Daedalus' New World

It hadn't taken the rest long to catch up to him. Beam was just faster than him and had caught up just after he reached the one league mark, landing next to him and seeming to be completely at ease. While they waited, they could both hear the heavy footfalls of the hydra ahead of them as it stomped through the forest. Each heavy thud shook the ground, mild tremors shaking the earth beneath his feet as Moon shifted nervously. As far as Jay could tell, though, it wasn't coming towards them. With that concern abated, Jay glanced to his partner. "Nervous?"

The little thestral mare gave him a hard glare and indignation sparked in her eyes as she bared her fangs. The little show of aggression only lasted a second before she deflated with an irritated huff. That, too, faded soon after as she slowly nodded. "A little. There's never a guarantee to return from these hunts and even the simplest hunt can kill, but hydras are really bad. Pretty much anything they can do will kill a pony in a single tap. The tail will break every bone in my body, a stomp would flatten me to paste, a bite would cut me in half or swallow me whole, and the acid would just leave bones behind. The only way to fight a hydra and live is to never be hit."

Beam glanced away as her hoof pawed at the ground slowly, betraying her nerves. "I've... got a bit of a track record for getting hurt on our hunts. It's usually minor, but with a hydra... there are no minor injuries. I'm worried because getting hurt is death during this hunt, and I pretty much always get hurt. We're Hunters and it's our job to give our lives to save the innocent. I'm prepared for that and accept it. But..."

"Just because you're prepared to doesn't meant you want to." Jay responded as he nodded in understanding. After a second of consideration, he reached out and began to run his hand through her mane gently, earning a soft sigh from her as she leaned into his touch. "Like you said, there's never a guarantee. But I'll do my best to keep you safe, alright, Beam? Let me take the hits. I don't really feel pain, and it can't kill me. I'm built different."

She snorted softly at the cheeky tone he had and looked up with a soft smile, her slitted teal eyes shimmering lightly in the faint moonlight. "Yeah. Just, make sure you stay safe too, okay?"

He gave her a toothy grin. "Don't worry, I've got reasons to go back home."

She returned his grin with a smirk of her own, feeling a little better as she talked with him. "Let me guess, Starfall~?"

Jay coughed suddenly, not realizing she knew about that. Her grin only widened at his reaction as she realized she was right. After a second, Jay gave a nod and moved to speak only to stop, the heavy hoofsteps of two ponies approaching them rapidly from the distance. He nodded his head in that direction as Beam hummed in agreement, her ears already perked. After hearing them, it only took a minute or so for the two large ponies to arrive as they slowed down. Iron gave the two an expectant look and Beam spoke, already knowing what he was about to ask. "The hydra is about two and a half leagues ahead. It's stomping northwest but doesn't seem to be chasing anything, more just making a lot of noise and trying to drive away competition. Jay and I are ready to run interference while you and Kin hit it hard."

"Good. We'll move in and get going. Jay and Beam, you two pull ahead and get eyes on the hydra. Do not engage yet. Keep in the underbrush and in the canopy respectively. Once Kin and I are in position, we'll attack it together. Beam, stay evasive and make sure you don't get touched. I hate to say this, but if anypony gets hit, it needs to be Jay. He can take the force and be alright, but the rest of us aren't so lucky. Aim for the eyes and necks as much as you can. Jay, stay aggressive and stay in its face or at its feet. Keep its eyes on you and make it forget we even exist. Kin, me and you will be darting in and out and striking its legs. Aim for the arteries and try to make it bleed as much as possible. The more we work its regeneration, the weaker it becomes and the faster we can kill it for good. Any questions?" No one said anything. It wasn't a complicated plan and left it open for everyone to decide how to get their own job done in whatever way was safest for them. "Alright, head out."

With a mix of nods and sounds of conformation, the squad of five took off. Jay sprinted along the ground as Beam shot skyward, flitting in and around the canopy to keep her visibility as low as possible. The two ground bound ponies fell behind rather quickly, though they stayed within earshot the entire time as the two scouts had to move slower- Beam didn't want to strike a branch at full speed and Jay wasn't sure how good a hydra's hearing was. It only took a couple minute or so for them to cross the distance as Jay caught sight of it and let his form unravel, becoming little more than a viral mess blending into the wild shapes of the trees and underbrush.

The great beast was large. Very large. It was easily eighty feet tall and about twenty feet thick at its torso and entirely orange. He had half expected some shade of green or brown. The reptile was bipedal as it stomped around on two large flat feet with three large claws on each. It's torso quickly extended into a long, thick tail and on the other end, the torso quickly shifted into four necks each about five feet thick and tipped by a snake-like head. From the tip of the tail to the top of the neck, multiple rows of bright red and razor sharp spines covered the hydra. The four heads were swaying around independently as eight sets of green eyes looked for the next meal. As one glanced in his general direction, he noticed that it's mouth and teeth were covered in dried blood from what was no doubt a recent meal. Overall, while the hydra was still an intimidating sight, it seemed more squat and fat that what he was expecting.

