by Cheek, Jason
The thought of being repeatedly spawn-camped by a bunch of savage demi-humans that were known to tear humanoids limb-from-limb and eat them alive wasn’t for the faint of heart. To rush down into that mess took a certain amount of courage … or stupidity, I thought with a shake of my head, watching Hefe clashing his punch daggers together while he excitedly talked shit to Bonnie and AJ in a low voice. There were no excited cheers as I wound up the planning session. Looking out at the nervous faces looking back at me, I cracked a grim smile.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to lose now after everything we’ve been through,” I said in a no-nonsense tone. “Fuck these assholes!”
“Fuck these assholes,” Thomas agreed, reaching out to grip my hand as the rest of his guild came forward laughing to put a hand on top of the two of ours like a sports huddle.
Seeing what the Devil Dogs were doing, my friends began pushing forward to do the same thing. There was no way all of us could get into the huddle. My friends squeezed in, Krishna and Angie pushed close to be near the center, and even Domenic couldn’t help but laugh as he pushed into the circle next to me. None of the people of The World or the Uten Syn guild members really understood what was going on, but they picked up on the spirit of what we were doing as they put their hands on the person’s shoulder in front of them. Before I knew it, there was a circle of players and people of The World standing together as I called out in raid chat.
“We break on the count of three!”
“On the count of three!” My friends yelled back at me.
“One!” I shouted, as my friends echoed my shout.
“Two!” Thomas called out, as all of us hollered the number after him.
“Three!” Krishna screamed, as the rest of us followed suit letting out a wild shout.
“Fuck these assholes!” I shouted out at the top of my lungs, as the entire raid yelled out together with me, before breaking the huddle with a Marine Oorah.
“Follow me!” I roared, while turning around to race down the slope as the raid flowed after me.
The huddle might have been a little weak at first, but by the end, we were all clinging to the same spirit of hope. In my own opinion, that was always a better option than being afraid. While the hyped up adrenaline might not have been the same from when I’d first led the raid into the pass, this collective vibe was that of a group of Pro Gamers taking on a championship match or a group of soldiers making a last run against the enemy stronghold. For the people of The World, it was more of a last gasp of hope that this plan would somehow work and they’d live through this disaster to see tomorrow.
For me personally, what drove me down the slope in an all-out sprint was the thought of losing everyone I’d taken under my wing and built up to where they were now. It was almost too much to bear. Not only would losing my forces here and now severely affect my ability to defend BrokenFang Hold from the Hobgoblin invasion. It would mean losing to a monstrous culture that had hurt Helgath for so many years and had literally destroyed, ate, and enslaved everyone in their path. The thought filled me with a fury that I hadn’t felt since I’d seen my people being tortured alive by the Goblins that had held BrokenFang Hold.
I’m sure some people watching my Twitch Stream would think that I’d completely lost it strategically. In a way, they would probably be right, but not in the way that they’d think. There was no time to cast the handful of soul stones or any of my other summoned creatures any of us had acquired during our push towards Ironheart Stronghold. Domenic’s summoned Earth Elementals were already tied up slowing down Evil Sandra and her raid, and waiting a few minutes for everyone to cast Water Elementals would also have taken too long. The worried glances from my friends told me they felt the same. If we didn’t make it down the line of Kayden Troopers fighting for their lives in time, we’d never have any hope of pushing the never-ending horde back after that. This was a truly do or die situation.
All around me, the Uten Syn Druids began to transform into their various fighting forms as massive Werebears and fierce Werewolves began to tower above the raid and bellow out their unique beastly challenging roars and howls. Due to their earlier leveling against the various monsters we’d fought on our way to Domenic’s valley, a good three-quarters of the Druids had achieved their level 30 Werebear form. Even more impressive, their savage calls now buffed any ally that heard it with a bestial strength and attack speed boost. It was an effect that most definitely hadn’t been there the day before. I wasn’t sure what buff had been unlocked, but it made me feel stronger and quicker as raw animalistic power welled up inside my body begging to be released.
