Chapter 358: Hammerdin |
I watched General Ragad Oladl for his response. The Level 26 wore an expression somewhere between rage and concern. The man had been confident in his strategy when it was just me, but Shog showing up as a Grade 27 completely upended the board. I could just imagine the thoughts going through his head…
“Good riddance, Leon, you stupid asshole. 'Doesn't have a summon any more' my ass! I hope a bird shits on your grave at the memorial."
More realistically, he was probably thinking about how to scrape out a victory despite the situation, and the best way to do that would be to focus down Shog before swapping over to me. Ragad was the biggest gun on their team, so I needed to figure out what he could do while also grabbing his attention.
As I gamed that out, I waded through a rising sense of disgust. This whole thing felt like such a waste, a shortsighted power grab that was going to see Timagrin in an even worse situation than it already was. Some part of me resisted the idea of what I was about to do, but my doubts took a back seat to survival. My responsibility right now was to Etja, not Timagrin. More broadly it was to my party and even the Littans I’d agreed to help see safely through the forest. Sitting atop all of that was Closetland, which now had tens of thousands of residents, and there was no universe in which I let someone else use me as a game piece to extort the nation we were building.
Any responsibility I had towards Timagrin was far, far down that list, if it even existed at all. Still, if I’d had more time to think it over, I probably could have found a better solution than to kill these people. As it was, I had no time to second guess myself. Surprise was our best chance of winning, and Shog forced everyone into action.
After reducing Leon to a spray of red, Shog immediately dove towards Ragad’s group. Two of the Timan general’s mercenaries were the tall, blue Grimvaldrim from Mittak, one man and one woman. Shog had been too fast for either of them to follow earlier, but the woman had started slinging glass orbs at her allies the moment she realized that. They shattered on impact, each filled with a different liquid; one sizzled, another sparkled, and a third evaporated so fast it was tough to tell that it had held anything inside at all. These were some kind of alchemical buffs, ones that could be applied topically, and the well-muscled woman was hurling them with enough force that the little glass orbs would have been lethal projectiles to anyone without superhuman resilience.
One of the vials left her male counterpart wide-eyed and vibrating, giving him enough extra juice to spot Shog’s dive in time to react. The man raised his mighty arms overhead and clapped, summoning a dome of stone from the ground. It rose to surround the four Level 20s and General Ragad, hurling clods of dirt and grass with enough speed they might’ve gone into orbit had they not disintegrated.
Shog brought two of his heavy tentacles down on top of the dome, creating a web of deep cracks and sending stone chips flying. A thrust from one of his larger swords broke through, resulting in a six-foot-long ballista bolt erupting from the hole. Shog neatly avoided the attack despite it being made from nearly point blank, using the momentum of his dodge to spin his blades around himself, shattering more of the structure.
Chunks of the abused barrier fell away, but rather than submitting to gravity, the rocks halted their journey to the ground, then blasted back up to assault Shog. The c’thon ducked some of the debris but let most of it collide with him, the magically-reinforced stone shattering against his body. In a handful of attacks he’d obliterated half of the defensive summon, revealing the crew within. The delay hadn't bought them more than a fraction of a second, but even that much had been a boon.
Behind Rocky, the cowled Deijinon spread feathered wings. Shapes rose up from the shadows all over her, hundreds of hand-sized creatures that were a mix between bat and insect. Their forms were devoid of color, not true animals, but mana constructs that took advantage of the gloomy environment around us.
Contrasting the Deijinon was the only other Timan aside from Ragad. His body shimmered with a misty white light that clung to him, gathering around an arrow as he raised a shortbow. Expensive mana weaves made it glow to my mana sight, but the bow looked like a toy compared to what the Grimvaldrim woman had pulled out.
She’d finished hurling orbs and was now manning an actual siege engine, aiming a ballista the size of a van at Shog. It had been heavily modified, with a gimballed mount that allowed her to pivot it in any direction and had some effect that caused it to hover off the ground so she could maneuver it into place as she liked. It had a wide, transparent shield on the front and the whole thing was fucking belt fed by a row of linked ballista bolts coming from a long crate on its side.
