Sixth Realm
Page 36
Erik’s hand jabbed out, stone flame hardened pierced through his attacker’s neck as he grabbed their hammer.
Rugrat fired to Erik’s right side, striking an Orc in the arm, the blunt force pushing them to the side.
Erik swung the hammer he had stolen from the last orc and hit the off-balance orc in the head, cracking their skull.
The two of them flowed together, one acting, the other anticipating; the two of them more powerful than the sum of their parts.
“Focus on the shamans, use silence spells, that should stop them chanting!” Rugrat ordered, the ranged fighters changed their aim and shot at the Shamans.
Rugrat ignited the second part of the chain spells. Explosions tore through the orc formation, killing seven of the shamans.
One of the shamans got off an attack, slamming his staff into the ground. The ground cracked, and split apart, just as it had with the orc camp leader.
George, in tune with Fire mana quickly understood what the shaman’s aim was.
“Erik, dodge!” Rugrat yelled.
Erik jumped, using an explosion in front of him to toss himself backward.
It wasn’t a moment too soon as a pillar of magma shot out of the ground.
Yuli sent out a spell of wind, cutting the pillar apart and spraying it back over the orcs, causing them to scream out.
Rugrat looked at the defenses that had been breached, the cracks in the ground, tearing apart the funnel they’d created.
“Tian Cui, get out around the camp and hit those shaman fuckers from behind. Yuli, try and throw up some barriers. Gilly, take the right. Storbon the left. George, help them. Yao Meng, Lucinda, get grenades into them!” Rugrat pulled out two grenade launchers and jumped off of George.
People keep on telling me that we can do things that no normal person would be able to do, it’s about time we did some super-human shit! Rugrat flicked the safety off of the grenade launchers.
He was like a mobile turret, firing on the orcs that were still smoking from the magma as they ran forward. Destruction rained down on the orcs. The defenses were already screwed. Rugrat only cared about thinning the creatures down.
The melee fighters ran in. Tian Cui was rushing across the camp to an unseen part of the wall.
Erik had the room to move around as orcs made it through the fire. Rugrat and the others had to be careful to make sure that none of their attacks were close enough to harm their allies as they started to aim at the middle to the rear of the orc horde that was pushing forward. There were just around sixty of them left, including the orc shamans who were deploying their totems.
Attacks shot forward, hitting the defenses on the second line. Yao Meng and Lucinda to their credit didn’t even flinch and kept on shooting, the dust and explosions made it hard for the shamans to see clearly.
With the Orcs packed together, each grenade could take out up to five orcs.
They were starting to take control of the fighting again.
Erik was up there, fighting away. He was taking more hits from the orcs to make sure that they couldn’t get past him, using his own body as a shield.
His hands were covered in a red haze as his attacks increased in power. He created stone shields against the nasty hits, blunting some of the force as the area around him was covered in a dark miasma, leaking poison across the area. The longer the orcs fought, him the weaker they became, some that had been inside his range for too long started to collapse from poisoning.
Erik’s movements flickered, his strikes making the three-meter tall Orcs to stumble backward and lose their balance.
Rugrat started to leave his inhibitions behind, fully pushing himself into the fight, feeling the rhythm of it. His body was reacting on trained impulses. The team was working together and as they had all trained together they could react and act in accordance with how the others worked. There was no need for verbal communication.
This is what we were looking for. Several people working together as one. Rugrat felt the flow of power through the area. Yuli created a ball of water in front of her and shot out water arrows from it repeatedly with the other hand she was raising mana barriers, her fingers dancing across the air.
It was a show of complete skill and understanding over her environment and her own abilities, melding them together as she was instantaneously casting mana barrier over the front liners, protecting them against the totem’s attacks while not obscuring their fight.
That was how a support class was supposed to do it!
Yao Meng had jumped onto an amplification formation. It increased the power of the spells that he was putting on his grenades. He would raise barriers around where the grenades hit, directing the explosion so instead of wasting themselves on blowing upwards, all of their force was going out parallel to the ground, cutting orcs apart.
Lucinda’s flying beasts were daredevils, circling the battlefield and dropping explosive packages.
The Orcs were at a standstill. Gilly used her body and her spells to hold down half of the front line. Erik was holding down a five-meter wide area, flashing across the ground, sending the orcs up into the air and at the spikes around him.
His domain was stretched over the battlefield. He threw out healing daggers, hitting Gilly and Storbon who had just taken a hit to the arm, making him yell in pain, his hand was split, his fingers off at unnatural angles.
The blade hit him in the side. He wanted to cry out, but he knew that if he stopped he would die for sure.
He lashed out with his working hand, aiming at the orc’s head.
The orc shifted so the spear head raked his chest instead.
Storbon and the Orc backed off.
The Orc’s head snapped backwards and two others fell.
Storbon used his armpit to push his hand together with a yell.Rugrat nodded to him, reloading and shooting at other orc stragglers. He was pale, covered in blood as he shifted the grip on his spear. He gritted his teeth as his tempered body was already fusing his hand back together. He looked over the barricades ready to meet more orcs that tried to jump over.