A quick glance at my HUD showed that I’d received two buffs, Terrifying Roar and Frenzied Howl. While they both increased my strength and attack speed, there was nothing listed about how it made you feel almost like a berserker as a red haze began to form over my eyes. As the adrenaline pumped through my veins, it took a conscientious effort to not lose myself in the blood surging through me as I began looking for where I was needed most. At the same time, I began casting Bone Fangs, Bone Shield, and Enhanced Mage Armor for myself and my companions, while Helgath focused on casting Holy Shield from where she rode on Neysa’s back.
I felt more than saw my friends form up around me. Warriors like Sarka, AJ, Bonnie Smash, Fylreh, Thomas, the Cobra Kai twins, Domenic, and the Uten Syn Werebears formed up into mini-diamonds as the DPS melee classes fell in step behind their tanks. As we approached the nearly overwhelmed line of Kayden Troopers fighting for their lives, I could see the enraged Orcs had closed the gap between the two forces to less than ten yards.
“Hold your fire until my command!” I shouted in raid chat just before we reached the hundred yard mark. Even though I heard several angry comments at my order, everyone thankfully held their fire as we hit the last stretch. My tactical mind understood that this had to be timed just right if we were going to have any hope of opening up a new gap in front of our forces. Otherwise, there would be no way for us to conduct a tactical retreat without losing a large portion of my people.
As the yards ticked down, I was finally close enough to get off an Identify on a couple of the six and a half foot tall demi-humans leading the charge. Instantly, the title level 45 Elite Orc Warrior appeared over the creatures’ gray-skinned, armored heads as I swallowed hard. Obviously, the enemy was through sending the level 36 and 38 scrubs at us and had switched to their main-line units, I sourly thought, as my eye took in the superior gear and equipment each Elite Orc Warrior was decked out with.
Gone were the serrated swords, jagged axes, and bare chests. These Orcs were decked out in proper metal breastplates, spiked pauldrons, greaves and armguards. Not only that, these demi-humans had weapons that fit their specific classes’ builds. Solid bronze shields, gleaming swords, and deadly axes that had a matching consistency of what you’d expect to find with a Roman Legion, albeit with the brutish markings, finger-bone necklaces, and a collection of skulls you’d also expect from such a savage race.
My eyes took all of this in as my mind weighted the tactical implications of the forces we were facing. These weren’t savages, they were a brutal culture with a military bearing. That in itself was a terrifying thought. I tucked that information away as we closed to within twenty yards of the rear line of my house troopers. The front ranks of swordsmen and swordswomen were just readying their shields and blades as the snarling horde lunged forward, when my voice cracked out like a whip in raid chat.
“Fire at will!”
From behind the Kayden Troopers’ lines a storm of Arcane Missiles, Enhanced Multi-Shots, Enhanced Shadow Bolts, and the glowing white flares of Homing Zap from three hundred and fifty-eight players and people of The World smashed into the center of the enemy’s vanguard stopping their advance cold. One second the humanoid lines were going to fall and the next, it was like the Orcs had crashed into a stone wall. The level 42 Elite Orc Raiders and level 45 Elite Orc Warriors’ lifeless corpses crumpled un
der the weight of the magic storm we sent ripping into the center of their charge dying in seconds.
I wasn’t sure if the Orcs blatant disregard for their peoples’ lives was because they had such a massive horde that the individual deaths were meaningless, or what, while I watched their charge collapse to the overwhelming volley. Our non-elemental magic attacks must have taken the Orc War Leaders totally by surprise because they seemed to be clueless to the virtual ass-whooping they were taking. Unbeknownst to the brutal demi-humans, this wasn’t the usual Elemental magic that they would be expecting to face and were highly resistant to, I thought to myself, as I watched while they clawed their way over their dead brethren and threw themselves bodily into the magic meat grinder of death once again.
Whichever it was, the heaps of corpses would’ve worried a lesser demi-human species. Not that any of these savages seemed to think twice about our humanoid magic. At least, not until the last few seconds of their lives when our Enhanced Shadow Bolts were ripping away their remaining hit points. The incredulous looks on their brutal, tusked faces as they thrashed about at the incoming purple-black bolts before keeling over dead brought a smile to my face as Assault Leader Dell’s strong voice rang out above the chaos.
