for now and focused on the task at hand. Perhaps he’d be offered that quest later. Now, he had some serious smashing to do.

  Before he got to it, Sasha pulled his attention as her Shock Bomb took out another black crawler. Its existence was erased in the concussive explosion, but Mark noticed that her potent electric ability only blackened the surrounding crystals, leaving them otherwise untouched.

  “Good to know,” he said before unsummoning his weapon. He brought his empty hands up to resume clearing out the field when he noticed five of the ragged, skinny villagers had gathered by the well to watch.

  He gave them a smile and a wave before re-summoning his massive weapon and crushing more crystal. The process was rewarding and cathartic. While they fought the monsters and he broke apart the crystals, more villagers came to watch. The first thing he did was create an open area in the middle of the field for his badass AI beast-women to safely handle the creatures pouring out of the hole. The more infestation they cleared, the faster the inky creatures came out. They still weren’t worth much essence, but every drop would only serve to make them stronger.

  After a good-sized patch was cleared, Mark started making a path back out and ended up near Learis again as she trilled another clump with her sonic ability.

  He gave her a nod, and when she looked up, he saw her thin pink lips curl up into a sweet smile.

  They had cleared out maybe an eighth of what remained in the one field, and he realized that the sun was higher than expected. This process was going to take too long.

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and turned to glance at the gathered Lagomorph villages. It was relatively the same number that came out when he’d first arrived- all except the teenage male he’d seen before, and Mark assumed it was everyone that lived there. Then an idea hit him.

  “Learis,” he said, “can all of your people trill, or is it just you?”

  “All Lagomorphs can. Why?”

  Mark gestured out over the field they were working on as Abby took out another creepy crawler.

  “Maybe if all those people over there stood here instead and trilled with you… well, wouldn’t this go much faster?”

  She put her hands on her furry hips and shot a glance over to the chrome-legged Sasha and grizzly-Jezebel standing guard in the dirt, intercepting and annihilating anything that came for them.

  “Agreed. As long as you can keep them safe, Mark.” It was the first time she’d used his name. She turned and faced her people. “Everyone, come to me.”

  The white rabbit-villagers of the Wattis Downs looked at each other before several moved out to join Learis. The old rabbit-man with the cane stayed, and so did the pregnant one along with the four children. But seven more Lagomorphs now stood in a line in front of the crystals.

  A few of them had their long, soft ears tied back with bits of string or leather cord, yet Learis was still the only one with a red ribbon. He wondered what significance it held but put that aside too. He was sure they’d have plenty of time for questions later, and he knew Jezebel was itching to dig into the relationship between these rabbit-people and the Kalorplast.

  Mark moved back up the path he created and got out of their way. There, he planned on continuing to clear out the middle or helping his loves if they needed it.

  The villagers were popping several at a time now. It was still going to take all day to clear this one field, but at least they might finish now. He crushed a few more with his hammer and noticed that grizzly bear Jez was mostly watching the rabbits work while Sasha and Abby kept bursting the shadow creatures with their powerful ranged attacks.

  He caught her eye, and she grunted before shifting back to her satyr form to talk.

  “I am just beyond fascinated by their innate ability. Frequency harmonics played a big role in getting a stable fusion reactor going. I wish I could hear them.”

  Mark turned back to watch the rabbits open their mouths to randomly explode the small crystals and felt a mild hope building from them. Jezebel continued.

  “The real breakthrough was setting the magnetic wave emitters to fire in sequence, each at a sympathetic amplitude higher than the last until resetting, thus pushing plasma in a constant whorl.”

  “Everything you just said was nonsense,” Sasha said as she Arc Bolted another creature, sliding a bit of essence into Mark’s reservoir.

  “I understood some,” Abby said. “Perhaps the Lagomorphs could similarly harmonize with each other to increase their amplitude.”

  Jezebel turned to face the abyssal horror, her eyebrows shooting up.

  “Intriguing. I wonder if they ever tried that. I assume they must have at some point.”

  “Heads up,” Sasha said, and Mark turned to see three of the disturbing creatures scrambling at them once. Either it was the crystal smashing or the rabbits’ silent singing, but these things didn’t like it.

  “I’ll help
here,” Mark said, shifting his sledgehammer back to a long spear. “Jez, why don’t you go try and work with the choir over there and get them all… symmetrical, or whatever. I think you two are on to something here.”

