by Dakota Krout
“Well, that’s new. I like it,” Hans commented as the bone bubbled and popped. Dale would have responded, but the downside to his aura had just become apparent. The dead were staring at him, and his aura was painting a beacon of hate for them to target. Dale had been dealing with waves of zombies and skeletons, but now there were ghouls sprinting at him as well. The long-clawed undead were faster, smarter, and overall more deadly than their lesser counterparts, even though they were lesser undead themselves. If a comparison had to be made, ghouls fought in a manner similar to rogue-types. They could deal a tremendous amount of damage in a short amount of time with their teeth and claws, using their enhanced strength to tear off chunks of meat.
Dale wasn’t overly concerned about these fiends - as his armor would prevent their main weapons from cutting into him - but the mass of dead now focused on him was still unnerving. *Thud* *thud* *thud*. Dale’s fists beat out a metronome, and bodies began to pile up in front of him. Unbidden, his armor unrolled itself, ensuring that only the smallest sliver was left open for his vision. An arrow took a jumping ghoul in the eye socket as it dove at Dale, too late to arrest the undead’s momentum as it tackled the man from the side and brought him to the ground. It began sizzling and melted onto him as his aura interacted with it, but by then, more ghouls and zombies were coming through the slight opening in the lines.
The people that had been resting were forced to join in the battle and beat back the encroaching horde. As the last were cleaned up and tossed out of the ring of warriors, Dale had to grip the arm of someone who assumed he was dead and was trying to throw him as well. This had the unfortunate side effect of having the man scream like he was being murdered, and Dale very nearly was slain as his friends came to ‘rescue’ the man. Dale waved his arms and shouted that he was alive, but the man still fell back mumbling, “You were dead!”
“I was never dead; I was just covered in bodies!”
He shook his head violently while whimpering, “Dead things should stay dead!”
“I wasn’t dead!” Dale yelled as the man stumbled away.
Hans pulled Dale back into his position before it could be overrun again, pausing as the blood splatter that had managed to land on him boiled and vanished into vapor from Dale’s aura. “Oh, I like that a lot. I think it’d be worth opening some affinity channels if I can get an instant bloodstain remover. Listen, Dale, some people handle the stresses of combat easier than others. Look at Adam, he’s barely freaking out. Tom is laughing and coating himself with as much gore as he can; he’s going to need a healer after this. Rose is more of a ‘fire and forget’ sort of person, so she seems fine. That guy was in shock, pretty obviously. You get that sometimes.”
“Tom! Get closer to me here, would you?” Dale called to the overly large Barbarian. “You are going to get a nasty infection if you keep doing what you are doing!”
Tom kept laughing and swinging his hammers, crushing undead as he stepped a few feet closer to Dale. Black blood began to boil off the redhead, revealing bright red bulging arms. Tom’s arms were hot from constant use, and if he were not in a battle frenzy, he would have been in serious pain from his strained and damaged muscles. Dale’s aura began to sink into the man’s skin, and the tight muscles relaxed and began to heal at a faster-than-natural rate. It wasn’t what he truly needed - a cleric - but it kept the man from suffering possibly permanent damage to his limbs. It also allowed Tom to last longer before he would need another rest.
Tom’s commitment to the battle, even at the expense of what must be severe pain, helped Dale stay grounded and focused even though the dead began surging against their lines harder. Heavily armored Death Knights started joining in against the Guild, their hard-to-damage forms keeping the attention of the cultivators while standard units used them as a distraction to pile onto the living and bring them down. The Death Knights weren’t hindered by the stone barricades, simply smashing through them when they charged with ground-shaking steps. Defensive Mages reinforced the walls quickly, and the next few Death Knights bounced off or flipped over the chest-high walls, becoming easy prey if the humans were able to take advantage of their position.
The death toll began to build as more and more Guild members fell and joined the opposing forces. A cleric-Mage in the center of their group flew into the air, hands clasped before him in supplication. He shouted to the sky and released an immense wave of golden Mana that rolled over their formation and into the undead surrounding them. The Mage’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell out of the sky, luckily caught by his team waiting below. The undead who were caught in the light dropped like puppets with their strings cut, instantly consecrated and banished from the world.
“What is going on? Why have they gotten so much more aggressive?” Rose shouted, her ears ringing from the blast of power.
“I don’t know!” Dale shouted back, his ears equally impacted by the thunderous noise. There had been a strange dichotomy of pain and pleasure as the healing energy washed over them, but the noise had followed the light and so was the most recent thing to affect them. As the sounds of the battlefield started to resurface, they quickly learned why everything was starting to go downhill. Walking across the small gap were three smiling demons. Before the dead closed around their path, Dale also saw a few men in purple and black robes. Not only demons then; the necromancers themselves had arrived to wipe them out.