“Kayden Troopers, double intervals by teams!”
The order was immediately repeated by the Sub-Leaders and Team-Leaders alike as the Kayden Troopers formation suddenly expanded to make pathways through their ranks by teams. They did this by stepping to either the left or right from the center group, creating double arm-length spaces for every block of twenty-five troopers. Seeing a gap appear directly ahead, I drove my group into the opening at a dead-run and let loose with everything I had as I switched to the raid’s command channel.
“Dell!” I shouted, while blasting at the mass of Orcs through the corridor of troopers I was running through. “Withdraw our people to the Palnisdale path!”
I barely registered his affirmative as we burst past the front line of Kayden Troopers in a blaze of dark-purplish bolts. Ducking underneath a mutilated corpse that came flying through the air like a makeshift missile, I rose up dual-casting Enhanced Shadow Bolts from each fist at the Elite Orc Warrior that was three yards in front of me. Before he’d even raised his massive War Axe above his head, I’d hit him for over two thousand points of damage. The dark energy had already consumed the majority of the gray-skin of his neck and face as he lunged at me with a triumphant bellow.
The look of shock on the brutal bastard’s shocked face was classic as Neristhana and Helgath joined me in pouring their Enhanced Shadow Bolts into the Orc. You could tell that the Elite Warrior couldn’t understand why he was taking such massive damage. In the two seconds it took for him to cross the space between us, we nearly did another three thousand points of damage as Fylreh hit him in the chest with two full Enhanced Multi-Shots. Altogether, that was more than enough to rip away the ugly fucker’s remaining hit points as Neysa caught the Orc in midair. As the War Axe tumbled past my head, she flung the lifeless corpse aside with a casual toss of her head.
Fylreh’s Barrage of Death devastated the Elite Orc Warriors behind their leader as the rest of us focused fire on the next closest Orc. It took us two seconds to burn the injured bastard’s hit points down to nothing. As the Elite Warrior’s body collapsed in a heap, Fylreh’s follow-up Enhanced Multi-Shot ripped the third Warrior’s life away in the blink of an eye. He died a second later not understanding what had hit him as the entire team blasted his life away. In the two seconds it took to take the Orc down, the last two injured Elite Orc Warriors were on top of us bellowing in rage.
As the fourth Orc’s cleaver-like sword sped at my head, Neysa was there to protect me. Howling in challenge, she body slammed into the Elite Warrior’s solid bronze shield, throwing the large warrior off balance and allowing me to duck under the wild swing. While the Silver Dire Wolf’s fanged jaws aggressively snapped at the Elite Warrior’s sword arm, I drew the Vampiric Bastard Sword of Slaughter from my back in one smooth motion and parried the next chopping slash coming at my head with two hands. Sparks flew from our iron blades as I took the fifth Elite Orc’s follow-up Spiked Shield Bash at an angle on my Black Coral Pauldrons, while Helgath launched herself daggers first at the Elite Warrior’s red cat-eyes with an enraged shriek.
Deflecting the worst of the strike, I used the momentum it gave me to spin around the injured Orc’s shield while swinging my two-handed sword in a wide arc. As Helgath plunged her daggers into the Elite Warrior’s wild eyes, my heavy blade bit deep into the back of the Orc’s tree trunk-like leg. Immediately, I felt a tingling rush surge up through my hands and arms to fill my body as the blade’s Vampiric Touch ability proc’d, raising my hit points by forty-one points of health. The supercharged feeling that filled my senses was like nothing I’d ever felt before as my pupils dilated from the intensity of the rush.
From far away, I heard the Orc’s enraged bellow come to my buzzing ears as I twisted the blade free from the ugly wound. Even with all of the insane damage we’d dished out, the Elite Orc Warrior was only down a third of his hit points as he blindly swung his cleaver around in a backhand. Parrying the powerful blow, I leaped back and blasted the ugly fucker in the balls with my Dark magic as the Orc bellowed in agony, while Helgath repeatedly drove her daggers into the Elite Warrior’s bloody eye sockets. As the Orc blindly flailed at the crazed Half-Orc hanging on its neck, I punched my blade through the Elite Warrior’s breast plate and left it there as I finished the fucker off by blasting him to death with my Enhanced Shadow Bolts, while another jolt of hit points surged through my body.
