Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3)

by Akella,G.

  "Shift!" Elnar cried out. "Full gallop!" At once all my clanmates began shifting into their true form, while spurring their mounts to maximum speed.

  I shifted together with them, and popped Gloom's Charge. My target, the caravan's commander, whipped out his blade and started turning his bone horse toward me. The force of inertia hurled me against into the back of the saddle as the razorback gunned forward. The howling all around me was intoxicating. The death knight raised his rectangular shield with his left hand, and drew his right away, preparing to strike... But a moment too late.

  Popping Infernal Rage, I smashed into the fiend, my lance skewering his side with a crunch. Crit! Even if the death knight did survive, being trampled by Gloom finished him off right quick. The momentum carried us further into the next pair of horse and rider. The edge of the second knight's heavy shield struck me in the right shoulder, numbing my arm completely for a moment.

  "Bitch!" leaving the lance in the corpse, I raised my own shield to block his attack. The weapon, its blade radiating a marsh-like glow, caught only air, just as the knight's bone horse tumbled to the ground, like a sedan flattened by a bulldozer. Gloom, that beautiful boar, pinned the pair down with his hooves, and delivered a terrible blow with his tusks at the supine knight's chest.

  To my right, a wave of getare smashed into the enemy. Despite the skeletons having closed their ranks and raised their shields, the impact was enough to send three centuries of armored infantry flying in all directions like bowling pins.

  Strike! I grinned with pride, alternating attacks at the knight as the latter tried to regain his footing, and reveling at the exhilarated banter in the general channel. I popped Gloom's Frenzy. The first knight's horse was back on its feet and trying to hit me with its front hooves, but Gloom's tusks were faster. The razorback knocked the animal back several yards whereupon it met a swift end, moments after its master, courtesy of one of my demons.

  In the corner of my eye I glimpsed the rearguard century rushing at us from the left, their formation order more or less intact. As the skeletons got within twenty feet, they suddenly froze, immobilized by the Blizzard raging over their heads. An AoE spell bolstered by Infernal Rage was a terrible thing to behold.

  "Fire Storm," Reece commanded calmly in the mage channel, and the Blizzard gave way to a torrent of molten lava.

  To my left Vaessa's bonehounds were dragging the remaining death knights along the ground; the magus herself was whispering something under her breath while making strange hand gestures and looking terribly bored.

  Suddenly the wind shifted, now blowing from the direction of the carts. So foul was the stench that assaulted my nostrils then that even in demonic form I barely held back from puking.

  You have gained a level! Current level: 191.

  You have 1 talent point to allocate.

  Class bonus: +1 to intellect; +1 to spirit.

  You have 3 stat points to allocate.

  Having finally regained his footing, the death knight swung his blade and caught my boar's in the withers before a dozen arrows tore into his belly. The next moment a getare unit executed a shield bash, knocking the mob back down. The soldier followed up by raising their visor and blowing me a kiss. Tilly! Well, that was certainly her style, and I couldn't even shake my fist at her in return—the girl had already joined another scuffle. Ice Blade. Crit! Tongue of Flame. Crit! Each attack took off 70 to 80 thousand HP from the knocked-down target. There was a flash, as several wagons on my left caught fire.

  "Krian! Get out of the way!" Salta's resonant voice cried in the officer channel. Without thinking twice, I Jumped thirty steps to the right.

  Before he'd even managed to get up, the death knight was turned into a porcupine, twitched a few times, and kicked the bucket. I looked around the battlefield, and realized it was all over. And my Charge cooldown had only just now reset! We'd obliterated over four hundred undead in the span of five minutes!

  Sliding open my visor, I smeared my nose with a blue ointment Reece had supplied me with back in Feator. Able to breathe freely at last, I slipped a pipe into my mouth, having filled it judiciously beforehand.

  Half the carts were ablaze with the disgusting sound of lard being burned in a frying pan. Reece was gesticulating wildly at his mage crew, and half the getare were examining the seized catapults with great interest.

