74 Chapter Seventy-Four – Death of an Erlking (1/2)

Wooden sword. Treated with Ironwood, strong as steel. Made of heavy oak for weight, then auto-treated with Greater Magic Weapon at 20, for a pithy +V enhancement bonus, combined with the same effect on his crafted oak-leaf scale armor, looking resplendent and lovingly carved with forest scenes, leaves… and I deliberately did not count the nymphs, but I was pretty sure there was one for each of the embedded stones.

Right.

”Die!” he shouted at me, pointing his finger.

Something necroic faded away against my Null, and I smirked at him, only half-turning as I continued my execution of his centaur troops. A One-Two went off from the hellpuppies as they mocked him back.

He did not look happy at being ignored like that, and raised his hand. The ground shook, and for a moment it looked like thorns and grasses might be boring out, but that didn't happen, either.

What part of Interdicting not allowing Summons of any sort did he not understand?, I thought to myself, as I removed a centaur's head, gutted another, and ended the blow in a third who had been dragged into range by Shirley's jaws on his foreleg.

I wasn't going to leave my dogs to fight the centaurs alone; they were way outnumbered and the centaurs were at least Twelves themselves. The hellpups tore the throat out of one that Fido hurled to the ground, so quick and automatic I was impressed despite myself. Savage Them was a nice trick with the Tripping Feats leveraging it so much.

I was sincerely hoping that bird-boy would come on in to get Finish-Hew'd, but he instead opted to turn his attention on my fighting troops, lifting his hands to unleash something.

Amused at his cheek, I ended my attack combo with a Banestar into his side, sending him stumbling off and spoiling whatever he was about to do.

”You should pay attention to who your opponents are!” I called back to him with a laugh, as he turned to stare at me. His hand went to his side, where armor was rent and there was blood… and the wound wasn't healing.

Duh, like I was going to let him skirmish me and endlessly heal away the damage. Blooding took care of that rather nicely.

He pointed, and a huge murder of crows descended upon me in cawing zeal to kill.

Banefire ripped through whole swathes of them, tearing them out of the sky in flurries of feathers that covered everything. Shredded bird bodies sprayed black feathers everywhere, obscuring vision.

His sword came sneaking in through it, looking for a target… and found Shirley wasn't there.

As if killing my frostpup would slow me down. I was riding her to keep her alive and that breath weapon available, not because I was that much better a fighter mounted. In all honesty, I could move faster than either hellpup…

Being the conscientious commander that I was, I totally ignored the feather cloud and proceeded to slaughter the last of the vision-obscured centaurs, who couldn't see enough to get away and who were basically compelled to try and kill me and couldn't run away.

His archer line dead, I slid off Shirley and dove back into the feathers for the advancing Erlking, who I had painted in my Tremblesense perfectly. I danced over centaur corpses as the hellpups ran together back towards the main fight, ready to add some more One-Two's to the mix.

Erlkings weren't all that strong by default, but naturally this one was double-sized, so every bit as strong as me with my Girdle. That didn't mean much, as Giant Power meant my Might was just as high as his. The first time our swords met, he didn't even push me back, despite being literally three times as tall as me.

He did have reach, but without his default temporal acceleration working in my Interdiction, he definitely didn't have a speed advantage, and his wings didn't do anything other then give him a jumping bonus now, and a pretty small one given how small they were relative to his Mass.

Tremble and his oaken sword met once, Stand smacked it aside with surprising force, I slid Tremble's tip up the erlking's arm, and he barely jerked his head back in time to not lose an eye.

He hopped back, and I snickered at him as his wings beat once, blowing away the feathers around us. He was staring at me in shock, and Tremble was in Fey-Bane mode, pulsing in time to Stand's drum beat, obviously ready to carve him up and release him from this life.