Black Flame in the Barren Steppe: Epic LitRPG (Realm of Arkon, Book 8)

by G. Akella

  Spear of Chaos II.

  Instant cast.

  Effective range: 50 yards.

  Mana cost: 900 points.

  Cooldown: 2 seconds.

  Deals 26,460-32,340 Chaos magic damage to the enemy.

  An important caveat to this was that not even the gods had resistance against Chaos. Of course, I fully realized that Vill was no more concerned with thirty thousand damage than an elephant with a gadfly, but this amounted to a powerful ranged spell in my arsenal that I had been lacking. Indeed, you couldn't compare Stone Disc to Spear of Chaos. I smiled to myself as I reviewed the numbers one final time.

  Ice Blade ХV—196,115-384,027 physical damage.

  Tongue of Flame ХV—197,673-385,456 physical damage.

  Long live Chaos. I closed the menu, finished the tea in my cup, glanced at Vaessa's beatific expression, then took out my cloak and shuffled over to my sleeping boar. Dawn was five hours away, and I would put them to good use.

  I woke up when the edge of the sun was already peeking out from beyond the horizon. Patting the sleeping Gloom on the side, I wiped the morning dew off my armor and made for the campfire, where a crowd was already gathering. Alas, I would need to release the boar. I wouldn't be able to tank Vill while mounted—these days I was much more agile on my own two feet. And I didn't want to endanger my four-legged friend needlessly.

  Dawn was rising over the Caëntine Prairie. The air still carried the night's freshness—no longer chilly but not yet hot. Not a single cloud could be seen in the sky. The entire stretch to the horizon line scintillated silver from the blanket of morning dew. The early sunlight seemed to accentuate every shape, every contour. It was like you could make out every pebble or blade of grass from a hundred yards away. An amusing and curious sensation.

  Duke Richard's field tent on the hill looked like a giant hiking tent. It bore his crest—a unicorn rearing on a Spanish shield, symbolizing strength, intimidation and invincibility. The undead weren't likely to be intimidated, but we could use some invincibility today. It was probably expected of me to go pay my respects, but I just didn't feel like it. The duke had already been briefed on everything orc-related at last night's general meeting by Rehan himself.

  The orc legions were already lining up ahead. The whole camp was immersed in pre-battle hustle, which still felt perfectly organized. The orcs were moving in groups, nobody was running aimlessly, and the officers weren't shouting at anyone. Pretty amazing, considering that players made up more than a quarter of the army. I didn't know whether this was possible in the Medieval armies of Earth, but I couldn't argue with what I was seeing with my own eyes.

  "I forgot to ask you yesterday—where did you get that scar on your face?" Vaessa inquired as I came up to the campfire. "I don't remember it being there before."

  I shrugged. "Gurkass had this weird staff. Its tip twisted and bit into my face, right through the helm's armor."

  "Samwell's Paw!" the demoness exhaled in shock. "How did you survive?! The venom is lethal enough to take down a dragon!"

  "Not all dragons, clearly," I smiled. "White ones appear to be immune."

  "Oh, right," the necromancer's daughter shook her head. "Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, dar, but that scar is there for life. It will never heal."

  "That's all right, scars look good on warriors," Donut came to my defense.

  I snickered. "An orc lady I know said that scars are grotesque indicators that the warrior bearing them is a clumsy oaf who can't move their feet."

  "Sounds perfectly logical," Bonbon said musingly, taking a sip of coffee from his mug. "For them, anyway. But for us, you can't dodge 'em all. That's just not how tanking works."

  "Wait!" Vaessa stopped him, then turned back to me. "What happened to the staff, dar?"

  "It turned black and crumbled," I said with a shrug.

  The demoness nodded. "Right. Samwell's Paw can only be passed voluntarily. And it constantly devours its owner's life force. Or used to devour, that is," she corrected herself. Suddenly her expression became very serious. She was still for a few moments, then nodded southward.

  "Undead... lots and lots of undead. About four miles from here. It's starting..."

  "Let's go!" Kan commanded.

  Emptying out the remains of his coffee into the flames, the knight-commander put the mug away into his bag.

