60 Chapter Sixty – Size Matters (1/2)

I had tipped over Binder/2, I had sent the 4 Skill Points to Sailor as I had Binder/1, and I had done my Crafting and mixing.

It was time to put it to the test, as a foggy evening turned to dark, and the Mask I'd Tattooed on my face lit up and let me ignore that darkness with Devilsight.

Huge forms were gathering further up the hill. The Brine Zombies were already dead, or more undead might have been crawling out from the wreckage of the Beatrice that I'd burned away.

Tremble popped his pommelstone, and I grabbed the first of the four Growth Potions in there. They'd take effect at level Eight, and then be doubled by the Girdle… but I was still restrained by my Null nature to the max of ten minutes to slaughter as many Jotuns as I could. It was a pure comparison of damage against a weaponless foe with great numbers, testing to see if I could slaughter them faster then their numbers could generate hits and bring me down.

There would be no wasted damage, no wasted overkill. Through double Swarmbane and their hordemind, they'd be eating all of it!

”You ready for this?” I asked Tremble, popping the cap and skating up the hill as the zombie giants lumbered down towards me.

”Oh, yeah, baby!” he answered, and I sucked down the Potion.

It tasted like wet moldy feet, but needs must. Even as it went down my throat, I could feel it working, ectoplasm streaming in and mass accumulating. Everything began to shrink around me as I grew in perfect proportions to double my height, four foot-something to eight foot-something… and Tremble's blade doubled in length.

From 4-32 to 8-48 base damage, and then the Holy Water configuration set up, and the acid damage on the blade became some really, really, REALLY potent holy water.

I met the first ones on the first rolling level, and the slaughter started. Their moans and bass-driven howls would have driven a normal person mad with terror.

They only told me where their most vulnerable points were, a foot or two below the things making the sounds.

I began to kill with a rolling explosive swirl of glowing, fluid light, incredibly beautiful if anyone was there to see it.

Giant zombies.

They didn't have the primal DR they'd had while alive, and they didn't have the massive Constitution bonus they'd had before, either. Just undead with more Hit Dice and Toughness, easier to kill then before. Auto two-hit kill. One hit with a crit, which meant getting up under their ribs and spraying the Holy Banewater up into their upper torso, up and into the neck and through the spine. Auto-kill on a charge.

It was fast killing, faster then anything I'd done in a long time. Their arms were long, but no longer then my reach anymore. Everything became arcs and vectors, equal parts precise calculation and free-flowing intuition through the press of massive bodies. First hits were generally limbs melted through, before sending peace up into their main body cavities.

Arcs and whorls swept through the air like the birth of new and moving flowers. In their wake, massive zombies folded, their undead flesh dissolving like melting wax, and if there was no vivic fire to clean them up, that was totally okay for now.

I started at the path side, worked my way across to the ramp side with an elegant savagery that was very cathartic. I wasn't jumping, spinning and dodging so much, I was killing them as they reached for me, and they were dying before they could hit me.

Growth Potions were going to change a few things for me, it seemed.

Up the ramp side, into the slaughtered knights, and as I worked through them, the inhabitants of the house began to shamble out to join in the fun. Even had on the same clothes, now all rotted and half-falling off to fit the theme.

They all burned and melted in an unrelenting chain of Ripostes, Sword beats Fist, Cleaves, Hews, Finishes, and Whirlwinds. I cut my way through the press, multi-ton bodies dissolving around me, unable to press me enough to restrict my movements before they died.

One hundred and eighty-four zombies died, fourteen zombie Hell Puppies. The ghouls the sailor officers, the knight commanders, and the noble lords had turned into were the only blips in the fighting, but only the Wight that used to be the Count or Duke or whatever held me back more then a few breaths, as he was the only one wielding a weapon.

I Finished one of his guards, Hewed into him, parried his life-sucking Sword into another guard, then repeated the Hew to him off a One Strike with a spinning leap that took both of their heads in the same slash.

It hadn't taken me ten minutes. I'd moved too fast, covering ground as fast as I could to max out the benefits of the Potion.

”Firephasing, all Fire, Sundering!” I snarled, and as Acid turned to Fire, I smashed it into the wooden exterior of the mansion, smashing through the façade and into the wooden siding and beams behind. Tremble whooped as fires exploded around us, and with the efficacy of dream, caught and expanded with unnatural speed.

I raced into and through the mansion, gouging the walls, floors, doors, and streams of fluid fire followed me.

I left the shattered kitchen in flames, stepped out to the back path, and walked out towards the front of the house as the two minutes dead time ticked down, and the duration of my Potion ticked away with it.

I stood there at the corner of the yard, still trashed from earlier that day, wondering what the Curse was going to come up with next.

The stacked, half-dissolved corpses of the zombies began to twitch under the blossoming fire of the burning mansion. I blinked at them.

And their heads all blew apart, exploding messily. Those who didn't have heads instead had gore erupt from their necks like a garbage disposal exploding.

All of them had rather large and impressive clusters of black and phosphorescent green tentacles suddenly sprout from their necks, flailing about wildly before settling down. The corpses began to flow back together under an invisible power.

”Vivus next time,” I said in no uncertain terms.