Suzy cast soul field on the entire area; power headed for Dave and Deia, who were the closest linked armors.
“Shiny,” Induca commented, dropping firestorm right on top of the east door’s entrance.
Dave and Deia fought next to Steve and Anna. The Players all around them fought with everything they had. Mages had to put spells of Stamina regeneration on them as they didn’t have the time to take Stamina potions while they were fighting.
“Buffs on the western and southern fighters,” Suzy called out.
They’d worn the undead down; there was just a few hundred to go. Now it was the last wave. The Stone Raiders were taking risks that they wouldn’t have on earlier waves to bring about the end of these creatures.
Quest: Aleph Homecoming
You have arrived at an unknown Aleph City.
To return the city to the governing power of the Aleph, you must hold your position in the city for 20 waves.
Wave: 20 of 20
Attackers: 217/3,000
Rewards: ???
The numbers dropped faster and faster. Josh’s people were no longer fighting in the buildings that surrounded the tower. They were moving across the battlefield and getting to the rear of the undead.
“Buffs on Josh’s DPS people!” Suzy said.
Chapter 24: A Meeting of Minds and Metal
Dave saw as the Lich Lord made its way inside the tower. There was an oppressive aura surrounding it. It clawed at Dave, making his legs shake in fear. He slowed in his reactions.
The Lich seemed to abhor anything that dared to try to survive or live in its presence. With a wave of its hand, it overpowered mages who were piling spells into the creature. Their shields were overpowered and they dropped to the ground in pain.
“We need a way to deal with that damn thing!” Anjold said.
“I have an idea, but we need to clear out more of its minions!” Dave stared at the creature until he got a pop-up.
Lich Lord
Level 251
Shit, this better work!
“All right!” Anjold said.
Dave had improved in the time that he’d been fighting the draugr. Fighting the normal soldiers were now an easy opponent; the lords, knights, and magi were mini bosses, with the bone creations like damned tanks. They had been easy targets for the ranged fighters to take out and they were targeting them even now. Once they got into melee range, they were devastating.
The Stone Raiders’ own skeleton forces had been destroyed but the necros were using curses that pulled apart the undead. The spells warred with the very soul of the draugrs but if their will was weaker than the Stone Raiders necromancers’, their souls were free to move on.
The Lich Lord let out a bellow; all of the draugrs got a buff that made them harder to kill.
“Mother fucker!” Steve yelled.
“Well, at least they’re still as dumb and useless as before and not as fast,” Dave said.
One of the draugr seemed to take that as an insult; it tried to put their blade through Dave’s ribs, hitting his armor as Dave stabbed his own sword through the creature’s head. Dispelling the conjuration, he turned it into an axe as he took out another’s knee. He’d come to rely on his armor more and more; it had some scratches and dents, but it held steady.
A little bit of pain to end the other bastard was a good compromise, in Dave’s books.
“Pull back to the elevators!” Dwayne yelled.
The Players spent skills and spells that allowed them to try to gain them the time that they would need to pull back.
“Burning hand!” Deia held her hand out, a veritable flamethrower coming from it.
“Branded ground!” An AOE spell outlined in red spread over the stairs and the landing that led to the doors of the tower.
She jumped off the top of the stairs, falling the ten feet into a roll, popping up and looking at her work.
“That’s my girl. Bit showy, though,” Dave said. Spears jutted out of the ground for fifteen feet in a half-circle around him and Steve.
The rest of the line scrambled back as Dave conjured grenades and threw them behind him like candy as he reached the stairs. He quickly stepped down.
“Fuck sakes! Why I ever got that StairMaster, I don’t know. Feeling like I’m going to bust a lung!” Anjold said.
Dave grinned, making sure that he didn’t misstep and fall down the stairs.
“Swan dive into the best—” Steve was abruptly cut off as he slammed into the stairs, going down them as only a human five times their normal size, made of three tons of metal and trying to impersonate a winter sled could.
Dave made out a few swearwords as Steve continued to bounce and get airborne after hitting a sharper step.
Fighters got out of his way as he once again went airborne. His knees and armor shot out, slamming them into the ground. He left furrows in the floor and came to a stop, kneeling, with the bottom of his axe planted in the ground.
“Oh, that just looked badass!” Steve declared.
“Until you opened yer damned mouth!” Baldur, an orc giant, said.
“Screw you, Baldy!” Steve got to his feet.
“It’s Baldur, you tin can!”
“Is someone in a bad mood?” Steve said in mock worry. It reminded Dave of some coaches just before they told their team to get a hold of themselves and go win the damned game.
“There’s more dents and scratches than anything.” Dave shook his head and turned away from Steve as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Fuuuuck stairs,” Dave said. Anjold, who stood beside him, nodded in agreement.
“Looks like we’ll have to work on that,” Deia said.
“Ahh, well, if you’re the one running in front of me—definitely a better view than Steve’s rendition of the Griswold’s family Christmas,” Dave said.
