How I wished I could summon a horde of al-Mi’raj. Alas, it was a dead magic world. We had the System but only the physical and social parts. Queen Lorna’s crew was affected by all my Leadership Perks, including 45 bonus Attribute points of {Elite Lieutenants}. Minus Luck because this place sucked. To people stuck in the base species, it was a lot. Then add the 25% combat bonus from {Rallying Muse} and another 17% from {Lead from the Front}. That almost doubled their own Proficiency bonuses.
But we were the ones being zerg rushed. I had to keep singing to make the bonus count, mixing my orders in the lyrics.
“Full speed! Hard left! Withdraw the cranes and move to a locked position! Everyone, brace!” I ordered the navigator. If we didn’t keep moving, we would be overwhelmed. The raptors could easily dash past us but they couldn’t fight as effectively while on the run. And they consumed stamina. I had a fully charged flywheel and a lot of wood to burn on the steam engine.
“Permission to shoot!” The stern gunners asked.
“Take aim first! Make each shot count. Everyone, man your crossbows!” I said as I readied my gnome-sized bow. It wasn’t a masterpiece but I still had to reveal my true form.
The kobold horde vanished behind the dust cloud our tracks rose. Then the fastest raptors appeared from within and took the first two ballista bolts to the chest. They tumbled and vanished once again under the cover of the airborne sand. The gnomes cheered.
“Prepare to throw the Molotovs!” I said. Two gnomes that were experts in throwing stuff opened the cargo bay and took the famous improvised incendiary devices from the hold, lighting the fuses at the steam engine. They approached the stern and threw the bottles at the silhouettes of the raptors inside the cloud. The dust lit up as the frail bottles broke and raptors screamed in pain as they burned.
The other raptors echoed their cries and we saw two wings of riders moving to flank us. “Side guns, take aim!”
I added my own arrows to the volleys. The mounted crossbows could fire every forty of fifty seconds with a crew of two. To rearm the weapon, you had to either have the strength to pull the living silk string or move it to an upright position where a mechanism drawing power from the drive train would do the job for them. The gnomes needed to use the latter.
I could tally the kills by the Exp tithing. I had it set to display only awards from my crew. Even if the kobolds won today, it would be a costly victory. We would make them pay for every drop of gnome blood.
The kobolds were furious at us and more than eager to foot the butcher’s bill. Despite taking losses, they kept trying to approach. One of the flankers had his raptor dodge the two crossbow bolts aimed at him and made his creature jump on the tracks. As the duck feet of the raptor touched the leather band, they were comically catapulted forward, losing balance and falling ahead of the tracks. Then Queen Lorna bumped as they were pressed into the sand by the track running over them.
The gnomes shouted and cheered. We were winning, but for how long. I knew the cheater could use her [Saintess] magic inside the dead magic zone as they just instructed the System to do their bidding. I had to keep an eye out for her, to see if she would try anything funny. Like putting an invisible wall in front of us.
The flankers overtook us and moved to our front. From here, they prepared to jump from the raptors and invade the deck. We were surrounded by raptor riders on all sides. The gnomes did their best to shoot the crossbows as fast as they could, the mass of scaled bodies around us making the need to aim a foregone concern.
The riders jumped and clung to Queen Lorna’s bow. The forward ballista crew of three gnomes let go of their siege machine and drew their less rusty blades. I too slung my bow across my chest and drew my carbon steel short swords. With a mighty shout, I activated {War Cry} for an extra short-timed combat bonus.
I put all of my being into the battle. Raging like a true barbarian, I roared as I descended upon the deck. Targeting the kobold nearest the bow, I activated {Bushwacker} as I {Charged} that Kobold. Each enemy in the way took two slashes of my blades as I moved past the now dead bodies. They were too low-leveled to resist even though I suffered a 59% damage penalty against them.
As I reached the hapless kobold, he stared at me with his eyes wide open. I brought both blades down to cut him at the shoulders. The kobold tried to dodge but he lost his grip and fell down on the sand, overrun by Queen Lorna’s hull.
Around me, the gnomes were fighting the kobolds. I moved like a blade dervish, singing and dancing as my swords killed kobolds left and right. But the gnomes were taking hits too. And worse, without them manning the crossbows, the kobolds had free reign to approach and board.
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They could make Queen Lorna sink with the weight of their own bodies. Fifteen minutes into the brawl, I had to order the gnomes to start tossing corpses over the railing to keep the mass from slowing us down too much. The deck was slick with lizard and gnome blood. I had to shoulder the damage of a killing blow a handful of times using {Strength in Numbers} but it was a minor dent in my HP pool to save a gnome’s life. The two-meter range was too short, though. We already had four casualties out of fifty able-bodied gnomes crewmembers. Another six and we would start to lose the battle of attrition.
We’d killed hundreds by now but they had the numbers to throw at us. A herd of riderless raptors followed the other kobolds in the distance. Worse of all, I had no idea where the cheater [Saintess] was.
