Chapter 369: Love & Tenderness |
We plowed through the rain of bodies with little care for how disgusting it made us. Varrin flew up front, able to muscle past the meat wall with ease despite the size of some of the creatures. His passage destroyed many of the recently deceased projectiles, but I was right below him, shunting more aside using Gracorvus. Xim was slightly behind and between us. The cleric was in her angel of fury mode with a glowing disc at her back and hair like molten blood.
She was more than capable of pushing through the mess but we wanted her full attention to be on spamming her Infernal Cleanse and Judgment spells. She was flexing a number of skills and evolutions to increase the size and range of the spells, hitting huge swaths of the Charl-led mob coming at us. Her Fire Spreader passive caused everything she’d set aflame to Ignite everything else around it, and given how tightly the enemies were grouped it was absolutely devastating.
Using her spells constantly like this wasn’t cheap and the cleric could only cast so fast. She was holding two of her transformations back for an emergency, meaning her speed was a limiting factor. However, one of her Labyrinth upgrades had given her a speed buff based on how many enemies she’d Ignited recently, and that number was currently very high. After a couple of seconds of enemy contact she was already capped on the passive upgrade, and we were supersonic.
Throughout this time I took note of Charl’s soul threads. His own soul made countless tiny connections to the cellular masses he’d buried inside the horde. I was working on a way to use that against the cancerous United, but Varrin had already proven that a plain Spectral assault against the man’s soul wasn’t enough. We needed some extra spice to leave lasting damage. While Xim’s flame was superb at obliterating Charl’s flesh, it was lackluster at affecting him in a meaningful way. There was just so much of the man.
While the tunnel of animal flesh slowed us down and caked us in fresh gore, it didn’t do much more than that. Although, given the tactics I was seeing from the United I figured their goal was exactly that. If they wanted to stop us, they could certainly rally more of a resistance. As it was, my guess was that they were retreating into the Chasm and what Charl was doing was buying time for their forces to fall back. Regardless of their intent, we broke through the hindrance in good time, closing the remaining distance to Ishi’s trapped party in ten seconds.
Vaulty was set up on a tall bluff overlooking a wide river of sludge. The hulking golem’s legs were locked in place, buried in the ground to brace him against the constant volley of firepower he was outputting against the persistent Charl assault. Cannons came from his shoulders, laying out a stream of ghostly spectral energy that shrivelled and destroyed the body and soul alike. More protruded from his chest and back, hurling traditional projectiles of metal and ceramic that splattered his attackers. His hands had also become rotary guns, raking the air with spatial distortions that twisted everything apart in violent sprays of dismemberment.
Ember stood atop him, the armored archer adding her own arrows to the mix. Each one easily exceeded the destructive force of an anti-tank missile on impact, then became infinitely more lethal with the delivery of the wicked power granted to her by the blood god, Chalgoth.
Ishi was above them both, hovering in the sky alongside her own bow and staff, wielding a shield and a wand in her actual hands. All three weapons were firing a combination of physical and spatial attacks to keep the air above her clear of attackers. She was also working a wide-area spatial effect that kept the bloody storm of eviscerated Charl from splattering her or her allies. While they’d been given some of Xim’s Infernal Cleanse wands, they’d run out of charges a while ago.
Joma and Nottagator were fighting a short distance away from those three. The furry pugilist was tied up with the turtle-like United holding a massive shield. Like the last time she’d fought the person, she wasn’t making much headway, although her fists were bouncing off of him instead of getting stuck this time. That was potentially some kind of progress. Meanwhile Notty was in a persistent Incorporeal state, rising up from the ground to sever the soul threads of dozens of creatures at a time with her wide, flat-toothed mouth, like a ravenous specter.
We hit the encounter like a cruise missile. Charls were torn to atoms and reduced to ash by Etja and Xim working in concert. We hit the ground nearby Two of Crowns with Xim immediately releasing a wave of Divine fire. It rolled over the area and purged it of any lingering Charl cells, while removing any that might have squirmed their way into our fleshy allies unseen.
Vaulty would be immune, given that he was a spiritually-inhabited construct and technically undead, but Joma would be susceptible, as would Ishi in her human form. Whether Charl could affect her as a dragon, I didn’t know. Ember was a coin flip for Charl immunity given how weird Chalgoth had made her body, and I assumed Nottagator was staying Incorporeal to avoid the United’s infection.
I’d been on a psychic line with Ishi throughout this time and our two parties coordinated without the need for exchanging words. Xim spread her fire to create a perimeter, taking pressure off of the three ranged fighters. Clouds of poison began to spread through areas beyond the ever-growing reach of the flames as Nuralie started her own assault from the shadows.
Joma was struggling with her United so Varrin and I broke off to give her an assist. I opened with a rain of hammers, skipping the use of Oblivion Orb to save on mana. My stamina pool was still looking fairly healthy, meaning I could lean on my techniques for the moment. Given my experience with the Timans and Heronwytes earlier, I expected my hammers to still pose a massive threat on their own.
They all bounced off the turtle man. They didn’t even leave a scratch. He kept shield bashing Joma like he hadn't even noticed the assault. Nottagator was getting in on the fight at this point as well, towering over him and trying to shred the man’s spiritual self with her spectral claws and teeth, but even she failed to find any purchase in the man’s flesh. He was hammering Joma into the ground, leaving the furry woman spitting blood as she was driven ever deeper into a crater.