Just like Beam had said, the hydra was deeper into the forest to the northwest, and it was clearly intentionally making as much noise as it possibly could. Every heavy footfall came down with more force than seemed necessary for its assumed weight, and its heads were busy biting smaller trees in half around it and throwing the shattered logs around with powerful flicks of its necks. Iron's briefing about it driving predators out of the Everfree came back to him and he had to admit that was definitely the case- if he was a wolf or manticore, he'd be running away from this thing too.

Jay heard the underbrush next to him very lightly rustle over the faint undertone of breathing and glanced over his shoulder. Kin and Iron were approaching him as they kept low and moved slow. He pointed up toward Beam and gave them a nod that was returned then turned his attention back to the hydra. The two ponies laid down on their bellies as they peered at the hydra.

"It's a large one. Easily sixty hooves taller than average." Jay heard Kin's rumbling voice whisper.

"It's ancient and probably about to die. I didn't consider this. The last record of a hydra dying of age was nearly three hundred years ago. They tend to drive off as many predators and carrion scavengers as they can in the last few weeks of life so they can die in peace and not have to fight. This changes nothing, though." Iron explained with a slow nod as he put the information together and realized why it was acting this way. "Jay, Beam, are you two ready? We'll help it die a little earlier than it planned."

"Yep." Jay said simply at the same time Beam voiced her assent.

"Start. Keep its attention away from us and we'll hit it when we can and wear it down. Our axes and hammer will cut through the flesh and into arteries and veins pretty easily." Iron gave the order. As soon as he finished talking, the two scouts burst into action.

Beam kicked off her branch and darted toward the hydra, staying high in the canopy. When she neared the hydra, she veered upward sharply and ascended the last twenty feet to the hydra's head and darted between two necks as her wingblades lashed out. The glimmering metal carved a thin line in the orange scaled flesh of the beast but did little else, the masses simply too thick for the small blades to cut deeply into. Still, the hydra roared more in fury than pain as all four heads turned toward Beam. Taking the opportunity for what it was, Jay ran forward only a few feet to get clear of his two companions before kicking off the ground as the dirt beneath his feet cracked and buckled. Midair, his right arm shifted into a massive collection of tendrils, each one rapidly coiling around itself into a viral approximation of a giant fist as large as his torso. An instant later, the hammerfist violently ejected biomass and increased how fast he leapt through the air. He impacted the hydra's gargantuan torso that the densely packed flesh and muscle rippled away from the point of impact, staggering the beast as it stumbled back several steps. Jay felt at least one bone splinter underneath his strike as the monster roared, this time with pain just as much as agony. He saw a flicker of movement before the beast's tail whipped around and impacted him, utilized more like a whip than a club as only the last foot of the tail hit. The hit damn near bisected him, ripping through two thirds of his torso and sending him flipping end over end as he was launched away. Three heads roared in triumph as the fourth tried to catch Beam, foolishly believing him to be dead.

It was foolish because the hydra did not fight with magic. The injury it dealt Jay had been fully healed before he even hit the ground. As he took a second to stand, he noticed that the many small cuts Beam was leaving on the hydra were bleeding far more profusely than he'd expect from what was essentially a paper cut to the beast. Eyeing the little mare that was evading the heads with experienced ease, he saw that she now had two daggers slotted into locking mechanisms on her hoof caps and came to the conclusion she was utilizing some type of anti coagulation agent to encourage bleeding. If they were trying to wear out its regeneration, forcing it to replace blood was just as good a way to do it as replacing flesh. Then his gaze shifted to the two ponies weaving around the hydra's feet. Even Iron was striking with the spikes of his hammer instead of the blunt end as Kin's axe left deep gashes in the flesh that just poured blood out. With that in mind, he decided to forgo the blunt approach as his hammerfist disappeared in a shifting mass of viral flesh, quickly replaced by a pair of thorny claws that glowed an eerie red sheen.

Jay sailed through the air, again bleeding biomass. Evolved, while amazingly agile on the ground, had little in the way of airborne mobility. As such, Mercer had long ago discovered how to eject biomass from his body to increase the distance of his jumps, keep him in the air longer, and even allow him to mimic a sort of gliding. Later, he had adapted the same effect to eject biomass out of his hammerfists, allowing him to strike harder and faster than ever before or even change directions in mid air. Eventually, he had passed on the same technique to the Greaters under his control and Jay was now using that to his advantage, able to easily leap two hundred feet with every jump though at the cost of his slowly trickling supplies of biomass. As he neared the hydra, he yelled to the little thestral that was busy giving it a death by a thousand cuts. "Everyone, get back!"

