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Loot:
1x Common Earth Grade Monster Core
2x Grand Earth Grade Monster Core
1x Greater Earth Grade Monster Core
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Translated into experience, they were worth 33,000,000 Experience.
“At one time that might have been enough to power level us from one realm to the next, now it's barely a third of what I need to increase one level,” Erik looked at his experience bar.
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39,048,136/70,000,000 EXP till you reach Level 59
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“With how slow it is to level I’m starting to wonder if I should start to use monster cores to increase my level. Considering the massive amount of experience required, it's no wonder that the people of the Ten Realms need extended lifetimes to become stronger.”
Erik stopped checking the loot in his storage ring and stretched. His armor was one of the sets that needed to get buffed out. The solid plates were strong, but the orcs had all been close to level sixty, with Bodies like Stone, a higher constitution compared to humans, racial buff for working together in a group that boosted their stats by forty percent and then the damn shamans buffing them up from the rear.
Erik’s body was tight from the fighting. The bruises and internal damage he’d dealt with already.
He grabbed his rifle and walked over to where Rugrat and Storbon were working.
“How does the loot look?” Rugrat asked he had pulled out his mobile forge and was working on people’s gear.
“Most of it is going to need to be pulled apart. Should be enough to get a few rounds at the bar when we get back,” Erik said dropping into a squat with his rifle over his legs.
“How’s my armor?”
“Dented, they can hit like a damn transport truck,” Rugrat said as he used his domain, creating flames around the armor plate and hammering it back into form.
“Most of their weapons are blunt. They can stagger you easily with a hit, or send you flying,” Storbon said. “Have to watch out for internal injuries and broken bones.”
Erik grunted in agreement as Storbon sharpened Tian Cui’s blades. With their tough bodies, just hitting the orcs degraded the condition of their weapons.
Storbon continued talking.
“Good thing that all of us have tempered our bodies to Iron. Well, Yuli is at Body like Stone but she should be in the rear of any large fight we get into.”
“It's going to get harder before it gets easier. The Orcs know that we’re here. When they group together and have their shamans they’re a pain in the ass to kill. Going into the caves we’re going to lose our defensive position. We’ll be fighting them head-on. Means we’ll probably be facing just the orc fighters while the shamans hide in the rear. They can circle around us and hit us from behind,” Rugrat said darkly, looking at them both and then inspecting the armor plate he was working on.
“As we go we could collapse the secondary tunnels that lead into our path. Give us a way to control the battlefield, preventing flanking and allowing for retreat if required,” Erik said.
“Could work,” Rugrat said.
“I’m scared that it could all come down on us if we do that,” Storbon said.
“Gilly and I should be able to do it. If we think that it might all collapse, we’ll just set up a bunch of walls that the orcs would need to break through?” Rugrat threw out the option.
“I’d feel safer with that,” Storbon conceded, looking directly at Rugrat. “With Erik and I up at the front, I’d feel good if you were in command again. Have Yuli as your second. Lucinda won’t be able to use her beasts much in close-quarters fight, but she can scout out the caves before we start moving.”
“Alright, let’s get her started then.”
Lucinda’s beasts headed out down the tunnels. The team took breaks to eat and relax. Rugrat and Storbon finished working on the armor.
It was midday when Lucinda’s scouts had gone as far as they could and they picked out a route.
They gathered the formations, unused mines and explosives before they mounted up.
The caves were foreboding and darker than the cavern that the camp had been in.
Erik looked at the ruined walls of the camp and used his night vision spell. The cave brightened as he stepped forward. Lucinda was on his right, Storbon was on his left. Rugrat and Yuli were behind them with Tian Cui and Yao Meng taking up the rear guard.
“Let’s start the grind,” Yao Meng said.
They had their rifles ready as they walked forward, scanning the area. They destroyed the entrances to the tunnel they were in, following one of the routes that Lucinda’’s scouts had checked out.
Erik opened and closed his hands around his rifle, feeling the pressure of it, trying to remain as alert as possible.
Finally, the tunnel curved and then opened up, getting brighter.
Erik slowed down as they got to the mouth of the tunnel, taking a knee with Lucinda and Storbon as they surveyed the cavern in front of them.
It looked to be a farm to raise the big bulky hogs the orcs rode on.
There were several plots of mud where the hogs lived, their snouts to the ground, trying to search out something to eat.
Some had Orcs whipping them or riding them, breaking them in. Scarred older looking hogs shoved one another out of the way. Fights broke out among squeals and snorts of the fighters.
A group of large hide crafted tents in the middle of the muddy pens.
Orcs milled around the tents and headed off into the caves in groups or returned from the caves.
There had to be close to a hundred orcs and nearly twice that number in hogs, maybe more.
All of them are as strong as the second group that attacked us, probably between level Fifty-Seven and Sixty.
He saw the same bone and sinew carriages outside the village. They were all emptied of people. One hog attacked another with its tusks. The hog let out a pained noise and whipped its head to the side.
The orcs, hearing the commotion, moved over to see the hogs fighting, raising their weapons in excitement.