  "It's time," he said, getting up and looking into my eyes. "We must take up positions indicated by the duke. Good luck to you, prince, and may the gods watch over us all." Kan's handshake was as firm as ever.

  I watched my friends depart, then sighed, took a seat on a log by the campfire, and fished in my bag for a flask of hot coffee. I badly hoped that all of them would survive this day.

  The fire slow-burned, the embers crackling softly. It seemed odd, to have a fire going in the barren steppe. But many of us were rich with firewood from the farmers' stock. Thankfully, strength wasn't an issue when it came to carrying it.

  I sat there, sipping on the mindbogglingly fragrant coffee, gazing into the dying flames, and thinking. Not about the upcoming battle—there wasn't much to think about there. All I had to do was use Ahriman's scroll on the rat bastard and hold his attention. No, I was thinking about Alyona and Max, about my future nieces and nephews, and about my own kids. I knew that a succubus had to be in love in order to conceive, but I was going to try hard to win her love. A good man shouldn't have any issues communicating with his woman. Treat her well, and all will be well. All those stupid glamor magazines with headlines like "What to Do if She Starts Ignoring You?" were for losers. I couldn't imagine a decent guy plagued by such problems. Maybe women just read that trash for a laugh? Anyway, I knew that I would have kids! For sure I would...

  As the flask ran out of coffee, my mood soured. I got up, extinguished the fire, released my razorback as he walked up, glanced at the orcs finishing up their formations, and started toward the tallest hill around. Being marked by the goddess, I knew she would find me anywhere, and I would prefer higher ground to have a better view of the coming battle.

  Upon climbing to the hilltop, I sat on a billet of wood from my inventory, lit up and proceeded to study the allied army. The orcs arranged themselves in two rows. The front row consisted of ninety percent players with hardly anyone above level 230, while the back row featured fighters as high as level 400. The Ancient Roman strategy, with their hastati and triarii? Perhaps. Players needn't fear death, and whatever dent they could make in the enemy, they would, whereupon the main forces would step in and clean up.

  They stood in whole cohorts, making it impossible to see the entire army, which spanned for at least a mile. Shamans were moving between the first and second rows, putting down totems to bolster the spirits. It was only in spontaneous fights that a shaman was forced to act like a mage or necromancer, but a bit of time to prepare went a long way with the class.

  Rehan and his sons were on the right flank, next to Duke Richard's legions. I looked but didn't see Trang—it would appear that his recovery had been delayed. I couldn't make out where my friends were, but assumed they were toward the right edge, near the duke's cavalry.

  The edge of the allied army's left flank was all cavalry. Though it was impossible to make an accurate estimate from here, I would guess seven to ten of the legions were light cavalry, and the remaining five or so were wolf-riders. Whereas orcish mounted troops wore chainmail, used bows and rode short hairy-footed horses, wolf-riders were, for all intents and purposes, knights. Wargs were intelligent animals who didn't obey just anyone. When an orc tamed a warg, they were immediately promoted to the title equivalent to a knight. The ritual was a perilous one, with a high fatality rate. Truly, if there was one thing no one could accuse orcs of, it was cowardice. There probably wasn't an orc alive who wouldn't at some point in his life attempt to become a wolf-rider.

  Wargs had a coat of thick fur, very high resistances and jaws full of razor-sharp teeth and fangs. According to Donut, their jaw power and teeth d
urability allowed them to easily chew through rock. In response to my boyish question as to who would win between a legion of Erantian knights and a cohort of orc wolf-riders, he had said that the chances were fifty-fifty, as evidenced by the rich history of clashes between the two factions. It was no accident that Karrosh an Ghort had been able to endure for a full hour against an army of death knights three times the size of his own force. And he would have kept fighting if it hadn't been for the Twice Cursed God's companions joining the fray.

  Where are the stinking undead? Is Vill going to attack or keep twiddling his thumbs?! I thought angrily, looking southward. Just then, as if hearing my plea, he responded. A thin strip of gray fog appeared on the horizon and began to slowly crawl in our direction. Spanning at least a mile, it looked like a tidal wave. Ten minutes later you could begin to make out tall lumbering figures, and before long they were in full view. Huge quadrants of plate-clad skeletons, legions of death knights, and bone spiders on the right flank of the undead army.