“The what?” Deia frowned.
“Not important. We’ve got draugr to kill.” Dave hoped that changing the subject fast enough would get her to forget about the whole stairs training thing.
“Everyone else is the damned hammer and we’re the anvil. We will hold and we will make these undead pay for screwing with us and turning this city into their home!” Dwayne said.
The Stone Raiders yelled their agreement. The mages were now able to hit the undead army with everything they had, now that the melee fighters were out of the way.
They started to come down the sheer stairs, having as much of an issue as the Stone Raiders, many tripping and falling. Those with spears near where they landed put an end to whatever crashed down.
Deia’s spell was working, glowing an angry red as the draugrs let out pained noises. They were getting burned with every step they took.
The bone creations seemed to take a lesson from Steve as they largely fell on their asses and tumbled down the stairs. However, unlike him, they were heavily damaged from the fall.
The melee fighters fell on them quickly, taking out their Health before they could regain their feet. They were a fearsome enemy, something that no one wanted to have right next to them as they were just trying to take out the draugr mass that poured down into the area around the elevators.
Dave hacked off a draugr knight’s head, ignoring the helmet that the creature wore.
The Stone Raiders now worked with practiced efficiency, taking out large threats and anything that was in reach before they could become a real problem. They fell back as the falling creatures mounted. It wasn’t long until the creatures that hadn’t fallen down the stairs made it to the leveled-out area.
As Dave and the other Stone Raiders pulled back slowly, the first of the Aleph traps activated. Twenty or so creatures turned to icicles. Mages dropped lances on them, tearing their frozen bodies apart.
More of the traps went off, each of them freezing all of the creatures within its area into ice sculptures.
The Lich, seeing his remaining forces draining away, let out an angered cry. The undead draugrs started to rise, turning in
to the Lich’s skeleton warriors and bringing any dead Stone Raiders back to life before they could accept their fate and remove their bodies from the battlefield.
Bone creations crashed with the main lines.
Stealth types leapt from the top of the stairs with abandon, crashing into anything that wasn’t looking for them. Their weapons found purchase as the last hundred or so enemies appeared.
“Dave, do it!” Anjold yelled.
Power surged through Dave from his internal reserves and his armor. He pictured the creation in his mind: five parts, not including a secondary Magical Circuit. His eyes blazed with power, finding the Lich’s.
It screamed, a spell forming in its hands as if it realized something was about to happen. It was too late.
A circular unit of dull steel rested underneath the Lich. Four others, these ones looking like half-circles, snapped up around the Lich on all sides. A second circular device fell from the sky, but seemed to rest in mid-air as the Lich’s screams were cut off.
Dave focused on the last part. Runes formed all around the Lich.
The Lich threw attacks, but they stopped just feet away. The semicircles were Mana barriers—a little trick that Dave had come up with when making his armor.
The Lich slowed as the runes around it ignited with power. The Lich’s Willpower was drained from it as it powered its own prison.
The newly risen undead collapsed and bone creations wilted, shedding bones that they couldn’t control as magi were targeted and pulled apart.
Summoned creations added to the fray as Dave gathered up his weapons. They still had around thirty or so fighters left from the draugrs, all of them heavies to have survived so long.
Dave’s mind was foggy with the power he had expended. Fighting was based on reactions and following the hints. He played defensively, waiting for the heavies to make a mistake and capitalizing on it. Much smarter than charging in, especially when his timing was off.
Suddenly, buffs made him faster than ever before as the openings seemed to just appear before him. The melee fighters with full buffs moved through the draugrs like so many farmers come to harvest wheat.
Dave watched as a draugr knight let out a startled look as its Health hit zero. It dropped, showing a rogue panting as they looked around with wild eyes for another victim. Dave looked around with them, unconsciously covering the direction the other wasn’t looking at.
A draugr magi’s shield failed; three melee fighters planted weapons into the creature.
Only the Lich Lord remained, floating listlessly in its prison.
A yell rose from someone’s throat, a visceral thing. They had won! Dave’s voice added to theirs as he hoisted his sword. He shifted his weapons back to their original batons and hooked them to his belt. His arms were tired from the day’s fighting.
“Stone Raiders! Stone Raiders! STONE RAIDERS!” They all took up the chant, renewing their vows to the guild and to one another and basking in the glory of the moment, of what they had all come together and done.
“See to the wounded!” Josh bellowed out.
The Stone Raiders spread out. Healers came down to the first floor. Health potions were expensive, but they didn’t care, using it to numb one another’s pain or bring back someone from the edge.
Dave looked for the different statuses showing people who had been knocked out, stunned, or close to death. He used healing where he could and potions where people were close to death.
There had been just sixty-seven melee types fighting down on the first floor. Fourteen were still standing, another seven were saved through healing, five were close enough to just dying that the higher-leveled purpose healers could bring them back from death.