Set on replenishing his biomass reserves, Jay again impacted the hydra's torso, though this time without a strike. Instead, he buried his left claw into the hydra as dozens of viral tendrils immediately began burrowing into the beast's flesh and anchoring him in place as it tried to throw him off. With his right claw, he began to tear into the hydra with extreme prejudice, digging the unnaturally sharp blades into the hydra's flesh and ripping chunks out before rapidly consuming it and assimilating the new DNA. Integrating new genetics always forced him to undergo a metamorphosis and resulted in a massive burst of kinetic energy. Jay was, honestly, counting on it. He just hoped the others made it clear in time, but they shouldn't have any trouble getting away from the hydra that only cared about the creature on its side and ripping it apart.

Deep within his internal system, the virus quickly isolated the new genetic sequence it had been provided. Identifying which genomes would be useless to the Evolved, it rejected them for integration and instead catalogued them away for future use. Orange melanin, scales, green pupils, spikes- it already had those. Even more were rejected and outright discarded. Then it separated things that would be useful to the virus, rapidly modifying the genes before integrating them into Blacklight itself. The coding for bile production evolved into a powerful acid coating that could be secreted from his body. The hydra's ability to efficiently digest anything living into energy improved Blacklight's assimilation, streamlining the process that broke down organic matter into base nutrients and allowing the virus to gain additional biomass from anything it consumed. Finally, the hydra's natural regeneration was modified into an increased passive biomass production. Before, the minuscule trickle of biomass that took a month to return Jay into his standard state was exponentially improved, cutting the time down by sixty percent as better collection methods and improved efficiency were implemented.

Then Jay felt the pressure begin to build up. The Blacklight virus now had to implement the new viral strain into every cell in his body. There were two ways to do this. The first was only possible if the virus had a few days to individually insert the new strain into every cell in his being. Being that the virus almost solely gained an improved strain during some form of combat, this was never an option. Instead, the virus would quickly shed a layer of its body before rapidly replacing it with cells containing the new variant before moving on to the next layer. The process from the core of his being to the external 'skin' would only take thirty seconds, but something needed to be done with all the excess, outdated cells. Instead of consuming it for biomass, the virus would instead violently eject the old cells. This was, in truth, the core process that Mercer had redesigned for greater air maneuverability. Using only a pound or two of biomass over several seconds, this ability could be used to increase the force of blows or change directions in the air. However, ejecting nearly a quarter of a ton of viral material in an instant amplified the effect over thousand fold. Finally, small tendrils connected to the shed cells would command them to consume every bit of flesh they touched and feed the newly gained biomass back to the source before detaching and allowing the shed cells to die. All together, a metamorphosis invariably resulted in a kinetic explosion that would simultaneously pulverize anything nearby and consume any and all organic matter, resulting in one of the most devastating effects the Evolved could ever do- albeit one they could not do on command.

To the ponies that had backed off from the hydra, it was hard to tell what had happened. It appeared as if Jay had just dissolved into a mass of formless tendrils before what appeared to be a black and red mist began to coalesce around him. The hydra roared in pain and fear as its instincts screamed at it, and it tried to stagger away as the mist began to thicken and pulse. Each of the three Hunters had just enough time to fold their ears back in concern when Jay seemed to detonate. The mist around him expanded rapidly as a small, fast pressure wave shook the air and ground as two objects came flying out the mist too fast to be identified. Half of the hydra's torso was completely consumed by the mist as roars of absolute agony shook the earth and nearly deafened the ponies. The great beast stumbled as one of its legs fell completely free of its body, hitting the ground with a wet squelch as the upper quarter was just gone. Seconds later, the rest of the hydra followed its leg as it hit the ground. A moment later, the black and red mist faded as quickly as it had appeared as Jay leaped away from the beast, revealing just what had happened to the hydra.

The Hunters couldn't help but stare in unabashed awe as a massive crater easily twenty feet tall and six feet wide had appeared in the hydra's lower torso where Jay had been. At first, the visible bones and torn flesh were unnaturally clean without even a splotch of blood, but that soon changed. The hydra began to bleed horrifically as its natural regeneration just could not keep up with such terrifying damage that had appeared in an instant. Iron even noticed that there were no chunks of flesh or blood stains around the beast or even on Jay, as if all the missing flesh and blood had just been erased instead of torn or blown off. As the Hunters collected themselves, quiet and pained whines were the only sounds that filled the air before Beam darted over to Jay. "What the BUCK was that! That was amazing! Why didn't you do that from the start?"

Jay gave Beam a small smirk. "It's a bit risky to do that and I can guarant-"

Iron's voice interrupted Jay as the older unicorn shouted. "Look out, Beam!"