“Hunker down. Don’t expose yourselves or overextend. Keep your stamina. Let me deal with the kobolds. Protect each other. The Matriarch doesn’t want any more of her children dead!”
“Aye, captain!” The gnomes shouted back.
Some kobolds took the defensive posture of the kobolds as an opportunity to steal our crossbows. They were firmly mounted on their emplacements, though. Meanwhile, I frantically ran in circles around the vehicle, beating kobolds off the railing, killing them, and kicking bodies out of the deck.
Out of this dead magic zone, I was tireless. Since the System had no Stamina resource, it converted extreme fatigue into HP damage. Here, with my HP regeneration divided by six hundred, I started to flag.
That’s when the bitch took the opportunity to show up. Her one-eyed raptor jumped up on the loading deck, kicking some of our treasures out of the vehicle.
“I killed you,” She hissed. “Years ago.”
“That you did. But guess what, I’m impossible to defeat. You can beat me blue and even kill me. But I’ll come over and over until I win. See if your statue god will bring you back or even notice that you died.”
She ushered her raptor forward. I slid on the blood and slashed its legs. I damaged it but it was superficial. The fucker had toughened up his scales. Then I fucking bit that dino ham, scoring a critical. {Vorpal Teeth} (it was “bite” but when it converted into a Proficiency Ability, the name changed) triggered and then the leg came off. Rider and dinosaur fell on the floor, prone.
If I had any luck, she would be pinned under the lizard but that didn’t happen. The little dragon-woman stood on her feet and stabbed me with her rusty spear. On the second stab, I readied a parry and riposte, knocking her spear aside and drawing a gash on her chest.
She went on the defensive, trying to harass me into giving her ground. I pressed on. The benefit of having many weapon proficiencies was that you could specialize. With [Spears] I was all offense. Most of the Abilities were to deal damage. [Blades], however, was for dueling. I had huge advantages on a parry, the biggest of them was the free attack from {Riposte}.
The cuts and stabs accumulated on each side. I had more than five times her HP pool and my damage was bigger. The cheater, however, was healing herself. In a dead magic zone, to cry out loud. Why these idiots thought this [Saint] bullshit was any good was anyone’s guess.
Spoiler alert, it was exactly for the same reason this little lizard-bitch existed. To counter me. I should be flattered, all I got was more {Berserker Rage} minutes.
I heard the gnomes cry and looked. The other kobolds seized the opening left by me and went for the kill. That, I couldn’t allow. Since this was going nowhere, I disengaged from the [Queen], letting her stab me in the back as I went postal on these kobolds. Another four gnomes had died because I wasn’t close enough to shoulder their damage. En passant, I finished the maimed raptor, putting the animal out of its misery.
While I killed kobolds, I heard the [Saintess] praying behind me. As she finished with a clawed hand pointed at the flywheel stack casing, she grinned her toothy grin and said,
“Goodbye again. Better luck next time.”
The casing exploded, the flywheels on the stack shot like one-ton frisbees everywhere. It ripped some crossbows from the railing, it bashed a ballista, it broke part of the cabin killing more gnomes. One wheel came at me like a homing missile. I tried to evade but my feet slipped in the blood. Bullshit. The steel wheel hit me in the shoulder and pushed me over the railing and on the tracks. I was catapulted forward and fell face-first in the sand, and I was burdened with the 10 times slow debuff.
Then the track passed over me, burying me in the sand. I barely had the time to roll on my back before it did. I grabbed the sides of the leather belt, holding a scream as my fingers were smashed between the wheels and the belt. But I came out on the other side and managed to keep holding on as the belt turned and put me on top of the track again.
I jumped back on the ship and knife-handed two kobolds, piercing their lungs. My swords were lost to the sand and my bow broke. I didn’t care. With a guttural yell, I jumped on the kobolds harrying the gnomes, and started to bite and claw necks and limbs.
Snarling, roaring, I ate a dozen kobold necks before the other fanatics were intimidated enough to back off. A couple died to attacks from the gnomes, who were cradling another five dead. Thirteen.
I tossed as many bodies I could grab over. Surveying the sands, I saw that the kobold horde following us had thinned. Only less than a hundred raptor riders followed us, with a herd of riderless raptors following them from way behind.
“Stay dead this time!” The [Queen] cackled as I was trapped in that Force bubble again.
I struggled. She took damage. The system, in a parody of fairness, demanded she paid to keep me contained. She started to squeeze. I had more than a dozen points of Strength than before. After struggling like a wet mountain lion caught in a net, I broke free. The [Saintess] was bleeding from every orifice in her head.
I rushed forward and slipped on the bloody deck again. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Again, another cheat. An inexpensive one? I knew for a fact she couldn’t trap me again.
Then the [Queen] jumped off the ship on the sand. Queen Lorna moved on, leaving her behind. I thought about giving chase, about ending it all but I had wounded believers that needed my aid. I couldn’t afford to lose more crew.