Chapter Forty-two
“Why hello there, filthy mortals.” The demon’s voice was difficult to listen to. The intonation was pleasant enough, but worms of infernal Essence seemed to crawl across the skin and ears of everyone present. “Our Master has authorized us to give you a chance to flee. Take it, and be gone from this area. Quit the field, leave the war, run away like a scared little Forest Elf! Pretty please, run in terror. Flee before us, and show to the world that the so-called ‘Adventurers’ Guild’ will always leave them to their fate in order to save themselves!”
It was evident that the creature was intentionally taunting them. It had no interest in letting them leave, but it had to follow its orders even if it only technically did so. While everyone else stood frozen, including the Mages, Rose took the initiative and answered for the Guild. She whipped out an arrow from a side quiver, sending it speeding at the demon as a flashing streak of silver. The demon casually held up a hand and let it *thunk* into its palm.
“Oh, look, she used silver. How cute.” The demon’s casual tone vanished as the banishing Rune on the tip of the arrow took effect. “What? You filthy-” He vanished with a flare of infernal and fire Essence. The Guild members cheered wildly as the other demons stared toward them with fury - and maybe just a tinge of fear - outlined on their faces. Then, in sync, they squinted and ordered the dead to attack instead. Creatures that had been slow and unfocused in their attacks before were now being directly controlled; they had become fast and coordinated. The necromancers empowered them with bolts of infernal Essence, and the demons directed dozens of attacks at once.
Before this point, only their overwhelming numbers were a serious concern. Now, even the lowest powered minion was a strong and deadly threat by itself. If a bolt of dark power connected to a skeleton, they would be wreathed in dark flames and subtly change. Their boney fingers would sharpen, and a hint of the deepest darkness would appear in their joints and along their bones. Dale punched one in the face, and instead of the skull shattering, it only cracked. Putting a bit more effort into it, he lashed out again, and the entire skull was blown into fragments that knocked over a few beings that had been behind his target. A more substantial portion of infernal Essence was sucked into him, and he took a sharp breath as it reached his Core.
“I’d say somewhere between the strength of those two strikes, Dale,” Hans quipped easily while never failing to dispatch zombies and ghouls that were coming at him. For some reason, his ranged attacks tended to glance off the skulls of the skeletons now. That was fine because Tom was happily smashing skulls left and
right with his ingot hammers and powerful arms but was having trouble with the more meaty heads of the zombies. Rose ran out of regular arrows and had to leave her position to stand in line to get a fresh crate of them transferred to her bag from a Guild supplier.
Dale rolled his eyes, not that Hans could see it. “I figured that out, thanks, Hans.”
“Always happy to teach the newest generation how to do things properly!” Hans flipped the dagger in his hand, using the hardened pommel to smash a skull that was clattering at him. “I don’t mind the skellies getting close, I suppose. They aren’t very leaky.”
As they were bantering, a Mage lifted out of their group in preparation of using a large-scale spell. As her hands began forming symbols, a demon sprinted across the combat area and leaped, snatching her out of the air like a dog catching a ball. She screamed once, a sharp cry that made everyone wince as she vanished among the dead. Someone else shouted an order, “No more flying!”
“What? Why?” Dale muttered sarcastically as he began increasing the pace of his attacks. After he had given himself a bit of breathing room, he pulled two small items out of his bag. They were the ends of the tendrils of Assimilators, specifically the Runes for fire and celestial projection. Holding a Core in each palm, Dale began directing Essence through his corruption Cores and gauntlets into the organic Runes. With a grunt, he crossed the Runes and a wash of celestial-enhanced fire sprayed from him in a cone. This naturally drew attention, and as the flame began to sputter out, Dale saw a black-eyed demon sprinting at him with a malicious grin. As it closed in, sure of its kill, Dale smiled in return. The demon saw his expression shift and tried to react, but for once, Dale was faster.
The Cores in his palms shattered, and Dale grasped the entirety of the expanding Essence and directed it through the Runes. This time the fire was almost a solid as it projected outward, obliterating the dead it touched and coating the demon in holy fire. It screamed an unearthly buzzing scream as the flame stuck to it and seemed to draw ever more flame to itself. Almost as a mercy but more in terms of practicality, Hans whipped a spike at the being. This was a spike pulled from Manny the Manticore and was an effective banishing device. With a *pop* and a blast of Essence, the entity vanished, taking the flames and spike with it.
The organic Runes in Dale’s hands crumbled to ash, scattering in the wind before they ever touched the ground. He took a moment to slap Hans’ outstretched hand, grinning as he did so. “Two down, one to go?”
“They can summon more, so what we really need to do is take down the necros,” Adam interjected quietly, scanning the horizon for hints of danger. There were massive exchanges of power in the distance as the powerful members of the armies clashed, but since they were alive and still here, it appeared that there wasn’t a decisive victor yet. This made Dale wonder exactly how powerful The Master was. He knew there were powerful people in his army, but if the might of the entire world was being fought to a standstill right now…
“Son of a… an S-ranker is making a move in the area!” one of their remaining cleric-Mages shouted. “The dead are moving!”
