Chapter 146: I Used Her Strongest Attack to Bring the Quarry Down on Her

The air came back all at once.

Not like wind.

Like a wall.

Raven saw the Matriarch’s abdominal plates snap shut a fraction of a second before the discharge erupted, giving him barely enough time to reinforce the right side of his torso with Stonehide.

WHOOOM.

The quarry vanished behind dust and shattered rock.

Raven activated Burst Step toward the side, but the pressure wave caught him before he completed the movement. It struck his back, punched through the protection of Stonehide, and compressed his chest as though someone had closed a vise around his ribs.

He was thrown off his feet.

Raven hit the ground and rolled until he stopped near a low terrace.

For a moment, he tried to breathe.

Nothing happened.

His lungs refused.

Sound disappeared almost at the same time, replaced first by a piercing ring and then by the muffled sensation of being underwater.

Predation filled his vision.

[Severe Pressure Trauma Detected.]

[Right Tympanic Membrane: RUPTURED.]

[Pulmonary Compression Injury: MODERATE.]

[Rib Fractures: AGGRAVATED.]

[Predatory Regeneration Responding.]

Raven opened his mouth and tried to inhale again.

A thin stream of air entered.

It hurt.

It was enough.

The Matriarch was already moving.

She had released enough pressure to pulverize part of the stone in front of her, yet showed no visible sign of strain. All six limbs anchored into the ground as her abdomen began expanding again and the lateral plates separated slightly to draw in air.

Valeria emerged through the dust.

Raven barely heard her.

"Raven!"

He raised one hand to show he was still conscious.

He didn’t need her running directly toward him while the Matriarch prepared another discharge.

Valeria only partially obeyed.

She rarely did.

She reached a nearby rock formation and extended both hands. Several strands of blood flowed from her fingers, but instead of becoming spears or blades, they wrapped around her own arms, neck, and torso.

Raven watched as he managed to rise onto one knee.

It wasn’t a barrier.

Valeria was reinforcing her own circulation.

The Matriarch’s next inhalation confirmed why.

Air began flowing toward the creature’s abdomen, and Raven felt the surrounding pressure drop. Pain returned immediately to his ears while an unpleasant pulling sensation spread through his chest.

Valeria tightened the blood threads.

Her face grew paler, but she remained standing.

Then another strand extended from her hand toward Raven. It didn’t pierce his skin. Instead, it spread across his neck, ribs, and upper chest like a thin net pulsing in rhythm with his circulation.

Raven felt controlled pressure around the vessels in his neck.

Not enough to harm him.

Enough to keep blood moving toward his brain.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Even his own voice sounded distant.

"Keeping you from passing out the next time that thing changes the pressure."

"That seems useful."

Valeria stared at him in disbelief.

"I’m glad to receive such a detailed evaluation while your lungs are trying to collapse."

The Matriarch stopped inhaling.

Raven saw the preparation immediately.

Front legs spread.

Abdomen rigid.

Lateral plates fully open.

Her body rotated.

Not toward him.

Toward Valeria.

"Move."

She had already understood.

The Matriarch discharged.

Valeria formed an angled wall of blood instead of trying to meet the blast head-on.

WHOOOM.

The barrier didn’t stop the pressure.

It split it.

Part of the discharge was redirected upward while the rest slammed into the quarry wall behind her.

Valeria was dragged several meters across the ground, but she managed to remain upright.

The wall wasn’t as fortunate.

A wide fracture opened across its lower section.

Raven saw the crack travel through old mining scars and connect with a vertical seam farther above.

The overhanging shelf shifted.

Barely.

But it shifted.

Raven stopped watching the Matriarch for half a second.

The quarry had been abandoned because the stone was too fractured to mine safely. Old extraction cuts still ran beneath the ledges, and years of erosion had left sections of the wall carrying far more weight than they should.

The Matriarch had just connected two of those failures.

That changed the battlefield.

"Valeria."

She was recovering her balance.

"What?"

Raven pointed toward the damaged wall.

"Remember that section."

She followed the fracture upward.

Then her expression sharpened.