“Pull back,” Erik said over the comms. Once they were back in the cover of the tunnels, he started to relay everything to the rest of the team.
“Alright, everyone get set up,” Rugrat said once they were forty or so yards back from the entrance to the open area.
Gilly raised spiked walls to guide the attackers through. Yuli and Rugrat tossed down amplification formations. Erik created trenches through his magic behind the walls, creating firing positions and a secondary line that was more suited to hand-to-hand combat.
Gilly created raised platforms for Yao Meng, Tian Cui, Yuli, and Rugrat to see the battlefield from and be above the three front-liners so they could shoot and used ranged attacks without hitting them.
They were almost done when Lucinda’s voice sent a chill through all of their bodies.
“There’s a patrol coming.”
“Yuli, do you think that you could target the village and the pens?” Rugrat asked as everyone moved to their positions.
Yuli grimaced and looked at the tunnel and at the wall between them and the tent village.
“I can try.”
“Good enough for me, fire it up,” Rugrat said.
Erik was in one of the trenches, his rifle fitted with a drum magazine as the noises of the orc patrol grew louder.
He could feel the surrounding mana gathering around Yuli as she prepared her spell. Without a line of sight, she would have to rely on her long-distance artillery training to guesstimate the ranges she was working at and hit the enemy village.
From that mana she’s pulling in, looks like she’s aiming to just hit them with something big.
Erik pushed those errant thoughts from his head as the patrol group turned the corner of the tunnel.
The orcs made some confused noises, those in front not knowing why the tunnel had changed.
“Open
fire!” Rugrat said.
Erik fired into the foremost orc, tracers cut through the tunnel, hammering the orcs and dropping them. Smelling blood, the orcs in the rear charged forwards.
The shaman started to cast his spell when a round found his head and he collapsed backward, the spell dying with him.
The orcs’ racial buff affected them but they had lost half of their ten orc group before they charged, not one of them made it to the first line of defenses.
Erik changed magazines, checking the magazines he had laid out along the trench’s wall, making sure that they were all still in reach.
“Damn,” Erik said, feeling the fire mana channeled into the cavern next to them, the mana built up quickly, he felt small impacts hitting the ground and then larger ones that made the tunnel they were in, shake and drop dust from above.
“Shift fire away from us and to the north,” Lucinda said, she was using one of her beasts she’d snuck into the cavern to alter Yuli’s attack.
“Got some orcs coming this way!”
Orcs rounded the corner. They were in a panic, trying to escape the cavern. Rifles fired and added more tombstones to the ground.
***
Lucinda watched armageddon. Yuli had called down Meteor rain on the village. Meteors from the size of a fist to a cart appeared from the massive magical circle above, streaming smoke and fire they crashed into the ground, exploding into superheated rock and magma.
The first part of the attack tore through a pen of hogs with her call out the attack carpeted the village, tearing it apart, turning it into a crater-filled fire.
The orcs had turned toward the tunnel when they had first opened fire but now they were running in panic. Their fear of fire deep in their bones as they forgot about the first sounds of an attack.
“The Orcs are running in all directions, some of the tunnels have collapsed,” she relayed to the rest of her team. “There are more orc fighters rushing into the cavern from other places. Get ready, some are coming our way!”
Another orc team ran into their tunnel.
Lucinda didn’t need to aim down her sights, using the line of tracers to cut through the charging orcs.
Tian Cui used a spell scroll that shot Iron spears down the tunnel, piercing the orcs and pinning a number of them to the wall, some of them were strong enough that it took them a few seconds to succumb to their wounds.
Yuli’s attack was fading as one of the orcs was able to raise a horn to their mouth.
Beour-mphf
The deep bassy horn was cut off with Rugrat’s shot.
“Shit, it looks like that got their attention!” Lucinda said.
Horns were calling out to one another, pulling in more groups, the orcs, enraged at the destruction of their village started to rush towards the tunnel.
Lucinda checked her connection to her controlled beast.
“Looks like they figured out where we are. They’re all piling towards us, must be three more groups the same size!”
“Looks like they’re pissed at your redecorating,Yuli!” Tian Cui said.
Lucinda grinned despite the situation as Orcs piled into the tunnel.
The shamans of this group were thinking ahead, buffing their Orcs early, magical designs covering their bodies.
Lucinda squeezed her trigger, sending controlled and measured bursts into the orcs that were enough to get through their enhanced bodies and kill them.
A roar shook the tunnel as George stepped forward, sending out a pillar of flames that crashed with the Orcs like a force of nature. It burnt through Orcs, turning them to ash.
Gilly let out a shrill shriek as stones shot out of the ground and she smacked them with her tail, they shattered, turning into shrapnel that cleared a path through the Orcs.
“Ranged, focus on the shamans and the leaders with the horns. Front-liners, just control them as best as you can. Yuli, drop area of effect spells near the entrance to the tunnel on Lucinda’s command. Thin out their numbers.” Rugrat ordered.
Unhallowed Ground appeared under the Orcs’ feet. Erik was drinking mana potion from his camelbak, still shooting.
“Reloading!” Lucinda yelled as she ducked and moved from her first firing position. She ejected the magazine, slapping in a new one and hit the bolt catch she got back up into position.
