Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story
Page 25
“Light them up!” Hawke ordered.
Spells and arrows arced out above the tanks’ heads and struck the still-obscured targets. Tava dropped one of her patented Arrowstorms on the advancing monsters, making the mist crackle with detonations. A moment later, Leara fired one massive arrow volley of her own, easily twice the size of the first one.
Showoff, Hawke thought. Several targets vanished from the map after Leara’s multi-shot, though. Effective, though.
Fireballs, lightning bolts and other long-range spells of mass destruction dropped more monsters before they reached the edge of the fog. More magical explosions exposed the closest Chaos Titan. Unlike the giant walking mushrooms from the Emerald Wing, these were skeletal figures wrapped in white flames, much like the Chaos Duke they had fought, except bipedal. They carried long-handled mauls in one hand and what appeared to be big blocks of stone in the other.
“We’ve got incoming!” Grognard called out as said blocks came flying out of the mist, over a dozen of them. Several landed short or overshot the right flank, although some of those struck the Fae on the left flank. One hit the ground between Hawke and Digger, making the earth shudder with the impact. K-Bar rolled away just in time to avoid getting crushed by another.
Two or three struck the rear ranks, knocking down Gosto’s Earth Dome. Of those, only one found a target: Aristobulus ate a stone block. The Archmage’s Mana Shield absorbed the impact, at the cost of all his Mana; half of his Health was gone. Those boulders hit hard. Luckily, that was the end of the barrage. The remaining Titans and Maulers emerged from the fog at two hundred feet, running at inhuman speeds. The smaller creatures were deformed crablike monsters, about the size of a horse, with variable number of limbs and heads. They all had some kind of claw, spiny tentacle, or pincer, though, at least two different kinds of ‘natural’ weapon per critter. And there were a lot of them.
“Advance!” Hawke ordered the tanks and pets on the front line. You didn’t want to stand still for a charge. Better to build momentum and meet them head on.
Tava’s and Leara’s second Arrowstorms hit the rushing monsters, followed by a volley from everybody except Aristobulus, who was downing Mana and Rejuvenation potions to recover. Half of the Maulers and two Titans went down. At a hundred feet Blaze and Hawke let them have a gush of Mind-Fire. The entire first rank of the Chaos Maulers was wiped out, dozens of the creatures disintegrating between stops. They were tough but not invincible:
Chaos Maulers (Chaos Chimera)
Level 30 Elite Minions
Health 3,600 Mana 900 Endurance 3,600
As the scattered and injured survivors pressed on, Hawke used Soul Whip on one: the deep green energy tendril came flying out of his third eye and hit the monster for 2,250 Soul damage plus another 1,106 Order damage that finished it. An enhanced Death Stare as he stepped forward took out another, but a third Mauler came crashing into him. His own forward momentum and superhuman strength stopped the monster cold, despite the Mauler’s greater mass. That went against the laws of physics, but in the Realms, strength beyond certain levels allowed people to ignore such minor piffles. As the monster staggered away from his shield, he chopped off two of its tentacles in one slash and cut off its head with another, as easily as carving up a paper doll. The Tulpa Edge he put on Saturnyx let him ignore most armor and damage resistance. Three down. Hawke had time to glance to his left and right to see how the rest of the line was holding up.
To his left, Blaze grabbed a Mauler with his paws and breathed a short jet of Mind-Fire right on its face, melting it off. On his right, Digger tossed the crushed corpse of one monster and used his pincers to clip four legs off another; his exoskeleton was too tough for the lesser beasts to do more than a few hundred points of damage. Further out, K-Bar was getting to his feet and kicking a twitching corpse off of his great-sword. Gosto’s bear-shaped Nature’s Guardians were keeping three other monsters busy. Before Hawke could go help them, Rabbit and Alba struck. The Umbral Bear and the Shadow Assassin had stayed back as a tactical reserve, but they now arrived in a cloud of darkness and back-clawed and stabbed two of the monsters, killing them instantly with double-criticals. The last one didn’t last long. Not bad.
