They moved like whispers through the mire, each step deliberate, the soft suction of boots against the saturated ground barely audible beneath the drone of insects and distant rolls of thunder.
The land around them stretched ominous, gnarled trees twisted like arthritic limbs, dark water dappled with scattered spores.
Any misplaced movement could ripple the surface, and ripple meant danger.
Cain kept a hand hovering just above his casting rifle, eyes narrowing as the landscape subtly shifted toward something less organic — more prepared.
Before them stretched the battlefield.
A towering cavern of formation that glowed faintly from moss-fed light veins that traced the cliffside walls.
Pools scattered between roots and broken rock, forming multiple a natural choke point.
Elevated ridges would serve well for ambush. It was here they'd corner the Blight centivine.
Cain looked around, his expression unreadable beneath the tactical tinted visor.
"Last check, Comms green, no sissy punches."
His tone was low but crisp.
"Watch your footing. I'll be laying traps, places I don't mark. You step on them, it's on you."
Ricky and Tol gave a clipped nod, Pumbo raised a fist in silence.
Even Beany, normally jittery, gave a calm blink of blue across the feed.
The tigress just grinned and slammed her metal gloves together, the sound ringing like a challenge.
After the acknowledgment tone clicked through each line.
Cain took the lead, one slow step at a time, eyes never leaving the open gorge ahead.
The hunt was about to begin.
Crouching low behind the wet ridge of a crooked root, his breathing tempered, eyes narrowing behind his visor's glare filter.
The team didn't fanned out behind him, each one silent — part instinct, and part fear.
The swamp air here was heavier, charged not with battle but with rot.
It clung to the skin like mucus, crawling into the gaps of armor and layering the back of every breath with the promise of decay.
Cain suddenly raised his fist, halting their movement.
Through the warped trunks and tangled vines, they saw it.
A massive herbivorous insect resembling a cockroach, at least four meters from end to end, stood with unnerving stillness in the middle of the clearing.
Its obsidian armored carapace had become dull and placid, the kind of calm that didn't belong to the living.
The blight centivine's fanlike fronds had stung it square in the abdomen.
Cain watched the interaction with a rising sickness in his gut, not revulsion, but something deeper — like watching the rules of nature get rewritten in real time.
The giant insect didn't fall nor screamed.
It simply turned and began walking — slow, lethargic, its legs dragging through the mire, guided by the centivine's spindly rootlike vines that pulsed with green luminescence.
Like a puppet.
Cain followed its movement as the plant's tendrils wrapped around its legs, its back, and its head.
Then, the burrow, a hidden cavity beneath a natural slope, vines pulling apart like parting jaws.
The creature walked straight in.
The Centivine moved next — its core bulb opening slightly, exuding thick spores into the burrow entrance before resealing it with a slick fold of root and vine.
Cain's fingers twitched reflexively near the trigger of his rifle.
Those millions of seeds spores, it would root inside the belly of the insect, right where the digestion was still active.
Not killing the host, but feeding on its gut lining, on stored fat, and on the nervous tissue that kept the creature aware.
It will take days, maybe even weeks.
Until the host could no longer be distinguished from the root cluster blooming from within its ribcage.
"Look alive, we aren't here to watch discovery channel."
The silence that followed wasn't fear, it was agreement.
Taking out a gas expelling grenade, he adjusted the gasses in his analogue scope.
His arm moved like a coiled spring finally let loose.
The grenade sailed in a clean arc through the bog's dense, pollen-laced air. It struck just outside the sealed burrow.
'Three hundred meters, it's not going to make to the opening.'
Cain's hand caught the humming digital ball mid-spin — Pumbo's throw had been just shy of the mark.
Without a word, he adjusted his stance, felt the wet soil give slightly under his boot, and threw a pebble.
The impact made no thunder. No fire. Instead, a subtle pop echoed out, more like the hiss of a popped blister.
A translucent clear mist unfurled, dancing low against the ground, rolling like a crawling tide of ash across the gnarled roots and muck-laden waters.
It didn't burn. It wasn't meant to.
The millions of spawns fighting to be the last inside the borrow — all withered within seconds, twitching violently before folding inward like collapsing kelp.
Their soft bodies spasmed, then liquefied into twitching yellow pools.
That was the start — they need the animal extremely agitated or it will dash out,
Feeling the connection towards it's saplings diminished to nothing, the centivine moved.
Its entire body spasmed, a pulse that reverberated up its massive, root-thick torso.
The five fan-shaped antennae flailed wildly, each lined with fine, whisker-like sensors that now twisted like frantic serpents.
Then came the release — a violent, percussive burst of golden dust expelled from its inner bulb. A turmeric cloud exploded outward.
The effect was immediate.
A chittering squirrel froze mid-run, let out a shrill noise, and fell twitching into the swamp water.
Frogs chocked on their own croak Carrion flies dropped in clusters.
The cloud was a nervous disruptor, refined to paralyze not the plants — but anything with a spine, the plant wanted to know the culprit.
The moment hung — and then everything surged.
Lines of faint light erupted from behind each squad member.
Their magicules signatures stretched out, latching onto Cain's back like glowing tethers.
His body locked, the sudden weight of borrowed power nearly knocked him off balance.
But he'd done this before.
The unique magicules poured into his rifle's core, spiraling through the mechanism, and accelerating with a howl like friction over glass.
He braced himself, knees bent, chest tight, and arms rigid.
Only a single collective breath drawn sharp.
The barrel of Cain's casting rifle glowed a molten white-blue, arcs of stabilized magic spinning at its tip like a miniature galaxy collapsing on itself.
They would start this with the most common move mankind had used to trump over anyone.
Magic missile — charged with the magic of the six individuals combined to one.