Robert: It's your fault, it's all your fault. I almost had it, but you had to break everything. Arrgh. We, we almost had him, almost my brothers and sisters were free. You destroyed everything you little whore.
For Magna this guy was clearly crazy, no healthy person spoke of himself in the plural! Right behind him, Sam came to a stop, as did the few remaining ones on their train. They had shrunk to the size of a group and were perhaps just under 14 men, including Sam. Countless beings began to gather behind the knight.
Magna: Seriously, are you all kidding me? What is this here now? A damn boss fight before the victorious homecoming?
Sam: What's going on here, Magna?
Magna: Well, finally something that your hammer can loosen. How about if I leave the poor lunatic to you. I think I shone enough for today, don't you think so?
CARTER: I don't usually mind a good brawl, but we're all tired. Can't you invite your friend over there to play another time?
Magna: No offense, but the man is not my friend and has certainly invited himself. Also, he doesn't seem to have all of the cups in the closet.
And he knew what he was talking about, after all, he himself didn't have them all together.
Robert: You know we can hear you?
Magna tapped her head lightly with her fist: See? Didn't I say it: A couple of decent screws are loose!
Robert: Don't ignore us!
Robert pointed forward, whereupon the mass of creatures began to storm. Damn the entrance was big enough for so many of them. What more could you ask for, a boss fight and a gigantic ticking mana bomb under your ass waiting to detonate. There were really shitty days that he had already learned in his last life, like in this life, but some days were just mythically shitty. In the depths of his mind, several adjectives occurred to him with which to supplement the word crappy when mythical didn't feel like enough.
At that moment he really had the faxes, what damned lunatic got involved in a decisive battle when the mother of all bombs was ticking beneath him. Immediately he pumped all newly gained points into his intelligence. He really wanted to spread them out a bit more evenly, but right now he needed every little bit he could get. His supply, his recovery, everything increased, but that was not enough for him, instead of waiting he let a potion appear in his backpack, reached into it, uncorked the bottle and tipped it down his neck, whereupon he had a rapid in his mana pool Felt increase. It just had to be enough.
The mercenaries didn't even have to be asked anymore, they immediately began to form a wedge formation around him, whereas he laid his frost field directly. The first beings to storm in slowed down.
Robert: What in the gods is that?
The parasitized knight had not mixed up in the fighting so far, but simply continued to bring in new beings, they came in streams towards them. They had to either turn it off right away or break it, but one thing they had to do, and it was fast. Magna decided to empty his pool almost completely until he had just enough to support the aura long enough to get out of town. In multitasking, he began to shape the spell for his mana bomb, but not the little grenades he used before. This thing was really fat and the size of a medicine ball which made him giggle ironically. The mercenaries as well as Leica covered his back.
Magna could barely control the sphere without investing too much of his mana into maintaining the barrier. Finally he threw the thing over the heads of the mercenaries and detonated the barrier at the level of the snakeheads.
A massive wave of mana spread and if he thought about it he could have created a wave or scythe of compressed mana, but it was too late for remorse. The thing went off with a beautiful plop that reminded him of a grenade launcher.
The mana output reached a radius of 250 meters, causing each of the creatures to twitch wildly. A few seconds later they were dead on the ground, just lying there while the knight clasped his hands around his skull and screamed like a madman.
Robert: Damn it, it hurts, what's going on here, where is everyone? Where's that bloody blue blood son of a bitch?
His face revealed many different expressions that seemed lost again shortly afterwards. Instead, he grabbed his sword and shield again. With both in his hands, he began charging towards her.
Sam: Leave me some too, Magna!
Magna: I'd like to if our asses weren't pulsing with a bloody bomb of gigantic proportions.
Sam: Forget about it, when I'm in combat I like to lose focus.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Magna: Anyway, just take care of the damn guy.
Magna could see Sam swinging her hammer, which was blocked by the shield, but not without pushing the knight back a few meters himself. Sam seemed to strike out for a new one right after the blow, still using the momentum, the hammer slammed against the sword, causing the knight's entire arm to tremble and the sword to be thrown backwards.
There was no gasp or cry of pain from the knight himself. These parasites were getting really creepy in his eyes when they could control humans that easily. But all the talk of vengeance puzzled him. Did they enter into a symbiosis? Did the knight's thoughts affect the parasite?
The other mercenaries didn't just stand around either, but began to secure the escape route, taking care of the slowed influx of new beings. At that moment he could actually run away, who should tell the story? What did these strangers mean to him? He didn't owe them, but he stayed there anyway, why did he stay?
Sam dented the knight's helmet neatly with her hammer, whereupon the knight soon couldn't keep up in this brief but intense exchange of attacks.
Magna: Damn Sam, bring it to an end, we have to ...
At the same moment the hammer shot one last time on Robert's head and cracked him like a melon. The mana density in the area had slowly increased a bit. He felt the damned detonation should be long overdue, which confirms his suspicion about a failover or overload protection, but he couldn't say how it looked or how long it lasted.