The dozen or so critters that hit the front line were the only survivors of about sixty monsters; the rest had died before getting there. But then nine Titans arrived; another twenty or so Maulers came galloping behind them.
Chaos Titan (Demi-Elemental Giant)
Level 30 Elite Lieutenant
Health 15K Mana 6K Endurance 15K
The ranged attackers concentrated on one of the behemoths, and from the way the target began to flare white, Tava had used one of her Seal of Order-inscribed arrows. That monster dropped before getting halfway to the front line. Leara took another one down with two glowing arrow shots. The others kept coming. Curses and debuffs from the gigantic Chaotic Undead washed over the front line but had no effect on the well-protected defenders.
Hawke and Blaze used their breath attack again, burning through Mana to increase their damage to levels not even the Titans could survive. Over half of the third wave of Chaos Maulers dropped under the barrage. So did two more Titans a few moments later. Five made it into melee range.
A Mauler leaped at Hawke and impaled itself on his sword just as a Titan swung its maul at him. He managed to twist his head and took the impact on his left shoulder. That was bad enough. The hundred-pound meat tenderizer crunched his armor after eating through his defensive auras – and ignored his Mana Shield. Fifteen hundred points of damage went straight into his Health, minus a hundred from his Archon’s new defense. That didn’t help much; the impact pulverized his shoulder and nearly ripped off his shield arm. He ended up on the ground, semiconscious.
Grunting, he used a Soul Whip to kill the Mauler on top of him, and sent the damaged pauldrons into his inventory before healing himself. A moment later, a powerful impact on the ground caught his attention. He turned his head and saw the corpse of the Titan who had crushed him, missing its head. Blaze used a healing spell on Hawke a moment later, despite being low on Mana.
For me too, he replied, struggling to his feet, acutely aware of the now-unprotected left shoulder. Well, he still had a layer of Fire Lizard padding, but that wasn’t much. If the Titan had managed to land a couple more shots while he was stunned, he would have been done.
And the fight wasn’t over. Three Titans and a dozen Maulers were still up and about. And large shapes came plunging down from the mist above them.
The flying monsters ignored the still-committed front line fighters and went for the rear lines.
Thirty-Six
The new arrivals were furry humanoid bats with leather wings, taloned feet, and weapon-wielding arms.
Upir (Undead Lycanthrope)
Level 30 Elite Minion
Health 2,400 Mana 1,200 Endurance 2,400
A dozen or more of the winged monsters fired off spells; bolts of Death energy rained down on the ranged Adventurers, doing little damage but causing confusion among their ranks. The rest plunged down, their long spears aimed at the least-armored members of the party. Tava shot down two of them before they struck. Luna incinerated three more at the same time. The survivors stabbed Amelia, doing no damage, but then grabbed her with their talons and began to lift her into the air. Luckily, her Whirlwind elemental rushed in and knocked her out of their grasp. She landed hard but took no damage. The spellcasting fliers were shot down moments later.
Hawke finished off the few enemies left on the ground. The attack on th
eir flank was over. None of the monsters had survived and they hadn’t inflicted any losses, other than killing a couple of summoned pets and ruining Hawke’s shoulder armor. All the tanks had taken damage but been healed up to full. He examined the full party map. Everyone seemed to be all right. The attack on the other flank had been nearly identical, and the Fae watching that side had taken care of it.
The frontal force had been reinforced by half a dozen Revenants, though, and some had lived long enough to try to drain Kastor’s tanks. They hadn’t succeeded, but there had been a couple of close calls. The Silver Fists had earned their fees. So had Sun-Ah. The Korean Eternal had fought on Hawke’s flank and had proved to be a deadly single-target and AOE spellcaster. His tiger pets had pulled back to serve as a mobile reserve, although they hadn’t been needed this time.
If the flying minions had arrived a little sooner, it might have been different. Distracting the ranged DPS team might have allowed enough melee monsters to attack the front line. Coordinating multiple groups at once wasn’t easy. The enemy could screw up, which gave Hawke some hope.