  Chapter 16

  Back on Earth, there was no shortage of stupid film screenplays. In some, a spaceship carrying twenty thousand settlers would land on a strange planet whose locals would greet them in exotic colorful garb. In others, a wave of attacking infantry would break into a run a hundred yards from the enemy. It made for a pretty spectacle, but it was stupid. Between body armor, helmet, pants and boots, an infantryman wearing even the lightest gear carried at least twenty five to thirty pounds of extra weight. And while you could technically do a hundred-yard dash with it, a row of pikes staring at you at the finish line was fraught with certain additional problems. When facing an enemy armed with guns or rifles, then sure—the faster you ran, the harder you were to hit. But pulling a trigger and swinging a metal sword were two very different things. Getting a running start from a dozen yards away to amplify the impact would make more sense, but that's a dozen yards, not a hundred.

  The undead infantry quadrants were walking, not running. Even stupid zombies were conserving energy. There were a lot of undead. It was hard to guess as to the size of the army, but I doubted it was that much larger than the orcish one. Vill was relying mainly on his own strength and the two summoned morts, while the army was mostly intended to draw out Dhoresh and Kahella to come to the aid of their race. If the size of the shapes bearing down on us was any indication, the enemy had no more than five raid bosses, yet several hundred mini bosses, at least. Among them were twelve-foot-tall zombies and skeletons of every stripe, four-legged avian creatures with dark feathers, giant beetles, canines with tentacles, and many more. Even the great Salvador Dali would no doubt be impressed with the phantasmagoric variety on display.

  A low sound rang out from the orcish side, which took me a few seconds to decipher. The orcs were singing. It was an unnerving, chilling, beautiful song. It flowed among the rows of pike-wielding armored warriors, evoking hazy images in my mind's eye. Boundless pastures, blooming poppies, and the smile of a lovely orcish woman... The steppe was magnificent! It was worth fighting for, worth dying for...

  As they drew within a hundred yards of the defenders, the death knights spurred their mounts into a gallop, aiming at the left flank of the orcish force. The bone spiders took a sharp right toward the light cavalry. The ground beneath the feet of the front rows of attackers exploded with shaman traps. Vague shapes of summoned spirits went up in the air to tremendous din that rang out over the prairie. The death knights smashed into the front row of orcs who had braced to meet them. The impact was both terrible and glorious. Impaled bone horses fell to the ground, crushing their riders and others besides. Steel flashed and armor gnashed against metal. The first row of defenders bent but didn't break, despite comprising of ninety percent players. At last, I knew the meaning of "our arrows shall block out the sun" when the light cavalry legion loosed their arrows, then turned sharply, away from the onrushing spiders. About half avoided the arachnids. The beasts pounced on the riders whose horses got caught in their webs, causing considerable losses. It wasn't obvious what kind of damage the orcs' arrows had done—the spiders seemed to be a single organism, a living sea of gray.

  Meanwhile, the fog washed over the infantry like a tsunami. A furious roar went up over the prairie as all the front lines engaged in battle.

  It would take a truly great author to properly describe everything that was happening before my eyes. The whole prairie looked like a blanket of gray and black, churning and heaving to its own rhythm. The undead pressing the front line of defense ranged in levels from 180 to 420. The AI running the attack had divided the attackers by class. Each quadrant included at least three-four legions of skeletal warriors while the other classes amounted to less than half of that number combined. Archers brought up the rear left flank of the attacking army, and liches the rear right.

  The archers and liches were stationed behind the warriors' backs, employing ranged attacks. Translucent shadows of spirits summoned by the shamans hovered over the defenders, blocking hostile magic. Unfortunately, they couldn't do anything against arrows, and the front rows of the orcish army now looked like a giant tortoise pincushioned with arrows. The warriors would take a knee and raise their shields, which looked like Roman Scutums, forming a shield wall that rendered nearly every projectile harmless. The undead archers were relentless, however, loosing arrow after frantic arrow at the enemy. If it weren't for the gods entering the battle, I wouldn't doubt the orcs' victory for a second. The only NPCs on the attackers' side were the death knights fighting on the left flank. The rest, including the officers, were ordinary mobs. And a horde of brainless mobs would never defeat an army of NPCs, not even with a five-to-one advantage in numbers.

