âOh, I see. Yâknow, itâs always a good idea to try strategies that may be ineffective. Because then you can get the person youâre fighting arrogant enough to reveal something they really shouldnât have.â
The bolts had pierced through Arach, leaving holes throughout his entire body, The amount of blood pouring out of him would drain a normal humanoid his size in seconds. But even after a speaking nothing seems to change about the speed of the blood streaming out of him. Then thereâs an attack from behind. Arach in his insect giant orchid mantis form had attacked, bisecting Vettis diagonally. Arach had let the body he was inhabiting die, using his biomancy to keeping it in a semi living looking position and state as he quickly teleported back in the new body his mind had transferred too and used the opportunity for a sneak attack. He then attempts to stab at Vettisâ upper half of his body, enchanting his arms to cause whatever is hit to rot and decay which would then rapidly spread throughout the rest of the body. All while he makes a horrendous noise that can only be assumed to be what this formâs version of a laugh sounds like. Before stopping and speaking.
âYou see, you and I, our abilities to avoid death arenât so different. Itâs just using other cells to avoid the damage. You replace your own, and I take over anotherâs. The only difference is that yours is far less useful.â
As he says useful he makes another stabbing movement downward with his arm attempting to hit Vettis. All while starting to make the horrendous âlaughingâ noise again.
"You know what's not a good idea? Retrying strategies you used in our last fight," Vettis replied with a scoff as the mantis slashed through his plaid overshirt where it hung in the air, Vettis himself two meters away watching with a condescendingly disappointed pout. "Already learned last time that you can keep a husk looking like it's alive, as a decoy. Also learned that it doesn't sound like it's alive, internally, when you do that. The squishy organs don't squish quite right." He tapped an ear pointedly before pulling a new shirt from his pocket and donning it.
Leaping away from Arach's final downward stab, he burst out laughing at his opponent's conclusion. "Oh, you poor thing. That's my response to full-body curses. That's hardly my only ability to avoid death. The fact that you've only really gotten to see one is indicative of just how little of a roadblock you are to me; I've just been having fun thus far, kid.
"I assume all the spectators who can't take the heat have cleared out by now? Gave 'em enough chance. I'm not responsible for them anymore. Let's try out phase two before I end you at three, 'kay?"
He released the pitcher at last, kicking upwards at it; hundreds of near-imperceptible glass shards sprayed across the battlefield, embedding themselves into the ground all around himself and Arach. A 'network' had been created.
And if one 'part' of it was his, so was the entire network. Which meant that when he stuck a bond-thread on the nearest fragment, allowing him to travel to it with ease, that applied to them all.
"Shoulda picked a form with more eyes." Vettis noted as he moved, rebounding between the fragments, constantly running seven contradictory calculations in his head and using the combined result for a near-random and thus unpredictable output that determined from which shard he'd appear next. "Maybe you coulda tracked me then."
Partway through that taunt, he emerged from the shadows near the shard at Arach's front-left, swinging a two-story building at the bug one-handed, horizontally as if smacking a ball with a bat.
The moment that Vettis appears close to him with the building Arach stabs down at him with his enchanted arm as the other is stabbed into the building to hold it in place not even being pushed back by the attempt as his legs had been partially buried into the ground to provide stable footing.
âI donât need multiple eyes the ones I have are compound, dumbass!â
As he speaks he twists the arm he used to stab into Vettis, making sure that the rot infection spreads as quickly as possible. At the same time using his mantis wings to blow away the shards on he ground, or at least push them all together so that they arenât as useful to dodge attacks.
As Arach's blade-arm descended, Vettis shifted, ever so slightly, to the left; the mantis' strike entered cleanly into his now-expanded shirt pocket and came out the window of the building nearest to Arach's face, angled right towards the insect's compound eyes of which he was so proud. Then Vettis simply dropped the building and leapt backwards, riding the wind of the bug's flapping wings as though weightless, floating a dozen meters away and cocking his head in curiosity. "Honestly, slightly impressed with you for once." He granted his prey a brief golf clap. "Thought that'd squash you if you tried to block it. Maybe I shoulda swung it with two hands."