“That was merely a probing attack,” Kastor said. “We must keep going.”
They did.
* * *
The party was attacked two more times before the enemy got serious.
Each attack had a few extra monsters. Twelve Titans per group became fifteen, then seventeen. There were dozens more Maulers per flank. Thirty fliers in each Upir flock, then fifty. The only absent forces from the second and third attacks were Revenants. Each successive three-pronged charge had come twenty minutes after the previous one. The attackers timed the arrival of the Upir better, but the raid party had been ready for the flying attack and wiped out the bat-men without much trouble. If the enemy’s intention had been to wear them off, the attacks failed completely. Other than a few summoned creatures, the party took no losses and only had to drink a couple of potions to get back to full power.
Hawke made use of one of the lulls in the action to check his notifications. The experience for killing high-level monsters was adding up quite nicely. Nothing like having a higher-level leader allowing him to fight creatures out of his league, although the price was that all his Leadership experience was going to Kastor:
For slaying your foes, you have earned 72,450 Experience (10,350 diverted towards Leadership (Kastor), 10,350 diverted towards Node Mastery, 10,350 diverted toward Tier advancement).
Congratulations! You have reached level 26! You have 6 Attribute points to distribute.
New Spells Available.
You have become a Level 11 Node Master! New Node Mastery abilities available.
You have found 4 platinum, 85 gold, 9 Master Healing Potions, 7 Master Mana Potions, 3 Master Rejuvenation Potions.
Current XP/Next Level: 328,877/350,000. Leadership XP/Next Level: 103,108/200,000.
Current Node Mastery XP/Next Level: 53,649/75,000. Current Guild XP/Next Level: 13,114/20,000.
Current Tier 1 XP/Next Level: 10,350/500,000
He didn’t bother checking the Node Mastery new ability list; he could save that for later. And he didn’t claim his new level, just in case he needed a sudden infusion of Health in an emergency. Things were probably going to get worse long before they got better. The high-magic event was still miles away.
“How big is this damn place?”
“Last time I was here, we wandered around for three days and we didn’t run into the final boss,” Aristobulus said. “And there was no fog. It was just dark; even our illumination spells petered out after a few feet. And the monsters were different. Deep Trolls that liked to capture you alive and torture you to death. That was how I ended up being sent for respawn.” He shuddered at the memory. “Never wanted to go back here.”
“Trolls,” Hawke said. “Must be better than Troggs.”
“Never met any Troggs. Trolls were nasty enough. There were plenty of other monsters, too.”
Hawke shrugged. At least they had a clear destination, the gathering of magic energies that called to them like a beacon. They didn’t need to wander through the entire zone, just get there and beat the Labyrinth Master. Problem was, the enemy knew that as well. So far, they had worked within the Labyrinth’s rules, more or less: they couldn’t send every monster in the zone to attack the party at the same time, for example, just enough to make for a tough but roughly fair fight. They had coordinated monster groups better, but that was about it. On the other hand, the Revenants weren’t part of the Labyrinth. Those rules didn’t apply to them, and that worried him.
“Enemies approach,” Kastor called out. “No flanking forces; it’s a direct frontal attack. Form up!”
Hawke moved to where the floating arrow told him to go. He, Digger, and Blaze ended up near the center of a shallow ‘c’ made up of all the main tanks and front line pets of the group, with Panadel and Leara at each end of the ‘c’ and the rest of the party inside the perimeter. Soon enough, a collection of giant and small shapes appeared through the fog, and missiles and spells soared toward them.
Dozens of enemy spells erupted from inside the fog and rained down among the party. They weren’t very powerful, but there were a lot of them. And the big shapes kept moving forward. About twenty of them were Chaos Titans, but there were over fifty creatures that were actually bigger. Hawke felt a chill when he recognized them. He had last seen them fighting on his side against the Nerf Herders:
Lord of Bones (Undead)
Level 30 Elite Aberration
Health 21K Mana 15K Endurance n/a
The disgusting collections of bones were bigger than the ones Hawke had encountered in the Common Realm: these Undead were a good twenty feet tall and much wider than the Chaos Titans mixed in among them. Fireballs, lightning bolts and arrows bounced off the walking mounds of mismatched skeletons, inflicting minimum damage. Mass Blast Undead did better, but even then it took multiple hits to bring them down.
