Everything is going smoothly, even with Gorger just rampaging around his area and letting a high amount of monsters pass him by, that was somewhat expected. Some undead have died and I've seen how the Respawn thingy works.
Whenever one of them ‘dies’ I can basically feel them in my core, almost like a shadow. They are slowly being… reconstructed I guess? Inside of me, well, inside my core. It will take a while for them to pop out, most who have died are under Level 20 or so and they will take about four to six days. One interesting aspect is that some died and were respawned almost immediately, those were the undead that my minions raised from the enemy, most of them are different breeds of apes that the Lizard dungeon keeps spewing at me.
Most of them are pretty normal apes with some kind of vegetation growing on their fur, there are some primates that are… unusual though.
I watch through Bob’s eyes as he lifts a [Bat Kong] up in the air, he flexes his arms and folds the black-blue furred gorilla like an old mattress, right before ripping a chunk of its body with his powerful fangs. He relishes the small amount of vampiric blood amidst the torrent of ape blood.
The ‘vampire’ part of the blood is very thin, which can be seen from the ape’s appearance.
It mostly looks like a gorilla with funny coloration, it has long bat ears and even bat fangs, wings too, the wings are about 30 cm long or so, meaning they look more like a costume piece than anything else.
Overall pretty underwhelming, however, one good thing about them is that they transform into ghouls with enough death mana, I’m pretty sure the reason is that Bob tends to drink them dry.
Everything is going well, which is why I am a little nervous. My horde is advancing faster and faster now, coming ever closer to the entrance to the Lizard’s cave. I doubt it is planning on rolling over and waiting for death so I assume it is going to try something soon.
My flying skulls spot movement coming from the cave opening, a large, very large, lifeform is coming out. A single spray of fire is launched from the ground, flying up towards my flying undead.
They all dodge away, I warn all my horde about this new enemy.
The flying skulls have better life-vision than most of my undead, but even they are somewhat confused about what they are seeing. Through the trees they are able to see the monster better, even with its attacking attempts on them.
The monster is a very large mass of… arms? It is at least 25 meters long and should be about 5 or 6 meters tall. The arms all move erratically dragging the beast through the forest and right into my undead.
Some of the skulls can also see that it is absolutely charged with mana.
I tell the closest undead to retreat.
Too late.
I’m not sure how the thing can see, no eyes can be seen, only endless arms, looking closer they seem to be… amphibian arms?
One of these arms stops spasming out and points in the general direction of the undead.
A single white hot point of flame appears on the tip of its finger, the arm shrivels looking like a corpse that was left out in the sun, through the skulls I can see the mana sweat out in cascades from the arm, the fireball literally explodes in size as it flies towards my undead.
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It hits a large tree before it can arrive at them and explodes, the top of the tree flies upwards in an arch while the rest splinters into burnt wood.
I tell them to hurry up and start to send commands to my army.
The monster points again, with another arm, I take a good look at the hundred arms this thing has. The arm shrivels again and another fireball is cast, destroying another tree and setting the surroundings on fire. Then I guess the thing decided that it had showed off enough, because seven of the thing’s hands point and cast fireballs in multiple directions.
And then it does it again.
I activate the array at the mouth of my cave and feel the drain of necrotic mana, the array pulls the mana and spews it into the Greenhouse, I tell the flying skulls to start directing it.
The forest around the monster is turning into a flaming clearing, which is very bad, approaching this thing when it has a good line of sight is not going to be pleasant. The monster starts to shoot the fireballs up, they sail the air and fall in an arch, suspiciously close to where a large amount of my undead are.
I can feel some kind of skill being used, but the aura of the Lizard dungeon is blocking me.
Kaiman and Jack start throwing attacks at it. The creature simply points at the projectiles and shoots a fireball at them, stopping most of their momentum.
The cloud of death from my dungeon approaches from the air, the skulls direct it towards the thing.
Just as the cloud of necrotic energy is falling I notice something.
The arms, the arms that were shriveled, some of them are changing back, they are starting to look healthy again, even to the life-sight of my undead.
The black cloud falls and engulfs the many-armed monster, it trashes around, moving even more erratically than before. I can see life being drained from it.
Then it explodes. Literally, one moment the beast was in the middle of the cloud, the other it was soaring through the air, completely on fire, bleeding and leaving a trail of destroyed arms.
This… risky maneuver was clearly calculated though, it is flying directly towards a large skeletal horde, the one Merlin is leading.
Midair the thing shoots fireballs towards them, Merlin’s group cannot dodge in time, so instead they shoot back.
A riot of magic colors meet in between, the bright yellow and flaming orange battling against the purples of the undead. For a single second it works, then the fireballs breakthrough, any skeleton caught dead on is completely destroyed, anything caught in the radius of the blast is scattered like broken glass. Even the ground is not spared, plumes of dust rising as quickly as the fireballs fall.
Merlin is lucky, mostly being caught by the end of the shockwaves,he falls in a hole created by a fireball and is quickly covered in dust.
His crystal skin is broken, more powder than armor now, the creature hits the ground in a wet splat, a dozen of arms flying in all directions and blood going upwards as it rolls on the ground.
The thing is in a wretched state, it lost so much meat that it is now half as long as it was before, barely breaking through 10 meters long. Even then, I can see the creature regenerating, its arms slowly growing back.
The thing rolls on the ground, Merlin leaps from his whole and runs towards it. Concentration rolling out of him in waves, his crystal pulsating and moving as if alive. The creature is alive, but not moving, eerily still for a being that was berserking around a few seconds ago.
The crystal powder around Merlin moves, his newly remade core cracks, mana pours out of his bones faster than ever before. They all combine into a 3 meters long curved black blade with a purple crystal edge shining brightly. The blade moves on its own, it cuts the monster taking a large chunk out of it, cutting it clean through.
The beast awakes and trashes around, its cut part trashing away from it, as if it has a mind of its own.
"Aaa Amar." Merlin groans, he moves his arms as if swinging a blade, and the black sword moves as if being wielded by his hands. It cuts another chunk out of the creature.
His eyes shine a deep mysterious purple, the center of it shining a bright blinding white.
He attacks again.
The blade hits the creature and it breaks, the crystal cracks and shatters, the black blade transforms into smoke. Ten hands take aim at Merlin, ten fireballs hit him dead center in his chest.
Whenever the other undead died it felt like a coin being dropped into a well, that well being me. Merlin ‘fell’ on me like the entire architecture of the well broke down into its waters. I notice that Merlin ‘dropped’ a single amethyst eye.
THREE WEEKS?!
500 hours, about three weeks, that’s how long it will take for him to respawn. Fuck.
I changed my view back to the battlefield. The monster, the many-armed-abomination, was a salamander. Looking at it now, as it runs away from the rest of my pursuing army, I can see that it somehow grows arms on its very long tail.
Just as Kaiman is getting close to the amphibian a large earth snake appears from the ground and gobbles the Salamander, right before disappearing into the ground again. However, the Salamander has truly insane levels of life, my undead are actually able to see it traveling under the ground.
The monster goes straight back to its cave, and my army follows close. Most of it, I leave a few behind just in case another surprise pops up.
I take a deep breath… mentally. Merlin’s shadow presence calms me, it’s a little sad I can’t interact with him…
He is going to be so pissed when he wakes up and realizes he missed three weeks of classes.