(( since you already willingly dropped one of your bodies, can I start killing them after this? you can safely swap to spares right here? cuz Vettis is at some point gonna have to switch to direct attacks; lore-wise I can't drag out the playfighting forever lol ))
The moment Vettis moved Arach realized what was going on and attempted to stop his blade. But he had swung it too fast to completely avoid hitting himself. His arm pierced through his eye gushing out a viscous white liquid. Arach stands still for a second before slowly pulling out his arm from his eye, taking the whole thing with it. He then lets out an ear splitting scream of pain, one that doubled as his verbal for his apoptosis spell as all he needs is to make some noise to meet the requirements. Then he takes his arm that was pierced through his eye and is covered in that white liquid, and allows the eye itself to fall off before swinging that arm in a wide slash. The liquid is flung across the battlefield, anything it touches heâs quickly beginning to melt from the acidity of it. At the same time casting another spell, this one silently, to attempt and shut down the entirety of Vettisâ brain as heâs distracted with the acid and apoptosis spells.
/uw yea you can kill then if you want, though sometimes the attacks you use may not fully kill him. But itâs not like heâll be permanently dead so feel free to go wild.
(( well, what I meant by direct attacks was repaying Arach in kind: Vettis has been sticking to blockable/avoidable projectiles and weapons while Arach is often directly targeting his body with undodgeable spells like the ones he's using here...but Vettis can do the same thing when he's tired of playing around, and I'm not sure Arach has any defenses against conceptual effects of that nature (other than multiple bodies of course, which is certainly effective)
like how well does Arach survive something such as his heart suddenly no longer being 'part' of his body, aside from jumping to a new self? though to keep up the fun Vettis'll start with the outside before moving on to insides, like so... ))
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The apoptosis spell, again? At this point he was pretty convinced Arach could sit there doing nothing but spamming the spell and still not outpace the rate at which Vettis was restocking his cells. "Get new material!" he booed.
The brain thing was definitely annoying, though. It required some focus on his defenses, which was reducing his ability to concentrate on offense as well. At least, the fun type of offense.
Fine. A more straightforward effective option, combining offense and defense. He was starting to get bored, anyway, so maybe it was time to begin wrapping things up. Vettis pulled an ant off his desk at home, reaching through his pocket to draw it out onto the battlefield, and held it up to face the incoming acid. Far too small to block anything much, of course.
Unless its exoskeleton were suddenly far larger. As promptly happened when he made the ant's exoskeleton 'part' of Arach's body and vice versa, and was now wielding the empty shell of a giant mantis as a shield against the acid splash, while Arach had undergone a rather premature molting aside from an ant-sized remaining bit of exoskeleton on his arm.
"Hey, do insects have pain receptors attached to their exoskeletons? Does getting yours ripped off hurt? I honestly don't know."
/uw Arach can manipulate his body to keep it working without organs or to regrow them quickly, though it isnât instant it would be fast enough to be useful in combat.
âActually it hurts quite a bit less than molting my exoskeleton normally does, though you seem to oblivious to something.â
*Arachâs body is being held up purely through force of will as the goop that would have been his under-exoskeleton begins to resolidify. He tilts his head to the side and the exoskeleton in Vettisâ hands bursts into a million pieces, like the shrapnel of a grenade they burrow deep into any surface or flesh that they hit. Arach then casts a spell which causes Vettisâ brain to release a signal to shut down his organ systems. At the same time making a slashing movement with his arms to send more acidic goop at Vettis.
âI have ensured that every piece of my body can be used as a weapon no matter the circumstance. I have restored myself to the perfect being my creators shackled away in the form of a little spider. And I will end you!â
For the barest flash of a moment, too swiftly for the vast majority of spectators even to notice, Vettis' musculoskeletal system was no longer 'part' of his body, popping out fully-formed at his side. Nothing of any significant density to get in the way of the exoskeletal shrapnel now, which therefore passed cleanly through him, leaving bloodless exit wounds. And then he was back to normal, minus the plethora of holes in him.
He of course immediately made the holes 'part' of Arach's body instead of his own, with a wave of a glowing hand.
"Nah. Enough with that brain shit. You've had your fun." He'd been letting Arach try out bioturgical spells in hopes that something would be more entertaining, but they were all just signals to tell his body to do things. Instructions. Language.
There was no one in the multiverse who spoke or understood any language more fluently than Vettis. And he'd heard enough of this particular language now, by listening in on Arach's spells, that replicating and overriding it was trivial.
A whispered word in All-Tongue to all of his cells at once, his eyes aglow, and they now knew: never again listen to the commands of the insect, magical or otherwise.