Of all the people in our little clearing, she was the only one smiling, revealing two rows of strangely perfect teeth. Her pupils were dilated to shit, and I was pretty sure Smiley had hit herself with a few too many of her own potion vials.
General Ragad, meanwhile, was just watching the events unfold, still coming to terms with the realities of his situation. I wondered when he’d last lived on the knife’s edge of life and death. Even as a general I doubted he saw much direct action. My Closetland doppelganger had scrambled together more intel to add to the man’s file, showing that his last Delve had taken place more than a decade ago. In short, he was rusty. He hadn’t been ready for my Shog surprise, and the hesitation that I’d ruthlessly killed at the start of all this was alive and well in the general.
As Shog dove, I summoned Somncres. While the general froze, I activated Homing Weapon. I targeted Ragad and used Gravity Anchor to put hammers into orbit around me. The number of Somncres copies I could make was based on my Intelligence, and with a score of 70, I could now make seven at a time. Each undodgeable hammer was tipped with an unblockable Oblivion Orb, spinning around me as I managed the gravitational pull of my aura to keep them trapped.
Something that used to take so much concentration was now trivial to accomplish, which was a very good thing since these hammers were orbiting at nearly 2,000 RPM. Homing Weapon had given them a boost compared to my earlier tests, but Self-Insert had cranked the speed even further. I felt connected to the skill like I was rooted in it, as though there were a deep trench dug into my brain and soul through which it unerringly flowed. There was nothing new to the way any of it worked, but I held a supreme confidence in its function. The evolution doubled down on what made the skill work and took every part of me that got in the way and excised it.
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I kept the hammers at bay for the moment. One other thing my clone’s frantic research had told me was that Ragad was primarily a mage. He’d gone incorporeal the moment Shog had been revealed, and given the man’s lack of serious armor I assumed his defensive style was avoidance. Either that, or he was used to putting a tank between himself and his attackers. Seven hammers sounded like a solid opener, but fourteen sounded even better.
I’d also activated Aura of Persistence to give Shog a buffer and help keep Etja and Grotto safe from any crossfire, although it wasn’t empowered by my staff. I couldn’t wield it at the same time as my hammer. Therianthropy had been refreshed, keeping my wings, feelers, and glorious speed-buffing hair active.
Shog flew past Rocky, launching a casual sword strike as he went. The giant intercepted it with his shield, which resulted in a large furrow dug through its surface. The bruiser wasn’t Shog’s target, however, and the c’thon flew at Cowl’s shadow creatures. The smiling Grimvaldrim unloaded a spray of bolts that continued to stream from the box on its side way past the point at which it should have been exhausted. Its firing rate made a mockery of any kind of physics, and even Shog was being tested to keep from being skewered. As the c’thon hit the mass of Cowl’s summons, he disappeared, leaving the horde clawing viciously at thin air.
Tentacles burst from Smiley’s shadow, wrapping her up. With a screech of surprise, the woman disappeared into the ground. The white mist surrounding the Timan archer spread out and a burst of light rose from the ground. It banished the shadows, but didn’t reveal anything. Screams came from amidst the trees that still stood.
In the middle of all of this, General Ragad shook loose of his indecision. Seven orbs swam around his body, each representing a different kind of magic. There was an orb for each element, plus two more. One was an ethereal violet I recognized as Spectral and the other had the golden glow of Holy. The last orb blinked and all the rest flashed golden. Ragad held out a hand towards the forest in the direction of the screams, seeing something none of the rest of us could. He went to launch his attack, all the balls combining into a larger orb that shook with power, and the moment he did I used Dispel.
His spell fizzled, both to my surprise and Ragad’s. Frankly, I’d expected him to have a way to safeguard his spells against interference. It wasn’t like my Mystical skill of 40 could compete with whatever skill level a full-career Gold had managed in his magic intrinsics, but I’d still gotten one over on the general. He turned to me, eyes widening for a moment as he noticed the blur of hammers orbiting me at a speed that could reasonably be referred to as Mach Stupid. Then his eyes narrowed when I threw another volley, and he refocused on me as a threat. With his attention came an unpleasant background buzz in my mind, and I very briefly wondered if I should have considered Psychic Citadel more seriously as an evolution option.