Storbon’s spear flashed, his face cold, that boy had long ago stopped being marked by just his age.
His spear left streaks of blood around him as any Orc that came in close to him was cut down, the poison on his spear doing quick work.
George let out a roar, his body ballooned as he sent a stream of flames through the orcs, melting the very stone he stood on.
Using that opening he rushed into battle, there were now more blue flames among his red fur. His jaws bit through the Orcs’ half-Iron skin as if it were nothing. His claws sent out streaks of flame and tore them apart, he was a one wolf-wrecking crew!
Who’s a good boy! Rugrat thought with all the pride of a dog-dad.
Rugrat felt that he was on the cusp of something. Looking at it all, he couldn’t help but think about his forge and sitting at the top of Vuzgal and looking over the city with Matt.
Rugrat tossed his grenade launchers into his storage ring and pulled out his rifle, ejecting the magazine he caught it in his storage ring with a practiced ease as he slapped in a new magazine with an S on the side of it.
He had personally forged these bullets and given instructions to the formation masters engraving them. One magazine was worth ten Earth Mana stones.
There were three hundred meters between him and his targets, and there were orcs, his allies, chaos, and totems in the way.
He exhaled. Feeling the shot line up, he fired. The round cut through the battlefield. It went through a mana barrier, the outer formation and round peeling away, revealing a smaller round underneath that punched through the shaman’s head. The orc opened and closed its mouth, poison melting it from the inside.
Rugrat switched targets and fired again. The first round hit the next shaman in the chest, a necklace fired up with power and stopped the round from doing too much damage as Rugrat sent two more rounds at the shaman before he could do anything else.
The third poison round decorated their chest, causing them to cough and sputter as black blood flowed out of the round.
He saw Tian Cui appear out of the shadows. Her blades dug into a shaman’s neck and she tore them back out, the orc’s veins changed a new color.
Poison everywhere, looks like Erik’s alchemy has affected us all. Thankfully we have poison resistance!
Tian Cui worked and Rugrat covered her. Orc shamans realized something was going on and called to their Orcs. A few of them had larger Orc Guards that returned. Others had either lost their guards or they were caught up in the fight and had given themselves over to their bloodlust.
Rugrat started firing. His rounds hit the larger orcs. It took three of his poison rounds to take out the guards, but he was finishing them off quickly.
He surveyed the battlefield, seeing how the fight was going.
“Meng, Luc, get out into the fight,” Rugrat yelled, the two of them had limited targets that wouldn’t put the others in danger.
“Rog!”
“Moving!”
The two moved from their cover and grabbed their weapons; Yao Meng with his sword and shield, Lucinda with her short spear and shield.
They entered the fight quickly taking the pressure off of the others. Yuli kept controlling her elements, using the openings she found to hit the orcs, allowing her to support the Special team without putting their people at risk.
Seeing that the battle had turned against them and that their fellow shamans were getting killed, three shamans broke off from the fight, taking Orcs with them.
Rugrat opened his beast storage devices. Five full-grown panthers wearing their armor appeared on the camp walls with Rugrat.
He pointed at the fleeing shamans.
“Kill.”
The panthers let out growls and ran along the walls, their eyes turning red at the smell of blood and fighting, seeing their riders fighting they wanted to prove their strength.
Rugrat called on his mana, casting out his area of effect chains. They appeared among the groups of Orcs, focused on the shamans. The chains snapped out to try and capture others, those that were in the area were silenced and slowed.
Casting it three times left Rugrat nearly drained but the shamans were no longer able to cast their spells, running they were unable to use their totems to create barriers.
The panthers struck the outer Orcs that were by themselves, separated from the group. The panthers tore them apart, their claws and teeth only marginally less effective than George’s.
After all, it was easier to raise a beast to a higher level than it was to raise a human.
Rugrat kept focusing on the shamans in the fight. Tian Cui killed the last shaman and the buffs over the Orcs fell away. Yuli’s Poison filled air-blade attack ravaged their bodies, killing those that were weaker, others that had been hit with poisons or grave injuries were no longer recovering at their increased speeds.
Their strength dropped as well, it turned into a one-sided slaughter.
Erik’s strength had reduced as his Defender’s Might pill ran out. Still, even in his weakened state, he was deadlier than when he had started. He knew his enemy. He could predict their actions.
He stepped forward and started pushing back the orcs. He flowed through the orcs. His armor showing sparks as his fists, fingers and feet left dead in his wake.
The hits were exact. Rugrat could see that he was striking the critical points in the Orc’s bodies.
They broke the Orcs that were still trying to push through their defenses. Erik jumped up onto Gilly as George flapped his wings, shooting forward to help the panthers against the fleeing Orcs.
The rest of the Special team ran forward. Storbon slowed his pace and scanned the area before rushing to catch up with them.
The Orcs got in some good hits but Erik was there with the heals and support, so no one was gravely injured.