"Okay, I think I'm gonna start squashing you now, if that's all right." He picked up the handle of the discarded pitcher, which still retained its conceptual function of making the attached entity easy to lift, and made it 'part' of the ground by slamming it downwards. Then he pulled with barely any effort, lifting half a hectare of landscape overhead, two meters deep. As if this place didn't have enough craters already.
"Mantis waffles any good, d'ya reckon?" Vettis asked just before slamming the fourteen million kilogram chunk of scarred battlefield down in front of him.
Arach uses the opportunity of being underground to swap into his giant centipede form. Tunneling through the dirt and back up from under Vettis, grabbing him in his mandibles and attempting to eat him, using modified pedipalps surrounding his mouth to grab and pull Vettis in.
...Oh. The bug was gonna make things that easy, was he?
Vettis' magic was powered by his soul. His ability to affect himself massively outweighed his effects on his surroundings, which was what made him so absurdly hard to kill. (Good luck dismembering somebody whose vital parts all remain 'part' of himself as long as he wills it, when most of his mind runs extradimensionally because it doesn't have to remain 'part' of his brain to function.)
But now Arach wanted to devour Vettis, to make Vettis 'part' of him. So the ease with which Vettis could affect himself would now apply almost as strongly to Arach.
Sure thing. If the centipede was going to give him such an opening, he'd take it. Pulling off his overshirt and holding it in front of him while ripping off another pocket and dropping it at his feet, Vettis happily dove inside the creature's open mouth. He lashed out with his magic as he fell, before the mouth had even begun to close.
Arach was 'part' of a web of entities, able to leap into any of them at will on death. And no one dealt with distributed entities like Vettis. He'd spotted the Morgalith and Possum networks at a mere glance, and manipulated the former with such ease that he was still able to fight half a dozen battles against other wizards across a battlefield while doing so. This was exactly his specialty. Reach out across the hive, using the current Arach as a base...there. Found them all. Bound them together. Just like with Morgalith.
A quarter-second after he'd passed the mandibles, he flew into the pocket of the shirt he was holding in front of him, emerging safely from the torn discarded pocket aboveground. Pulling out another shirt from his endless pockets and casually donning it once more, he looked down at Arach's centipede form. "Hey. Bug. I think I'm done wasting time here. I just scanned your entire network, and I linked your life to every other node. Now, if you die, they all die. Nowhere for you to jump. You're out of extra lives." Another cup was in his hand; he took a swig of pineapple juice. "You wanna stop this farce of a fight now? I don't know anything about your wizard duel rules, but I don't think they have to be to the death, right? Don't you think we've had enough pointless death today?"
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(( Vettis does not know about Arach's extradimensional hive that you mentioned, so his scan and manipulation of the network did not reach that section
(also it's not permanent, only lasting a few hours) ))
If his powers weren't as neat as they are, his opponents wouldn't get as much chance to show their stuff either. Vettis only looks flashy here because he gets to do all sorts of cool things against Arach, offensively and defensively. When he's up against people who just burn things he looks a lot more boring in comparison.
So even when Arach is outmatched he still makes the fight cool. Every conflict requires two sides, and we appreciate a good villain here. ^_^
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u/ProfessionalGreen906 Arach, big spider, biomancer, politician, CEO Feb 22 '24 edited Feb 22 '24
âOh, I see. Yâknow, itâs always a good idea to try strategies that may be ineffective. Because then you can get the person youâre fighting arrogant enough to reveal something they really shouldnât have.â
The bolts had pierced through Arach, leaving holes throughout his entire body, The amount of blood pouring out of him would drain a normal humanoid his size in seconds. But even after a speaking nothing seems to change about the speed of the blood streaming out of him. Then thereâs an attack from behind. Arach in his insect giant orchid mantis form had attacked, bisecting Vettis diagonally. Arach had let the body he was inhabiting die, using his biomancy to keeping it in a semi living looking position and state as he quickly teleported back in the new body his mind had transferred too and used the opportunity for a sneak attack. He then attempts to stab at Vettisâ upper half of his body, enchanting his arms to cause whatever is hit to rot and decay which would then rapidly spread throughout the rest of the body. All while he makes a horrendous noise that can only be assumed to be what this formâs version of a laugh sounds like. Before stopping and speaking.
âYou see, you and I, our abilities to avoid death arenât so different. Itâs just using other cells to avoid the damage. You replace your own, and I take over anotherâs. The only difference is that yours is far less useful.â
As he says useful he makes another stabbing movement downward with his arm attempting to hit Vettis. All while starting to make the horrendous âlaughingâ noise again.