“There’s something over there. I can’t make it out through the smoke, but I can hear footsteps. Something big, and a lot of smaller figures,” Edgar said.
“Well, it’s been long enough,” Jonathan replied. “I need to get to the peak of the rank before fighting Slothari. At least level 290.”
“If you need to do that, then we definitely do,” Edgar replied. “I have a feeling that it’s only going to get worse from here. We’ve only faced three elites so far, that rapier wielder, the archer I killed and the lightning mage. There’s probably dozens more.”
“They will all die before long,” Hushar muttered, his sword already in hand. “Their blood will fuel our ascension.”
“For once, I appreciate the melodrama,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to need every advantage we can get.”
“It wasn’t melodrama. It was a promise.”
Jonathan nodded, and then turned to face the rest of his army. “Alright! Form up! We’re going to have to fight in a few minutes. You all know the drill.”
The warriors tightened their formation, those with shields heading to the front. The mages withdrew and began to coat the area in magical protection, shields springing up to form a dome that, while see through, provided more safety than a castle’s walls. A few gaps were left for physical projectiles to arc through, but for the most part, mages could let their own skills through their shields, so they left them intact.
Jonathan began to gather his elemental energy, condensing it down into a spike of purple fire, surrounded by a cylinder of Domain energy and invisible conceptual power. It was a potent combination, and one he was eager to test out on his foes. The ground shook as the still invisible enemy force approached, and by the time they finally broke out of the treeline, Jonathan was ready for anything to appear.
The trees before them bowed outwards with the noise of tortured wood, splintering and cracking before the advance of something large and inexorable. Flames licked at the trees, taking root far faster than should have been possible.
The wood charred to darkness in a matter of moments, crumbling apart. In its place was a monster unlike any Jonathan had seen before. It had the body of a centipede but the head of a human, one grotesquely enlarged by the vagaries of evolution. Flames poured out of its mouth in an endless carnival of destruction. Some quirk of the monster’s development rendered it vulnerable to its own flames, and the flesh around its mouth was blackened and charred. However, its natural regeneration was high enough to repair the damage as it occurred. Jonathan winced. That seemed like an agonizing predicament for the monster to be in, no matter its degree of sapience. The creature seemed to agree as it let out frequent bellows of pain, each step representing its rage at the world and itself as it tore any obstacles in its path to shreds.
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On its back rode a titan of a man, taller than Hushar. Taller in fact than any member of the more common races that Jonathan had ever seen. However, as far as he could tell, the man was a human. He was enlarged not by his species but by elemental energy. His true body was stuck beneath a layer of pseudo-flesh that perfectly mimicked that of a real person’s. Jonathan could only see this because of his elemental senses.
“WHERE IS THE REBEL?” The man roared from his unlikely perch, hefting a hammer larger than Joanthan was tall in one hand.
Rather than respond verbally, Jonathan sent his Void Missile, which had been gathering potency for about half a minute, through a gap in the shield array. It traveled in a perfect arc towards the bellowing fighter on the centipede’s back. The man let out a roar of anger, and lifted his hammer to its fullest extent.
Yellow energy sparked around the hammer, and he swung it like a baseball bat towards the incoming projectile. A strange conceptual image appeared behind him, one of a stalwart mountain, inviolable to anyone who sought to harm it. The hammer took on a similar aspect, and Jonathan could feel its weight increasing on a primal level as it moved.
That weight pressed down on the air around it, and Jonathan could feel it, even from over a kilometer away. The hammer impacted the Void Missile with a mighty boom, and a shockwave of power rippled outwards, fighting with Jonathan’s attack. The other man had clearly expected an easy victory, but the Void Missile pressed forwards, undaunted by his strength. Then it exploded, blasting the fighter off of his mount.
With the loss of contact, the centipede went completely berserk, thrashing around and spraying fire over the treeline. There was a blast of yellow light from the ground and a pillar of rock exploded upwards underneath the monster’s chin, stunning it. Then the massive fighter with the hammer leaped up and onto his steed once more. His skin was scorched, but little else showed from the clash.
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, and then leaped forwards, channeling his Divinity into his being. His stats erupted to new heights as he leaped, propelling him through one of the gaps in the shield wall. As he went, a host of projectiles arced in beside him, representing the shared potency of his army. His fists blazed with light, and he let gravity take hold at the apex of his flight, heading straight towards the hulking figure riding the centipede. As he went, he burned stamina and then summoned a plate of purple energy behind him, pushing off.
The energy construct shattered into shards, and he was sent rocketing forth, the air parting around him. His fists led the way, trails of Void energy extending behind them like the tails of a comet.
He crossed the gap in the blink of an eye, aiming for his target’s torso, quite a large area to say the least. The other fighter brought his hammer around in a tight arc, but his speed was lacking. While he seemed to focus on durability and strength, Jonathan focused on everything.