Either way, there was nothing to the effect yet, and another array of orbs had appeared around the general as soon as the first was gone. They all instantly flashed to Spectral. Ragad had some kind of analysis skill, because the Spiritual damage type was my worst defense among the damage types the orbs represented. Of course, none of my spell defenses could be considered low, and I had plenty of other way to fuck with casters.
Ragad fired his spell, and I used Reverse Card to capture the humming ball of ghostly death, then hurled it back into his face. Ragad turned his body, evading the attack with an unimpressed look. His form swam in my vision as the buzzing in my head rose to a crescendo that scattered my thoughts, making it impossible for me to think.
It wasn’t until my Shielding was being ripped apart by another Spectral attack that I could even process what had happened.
You have been Stunned!
You have been Stupefied!
Shielding: 3,000 -> 1706
So that was how he normally dealt with countermages; it just required him to be focusing on his target. Fortunately, the momentary lapse in my ability to form a coherent thought hadn’t fucked up my use of Gravity Anchor, and the man’s attack, while impressive for something so casual, wasn’t as devastating as I’d expected.
There was a look on the man’s face when my vision came back into focus, an expression of disbelief that he hadn’t even cracked my Shielding with the attack. To be fair, that would have killed most Delvers with a Fortitude of 40 or below, whereas I hadn’t even taken any direct damage, so I understood the gentleman’s confusion.
I grinned and threw another volley of hammers. Twenty-one now orbited me, all pulling at their gravitational leashes, eager to seek out the man who’d scrambled my brain.
Meanwhile, Shog’s fight had drifted away from us. Smiley was still screaming, Rocky was shouting something, there were explosions and ghastly shrieks, and an odd, layered chiming accompanied by blasts of white light. The ruined trees all momentarily regrew, but they were fake, some kind of echo of their past. They all dissolved to fuel a spell I never saw, leaving the place as wrecked as it had been before.
I let the general’s next spell come, raising my shield, and it blasted through more of my Shielding as it landed. However, I was blocking, I was wearing heavy armor, and I had a stupidly named achievement that required both those things to fuck this guy’s day up.
What a Twist! took effect, sending a shock of feedback through the line Ragad’s spell had taken. It clapped him in the head, unavoidable despite his attempt to move, and the man’s body briefly locked up.
I released all of my hammers, launching them from orbit like a machine gun, sending them all careening at the general on more or less a straight line. The man came to just before they hit, and his body blurred as he moved to get out of their way. The hammers turned sharply to follow, making his attempts to avoid them impossible. Each one passed through his incorporeal form, which would normally have been immune to any physical attack like the hammers, but each one still landed a glancing hit.
The reason for this went all the way back to our defeat of the Specter of Orexis. We’d earned an achievement called Spectersbane, which let us affect incorporeal creatures with one quarter of any physical attack’s normal effect. It was the kind of thing that almost never came into play and was easily forgotten despite being one of my oldest achievements, but right then it was paying out dividends.
My hammers had to ‘hit’ for Oblivion Orb to activate. My hammers could hit the incorporeal general because of my achievement, and each hammer also got a stacking bonus from my Flurry of Blows evolution when it landed.
The general was theoretically immune to physical damage, but it didn’t matter. He flickered from side to side, temporarily avoiding each hammer, but they followed relentlessly. Each hammer could only hit for 25% damage, but each hammer got buffed twice by my Physical Magic and twice by my Dimensional Magic. Flurry of Blows added 25 damage to the second hammer, then 50 to the third, then 75 to the fourth. The 21st hammer would hit with an extra 500 damage, and each one was accompanied by an Oblivion Orb. The general managed to somehow disappear just before the first spell activated despite the hammer striking him, but after a few hammers cracked and broke his ghostly bones, the man lost his concentration.
To put it succinctly, General Ragad Oladl was fucked.