  "What are your orders?" Elnar rode up to me. The way he carried himself, you would think the air was scented with gentle lavender.

  "Get the catapults off the road! We'll decide what to do with them later," I said to him, exhaling the smoke. "Burn the carts, collect the loot. We move out to Xantarra in half an hour. Today we'll have to deal with Korg and the rest of those freaks."

  "Why go there?" James snorted, gesturing toward the city. "He and his buddies are coming this way."

  "Shit!" I exhaled, watching the rows of monsters approaching in the distance, and knowing full well that Elnar had no tactical plan for this particular situation. Not when it came to bosses. We were looking at an open battle, that much was clear, but getting us through what promised to be quite an ordeal was on me and me alone. At least the skeleton army appeared to have stayed behind outside the city, else we'd need to retreat.

  In truth, retreat was probably the most sensible option even now. My troops had barely more than five minutes left of their combat form, after which time it would be unavailable for forty five minutes. But I had no guarantees that, having lost his siege weapons, the general wouldn't immediately launch an assault on the city. And once he and his retinue reunited with the rest of the army, killing him would be a hell of a lot harder. No, we had to take the fight to them here and now.

  "Wolves! Formation four!" I roared into the general raid channel. "Archers and mages, take the right flank! Reece and Salta, traps on the road! Everything you've got! We must not let Korg's companions get a running start! Aritor, lock up Meresmet! Vaessa, as soon as they get close enough, shut the lich up with Silence of the Great Darkness. Warriors, the half-century is on you! Mages and archers, try to put down the lich as soon as you can—five minutes should be enough. I got Korg. Reena, make sure Aritor and I have enough heals. As soon as Meresmet is down, everyone switch to the death knights. Korg dies last! Elnar, take over."

  Barely half a mile remained till the enemy. How did Korg find out that his caravan was under attack? Did they have their own command chat or something? At any rate, the caravan was history now. I exhaled some smoke and looked around.

  The ground was scorched on either side of the road since the first undead invasion and the great fire that followed it. West of here, where a large village once stood, there were only frames of blackened houses, with shoots of greenery peeking out of the ashes.

  I'd chosen this spot for its level terrain—for the cavalry to be able to pick up decent speed when attacking. They say in the old games your mount would travel with equal speed through woodland as through tilled farmland, instantly spin one hundred and eighty degrees, and not sustain any damage in combat. What I wouldn't give to have those mounts for my clan, I thought longingly, steering the boar to the right edge of the half-legion as they fell in formation. Full-immersion games had devs doing their best to avoid such glaring oversights. Merely observing another player galloping at full speed do an instant one-eighty could result in a cognitive dissonance, if not other, more serious psychological side effects.

  The death knights riding our way had produced long black lances—evidently, they were well aware of at least the basic points of cavalry tactics. Thankfully, though their leader may have grown smarter since the patch, he still wasn't smart enough to have his troops attack all at once. Perhaps not enough time had passed, or could be the undead were just naturally stupid, but the menagerie of monsters charging at us had already dispersed across some three hundred yards. Leading the charge was a group of thirty death knights atop bone horses. Waddling behind them were mini bosses of varying sizes and degrees of ugliness and decay. And bringing
up the rear, with an enormous two-handed sword resting on his shoulder, was General Korg himself, walking practically hand-in-hand with Meresmet. Well, yeah, no horse could carry that fat ass, I thought, glancing warily at his weapon and realizing I wanted nothing to do with the business end of it. With the level difference, any blow that landed would bring serious pain. If this were happening IRL, an eighteen-foot giant would obliterate me into amino acids with a single swing of his twelve-foot sword. Praise Hart, this wasn't the real world. For want of anything better to do while we waited, I tried making an analogy with reality. Tanking a boss twice your level would be like letting a regular person in armor go up against a heavyweight wrestler armed with a rubber sword. The latter's blows wouldn't kill you outright, but they might just make you wish you were dead. And I wasn't discounting my superior Toughness skill at fifty three percent.

  I couldn't help but crack a smile at the mental picture.