“No kidding, moron!” someone jeered to a round of chuckles. “We’ve been fighting them all afternoon!”
“Not the ones still standing, fool! The ones we’ve been destroying!” the Cleric bellowed with a high-pitched tone. Indeed, the dead that they had dismantled were being pulled away by an invisible force, shattered bones and rotting flesh that had been ignored to this point were yanked deep into the enemy forces. A towering being began to take shape, the decaying materials flowing up and connecting together. Bones collected over each other. Skin, muscle, and sinew lashed the gargantuan bones into single chunks, and a towering form took shape.
“Someone is making a Legion Dreadnought Bone Lord!” Dale heard this shout and almost laughed despite the seriousness of the tone.
“Seriously, pick a name. Am I right, Hans?” He looked over with humor in his eyes, but Hans was staring at the towering creature that was forming and gasping deep breaths. “Hans? Hans!”
Hans started moving again, jerkily slashing and stabbing. He didn’t answer Dale, instead looking over at Adam. “Anything? What do you think?”
“Too nebulous of a threat,” Adam responded darkly. “Everywhere is threatened right now. I can’t get a read on where it will go, and nowhere within leagues will actually be safe.”
“Talk to me, please! How worried should we be? Please explain what that is!” Dale barked at the two, who simply changed the scope of their conversation to include him.
Hans explained the nomenclature as quickly as he could, “Bone Lord, fairly obvious. Bigass undead Golem made mostly of bone. Dreadnought, heavily armored and really hard to stop, does a lot of damage. Not as hard to stop as a Juggernaut-classed one, but it is reinforced with Spiritual energy so that point is basically moot. Legion type: this means that there is a demon bound to each limb that can control it independently and one more powerful demon controlling and coordinating the entire body as a whole. If that thing comes at us without us having S-ranked support, we die. I’d just go ahead and be very nervous, Dale.”
“What can we do about it?” Dale was hoping for anything but the answer he got in reply.
“Hope it doesn’t come after us and try to run away if it does?” Hans’ speech was slowing, so Dale nodded and got back to his own fight.
“In that case, all we can do is continue, right? Let’s trust that our people will recognize the threat and take care of it before it becomes an issue for us.” Dale’s words flowed evenly and powerfully, raising the spirits of the others around him. Their morale, that is. Not some kind of phantasm. He wasn’t a necromancer.
“It’s forming a weapon,” Adam stated almost blandly as his eyes stared unblinkingly at the monstrosity.
“Let me guess, a scythe, right?” Tom laughed as eyes turned toward him. “These sorts of things always have a scythe in the stories!”
Adam shook his head, looking like he was going to be sick. “No, it looks like it will be using something similar to a cat o’ nine tails with ends similar to a morningstar. This is bad. This is really bad.”
“What’s the matter, Adam? How does this get worse?” Rose shouted over the growing sounds of terror in their group of Guild members.
Clearing his throat, Adam had to swallow before speaking in a squeaky voice, “Four legs, three arms, three weapons. Those weapons also have an entity bound to them. There are eleven powerful demons in that thing. This thing has to be at least SS-rank. It has to be a personal summon of The Master.”
Chapter Forty-three
“Cal, now is not the time for you to be messing around and distracting Bob!” Dani chided me sharply. I didn’t hold it against her; she was really nervous about the changes that I was making against everyone else’s recommendation. “You should be triple checking every last Rune, making sure that you have done plenty of research on the possible side effects, and-”
“If you say my name in a soothing tone one more time, I’m going to throw something at you.” She growled deeply, making me and the Bobs in the area laugh.
“We are all set… Great Spirit.” Bob Prime spoke morosely, which may have set me off a little.
The stone around me swiftly vanished into my influence, removing the hill and exposing my Core and thousands of roots from the Silverwood tree. I watched with just a twinge of regret as my puddle of Essence splashed to the now-flat ground, leaving me totally dry for one of the very few times in my life. I was still held up by a small pillar of stone, looking for all the world like a stereotypical Mage’s staff. Pfft. They wish they had something as awesome as me on their weapons; though I’d make sure to be the most cursed item ever. The pillar shrank away, leaving me only with a thin band of metal supporting me in the air. It wasn’t actually a metal ring; it was two different metals set to spring apart and drop me through the tiny portal below me in case of emergency. Sometimes simple means are still the best means.
The Runescripted stone flowed across my floor, which would have been an impressive feat if there were anyone carrying it. No need for that here; in here it was just another chunk of area under my control. I lowered the stone that was already around me, the Runescript that collected Essence, and set the new section in its place. The original still functioned correctly and would even disperse the power to me just as easily, so there was no issue with using this new setup. I shifted everything around so that I was comfortable and took one last look at my surroundings.