Both of the scouts snapped their head toward the hydra, the monster clearly not as stunned as they thought. Though still knocked over and grievously injured, the great beast was not done yet as the four heads rose and faced them, great mouths opened wide as muscles contracted and flexed, almost appearing as if they were about to vomit. It only took Jay a second to realize what they were about to do. His head snapped to Beam hovering a foot above his head, her teal eyes wide in fear and realization even as the first pressurized jet of green bile shot out of the leftmost head aimed directly for the thestral. The Greater Evolved reacted quickly, snapping his arm up and grabbing Beam's leg. With a heave and a pop, Jay launched the thestral out of the way even as her shoulder dislocated from the sudden acceleration. Jay only had a second to hear Beam's pained cry as four jets of potent acid impacted him.

Though he had gained the ability to produce the hydra's acid the virus had not subconsciously collected the genetic code that allowed it to produce the secretions that made it immune to its own bile. As such, Jay himself was not immune to the acid that stuck him in four simultaneous splashes pressurized enough to become beams. Instantly, Jay lost an arm and half of his head as the jets punched straight through the compacted flesh and severed one limb. The jet that had been aimed at the thestral didn't directly impacted him, instead splashing him with acid as the outer layers of his skin began to dissolve. The final stream of acid had barely missed him but blinded as he was with half his head gone, he jumped straight through it as he tried to retreat out of the way of the attack. Impacted the ground with a thud as he lost his legs below his knees, Jay was very grateful that he only felt pain from magic as his body rapidly shed the damage cells and repaired him. It took several long seconds as the acid kept eating through the newly formed cells but eventually the bile was rendered inert and he healed. Rising to his feet, he first looked toward where he had thrown Beam. To his relief, he had successfully cleared her of the acid and she was fine if favoring one leg now as she took to the air again.

"Jay, start cutting heads off!" Iron yelled to catch his attention. He looked over to see Beam land near him and start taking their explosive crystals and realized he had lost his own and was surprised they hadn't detonated when he did. The Greater Evolved nodded and leaped toward the hydra again, the great beast now seeming to be entirely spent of energy. Even its regeneration had slowed having healed half of it's wound but now seeming to barely function. Jay landed next to one of the heads as it weakly snapped at him. He stepped back from the admittedly pathetic attack and shifted his arm into a blade, extending it more than normal to be able to slice through the thick necks in one swipe. Beam, above him, readied the first crystal just as he decapitated the first head.

Jay jumped back as he watched in mild interest as the stump of a neck bubbled and began to extend but before it could do repair any more than a few inches, the red crystal tinked softly as it hit the ground next to the stump. A second passed before it erupted with the roar of fire matched by a roar of pain as heat blasted the front of Jay's body. When the flames had faded, the stump was very clearly cauterized and no longer attempting to heal. Together, the two scouts made very short work of the remaining three heads as the hydra was too exhausted and injured to even try to run or fight back. When the final head had been cut off, Beam awkwardly landed next to him without cauterizing the last stump. Seeing his confused look, understanding dawned on her face as she spoke. "Oh! The last head doesn't need to be burned. Once its cut off, the hydra dies."

Jay nodded and turned to her as he knelt down. "Sorry I hurt your leg but I didn't have time to be gentle. Just stay still and I'll take care of it."

The little thestral just gave him a grateful smile. "Nah, don't worry about it. I'd, uh... well, I'd probably be dead if you hadn't. I kinda froze up there."

When he touched her leg, she sighed softly as it quickly went numb as nearly microscopic tendrils extended into the flesh and knitted together the torn tendons and reset the bone. Once it was done, he started to stand back up before stopping as he looked at Beam. Her tufted ears were folded back and her tail flicked slowly as she looked away from him. Giving a nod as he decided what to do, he instead scooped her up before standing. Beam squeaked in surprise as she was suddenly picked up, her ears perked and muzzle tinted red as she looked up at the faintly smiling man holding her. "W-what are you-"

He interrupted her. "Your leg will be numb for a bit and I'm sure your wings are tired. I'll just carry you back to the carriage so you don't have to try to walk on a numb leg or fly with sore wings. I want to get out of the forest before something else decides to try to attack us."

"Smart call." Iron said, smirking at Beam's blushing face as he and Kin approached. "And once we're back at the carriage, I want to know just what that was that nearly obliterated the hydra. Not know though."

As Beam hit her face in her front hooves, Iron's horn lit up in that now-familiar miasma of energy as he activated his communications crystal and his voice came through all of them, wonderfully devoid of horrendous feedback. "Aqua, Star, status? We're done here, the hydra's dead. Minor injuries but Jay already fixed them."

A second later and Aqua's voice came through the crystal faintly muffled by wind. "We're done here too. We were on our way to you but we'll head back to the carriage again. No injuries here."

"Copy, see you there." Iron said as he cut communications and turned toward the way they had come. "Let's go. Jay, you did well on your first hunt. We'll celebrate once we're back in Canterlot, I hope you like cider."