Rugrat looked up from his rifle, the smell of gunpowder around him, as he shifted he pushed spent casings, with a wave of his hand he pulled them into a storage ring.
“Consolidate on the camp,” Rugrat ordered. He scanned the area again and used spells to enhance his vision as he thought he saw movement.
“Yuli, how are you doing?” He asked Yuli who was sitting in a chair on one of the amplification formations.
“Tired,” she muttered as she grabbed a tube from her camelback, drinking stamina and mana regeneration potions.
Everyone had made it back to camp, all of them looking worse for wear. Erik looked like fresh death with the after-effects of his Defender’s Might and the hits he had needed to heal himself from.
His armor was dented in places and there were cuts that his natural healing was taking care of, quickly repairing.
He had to focus to make sure that his footsteps didn’t make him bounce, once he had used all of his strength, it was hard for him to limit it.
“Stamina and mana regeneration potions everyone! Storbon organize a watch. Yao Meng, Erik and I will clear out a part of the camp for us to stay in. Lucinda, Tian Cui, loot the tombstones. George and I will patrol for the first bit. Yuli and Gilly, I want to have repairing our barriers and erecting a stone wall over the burnt one,” Rugrat said.
They were all fatigued from the fighting, but they pushed onward.
“You did good,” he looked into all of their eyes, feeling as tired as they looked.
“Which always means there’s another job for us,” Erik said with a grin.
“One good act deserves another shitty job,” Rugrat winked.
They all laughed, more to bleed off the stress of the fight and get a balance than at the actual joke.
They organized themselves and got to work.
Rugrat checked George and got onto his back. Together they take off into the sky.
He looked over the battlefield. They had changed the very landscape of the Dungeon with their fight, leaving craters, cracks in the ground and melted rock, covering the place in orc tombstones. The camp walls were still smoking as Gilly blasted them with water and hit them with her tail, breaking them apart before she pulled the bottom of the logs out.
A wall started to rise from the ground as Rugrat looked over to the caves. He pulled out the horn in his grasp.
I have a feeling that I’ll be needing this sometime in the future.
He used his dungeon senses. Spreading them out, he saw dungeon cores in different areas, each of them with a different sense, combining different attribute manas, creating different areas in the dungeon.
As his senses reached through the caves, his eyes snapped up as if he could see through the very rock itself.
“Feels like it is contaminated, heavy metal, water and Earth mana in the surrounding area that it is trying to purify.” Rugrat got an eerie feeling with his senses. “I think that it’s due to a lot of bloodshed in the area around it.” Rugrat said
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Quest: From Orc Jaws
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Adventurers lost souls and villagers have been captured from the lands surrounding the Orc territory and sent deeper into Orc’s territory. Find these prisoners, free them and escape the Orc Territory.
You sense a foreboding dungeon core.
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Requirements:
Investigate the dungeon core
Free the Prisoners
Lead them out of Orc Territory
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Rewards:
Unknown
Wandering Hero Title
EXP
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“Great, I need a damn quest that doesn’t have a dungeon core involved with it,” Rugrat sighed.
“Rugrat, did you see that update to the quest?” Erik asked over the comm channel.
“Yeah, I’m coming back to camp, I just used my dungeon sense, there’s something messed up with a Dungeon core nearby.”
Notifications Every one of the camps counts as a small dungeon, do they extra rewards for takin
g the camp?
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Do you wish to:
Take command of the Camp
Destroy the Camp
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Erik put his finger on Destroy Camp and a new screen appeared.
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Destroy Stronghold: Volzig
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You will receive:
7289x Sandstone blocks
1x Common Mortal-Grade Monster Core
23x Thunder Mines
14x Teleportation Crystals
232x Thorium
1x Shield Spell Formation
534x Soul Manacles
1x Mortal-Grade Mana Cornerstone
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Do you wish to destroy this Camp?
YES/NO
==========
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39,048,136/70,000,000 EXP till you reach Level 59
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Chapter: Into the Caves
Everyone had some broken sleep in the orc camp. Dawn came quickly as they used clean spells to get rid of the sweat and grime from the previous day.
It wasn’t the same as washing with water but it was the best they could do.
Rugrat and Storbon repaired armor and gear. Lucinda monitored the area with her beasts while Yao Meng patrolled the wall, looking for signs of movement. Yuli prepared their food as Erik checked the loot from the orcs. There were orc tusks that could be used as an alchemy ingredient. Their rusted weapons that Rugrat had already appraised, all of them were worthless, they could only be melted down to be turned into something useful. Then there were the orc totems. None of them could use them but Erik kept the ones in the best condition to bring back to Alva.
At the very least they were made of rare materials and could be broken down by crafters. Then there was hide armor with such low durability that Erik had just tossed them to the side.
A collection of rare gems, ores, Earth grade mana stones, and ingredients were the main parts of the haul. The most valuable items were also the most basic: Monster cores.
The orcs didn’t have monster cores inside their bodies but the shamans and the camp leader had kept a few.