  "Do they look funny or something?" mused Reece, appearing on my right. "I thought I was the only one sick in the head around here, but I'm not so sure anymore. Still, that funky bunch over there," He gestured in the direction of the undead, which by now were no more than three hundred yards away, "do look pretty comical."

  "And here I thought the appearance of a tail in certain individuals might help trim their tongue some," I admitted. "How foolish of me. Anyway, are you certain your traps will slow them down?" I gestured at the numerous colorful rings covering the ground forty yards ahead.

  "Not just slow down—they will stop them," Reece vowed. "I wager half of them will even get knocked out of the saddle."

  "Good," I nodded, and commanded into the general chat. "A few changes! Mages and archers, you're helping the warriors until those two get here. Switch back to previously assigned targets on Elnar's command."

  "I saw that coming," the mage noted philosophically, and spurred his horse toward his troops.

  Once, a long long time ago, I saw a movie in which two huge trucks collided into one another head-on. My emotions then were similar to what I experienced right when the death knights reached the traps set up for them. There were explosions and a deafening racket, and moments later a wave of my demons, having received the order to attack from James, came crashing into the cloud of dust at full speed, their lances tilted.

  Just then a gust of wind swept away the ash and smoke, courtesy of one of Reece's air mages, enabling our mages and archers to lock in their targets. The ensuing pandemonium made it difficult to make out the shouting voices of my officers. Bone horses covered in plate were on the ground, thrashing in agony. More and more monsters kept pouring from the direction of Xantarra, as if we were downstream of a junkyard in torrential rain, only to be promptly intercepted by trios of getare.

  Bloody beasts! Is there no end of you? I fought down the raging animal inside me, rounding the main site of the battle. Aritor, Vaessa, Reena and five more priestesses were right behind me.

  Seeing what was unfolding before them, the general and Meresmet picked up the pace.

  "Mages, archers! Back to your original targets!" Elnar's command reached me just as I popped Charge and unleashed the storm of cold fury inside me.

  The bastard on the tip of my lance had been torturing and killing innocent sentients on the orders of a toady serving a despicable god. He and other bipedal wretches who had sold their souls to Vill had turned an entire city into a graveyard. MY city. Too bad Ahriman's getare had granted them such an easy death. It was good that he'd been able to rise from his grave, if only to give me the pleasure of putting him back there.

  Upon seeing a rider charging him atop a razorback, the general shrugged the two-handed blade off his shoulder, grabbed the hilt with both hands and raised it high overhead.

  "Die, asshole!!!" the tip of the spear struck Korg in his right knee, which was his pivot foot, and was immediately followed by my four-legged APC.

  One and a half tons of weight moving at fifty miles per hour was no joke. No joke at all.

  The steel tip broke through the blackened metal, though the lance's shaft shattered from the impact. The eighteen-foot-tall carcass of the former punisher was spun around, as the boss lost his balance and came crashing to the ground.

  I pulled on the reins and turned the boar around, then rushed back at the general, trampling him as he was trying to get up.

  "I've only just begun!" I spat out while executing an Ice Blade, driving my sword into the dark slit of his closed helm, letting loose all the hatred that had accumulated in me.

  The general twitched, emitting a deep-pitched growl—I couldn't make out the words. With my boot on his helm, I pulled out the sword and managed to land another Tongue of Flame before Korg finally recovered.

  Gray steel flashed through the air to my right. Ducking down to the boar's withers, I angled the shield so that the blow glanced off of it, and pressed the razorback to the boss' injured pivot foot, preventing him from executing full-strength attacks.

  "I'll coat my sword with your guts, worm!" Korg bellowed furiously. "You and your pitiful bunch will spend eternity in my army!"

  "You moron," I shot back, hacking away at the general's pivot foot by alternating attack skills and parrying the angled swings of his sword. "A few hours from now you and your entire wretched army will be standing before Celphata in your underpants. You had better pray the goddess doesn't have you reborn as a muckworm!"