  Jezebel looked past him to the villagers, her gold-flecked green eyes twinkling in the sunlight.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” she said and moved down the open path Mark had created.

  Mark turned away and skewered a black skittering monster, while Sasha got a double kill with one of her bombs. Abby stopped her spell to save her cooldown but kept her eyes on the hole where the disturbing monsters were starting to pour out one every ten seconds or so.

  “I really liked not having to eat,” Sasha said as she hurled another Shock Bomb toward the opening.

  “Yes,” Abby agreed. “The gnawing at my insides is in no way pleasant.”

  Mark nodded and took a deep breath as another two monsters crawled out of the hole.

  “Well, it could be worse,” Mark said while she began casting. “Also, I bet you’ll appreciate the experience of eating more now, Abby.”

  She finished her spell and obliterated one of the black crawlers then turned her large yellow eyes up to his.

  “Explain.”

  He thought about it for a moment and then grazed his fingers down her long smooth appendage, starting at her shoulder.

  “Think of it this way, my love. It usually feels better to fulfill a strong desire than it does a nonexistent one.”

  Sasha blasted a monster with a bolt of lightning as it drew close then turned to face their black-haired thief.

  “Next time we fuck, we’re totally edging Abby,” she said with a sinister half-fanged smile.

  “What is this edging?” she asked, not quite sure if she should be excited or not.

  “I suppose you’ll just have to have find out,” Mark said as he drew back his magic spear. The strange inky creature skittered to within striking distance and then leaped into the air at the last minute. The monsters had been mindlessly running straight for the first living thing they saw, and Mark’s guard was down, so he was not prepared for the change in behavior.

  It pushed off harder with its rear legs and angled its top-facing mouth right for his face, but the instant before it could have taken his other eye, Sasha’s armor-plated forearm shot between them.

  The nightmarish creature chomped down against the metal scales and gave Mark the single second he needed to react. He sucked back the energy that formed his spear, pulling it into his hand, and when the barbed point of the tip made contact, he clenched his fist and yanked as hard as he could.

  The creature was ripped downward from Sasha’s arm and vanished into fading smoke before it hit the ground.

  Sasha retracted her plates, her tail snapping aggressively behind her.

  “Holy shit, Sasha. You okay?” Mark asked, but he could feel that she was.

  She gave him a quick smile before she turned to track the next monsters crawling out of the hole.

  “Fine,” she said, “but it’s a good thing we’ve been beefing up my agility.”

  The three of them dropped the chit-chat and focused on fighting. The next few waves went by without a hitch, and Mark was beginning to wish he had his own ranged attack. There was no doubt that he was absolutely gifted compared to other Collectors, but there was this drive inside of him to become more and more powerful, and the unknown threat of this insane admin AI only cranked that knob farther.

  He began experimenting with quickly reshaping his energy instead of smashing or thrusting with his own muscle power. He couldn’t create parts of the phantom mass that weren’t connected to him, but if he could push it outward fast enough-

  “Hold on,” he said. “Let me get this next one.”

  Sasha’s tail whipped once, and he felt her frustration at taking her kill. He pushed her bloodthirsty vibes out of his mind and concentrated on his experiment. The blue, Oral Sex Goddess energy he’d sculpted into a deadly spear faded from existence, and he summoned the basic shape of a handgun instead.

  With his good eye narrowed to a slit, Mark pointed it at the swiftly scurrying monster drawing near and willed a solid beam of power to extend from the barrel. It worked, and a blue line extended from his hand toward the creature, but it was far too slow.

  He swung the long, “continual bullet” downward and ended up pinning the creature to the ground about three yards away instead of shooting it as he’d hoped. Mark flexed his mental command over the ability and forced his thin beam to become even thinner and extended it into the writhing ball of shifting legs and teeth. The creature faded to smoke after becoming impaled, and although it wasn’t what he was going for, he counted it as a promising result.

  “You’re making guns now?” Sasha said with an impressed smile before blasting another one.

  Abby used her Mind Crush ability on one emerging from the hole, and then began casting her Imaginary Lacerations on another.

