My Scumbag System-Chapter 368: Ten-Foot Gardening Shears

Juan’s superheated cards flew past me, exploding against the Harvester’s face in bursts of flame. The creature reeled back, its eyes sizzling from the heat.

I slid beneath it, grabbing a broken branch from the ground. It wasn’t my bat, but it would have to do. I channeled Thermal Incision through it and stabbed upward into the soft underside of the creature. The branch caught fire from the heat, but not before piercing deep into the Harvester’s body.

The creature collapsed, its legs curling inward like a dead spider.

"They don’t regenerate if you cook them from the inside out!" I shouted to the others.

Jaime was a blur of motion, my bat in his hands leaving trails of heat through the air as he pummeled another Harvester into submission. Each strike grew stronger than the last, until he finally crushed through its shell entirely, the bat emerging from the other side covered in steaming blue ichor.

"NUMBER EIGHT FALLS TO THE MIGHTY JAIME DE VALLE!" he crowed, spinning to face the next opponent.

Raphael had recovered enough to rejoin the fight. He tackled a Harvester head-on, absorbing the kinetic energy from its attacks before unleashing it in a focused blast that flipped the creature onto its back. Before it could right itself, Noah was there, her sharpened uniform sleeves slicing through the creature’s exposed underbelly.

"Juan! The big one!" I pointed to the largest Harvester, which had held back from the fight until now. It was nearly twice the size of the others, its shell marked with what looked like battle scars.

Juan nodded, gathering his remaining cards into a tight fan. They glowed white-hot in his hand as he charged them with more energy than I’d ever seen him use. With a flick of his wrist, the entire deck flew toward the massive Harvester, spreading into a perfect arc that converged on its face.

The explosion was blinding. Heat washed over us in a wave that singed my eyebrows. When the light faded, the giant Harvester still stood, its shell blackened but intact.

"Oh, come on!" Juan groaned.

The creature reared up on its hind legs, revealing a glowing blue sac beneath its body. The sac pulsed once, twice, and then a stream of bioluminescent acid sprayed toward us.

"Get down!" I shouted, diving for cover.

Celeste thrust both hands forward. A wall of ice materialized before us, catching the spray. The acid ate through the ice almost instantly, but it bought us precious seconds to scatter.

"We need to hit it from underneath!" I called out as the creature charged toward us, moving faster than anything that size had a right to.

"I got this!" Raphael yelled, stepping directly into its path.

The Harvester slammed into him with enough force to shatter bones. But instead of being crushed, Raphael lit up like a human lightbulb, his body absorbing the massive kinetic impact. His eyes glowed with stored energy as he grabbed onto the creature’s pincers, preventing it from retreating.

"Jaime! Now!" Raphael shouted through gritted teeth.

Jaime sprinted forward, the heated bat raised high. He slid beneath the creature, using Raphael’s hold to keep it from escaping, and unleashed a flurry of blows against its underside. Each hit landed with increasing force, the heat blade cauterizing as it went.

The giant Harvester shrieked, its legs thrashing wildly. It managed to catch Jaime with one pincer, flinging him away like a rag doll. He crashed into a tree, the bat flying from his grip.

"Shit!" I dashed toward the fallen bat, but the Harvester was faster, moving to block my path.

"Monica! The trees!" I shouted. "Can they help us?"

Monica, still kneeling on the ground with Celeste, nodded frantically. The silver trees around us trembled, their branches bending unnaturally. Luminescent fruit dropped from above, landing with surprising force on the Harvester’s shell. Where they broke open, the glowing pulp seemed to burn through the creature’s carapace like acid.

"The fruit!" Monica called out. "The trees say it’s poisonous to the Harvesters!"

Celeste immediately understood. With a sweeping gesture, she created a gust of freezing wind that shook the trees violently. Fruit rained down, pelting the giant Harvester from all sides.

The creature thrashed in apparent agony as the fruit pulp ate through its shell. Raphael, still holding its pincers, roared with effort as he channeled all his stored energy into a final, devastating attack. The creature’s front legs buckled from the force.

I spotted my bat lying in the sand nearby and lunged for it. The wood was charred from Jaime’s use, but the heat blade activated as soon as my fingers closed around the grip. With a running start, I leapt onto the Harvester’s back, raised the bat high, and drove it down with all my strength into the crack Raphael had created in its shell.

The heat blade sliced through the weakened carapace, sinking deep into whatever passed for the creature’s brain. Blue ichor erupted from the wound, steaming where it touched my bat. The Harvester shuddered once, twice, and then collapsed, its legs splaying outward in death.

For a moment, the clearing was silent except for our heavy breathing.

"Is... is it dead?" Monica asked shakily.

Juan poked the creature with a stick. "Considering half its brain is now blue goo on the sand, I’d say yes."

"Everyone check for injuries," I ordered, pulling my bat free from the creature’s skull with a disgusting squelching sound.

"Jaime’s hurt," Noah reported, kneeling beside him. Blood trickled from a gash on his forehead, but he was already struggling to sit up.

"Just a scratch!" he insisted, though his voice lacked its usual volume. "Nothing can keep the mighty Jaime De Valle down for long!"

"Anyone else?" I asked, scanning the group.

Raphael had burns on his hands from channeling so much energy. Celeste seemed unharmed, thanks largely to Noah’s protection. Monica looked exhausted but uninjured. Juan had a dislocated shoulder that Noah set with quick, brutal efficiency that made him curse creatively in three languages.

I took stock of myself. Bruised ribs, again. A cut on my arm I hadn’t noticed during the fight. Nothing life-threatening.

"We should move," I said, looking around at the crab corpses. "These things might have friends."

"The trees say there are more Harvesters deeper in the forest," Monica confirmed. "They’re drawn to movement and sound."

"Then we find somewhere quiet and defensible," I decided. "And next time, we’ll be ready for them."

As we gathered our scattered belongings, I glanced at the massive Harvester carcass. Something bothered me about these creatures. They were coordinated, intelligent in their attack patterns. Not the mindless monsters usually found in Gates.

"Monica," I called softly. "Ask the trees who controls the Harvesters."

She placed her hand against a silver trunk, her eyes closing in concentration. When they opened again, they were wide with fear.

"The Arborist," she whispered. "The trees say these are just his gardening tools."

I looked at the ten-foot monster we’d barely managed to kill, then back at Monica’s frightened face.

"If these are the tools," I asked, "what the hell is the gardener?"