Chaos ensued. The worksite quickly turned into a blood bath.
Beasts kept pouring out of the fresh new tear of the universe's fabric. There were hundreds of them, in all shapes and forms!
Michael held on to his pickaxe, and tried to calculate if he could run away if he tried. The Beasts seemed fast, and he saw plenty of the workers getting slaughtered already, some of them swallowed whole in one bite, so his chances of survival were close to the ground either way. Assuming someone could find his corpse, he figured that the mountainside was going to be his grave today!
"Come on!" he shouted out, "Where the fuck did the rest of the Tamers go? Protect us! It's what you're paid to do for fuck's sake!"
Frustration overcame him. He felt like he was talking to a brick wall, with the waves of Beasts being the wall itself. It was useless.
For that matter, he made the decision to charge forward. He hurried towards the monsters, and started swinging.
"I'm gonna die anyway," he said under his breath, "Might as well take some of these bastards down with me."
Michael picked off the Beasts that weren't paying attention to him. He was out of their line of sight, as he had initially been at the very edge of the worksite, and so he used this to his advantage.
His first kill amongst the horde, a giant porcupine. He couldn't identify its exact species, and he didn't know how this darn thing grew up to be as tall as him, but he didn't care.
He avoided its spiky spine, and got the drop on it, digging his pickaxe in its exposed head. One swing was all it took!
"Fuck yeah!" he shouted.
In the blink of an eye, he grabbed one of its spiky quills, pulled it out of its spine, and then moved on to his next target.
The quill on his hand had to weigh a pound, it was light, but he made great use of it.
He aimed at the biggest creature he could see, it being a giant mantis, ironically, and then, with every bit of strength he could muster, he tossed the quill, hitting the mantis on its bum, below its radiant shell!
The quill was nearly as tall as him, and half of it sunk into the mantis!
He could tell that the Beast felt it, because it hopped out of the battle scene afterwards. Standing at 10m/32ft tall, the giant mantis hopped away from the mountain, and only the Gods knew where it would land.
Working in the Quarry had some benefits. Michael was a strong man, and the muscles on his body could far outcompete an ancient Greek statue. He could put up a fight.
The blood bath continued, and he circled its outskirts, slamming down Beasts that were his size, or smaller. He used their diverted attention against them.
At some point, he ran into a few of the tamed Beasts. Their masters, the Higrus which looked like horse/human hybrids, were dead from the looks of it. The horde swallowed them, and what remained of the tamed Beasts were upset.
War wounds coated their giant bodies. Standing at 9ft/274cm tall, every punch and kick of theirs was like a death sentence!
The tamed Beasts were one-eyed, humanoid giants. Their species were called the Ru, and Michael didn't care what backwards universe they came from. Mother nature supported their absurd size, and unlike their Tamers, the Beasts were proving quite handy!
One of them was wrestling with a bear as tall as itself, landing gut punches with one arm, and choking it with the other.
The rest of the Ru, a total of twelve of them now, were also putting work in. They squashed tens of small Beasts already.
"Fuck you!" Michael shouted.
A serpentine beast caught his eye. It was small, but it bounced around like a cricket.
It could've bitten him no doubt, but he spotted it in time, and hit it with the face of his pickaxe. That was enough to break its bony spine, and kill it on the spot.
"Why are there so many of them?" he grunted, frustrated, "I never saw beasts like this before."
Looking at a tiny bunny afterwards, he pointed at it, and shouted, "Why is that motherfucker doing pushups?"
The bunny locked eyes with him all of a sudden, and then it charged at him, dodging the Beasts, tamed or otherwise, that stood in its path.
"Come here, you bouncy ass-whipe!" he roared, and held on to his pickaxe with both hands.
When the bunny leaped towards him, he swung his pickaxe like a baseball bat.
Unsurprisingly, he hit the bunny, and flung it across the worksite. It disappeared somewhere within the horde of Beasts.
"Oh God, was that an actual bunny?" he wiped the sweat off of his forehead, "Now I feel bad… the little fucker should've looked for a better place to do his pushups."
After the initial swing, Michael cared about the matter of the bunny for three seconds only. There were bigger fish to fry.