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Varrin landed beside the United and drew his blade. The move was so fast it was only evident by a glimmer of light catching the edge of his sword for an ephemeral instant. The United stopped his assault and looked up at the big guy. He looked confused before he fell into two pieces, cut clean down the middle from scalp to groin. Varrin sheathed Kazandak and held out a hand to help Joma up. The Iskarim woman accepted the gesture, then gave him a grumpy look while knocking the dirt from her fur.
“I’m calling the next one!” she shouted over the cacophonous roar of Xim’s inferno, Vaulty’s guns, and all the other bullshit flying and exploding around us.
“What the fuck just happened?” I asked as Varrin flew back towards me. The fight was somewhat contained for the moment, so long as Xim’s mana held out. “None of the rest of us could touch that guy.”
“In ten words or less,” Varrin replied, “his mastery was a gift, not one born of skill.”
“Right. Do you ever feel like you’re the real hero of this adventure? Am I just the plucky sidekick?”
“Sidekick? No, not at all.” Varrin patted me on the pauldron. “‘Comic relief’ is a more apt description."
[We have 5 minutes remaining.]
“Thanks, Grotto.” I checked on my party’s resources and flew towards Ishi to get a report from her on the same. We’d all been in an extended run n’ gun throughout the day, dealing with Labyrinth challenges and problems with the United, but we were a party built for endurance.
We were looking good for the most part, with Xim’s mana being the main limiting factor. She was down to half a tank. While I was lower, my spells weren’t as crucial to our present problems. Etja couldn’t fire spells from a mile out forever, but she had so much efficiency baked into her build that it wasn’t going to be a problem any time soon. Nuralie was also low but didn’t have much to begin with, and Varrin didn’t use mana so his mana pool was irrelevant.
We were good on health and stamina, even Nuralie despite having spent her entire stamina bar earlier. Looking at that value, I swore. I’d remembered her potions were even more effective on herself, and that thought reminded me that I had a way to boost my mana regen by quite a lot. I pulled out one of the gummies that she’d been making in lieu of traditional mana potions and swallowed it. The extra 400 or so regen wouldn’t help much in the next 5 minutes, but there was no guarantee we weren’t getting into more problems as soon as we left the Labyrinth. The fruity flavor of the gummy filled my mouth as I came to a stop in the air next to Ishi.
“How are your people looking on resources?” I asked.
Ishi’s bow continued to fire on its own as she turned to look at me, ocean blue eyes taking me in from behind her wooden helm. “I feel like I should be offended that you’re all business and don’t seem at all worried for my health and well being.”
“But you're a total badass who can take care of herself and this isn’t the time to get distracted by our romantic affiliation.”
“Gods, that’s so cold but somehow so sexy at the same time. Dispassionate calculation in service of my well-being makes me all–” She sighed and shook her head. “I think I have a complex. Did my mother give me a complex?”
“Resources?” I said, more firmly this time.
“As a team, our mana is in the gutter, but I have many more staves and wands to call upon. Vaulty can use Mindfulness to recover his own but needs a place to meditate to do so. Our stamina isn’t much better, and without Xim we were starting to accrue more damage than I liked. I can perform a modicum of healing but it requires focus I haven’t been able to dedicate. Honestly, we need to take a comprehensive look at our equipment and regenerative abilities to better plan for these kinds of situations.”
She looked around at the raging bonfire we stood within and the constant parade of animals rushing in to die to it. I doubted there would be many situations exactly like this one in the future, but there would certainly be situations with similar demands.
“All right,” I said, running that around in my head. “We’re going to rush for the exit. Xim will be forward of center behind me and Varrin, with your party forming around and behind her.”
“With Xim’s divine fire aiding us we can use the same tower strategy as we’re using here, but make it mobile instead.”
“I trust you to know your people so that’s good with me. Shog and Etja have a fragile guest which makes bringing them along more of a problem. Hopefully they can work together to avoid any direct confrontations and rendezvous with us closer to the Chasm.”
“I’ll send Drift their way. His stealth auras will help.”
“That’s good, thanks. Nuralie will join their group as well, in case they run into something nasty.”
“We’ll be ready to move when you are.”
“Awesome,” I said, then lingered a moment. “I was worried about you, by the way. I’m glad you’re safe.”
She gave me a playful kick in my thigh. “Shoo. We can be sentimental once we’ve left the flaming corpse pit.”
“Good point,” I said.
As I turned to fly back to Xim, Ishi added, “I was worried about you as well.”
[And I am worried about our impending doom. We have 3 minutes.]
Just as we were about to get a move on, a body went sailing through the sky overhead. It flipped and ragdolled, looking like they'd been hurled by a distant, angry giant. The armored figure struck one of the mega-huge cacti and exploded through it in a spray of viscous juice and chunky plant matter. They continued onward, their trajectory unperturbed.
“Who the fuck was that?” I asked.
[I believe that was Specialist Tomomaru. Or Interrex Tomomaru if what the late Rufio claimed was correct.]
“Oh. And the last we saw of him he was hundreds of miles away, heading off to fight Orexis and Anesis.” I nodded and immediately gave the order to move out. Something had just catapulted a Level 52 Delver through a five hundred foot-high succulent. For all I knew, Orexis had thrown the man like a stick for Anesis to play with. There was no reason to stand in the path of whatever might be coming to play fetch.
My resolve to run away as fast as possible was only doubled when Tomomaru’s 700 foot iguana came flailing across the sky next.