  "Die!!!" roared the commander of the undead army, leaping up with nimbleness belying his size, delivering a crippling chopping blow as he landed, and following up at once with a warrior's whirlwind.

  To be fair to the devs, when designing these abilities there was no way for them to predict that the boss would be tanked by a mage who could simply Jump away from the deadly storm of blades.

  While Korg spun like a top, I took a look around. A hundred yards back Elnar's armored troops were mopping up what was left of the general's half-century of knights. Bristling with arrows like a hedgehog, Meresmet was hounded relentlessly by Vaessa's puppies, who had him surrounded and cornered like a wolf pack hunting a moose. The lich's mantle was in tatters, and his HP bar below half. There were no gray icons in the raid window—everything was going according to plan.

  As Korg concluded his whirlwind, I cut the distance between us with a gallop. His next blow overpowered my block attempt, and I swerved to his right leg as before. The general tried his damnedest to shove me aside, but to no avail. While he would have succeeded if I were alone, but between the boar and I, we probably weighed as much as he did. Ice Blade, Tongue of Flame...

  "Die!" I hopped to the side, and the dance continued...

  You have gained a level! Current level: 192.

  You have 2 talent points to allocate.

  Class bonus: +1 to intellect; +1 to spirit.

  You have 6 stat points to allocate.

  As the staff slipped from his hands, the lich collapsed to the ground like a broken doll. The mages and archers spurred their horses in my direction.

  "Stay out of his melee range! Only Vaessa's hounds can come in!" I shouted into the general channel, though I imagined Elnar didn't need the warning.

  As I blocked yet another of the general's blows, one of Vaessa's hounds pounced and locked its jaw on his wrist, and the first arrows and spells started flying into his torso. His death was now just a matter of time.

  In phase two, instead of a whirlwind the general hurled Spears of Darkness around him, which weren't particularly troublesome for the raid. Through it all I kept on hanging around his right leg while being overhealed to oblivion by utterly bored priests, and Jumping away whenever the boss attempted any kind of special ability.

  At ten percent life Korg roared something along the lines of, "You shall all die in terrible agony at my hands!" and summoned an Army of Darkness—a century of level 200 ghouls—but even that did little to delay his death. Immobilized by a Blizzard, the undead century was obliterated by a torrent of arrows and a Fire Storm in the span of ten sec
onds.

  Not five more minutes later the sword slipped from the general's grip, and the giant's lifeless bulk fell to the ground.

  You've earned a unique achievement, Korg's Slayer. General Korg is a unique boss that can only be killed once. You and your allies have been granted a permanent 4% increase to your physical and magic damage.

  The morale of your party has risen by +15 points. Your party's current morale is +31 (a 31% increase to your party members' physical and magic damage).

  That's better, I nodded with satisfaction at the running system messages. The morale had dropped precipitously—from forty percent to just sixteen—after four hundred recruits were accepted into the clan. All the new arrivals started out with a ten percent bump thanks to my rank, and the system had merely spat out the arithmetical mean. A thirty one percent increase to damage output was nearly twice better than sixteen, and that should certainly prove useful in the upcoming battle with the undead army.

  "It's all a bit too easy, don't you think?" Elnar rode up to me, regarding the general's corpse with grim suspicion.

  "Well, this wretch is no Nerghall," I shrugged. "And we're no longer just a century."

  "Dar! Two undead legions are moving your way from Xantarra!" Hyld announced without sounding particularly panicked in the recon channel. "They'll be there in about seven minutes."

  I looked out and indeed—the skeletal warriors were on the move.

  "His summoning an Army of Darkness must have reached them," Elnar pointed at the skeletons with his sword, then turned to me. "What's our plan?"

  "Did all our horses survive?"

  "No, we lost about twenty," James shook his head. "Horses aren't a priority for our priests."

  "Put all the units who have lost mounts into saddles with others, and have them retreat towards Farot. The rest quickly collect the loot and follow after. I doubt the skeletons will pursue us for long," I commanded. After a few seconds of silence I added, also into the general channel: "Since when do I need to repeat my orders?"