"You want to drop it."

"Not all of it."

Raven studied the geometry.

The upper shelf was too broad to collapse cleanly. If the entire formation came down, tons of rock could bury the Matriarch’s abdomen along with the Pressure Chamber.

He didn’t need that.

He needed the front third.

There.

A vertical fault separated the ledge from the rear wall. Below it, an old mining cut had weakened the base. The Matriarch’s discharge had opened the lower seam, but one stone rib still connected the shelf to the quarry face.

Break that rib, and the slab wouldn’t fall straight down.

It would rotate forward.

Directly across the ground beneath it.

Raven tracked the projected path.

Head.

Neck.

Forelimbs.

The abdomen would remain outside the main impact zone.

Much better.

"I’m not dropping the wall," he said. "I’m dropping one shelf."

Valeria looked from the fracture to the Matriarch.

"On her head."

"And neck."

"What about the chamber?"

"If she’s positioned correctly, the abdomen stays clear."

Valeria smiled despite herself.

"That sounds more like you."

The Matriarch advanced.

Fighting an adult Blastback Burrower inside a tunnel was dangerous because there was nowhere to escape its discharge.

Fighting the Matriarch in open terrain solved that problem.

It created several new ones.

Raven discovered the first when she jumped.

She didn’t really use her legs to do it.

The Matriarch anchored all four forelimbs, compressed her abdomen, and opened two rear valves.

BOOM.

The discharge struck the ground and launched more than five meters of armored mass forward.

Raven watched the creature rise nearly two meters into the air before descending directly toward him.

Burst Step.

He appeared beside her flank.

The Matriarch smashed into the stone where he had been and cratered the quarry floor under her weight.

Raven attacked.

Not the abdomen.

The rear leg.

Kinetic Acceleration traveled through his short spear as the tip struck a seam between armored plates.

It penetrated.

Barely.

Dark blood appeared.

The creature turned with absurd speed for something that large.

Predator’s Instinct warned Raven before his eyes did.

He released the spear and ducked as one claw passed through the space his head had occupied.

The second strike caught his arm.

Stonehide.

CRACK.

The mineral layer prevented the claw from reaching bone, but the impact still threw him sideways.

Raven rolled, regained his feet, and felt Predatory Regeneration begin repairing small tears around his shoulder.

The Matriarch shrieked.

It sounded nothing like the juveniles.

Deeper.

Closer to stone grinding against stone.

Valeria attacked from the opposite side.

Three blood needles flew toward the eyes and forelimb joints.

Two bounced from the armor.

The third penetrated near one eye.

The Matriarch snapped a protective facial plate closed and released a short pressure burst.

She hadn’t fully inflated the chamber.

It was still enough to destroy the needles and force Valeria backward.

Raven watched carefully.

That discharge had been different.

Less pressure.

Less preparation.

Her abdominal plates had barely opened.

"She can regulate the output."

Valeria took a deep breath.

"That also would’ve been useful information earlier."

"I’m learning it now."

"Wonderful."

The Matriarch began inhaling again.

Raven didn’t attack.

He watched.

The abdominal plates opened in sequence, beginning with the rear sections before spreading along the sides. The chamber expanded inside a rigid armored structure that protected it from almost every angle.

There was exposed membrane between the plates.

Vulnerable tissue.

He could pierce it.

He couldn’t afford to.

FORGE needed the organ intact.

Raven had to kill an Elite creature while deliberately avoiding the organ that occupied a significant portion of its body.

Naturally.

Valeria was studying the same thing.

"The chamber is exposed while she charges."

"Yes."

"I could pierce it."

"No."

"I know. I just wanted to make sure you appreciated how irritating this is."

Raven breathed carefully.

His right lung still hurt.

Predatory Regeneration was stabilizing the injury, but it couldn’t erase moderate pressure trauma in seconds.

"We can’t kill her through the abdomen."

"Head."

"Too armored."

"Neck."

Raven studied the transitions between the cervical plates.

"Possible."

The Matriarch finished charging.

Raven watched her orientation.

Torso facing them.