What used to be a total of three-hundred workers, foremen included, were mostly slaughtered off by the horde now.
Less than one-hundred remained. At least that's what he guessed. He couldn't guess an exact head-count, as the horde tore through the worksite, roaring, clawing at everything in their path, crowding his line of sight, but he knew that most of them were dead.
Sooner or later, he figured that he'd join the pile of dismembered corpses that was spread across the worksite.
"Can I even run away?" he asked himself silently, as he eyed one of the beasts close by.
Beasts kept pouring out of the portal-like tear. There was no fighting them.
The few Beast Tamers that were assigned to protect the Quarry were dead, and the Ru, the tamed beasts of the said Tamers were dropping one by one.
Two of them were sliced in pieces by this magnificent Beast, a Drake which had an absurdly long tail, with razor sharp spikes sticking out of it. There was no fighting it.
Michael saw its tail only briefly. It cracked like a whip, and each crackle roared like a bolt from a violent thunder storm, distinct within the raging mayhem of the horde!
The Drake was deep within the horde, and yet it still distracted him. Michael diverted his attention from the small Beast he was eyeballing. This was a grave mistake!
As his gaze focused forward once more, the small Beast, a Tri-Boar, distinctive from the fact that it had three pairs of legs, was charging towards him!
Michael was frozen in place. He knew he didn't have time to fight back, and so he awaited his punishment. A tusk to the chest wasn't his ideal way to die, but he was stripped out of options.
"Here it comes…" he held his breath.
All of a sudden, the boar flew tens of meters to his left side, crashing against the mountainside.
A large human leg barged in his line of view. One of the Ru, the giant tamed humanoids, had kicked the Tri-Boar senseless!
"Thank you!" he exclaimed.
Michael instantly recognized this particular Ru. It was the one he had fed earlier on.
The Ru dived right back into battle afterwards, and left Michael to fend for himself.
"I guess we're even now?" he let out a deep sigh of relief.
The jolts of adrenaline were hitting him so hard, that it felt like his bones were being crushed. He knew that he wasn't built for battle, not against a seemingly endless horde of Beasts, at least, and yet he still couldn't decide if he should run away or not.
When a Dire Wolf, a terrifying animal which was as tall as him bared its teeth at him, his decision was made for him. He could not run away right now even if he tried.
The Dire Wolf sprinted towards him, jumping over small Beasts along the way. Michael charged towards it in response, holding on to his pickaxe with both hands, and preparing for a swing.
As he swung, the Dire Wolf was suddenly pulled back, and hurled above the horde.
He saw one of the Ru, the same one that saved his life a moment ago, throwing the wolf over the horde by simply grabbing its tail.
"God damn it, now I owe him one," he rubbed his forehead in frustration.
Michael was about to join the Ru in battle, deeper within the horde, but then the Ru rolled an egg towards him. It was two-feet long, and almost as wide.
"How the hell didn't it crack?" he grunted.
Michael took a few steps forward to grab the egg, but a second before he managed to grab it, he saw a large horn piercing through the Ru's chest.
"No!" he shouted.
Just like that, what likely was his only direct ally in this bloodbath, was dead. Michael was distraught, but he knew he couldn't kill whatever managed to take a giant human down.
Almost instinctively, he then grabbed the egg, and ran away with it. He was praying to whichever God was listening that he wasn't being chased. With most of the workers gone, and the tamed Ru Beasts falling one by one, he knew that this was a battle he could not win.
Technically, he knew he couldn't win it ever since the battle started, but the death of the Ru helped him get his train of thought back on track. He may have less than a minute before the horde tore through what remained of the tamed Ru Beasts, and after that, it was only a matter of time before the horde mowed him down as well.
"I can't push my luck any further," he mumbled under his breath.
With the egg on his arms, he ran towards the edge of the mountain, planning to climb down the mountainside. Once he made sure that he wasn't being followed by the Beasts from within the endless horde, he prayed that there weren't any Beasts around here either.
As he climbed down the mountainside like an erratic mountain goat, an odd voice popped up in his head.
[Basilisk Taming System activated]
[Task 1: Hatch Basher Basilisk Egg
Reward: +5 Affinity]