CPR worked in Emerilia; even the recent dead were given a Health potion to see whether it would do them any good. Three did make it back from the brink with their ministrations.
“Congratulations, you have cleared your first Aleph city. Go forth and repair the city’s systems in order to gain larger bonuses and aid for your forces. You have three hours of power left with current reserves. New missions have been added to your quest.” Shard’s voice rang through the tower before it disappeared.
“All right, Party Zero, you know how these things work. I need two more parties to aid them,” Josh said.
Slowly, but surely, other volunteers put their hands up. All of them wanted to relax and sit back.
The raid has only started. Dave grinned to himself.
***
Sato once again sat in front of his Mirror of Communication. Now, it was not just as a communications officer; it was as liaison to Emerilia. Dave’s information made it clear that there was a lot more that they could learn from the planet than just what the Jukal were up to.
Everyone watched the main screen, which relayed what Sato’s Mirror of Communication showed. A human male with glowing green eyes and a nondescript background answered the Mirror of Communication. He was larger than most humans, with a heavy build and pointed ears.
“Ah, you must be Mister Sato. Dave said that I might get a call from you in the future. Sorry, I am answering his calls as he is dealing with a task that I have given him.” The man looked to Sato.
“Who might you be?” Sato asked.
“I am Shard, I am the—as you would term it, AI of the Aleph people,” Shard said with a small, proud smile.
“The Aleph?” Sato asked.
“They are the race that created me. Dave showed me the information that he sent you. Are there any questions you might have? As he has showed, it might be best if we make sure that we are on the ‘same page,’ as one might say.”
“I am sorry, but we cannot share any information with parties that we do not know,” Sato said.
“Ahh, that inner paranoia.” Shard smiled wistfully. “You remind me a lot of my race. First of all, I guess to confirm and make sure that we are on the same page, I should tell you of how Emerilia was created and humanity grown to populate it. Dave and I do not believe that this alliance will be a short-lived one as there is much to get you up to date if you are indeed using the level of technology Dave saw last time. It is very exciting!” Shard’s smile grew.
Sato agreed, but he wasn’t willing to say anything. He didn’t need anyone to remind him what he should and shouldn’t say to people when using the communication mirrors. “Well, shall we start with the history of Emerilia and any items that you find interesting?”
“Certainly. I will also gift you access to a number of different systems, including the nanite software that allows one to quickly absorb information in various texts. It will take time to get you to a stage where we might be able to interact face-to-face,” Shard said.
“How might we be able to do that?” Sato asked.
“Well, the Aleph are masters of portals. There is nowhere that they cannot reach.” Shard smiled happily.
“Portals?” Sato kept the anxiety that he felt in his gut from spilling over into his features.
“How did you think Emerilia interacted with the aggressive species? There are portals that connect Emerilia to multiple worlds. Each one harbors creatures that wish nothing more than to destroy. Players are grown and trained over three years before these portals start opening and they start cutting down the populations of these aggressive species. The Aleph, interested in all things of information and technology, studied and learned. They became masters of teleportation magic and installations. They used the teachings of the portals to expand all of their knowledge and science, creating great underground cities completely cut off from the outside and prying eyes. Just like you, the Aleph’s cities and homes are a well-guarded secret. Even being inside one, a person would not know where they were on Emerilia.” Shard looked pleased with himself.
Sato had heard about the portals, but Alexanderi had never wanted to get close enough to them to check them out, saying that all manner of Demons and creatures came from them.
If they’ve figured out a way to reverse engineer th
at kind of technology, maybe Dave was right. If Emerilia is the birthplace of the Jukal Empire’s technology over the last few hundred years, we could get it right from the source. No cottage production to hinder us. We could ignite the factories and mass produce in a year what the Jukal Empire produces in five.
Sato remembered to keep his expression neutral; inside thoughts and ideas were sparking, thoughts of the future no longer hazy, half-cooked up dreams. He could start seeing a path, a possible future.
Chapter 25: First Step of Many
Josh looked at the simple black box that his people had found. “So, this is the phylactery?” Josh turned the thing around in his hand.
“Yes, sir. It looks like once the Lich was incapacitated, all of its wards and magical traps were deactivated. Our running theory is that due to it using soul energy to fight and sustain itself, when that energy was pulled from its body, then the other spells weakened,” Luke, the party leader who had found the box, said.
Josh looked down at the floating creature that bumped into the side of its Mana barrier prison, floating away. The Lich was still contained in the prison Dave had made, its energy fueling the tower.
“Very well. I’ll keep a hold of this. If that thing starts giving us any troubles, we’ll break this thing,” Josh said.
“Yes, sir.” Luke nodded.
“Now, go—get some food and rest. We’re going to be moving out to check out these new locations tomorrow.” Josh clapped the man on the shoulder.
“Why do I have the feeling that you’re going to send me and mine to go and find out if there’s anything lurking in those cities?” Luke drawled.
For The Guild (Emerilia Book 2) Page 31