Forelimbs anchored.

Her entire skeletal structure had to brace against the recoil.

That was the pattern.

The chamber could accumulate pressure without direction, but to release a full discharge, the creature needed to turn its entire body into a support structure.

The Stormhorn had been similar. It needed to align its mass and limbs before changing the vector of Kinetic Pulse.

This wasn’t omnidirectional magic.

It was anatomy.

"When she prepares a full discharge, she can’t correct quickly."

Valeria looked at him.

"How long?"

"Not long."

"You’re developing an obsession with unpleasantly small timing windows."

"They work."

The Matriarch fired.

This time, Raven was ready.

Predator’s Instinct caught the instant her body committed.

Burst Step.

Raven vanished to the right.

Valeria went left, launching herself with a blood platform beneath one foot.

The discharge passed between them.

It struck the quarry wall.

BOOM.

The damaged section fractured again.

The vertical seam widened, and the front edge of the massive shelf dropped several centimeters before catching on the remaining stone rib.

Raven saw dust pour from beneath it.

Now he knew exactly what held it up.

One support.

One failure point.

The trap no longer depended on bringing down an entire wall.

They only needed to break that rib while the Matriarch stood beneath the shelf.

The Matriarch gave them no time to calmly refine the plan.

She turned toward Raven and used a rear pressure burst to propel herself forward.

This time, she didn’t jump.

She slid.

Her front claws barely touched the ground as her armored body shot toward him.

Raven ran.

Not directly away.

At an angle.

The creature tracked vibration through stone far better than visual movement. Every footstep gave her information.

Which meant he could feed her the wrong information.

Raven struck the ground with the butt of his spear.

Once.

Twice.

Then activated Burst Step in the opposite direction.

The Matriarch turned toward the earlier vibrations.

Too late.

Raven appeared beside her left foreleg and used Kinetic Acceleration through the spear again.

This time, he didn’t stab.

He struck the joint laterally.

CRACK.

It didn’t break.

It shifted.

The creature lost support for an instant.

Valeria took advantage immediately.

Two thick bands of blood wrapped around the same limb and pulled outward.

The Matriarch dropped partially onto one side, armored plates grinding across the stone.

Raven attacked the neck.

The spear entered between two plates.

Two centimeters.

Then five.

Then it struck bone.

The Matriarch convulsed violently.

Raven released the weapon rather than let the movement tear his shoulder from its socket.

"That was mine."

Valeria looked at him as they retreated.

"You can recover it later."

"I sharpened it."

"Survive and I’ll buy you another."

"It isn’t the same."

"Raven."

"I’m moving."

The Matriarch regained her footing.

The spear remained embedded in her neck.

Not enough to kill her.

But useful.

It marked the exact seam Raven needed.

More importantly, the injured foreleg was no longer taking her full weight cleanly.

Raven looked from the damaged joint to the shelf.

That gave him the second half of the trap.

He didn’t merely need the Matriarch beneath the rock.

He needed her braced.

Full discharge.

Forelimbs planted.

Weight committed forward.

One damaged joint.

If twenty tons struck while she was anchored in that position, she wouldn’t be able to roll with the impact.

Her own anatomy would trap her.

The creature inhaled again.

Faster this time.

Raven felt the pressure drop.

Valeria reinforced her circulation with Blood Magic once more and extended another thin network toward Raven.

The effect didn’t remove the pulmonary injury or stop the pressure changes from hurting his ears, but it kept enough blood reaching his brain to prevent his vision from darkening.

"I can’t keep doing this indefinitely," she said.

Raven looked at her hands.

She had already spent a considerable amount of blood.

"How long?"

"Long enough that your answer should not be ’let’s keep experimenting.’"

"Then the next full discharge ends it."

Valeria glanced toward the weakened shelf.

"That sounds dangerously confident."

"It’s already fractured in two directions. One stone rib is carrying the front section."

"And if it doesn’t break?"

Raven looked toward the small charges they had buried earlier along the quarry route.

Most had been intended to control exits.

Two were still unused.

"Then we break it."

Valeria followed his gaze.