“Back in!” She yelled as the first rounds sailed down at the Orcs.
She saw several multi-colored areas no more than two feet wide, but if anything stepped into these areas then blades of mana formed and attacked with abandon.
It looked like Rugrat had figured out a way to create a domain like area of effect spell.
The Unhallowed Ground kept on increasing in size until it covered most of the tunnel.
Orcs were starting to press forward. There were just too many of them and their bodies were too strong to be stopped with less than an extended burst of rounds or powerful spells.
“Will you just fucking die already!” Tian Cui yelled.
Yuli gathered her mana again and cast chain lightning, it jumped between the orcs creating a sea of lightning that hurt to look at. Those further back let out roars as they broke free of the control spell and pushed forward. The threw their fellow orcs to the side, slowing their progress.
The Special team recovered their sight, cutting down the orcs that were still standing.
“Shaman!” Yao Meng yelled. A shiver ran through Lucinda, feeling the perverse magic of the shaman drawing in the power of the land, the totem on their back glowed, making everything else dimmer as it shot out a blinding beam across the tunnel.
Gilly shot out a beam of water that hit the beams and smashed through it, the point of impact exploded outward. Leaving a crater on the ceiling and the floor rippling through the tunnel as it tore through orcs. The beam smashed into the shaman’s barrier.
His totem flared with power growing brighter smoke started to rise as the shaman was pouring out everything he had. Smoke started to rise from the totem Gilly’s beam didn’t dim as the barrier gave way, the totem exploded as Gilly’s beam cut through where the shaman had been.
Rock fell from the ceiling and collapsed in places, the reinforced area that the team was occupying wasn’t affected as badly though Lucinda was wondering if the tunnel hadn’t partially collapsed behind them.
The orcs made another push forward, their lines getting cut down but they made it further each time.
The Unhallowed Ground had increased in strength, reaping lives.
“Prepare to fall back,” Rugrat said as the tide of orcs was getting ever closer, filling up the gaps in their lines with new bodies.
“Fall back!”
“Moving!” Lucinda waved her hand, gathering her magazines as she ran through the trench and then up to the second line. She kneeled behind a stone firing position and started firing on the orcs.
“Covering!” She and Storbon yelled.
Erik turned and ran. Everyone was firing and attacking over him, dropping orcs.
“Damn these buffs make them a pain in the ass,” Lucinda said to herself and quickly checked her scouts in the village area.
More groups were coming over, but there weren’t as many of them now.
“Yuli, be ready to call down that spell on my mark,” Lucinda said.
“It’ll take four seconds to channel,” Yuli yelled.
“I can work with that!” Lucinda yelled.
“Watch the left!” Yao Meng yelled. George let out a blast of fire that hit a group of orcs that had made it to the trap formations, the orcs were blasted backwards.
Gilly yelled and the rocks around the entering orcs turned into spears and shot out, striking them. The ground started to transform, turning into a slurry that cut down the orcs running speed.
Another shaman got a clear line of sight and fired at the defensive position. It hit their mana barrier but the shockwaves made the tunnel shake again, causing it to collapse in more places.
“If they keep going like that
they’re going to block us in,” Erik yelled.
“Tell me something I don’t know!” Rugrat yelled back.
Formations went off as the orcs reached the traps.
Magic flared to life, tearing through the orcs while the team shifted their attacks trying to kill as many orcs as possible.
Lucinda smacked the bolt catch, braced and held down the trigger.
With her strength even the high calibre automatic rifle was rock steady.
She followed the lines of spells that covered the rounds, using them like tracers as she fired into the groups of orcs until her targets stopped moving. There was no time for controlled bursts.
“Reloading!”
She ducked down and moved from her position as she ejected the magazine, tossing it into her dump pouch, the storage pouch made the empty magazine disappear as her hand flashed, a fresh drum mag appearing. She slapped it into place , hitting the bolt catch again and popping up again.
Tracers cut into orcs, spraying blood on the ground. Formations activated magic that annihilated those within its area of effect. Unhallowed Ground and Rugrat’s twin blades now had bodies piled around them as Gilly and George fired out their elemental attacks and Yuli joined in.
Tian Cui and Yao Meng used spell scrolls at the same time.
“We need to push forward or we’re going to get buried,” Rugrat yelled.
Lucinda’s rounds cut down one orc as she switched targets and fired. Her scout pulled on her attention as the rounds thudded into the orc, the force stopping their forward momentum before a tombstone appeared and they were tossed to the side, an orc behind them charging forward wielding rusted axes.
Lucinda looked at her scout.
“Yuli, call it now,” Lucinda said as the reinforcements were making it to the tunnel.
“Cui, Meng, buff the front-liners. We’re going to push out as soon as Yuli’s attack clears us a way,” Rugrat yelled.
Lucinda gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to leave the protection of the defenses, but if they stayed they’d get buried. Their fight had already partially destroyed the tunnel around them.
She took a quick glance back.
Nowhere to go but forward.
The rear was blocked with rocks and debris.
Sixth Realm Page 37