The knight almost fell headless, like a wet sack, before straightening up again. A few writhing limbs could be seen from the stump of his neck. He would have loved to just throw up at this strange sight. It looked so incredibly disgusting, but nothing of the former knight was to be recognized.
The longer he looked, the harder it got to keep his food inside. Sam didn’t let himself be deterred by this, but pulled out the hammer again, like an ax, the end of which hit the stump of the neck.
It was over for him here, he tore the damn mask from his mouth and vomited straight away, because the stump of the neck was torn open while a squirming mass burst out of the former knight's body.
That was the stuff real nightmares are made of, if he didn't know better, one of Lovecraft's monsters would have manifested right there before his eyes.
Without his protection he could now use magic, but had to draw from his emergency supplies. The renewed forest aura made the writhing thing freeze, but not Sam, who again waved her hammer on the mass, causing it to burst like a sack of meat and burst apart.
Sam was stained with blood from top to bottom, whereupon he almost instinctively would have thrown the cleansing spell on her if he didn't remember to manage his stash.
Just a moment later, Sam had collected himself.
Sam: Nice that you stayed, for a moment I thought you were going to let me down.
Magna: And miss the show? No thank you. Now let's go!
Sam simply nodded to him and set herself in motion, following him and Leica directly out of the entrance. Together they stormed through the streets towards the exit of the city. A couple of times they passed new businesses that made his heart ache if only he had had more time.
As soon as they were out of town, the group stopped. They took a completely different route outside, which was more likely to lead to his apartment on the side of the plateau than to the camp on the cliff.
Magna: What are you doing there?
Sam: Isn't that enough?
Magna: Damn bullshit, no. We have to get off the damn plateau as quickly as possible. Besides, the damned serpent creatures won't all be defeated yet.
Sam: Still not?
Magna: Did you forget the dimensions of the crystal and the space? Move. We follow the river.
Sam: But how do we get there?
Magna: Let that be my concern.
They started moving again, the damned earth already shaking beneath their feet. A couple of the men shouted panic “earthquakes” in, but Magna answered with a shout “What a lot worse!”
Like devils they ran along the river, which was losing more and more of its formerly rich water level, taking some of the small ones. In doing so, they ignored any contact with the enemy and simply left them in the dust.
With every kilometer they covered, the earth seemed to shake more strongly, the enchantment apparently no longer able to handle the massive amounts of mana without an outlet.
Eventually the others left him with something too, which forced him onto Leica's back so he could keep up. The mercenaries had clearly invested more in their physical stats than he did, but with Leica he was able to catch up and overtake.
Damn, a couple of the mercenaries had even dumped unnecessary ballast to go faster. Arriving at the edge of the plateau, the earth was already shaking so badly under their feet that he could assume that most of the city was already collapsing. The river bed next to them did not even carry a single drop of water, which meant that the waterfall lost all of its former majestic aura, but the miniature lake was still clearly visible from above.
CARTER What now?
Magna: Jump.
Sam: what? Down there?
Magna: I don't know what you're doing, but ...
At the same moment a massive beam of concentrated manas broke from the center of the plateau up into the sky and began to spread, causing the ground they had recently traversed to begin to break away. Everything fell into the underground facility to be changed forever directly by the mana. Any remaining parasites disappeared in seconds. Simply wiped out. The wave seemed to spread over the entire plateau, causing the wave to sweep over the fields, towns and river beds with an incredible speed, like a wall of fire.
The whole environment was bathed in a new peak of density of mana. The concentration, even when its most massive peak discharged into the sky, increased the abundance of mana on site to a completely new level, which is otherwise only found in the deepest parts of the magical forest.
Without hesitating a moment longer, he jumped off the cliff with a Leica under him, followed by the mercenaries and a Sam who called out to all gods she could think of. Another second later she could be seen plunging into the water.
The entire plateau collapsed, pulling the outer walls and his home with it. Every enchantment, the rest of the books, everything he thought not too valuable to take with him was swept away. The first place he felt safe, felt at home in this new world. For him it had been more than just a little house in a rock wall.
Sam: That looked like a nice house.
Magna: That was my house. My damn house!
Sam scratched his head a little awkwardly at her sentence: I think I'm sorry for you?
Magna: It's okay.
The expected destruction spread before his eyes, which left almost nothing. There was really nothing left of the wealth of this civilization. After the wave weakened beyond the plateau, whereby it lost its threat and the dust had settled, only a huge pile of rubble remained from the plateau, which now seemed to form a small mountain itself. His mana regeneration increased again exponentially after the mana was no longer collected from the environment. Very soon they would have recaptured the forest, this area.
He also felt a little sorry for Sam, because she lost a lot of her own belongings in her base camp, like all other mercenaries and the train as a whole only consisted of one group. In their last battle, they had apparently lost one more, dropping them off to 13 people.
They swam to the shore together, watching the little lake begin to shrink.