Understanding arrived.

"You want to move the charges."

"Yes."

"While she’s trying to kill us."

"Yes."

"You continue to make simple sentences deeply unpleasant."

The Matriarch finished charging.

But she didn’t release it.

Raven frowned.

Her abdomen remained expanded and the plates stayed open.

Then she started walking.

Slowly.

Holding the pressure.

"She can maintain it."

"Does that change anything?"

Raven watched the way she adjusted her legs.

"Yes."

Now she could choose the moment of release.

That made the bait harder.

Not impossible.

The Matriarch advanced.

Every step sent vibration through the quarry.

Raven retreated toward the fractured wall.

Valeria noticed.

"You’re doing that deliberately."

"Yes."

"Would you like to tell me the part where this stops looking suicidal?"

Raven looked toward the shelf.

The Matriarch needed three things before a full discharge: a target, solid footing, and enough confidence in the target’s position to commit her body.

He could give her all three.

"Move the two remaining charges to the base of that stone rib."

Valeria looked at him.

"While you do what?"

"Keep her looking at me."

Her expression flattened.

"That was exactly the answer I didn’t want."

"She tracks ground vibration better than sight. You can move along the terraces."

"And if she notices?"

"Don’t let her."

Valeria stared at him for half a second.

Then blood threads shot toward the nearest unused charge.

"I hate when your terrible ideas have structure."

Raven almost smiled.

The Matriarch took another step.

He struck the quarry floor with the butt of his weapon.

THUD.

Her head snapped toward him.

Good.

He struck again.

THUD.

The Matriarch corrected her path.

Behind her, Valeria used thin blood threads to drag the first small charge across the upper terrace without letting it scrape against stone.

Raven kept moving backward.

Not randomly.

He was placing himself on a line directly in front of the fractured wall.

The shelf loomed twenty meters behind him.

The kill zone sat between.

The Matriarch followed.

Valeria reached the stone rib with the first charge.

Then the second.

She looked at Raven from above.

He raised one finger.

Not yet.

The Matriarch advanced another five meters.

Raven threw a stone into the fractured wall.

Kinetic Acceleration.

CRACK.

The impact traveled through the rock behind him.

The Matriarch stopped.

Her head shifted toward the vibration.

Raven threw another deeper into the same fracture.

CRACK.

The Matriarch turned until her body aligned almost perfectly with the wall.

Valeria understood what he was doing.

"You need her closer."

"Yes."

"How much?"

Raven studied the overhang.

The leading edge of the shelf would fall roughly six meters forward before the rear section caught.

He looked at the Matriarch’s body.

Five meters long.

Her abdomen had to remain outside the impact.

"Three meters."

"That’s unpleasantly specific."

"It needs to be."

Raven stepped backward.

The Matriarch followed.

One meter.

Two.

The damaged forelimb shifted awkwardly under her weight.

Three.

Raven stopped.

The creature was directly beneath the front edge of the shelf.

Head and shoulders inside the collapse zone.

Abdomen outside it.

Exactly where he needed her.

"Valeria."

"Ready."

"Wait for the full charge."

The Matriarch lowered herself.

All four forelimbs spread across the stone.

Her injured joint locked under her weight.

The abdominal plates opened wider.

Air began rushing toward her.

Raven didn’t move.

Valeria’s eyes widened.

"You need to start running."

"Not yet."

The Matriarch had to commit.

Pressure dropped around him.

Dust streamed past Raven’s boots toward the creature.

His injured ear throbbed.

His lungs tightened.

Still he waited.

The Matriarch’s chamber expanded to full capacity.

Her front claws dug grooves into the quarry floor.

There.

Full brace.

Full pressure.

No easy correction.

Raven raised two fingers.

Valeria tightened the blood threads around both charges.

The Matriarch stopped inhaling.

Raven lowered one finger.

Not yet.

For a fraction of a second, nothing moved.

Then the abdominal plates began to close.

Raven dropped the second finger.

"Now."

Valeria detonated both charges.

The stone rib shattered.

At the same instant, the Matriarch released everything.