  As I pondered the above, the light cavalry pulled away from the bone spiders, and the commander of the wolf-riders—a seasoned pro by his actions—immediately took advantage. A wolfish howl drowned out even the din of metal as five legions of wargs charged into the churning gray sea. A massacre ensued. Whether it was the animals' high resistances or the buffs, the spiders' fate appeared to be sealed. Free of pursuit, the light cavalry made an arc and toward the liches.

  The first row of the left flank was down, and the death knights pushed on to the second. Losing twenty percent of levels stunk, to be sure, but this wouldn't be their true death. The right flank and the center were vanishing before my eyes—not another half hour would pass by before the players were all gone from the battle.But it wouldn't be for naught. The undead's losses were at least as heavy as the orcs'. Nearly a quarter of the mini bosses were already down, and thanks to the death knights being tied up on the left flank, the wolf-riders were enjoying much needed maneuverability. Duke Richard's legions had joined the fray as well, and things were looking good for them. The legionnaires were all above level 280 and fought expertly in tight formation. From here, their losses seemed minimal.

  I still didn't see any of my friends. Having left their party, I couldn't even know what was happening with them. Three of the raid bosses gave me pause: a giant crab, a mangy ogre and a six-armed simian, all of whom were behind the archers on the right flank. But perhaps that was for the best. Rehan and Duke Richard were pretty tough raid bosses in their own right, so hopefully they would pull through.

  It was an hour into the battle now. The fog kept traveling with the undead army, engulfing them. And I kept sitting there, chain-smoking to calm my nerves. It was as if the gods had forgotten about me, and that was concerning. Would they try and attack Vill without me? Doubtful. Patience, then—they would come when the time was right. And where was Vill himself? Bloody fog! I couldn't see anything past five hundred yards, but it was already obvious that the undead outnumbered the orcs two to one. Even worse, several dozens cerraths and six other giant monsters had emerged from the veil of fog.

  Besides Rehan and the duke, all the clan leaders in the orc army could rightfully be considered raid bosses, so in that respect the two sides were pretty evenly matched. Before the wolf-riders' attack the exchange had
been roughly one to one, but now the orcs had gained a clear tactical advantage. Still, the undead force seemed endless. Most of the allied army's reserves were yet to enter the battle—a comforting thought. One warrior of the Steppe was worth at least ten enemy skeletons.

  The next half-hour passed by uneventfully. The wolf-riders were mopping up the spiders, the light cavalry kept dancing around the enemy, and the skeletons were pressing the orc formations. At a certain point, an orange ball went up to the sky on Rehan's side. The spell hovered in the air for ten seconds or so before folding in on itself with a thunderous crash. At that instant, the second row of the center and right flank rushed forward with a roar, filling out the thinned-out first row. Duke Daar's legions pressed forward as well, mowing down any scattered undead in their way. The knight cavalry's commander stood up in his stirrups and yelled a command, whereupon the whole legion, which had positioned itself just right of the enemy, broke into a gallop and smashed into the nearest quadrant of undead archers. The light cavalry, meanwhile, began peppering the liches from a distance. They would unleash two-three volleys and fall back, effectively kiting them. Nine legions of mounted archers—and that was how many had survived the spider attack—were a formidable force. The squad of liches—nearly two thousand undead mages—was annihilated in less than five minutes. At that point the light cavalry split into three squads, and each one moved on to torment new targets with their kiting strategy. Fifteen minutes later the human legions disposed the last of the skeletal warriors and moved on to the nearest archer squads and the three raid bosses. A red-crested Corinthian helm flickered near one of them, giving me a great sense of relief. Having mopped up the remaining spiders, the wolf-riders turned around and charged into the death knights' rear. Checkmate, bitches!