  “Mark,” she said, turning to him after taking out two in a row, “may I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have much experience with projectile weapons as they were used by a specific Player Class in my originating program. However, this is not that game, and you do not need a gun. You are only wasting your allotted energy by forming one.”

  Mark blinked at her. She was right- all he needed was his damn finger.

  “Your logic is flawless,” he said.

  She nodded as if such a thing was never in question and returned to the foes that needed slaying.

  He couldn’t help the lopsided grin from growing on his face as he turned to see how Jezebel’s own experiment was going. She had arranged them in a diagonal row, each white rabbit a step behind the first with Learis in the front. The armored satyr was pointing to each one down the line and seemed to be trying to get their timing synched up in some way. Mark was glad they were even listening to her.

  The ambient mood in the area had slowly shifted from listless despair to expanding hope as they witnessed Mark and his team not only keep their word to help but by also going beyond their best expectations.

  Sasha’s concussive Shock Bomb brought his attention back to the monsters coming out of the hole, and he wondered what would happen if he went over there and activated his magic barrier while standing nearby. Would they be trapped inside? The violent things would probably pile up and all spill out at-

  Mark’s thoughts abruptly ended when a strong gust of wind hit him from the back and almost knocked him over. Every crystal around them began to hum with a swiftly increasing pitch, and before he could figure out what was happening, the entire field exploded with glinting splinters of murky-yellow crystal.

  The moment he felt the sharp sting of shrapnel strike his cheek, Mark instinctually deployed his magic barrier and the translucent membrane expanded around him and his two Enthralled standing in the middle of the field.

  He wiped the trickle of blood from his cheek but saved his heal for something more important. His bond told him his loves were relatively fine, so he spun around to check on the Lagomorphs to find them all standing with their small mouths open in shock.

  “Are you three okay?” Jezebel called out, but before he could answer, the ground began to shake under his feet. It felt like something much too large was tunneling toward the hole, and Mark turned back just in time to see a seven-foot-tall monstrosity claw its way to the surface.

  His first thought was that this was a giant snake-woman, but several key distinctions stuck out as the thing bellowed a shriek up into the sky that rung across the plains around them.

  Its body was inky-black, similar to the spider-creatures that gushed from the hole before it, but this thing was vaguely female. It had at least a dozen sets of breasts running down its front, matched with pairs of arms down her sides, each getting smaller the farther down they went. It had a full, purple-lipped mouth but no nose or eyes, and her smooth, elongated skull extended backward from her head.r />
  This monstrous half-centipede woman turned its eyeless head directly toward the three of them standing under his dome, and Mark could feel searing hatred emanating from this nearly mindless creature. Something caught its attention behind him, and he turned to see all the villagers sprinting away in every direction.

  The monster hissed and pushed itself forward, heading straight for the old rabbit-man with the cane hobbling slowly away from the well where he had been resting his old bones. Goliath, the good dog that he was, stood his ground. Although this monster would instantly destroy the rotund animal, his teeth were fearlessly bared, ready to defend his family at any cost.

  The many-limbed creature seemed too quick for its size and had made it beyond the other crystal-infested field when glowing vines grew out of the dried grass to ensnare it. The creature tossed its head up in rage, thrashing its limbs and long tail within Jezebel’s magic snare as Abby followed up with her instant Mind Crush spell.

  Both Mark and Sasha ran out of the protective shell, and he saw the Destructor charge up her Shock Bomb while they sprinted. Through their bond, he sensed her intent and slowed his pace to let her proceed while recalculating his own attack.

  His treasured succubus tossed the bomb, and it exploded bolts of crackling energy into the creature’s back. Sasha now had its full attention.

  It turned its bizarre head to face her, still encircled by the swirling purple clouds of Abby’s slow-damage spell, and opened its mouth to tear off Sasha’s head, but instead got a mouthful of Arc Bolt.

  Stunned under both crushing mind magic and electrical jolts, the fearless succubus took the opportunity to close the distance and Side Kick her sharp black hoof into the center of the monster’s long, segmented chest.

  Abby finished casting her Imaginary Lacerations directly after and severed one of the thing’s largest arms. The limb faded to sparkling dust before it hit the ground.

  Anything they’d fought before would usually be dead by now, but the loss of its limb only seemed to wake it from its stun and inspire snarling rage. The black centipede-woman broke free form the Vines and rushed Sasha.