Jonathan sent his Void energy to his hands, purposefully using the invisible version. Purple energy was not simply a hallmark of the Void, at least he hoped not, but it would be hard to come up with an explanation on the spot for the rare energy type.
Instead, he launched himself forwards, followed by the others. For once, he was fighting alongside people at his level of power, and he did not need to hold back in regards to physical might.
Branth and Alastair matched his pace, setting their eyes upon the rat lumbering across the ground. With a shared moment of clarity, the three men locked onto a large wound across the creature’s snout, and headed for it. The monster was Tier 3, and its miasma of rot affected the landscape around it, turning the swap into a slurry of toxic pathogens.
Jonathan leaped at the last moment, surrounding himself with an invisible mantle of elemental energy. As the disease tried to infiltrate his defenses, it was burned away, rendered completely harmless. Branth and Alastair were not as lucky, and they winced as blisters and boils formed on their skin from the concentrated elemental energy. With a cry, Jonathan brought his fist down towards the monster’s wound, sending a charge of the Void into it. His strength, coupled with his elemental energy, ensured maximum damage.
There was a detonation of purple light and the rat’s head exploded into shards of bone and fragments of rotting flesh. Jonathan flipped backwards, and away from the mess.
Behind him, the battle raged on, but the danger had dropped significantly with the death of the rodent alpha.
One of the mercenary commanders rose up into the air on wings of striated darkness, his form surrounded by shadow. A circle of power formed in the air above him, and blades of stygian blackness shot down from the sky. Where they hit, explosions of inky darkness shot outwards, passing through the fighters without any harm, but erasing the beasts from existence. One moment they were there, the next, they were gone.
Jonathan raised an eyebrow at the display of power, which was especially impressive given the natural durability of the world around them. He could have pulled off something like that in the Ash Heaps with his Maw of the Void skill, but it would have been significantly harder here.
Quite a few people had small injuries, mainly the mages, but nobody had died, and the mood was quite good overall. Jonathan and his companions were the furthest out, so by the time they had returned to the position of the commanders, they were already speaking.
“Great showing overall. You all clearly have taken to your teams well, and were able to fight against a numerically superior force without any sort of friendly fire. Yes, those beasts were trivially weak, but in such numbers, it would have been hard to spot allies among the morass,” Captain Ralond intoned, sounding a bit less reserved than normal.
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“In addition, we saw a few of your number go above and beyond, taking the fight to the horde commander. It is intriguing to see the depths of power that some of our more outwardly unimpressive members possess,” the man who had summoned the circle of darkness said, his eyes seeming to pierce the distance between himself and Jonathan. The message was clear. If he held back in a serious fight, he would be in trouble.
“Anyway,” Captain Ralond interjected, “we received our first commission. One of the local lords has requested our help in fending off a swarm of Muck Munchers.”
“Muck Munchers?” Jonathan whispered to Alastair, barely containing the incredulity in his voice.
“When there are so many monsters in this world, people tend to come up with unimaginative names for them.”
“I can see that some of you find this amusing, but I assure you, the name of these monsters is far less assuming than their actual power. They are vast, bloated amphibians that lurk beneath the ooze of Mire, waiting for prey to walk above them. Most are low Tier 3, but if a swarm has formed, then there must be at least a mid Tier 3 leader,” Captain Ralond said, a bit frostily.
Without another word, she turned on her heel, and resumed marching. Jonathan wondered how exactly she had received the commission, but chalked it up to magic. She probably had some sort of communication device. If he could get his hands on one of those, it would be very useful.
The march continued across the seemingly endless plain of fetid filth, with Jonathan gaining four levels along the way. The monsters were not exactly up to his standard, especially with the support of a full company of Tier 3s, but there were a lot of them. He had directed half of his immense pool of free stat points into Constitution and Dexterity, bringing them up to speed with Strength. He had many bonuses to his durability already, which meant that he could let Resilience drag behind a bit.
His body was filled with power, and he found it hard to remain in step with the slower pace of the others. Although he was only level 214, he had the stats of someone in the mid Tier 3 range.
By the time they neared their destination, about three days of marching later, Jonathan was able to make out the Muck Munchers from here. Despite their name, they were not something to be trifled with. Fifty foot long toads oozing toxins into the air around them, they launched their tongues out like missiles, cracking the stone of the fortress they besieged. A barrage of projectiles rose up over the city walls, and dozens of monster corpses littered the ground, but there were hundreds more. Anyone who left the safety of the city to fight would be quickly overwhelmed by the horde, even if they were relatively high level.
A ragged cheer rose up from the defenders of the city as they saw the company near, and the giant toads turned their bulbous heads in a display of ponderous stupidity, leaving themselves open to attack. Jonathan gathered up the Void in his right hand, before launching a blast of purple energy across the divide. His attack streaked through the air, along with dozens more as the mages entered the fray. It landed with bone shattering force in the midst of the horde, blasting apart monsters. While it would have taken out most creatures from the Ash Heaps, these beasts were far more durable, and none of them died from his attack.