Chapter 454 - Far Future Ch. 164 – A Taste of Axiom (1/2)

Crystalline streams of energy were flowing past us as the energy of the ones we'd slain on manifesting either dispersed or fed back to the ones behind us. Low-ranking Axiomatics were infused with the energy of their superiors and instantly promoted, a truly annoying ability. Cutting the head off of a group of Axiomatics just caused the next highest-ranking Axiomatic to self-promote to replace the one you just killed.

This meant that Axiomatics had a reverse psychology attack strategy, attacking with the powerful ones foremost, and as they died, the lessers behind instantly promoted up to replace them... and not incidentally, got access to x/use a day powers instantly filled up. You could literally end up fighting an entire army of Greater Axiomatics promoted up from Cards if you were stupid about such things... or you wanted a whole lot of Karma...

Ahem!...

They probably weren't happy to see we'd butchered so many of their own before we could manifest, but everyone was pointing in one direction, and with their multi-directional faces, the Axiomatics couldn't help but look that way and focus on that big glaring plume of a Warp Breach rising there.

That Octohedral floating there was spinning its diamond-shaped excuse for a head, palms and fingers making passes and signs as it surveyed the area and the arena, and deduced what was going on.

A fight against us was pointless entertainment for the corrupted things watching all this. The threat level of me and my girls was indiscernible, which was all kinds of alarm bells for something that should be clocking in the 15-17 range.

It had merely lost some of its minion-level creatures, as anything greater had been promoted up. The Warped would naturally slaughter all the lesser creatures as rapidly as possible to prevent promotions, so in the end it wasn't truly a great loss.

An Octohedral, two Hexagal lieutenants, four Pentals, eight Natals, and a few score Cubes. Against hundreds of us, and we'd already proven fast enough to kill over a hundred of them before they could fully manifest.

Tinkling chimes in Axiom spread out, and the creatures turned in series, 6, 5, 4, and 3's, and marched or glided after the Octohedral as it flew towards the Warp Breach.

An Axiomatic manifestion was never more than half the strength of the Warp Event which brought it here... which still might be enough to win if the incoming demons were stupid and didn't kill the low level Axiomatics first. Alas, not only had we killed many of them, this was an active breach, so demons would be pouring out into Gloom to contribute to the death and mayhem.

So, that had to stop, or we were going to die by infinite Warp spawns. Ergo, this was an exercise in intelligence. Would all the fighting forces unite enough to deal with the Warped before they couldn't be dealt with, or be swept away in turn?

”After them! Keep them Cubes alive until they get promoted and can take care of themselves! Now that they are focused on the Warp, we aren't in any danger from them.”

”We're going towards the Warp?” the drow captain protested.

”We go towards it now, or we wait until it's an ocean and comes at us then! What do you prefer?!” I shot back, as the four of us started out after the fast-moving Axiomatics.

The gladiators all grimaced. The Warp was not what they had signed up for here. Then again, they wanted to make it out alive, and these Axiomatics were going to be doing a lot of the fighting for them. This was indeed their best chance.

”Eyes on the prize, chowderheads, eyes on the prize!” Nobody made any further protests as they hurried after us as we hurried after the Axiomatics.

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The Warp wasn't that far away, we had good guides to follow, and the arena managers helpfully made the path more obvious even as we converged on it. A good Law vs Chaos conflict was something to see, after all.

”Your job is to keep the Cubes and Stars alive!” I told the gladiators. ”The girls and I will be dealing with anything stronger that wants to mess with us or them!”

And I... would be shutting down that open Warp Portal.

Lured in by the siren call of violence, death, and bloodthirst, demons were streaming through into the Gloom. I perhaps should have been totally unimpressed to see they were mostly Amoureans, as this was a spectacle they'd be able to perform for, but a lot of them came in pretty damn quick there...

They definitely were not happy to see the Axiomatics coming in, the biggest ones leading the way, instead of hanging back to watch lessers battle as was the way of the Warp.

Geometric cutting blades of force, fractal lashes in space, lines of solid force bisecting everything, and lots and lots of limbs started ripping into demons as warpfire and supernaturally strong claws and blades began to tear at those shiny metal bodies.