Sixty or seventy Maulers led the way, but there were other enemies right behind them. Troggs. They looked just like the Warriors and Shamans from Nur-Gamash, and they were there hundreds of them.
Those aren’t Labyrinth monsters, Hawke realized. They must have been gated in. Their only limit is how many they can bring over.
“We’ve got flanking forces moving in!” Aristobulus warned them; his scrying abilities let him see further into the fog than anybody else. “Twenty Titans and a hundred Maulers on each side! More fliers coming in!”
“Off-tanks, to the flanks,” Kastor ordered. “Summoners, bring in more pets to reinforce them!”
The group shifted its lines to meet the new threat as Elementals and other minions appeared to join the ranks. Hawke summoned two of his pets – a Living Shadow and a tanking Nature’s Guardian – to bolster the defensive line. More enemy spells continued to hit the raiding party. Stone blocks flung by the Chaos Titans also arrived, and these were new and improved versions, as Hawke found out when one landed a few feet in front of him and exploded like an artillery shell. He was knocked off his feet, unhurt but dazed for a few seconds. Trogg spells and curses hit him, five or six in rapid-succession; none of them injured him but the impacts dazzled him a bit.
As he got back on his feet, he saw Blaze opening up with his breath attack. Maulers and Troggs were only a few dozen feet away, and the Lords of Bones and Chaos Titans were catching up. More explosions went off behind him, but other than casting his Healing Wave on automatic (which with his new ring restored 375 Health per pulse), there was nothing he could do for them. He spent more Mana blasting the monsters. Maulers and Trogg Warriors rushed forward, while their spell casters hunkered behind the Lords of Bones and launched curses and death bolts that peppered the entire formation.
Things didn’t look good.
Thirty-Seven
Hawke dropped an Order- and Celestial-enhanced Mass Blast Undead on the attackers and used Restore Order to cleanse anyone without sixty feet of any lingering Chaos effects. Blaze’s Mind-Fire was pete
ring out; his Mana was running low and he had used up all four potions in his Dispenser. A couple of other tanks had short-ranged attacks, which they used to thin out the attackers before closing into melee.
A near-dead Mauler jumped at Hawke; he cut it down without slowing down, Soul Whipped a Trogg Warrior out of his way, and turned toward the closest Lord of Bones. Time to cheat. As the giant monster reached for him with a pair of mantis-like slashing limbs, he used Twilight Step to backstab it before dropping Consecrated Ground and firing off another Mass Blast Undead before leaping off the crumbling monster and chopping down another Trogg. It wasn’t the normal way to tank, but it got every nearby monster’s attention, allowing the other tanks to hit them with impunity. The Lord of Bones chased him around before the cumulative damage caused it to fall to pieces. Along the way, he beheaded a Trogg Shaman and fired off another Mass Blast Undead, this one aimed at group of spell-casting Upirs above the rear ranks of the party. Dozens of creatures targeted him, but his defenses kept him in one piece.
He fought back to the line, injuring or destroying another handful of monsters along the way. He spotted a couple of Shamans scrambling away from a downed Lord of Bones and wiped them out with Burning Light. His Mana was almost down to zero, both from casting and the damage he was taking; a dispensed Master Mana Potion fixed that.
The battle went on. Most of the regular Labyrinth creatures were wiped out in the first few minutes but the Troggs and Lords of Bones were tougher and more numerous. Hawke lost track of time. The world narrowed down to the next spell to cast, the next swinging bone scythe to avoid, the next snarling monster to slice and dice. He took another Mana potion and realized his Dispensary was empty, despite his having no memory of drinking more than two.