While that was going on, Neristhana and Fylreh focused their attacks on the injured Orc battling against Neysa. The first ten arrows blinded the enraged Orc as the Gnomeling struck the Elite Warrior’s sword arm with a double-handed strike from her Leeching Hand-Axe of Severing. Though the blow didn’t pierce the Orc’s bronze armor, however, the strike did allow the Silver Dire Wolf to lock her jaws around the Elite Warrior’s thick wrist in a death grip as Neristhana spun back around to drive the hand-axe into the back of the howling Orc’s unarmored knee. Not missing a beat, Fylreh stepped forward and smashed her front hoof into the Elite Warrior’s face, sending the Orc reeling in a spray of blood and broken tusks as the Centauride’s follow-up point blank Enhanced Multi-Shot ended his life.
The five of us ended the two Elite Orc Warriors at about the same time. As I ripped the blade out of the corpse at my feet and turned around to face the line of charging Orcs, Helgath had sprung back onto Neysa’s back as Neristhana and Fylreh stepped up next to me. In the ten seconds the fight had taken, the next line of Elite Orc Warriors were nearly on top of us. There was no time to plan or direct my team as we opened up on the Orcs directly in front of us with everything we had.
With a thought, Helgath and I dropped a Light Word of Censor on the Elite Warriors not five yards away, taking everything down in a ten yard radius. The resulting pile up of charging Orcs tripping over their stunned brethren allowed Fylreh’s devastating Barrage of Death to reap its maximum damage as Neristhana began blasting the downed enemy with Enhanced Shadow Bolts. In the ten seconds it took for me to nearly drain my mana pool, we’d taken out another fifteen Orcs.
While that would’ve been an impressive feat at any other time, it was less than nothing in comparison to the total number of enemies we now faced. Especially, once you took into consideration that I’d basically blown my magical load. I silently chuckled at the innuendo as I mentally broke down the problem. The good thing about the Enhanced Shadow Bolt I was using, other than that it could inflict damage on elemental resistant Orcs, was that it only cost sixty mana and had relatively decent damage for such a low-level spell. That meant, with my current mana pool, I could easily spam out fifty-eight bolts or dual cast twenty-nine bolts with a Light Word of Censor thrown in and still have fifty mana left over.
As Fylreh began sending Enhanced Multi-Shots at the fallen mound of writhing Orcs,
I glanced around to make sure everything was still on track. Behind us, Assault Leader Dell already had the formation of house troopers falling back towards the pass to Palnisdale. While heading up the slope was allowing them to keep up a steady barrage against the main horde further back, it did little to directly help those of us fighting for our lives against the mass of Orcs within the no-man's-land gap in-between the two groups.
AJ, Sarka, and Thomas were leading the diamond formations to either side of us and mostly holding their own against the Elite Orcs. Though, without the extra DPS of my dual casting to burn down the adds, they were being forced to work their targets down the hard way. Beyond them, I could see the Uten Syn’s Druids and Wardens backed up by the rest of my friends and a handful Domenic’s Paladins who were enduring a beating of epic proportions as they struggled to do any damage against the high-level mobs. If not for the Uten Syn guild’s nightmare stats, the immense strength of their Were-forms, their mass healing, and the Paladins’ shielding, they would’ve already been cut down. I was just crossing my fingers that we’d be able to hold out long enough for the plan to work, when Domenic’s voice rang out in raid chat.
“Just forty more seconds!” A veritable groan came from the raid at Domenic’s words.
“Forty more seconds?” Kenzie exclaimed in consternation, as she unloaded her blades in the back of an Orc. “What have you been doing up until now?”
“Remember, Dom,” I shouted in raid chat, as the group of Orcs in front of us started pulling themselves together and charging in our direction. “If you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it.”
“Fuck you, Jay!” Domenic yelled back in annoyance. “That’s forty seconds at a minimum, unless you’re wanting a trip to the nearest graveyard.”
“At least that would be quick,” AJ grunted out, as he blocked a heavy blow with his shield.
