76 Chapter Seventy-Six – Armies Abound (1/2)

The Curse gave up.

Doc had turned the tide. Matching up with a shot of Invigoration from Tremble to overcome any fatigue, it literally could not kill me. I just hacked myself back to full Health, and my Soak went up and down as my Battle Vigor had the chance to work… which it did when Invigoration went off, something I discovered and promptly started making use of. I needed only seconds outside of combat to restart Battle Vigor now, which I could get simply by withdrawing at top speed.

Being in Battle Focus all the time basically made me even more of a killer. I gave them nothing.

The Fey had come in again with more of their kind, bolstered with tree-kin, thornfolk, shamblers, and whatnot, all led by a hamadryad queen who thought being able to make walls of thorns and animate plants while plinking with a long bow made her something special.

Yeah, she died, too.

Pure numbers finally overcame my fighters, but they made a great showing of themselves. With bardsong amplified by Tremble's Courageous Slot, they reaped a gory harvest, stacking up hills and heaps of countless Fey and plants, hacking down trees as I ripped through the invaders time after time, until finally the swarming vines and roots dragged the last of my wounded giants down, hordes of fey washed over them, and they died.

But me, I just wouldn't die.

If they swarmed me, the swarm basically exploded. Bigger stuff meant fewer attackers, and Doc was always on the job, pumping vitality into me to deal with massive bruises, fractured bones, internal injuries, cuts, scrapes, and whatnot.

Tremble was Singing in Fey, totally defiant as we carved through them non-stop, cutting and thrusting dread into them at wholesale prices. Animated trees and their tree-kin controllers went down in fire. Earthen fey dissolved in acid, burning fey and elementals froze, insects and air-type servants burned, while water and bestial fey got the lightning.

And sometimes we just hacked and slashed away, and blood flew… with none of it sticking to me, even as everything around me was covered in gore. Just to demoralize them even more, showing me untouched.

I tore my way through the spears of the Amazonian dryad honor guard of the hamadryad, not a single arrow of hers touched me, and I carved her up without batting an eye, sending her en vivus to join her erlking.

The fey all screamed and raged to the attack. Whirlwinds and Cleaves galore greeted them, building me a burning pile of the dead that raged vivic beneath me, burning away even as it rose and feeding me more Karma.

I didn't get tired, and they couldn't bring me down. I was too hard to hit, too hard to hurt, and I hit way too hard, fast, and accurately in return. Throwing a horde at me resulted in a rapidly dead horde. Magic and spells failed in my Null. Stand took care of missile fire.

And it couldn't outlast me now.

Grey fog billowed out of nowhere, and swallowed the world in concealing mist.

------

It took me a few breaths to realize I was back at my starting point, the clearing in the fog. I turned around slowly, wondering if something oversized was going to come lunging out of the mists at me, but nothing happened.

”It's Renewal again.”

Tremble's pointed voice drew attention to a wave of energy sweeping over us.

Regardless of how the Curse shifted night and day, Renewal was an absolute. The rest was just a change in illumination, an illusion, that with my Mask didn't matter to me at all.

A day had passed, and the Curse hadn't killed me. It was all starting over…