78 Chapter Seventy-Eight – Armies Advance (1/2)
The fights to get to the battles were still intense for some time, as if laying out hope that by sheer repetition the Curse might get lucky and kill me again.
Instead, the days went by as I hacked my way through the small fry, looking to get to the group fights.
Instead of waking up from death, I went into quiet meditation as Renewal came, and now I tested myself by getting further and further each day, as my level 5 Masteries kicked in one by one, more damage going on the stack, lasting longer between needing to heal, having more burst healing resources, and naturally grabbing the last of all the Stat Masteries for another +1 to all Stats.
For a while, the Fey were the favored invading forces, and then abruptly, they stopped coming, or at least being led by powerful Fey warlords. I think the score-plus of erlkings dying at my hands might have scared them off.
Or maybe I just worked my way through the whimsical dipshits who liked to bum around in Dream and live out their reaver fantasies.
But there were plenty of other forces to deal with.
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Their almost apish war cries were constant, seeking to pump themselves up for the slaughter here. But these weren't Warhammer orcs, who existed only to fight. No, these were just hyperterritorial savage bastards who delighted in the slaughter.
A disembowelment ended with a heartpoke, and a chain of over a dozen orcs fell away behind me, spraying green blood and gore in all directions as they did. Tremble had made sure to note all the tribal symbols as I acquired the language via Polyglot, and was ripping out some doom-laden tunes that had all the green-skinned brutes trembling to see me come, even the berserker chieftains.
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Six pikes exploded into flinders, and I smashed into the middle of the pike square. Their kukris out, my infighters followed me into the center of the hobgoblin press, hacking in tight quarters on the dark purple-skinned creatures. The mangy, yellow-furred urgobs, seven feet tall and wielding massive axes, rose in front of me, and I cut down the first one as its blow came down behind me, moving on to the second target. The puke-green little goblin, all ready to shiv me with his short sword, lost his head, and I Finished and Hewed him. The hobgoblin captain and his plumed helm were not happy to be the recipients of that Hew, and yellow blood and pale green brains sprayed out…
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Stand cracked a cartilaginous skull, and the sahaug went down, the undersea dweller learning the power and glory of brute blunt force, not something you saw in anything but idle blows by massive undersea dwellers.
They were calling out in Diabolic, with that guttural accent all the deepsea dwellers seemed to have, nipping out with shark maws, thrusting with the spears in hand that were the primary weapons of sea dwellers, 'cause slashing and hacking and hammering work not too well underwater.
Exploiting that total reliance on thrusting, and their lack of unfamiliarity with pure above-water combat, I hacked my way through the press in an explosion of coral spear hafts and shredded scales, ignoring the cuts, scrapes, and bites aimed my way. One of the four-armed champions of the bastards croaked out a challenge, waving his four spears, but it somehow didn't seem to have all that much force behind it as a line of shark-men fell in multiple pieces behind me, and my infighters drove in to test claws against shields and kukri.
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”Sabers and kukris, hack them tentacles! If it sticks your shield, let it go!”
The colossal bulk of a really big octopus oozed forward on its tentacles, and if it not so accidentally squashed a Deep One or four, it totally wasn't because of the hasty maneuverings of the speak line opposing the fish-faced ichthyoids marching up to make trouble for us. Sabers hacked into the tentacles it was lashing out to pluck up prey, cutting and severing, while I danced around with a monstrous lobster and the crossbowmen riding it, trying to hide my drool as I thought of hot butter and dodged the urchin-spine bolts and their deadly poison…
Well, no, not really. Stand intercepted most of them, and I pulled them out and sucked on the tips as the goggle-eyed Deep Ones stared, enjoying the poison as only a Poison Healer can, dark veins surging out like a drug addict gone hyper-powered.
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Rats, rats, rats…
Transformed men and women swarmed me with short blades dripping snacks, er, poison, hundreds or thousands of rats piling around their feet to add to the chaos.
Vials of alchemical fire came shattering down, crashing on the barrel of oil that I'd hurled out earlier, and which the damn pests had all run through. The stinking, squealing inferno that raced from clawed feet up to shredded clothing and fur didn't much care about their DR/silver…
Next to me, a sewer lid was thrown open, and the swarm that preceded a two-headed rat below came boiling out. I slammed another barrel down and trotted on as Private Gomer dropped a torch down into the mass, and flames exploded in squeaking shrieks of death…