Like a barrage of spears, giant felled trees were flung through the air. Gi flinched from his vantage point near the edge of the Underbridge as the crash of a dozen trees shot water and dust up into the air. The trees looked even larger as they settled across the wide river that split the two land masses. Even as Gi watched, vines started to snake from the forest across the river and wrapped up the makeshift bridge tightly.
The tree made of shadows on the green shore didn't progress any further, but he could just make out the drummers spread across its dark branches, beating out a rhythm of war.
"Fire!" Captain Mesano's deep throated yell reverberated over the sound of thousands of monsters and otherworldly drums. Gi had expected arrows or something after his command, but literal balls of fire were flung from the top of the cliff by what appeared to be completely red trolls.
Their fire burst against the bridge, but a keening cry echoed out from the forest and thousands of lines of shadow burst out to stamp out the budding fires. A huge gust of wind turned Gi's gaze upwards and he saw the Queen take action for the first time.
Her red and brown scales made her look like a volcano had erupted forming the perfect image of a long snake-like dragon. She had a mane of fire that danced about her head with two living streams of flame that danced from her nostrils. Atop her head were two sets of majestic antlers that wouldn't have looked out of place on an aged deer. Strangest to Gi, she had no wings and simply swam through the air like a snake slithering through grass.
He'd thought the Dragon Pike Progenitor had been a dragon. By comparison, it was not even a tadpole.
The Queen descended and a handful of lesser dragons that were the same long shape flanked her on either side. As she descended towards the lower levels of Igna, the sheer size of her dropped Gi to his knees thinking that she would crash into him at any moment.
Instead, she hovered at about the fourth level and she and her Elites launched a white hot flame towards the shadowy tree. Again, an army of shadows burst from the forest and created a shield against the flame. The drums beat out another quick set of taps and suddenly the leaves started to charge.
It took Gi a moment to realize that the bodies of leaves rushing across the makeshift bridge were like the leaf monster that Jalx had saved him from. Except there were thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands.
"Fight! Crush your enemies beneath your feet! Drive them forth from our lands and steal their strength as your own!" The Captain's shouts continued as Igna's mass of warriors hit theirs. The forward momentum from the leaf monsters literally sent goblin jobbies flying into the air. Blood and screams followed the falling jobbies and the Captain only raised his voice to continue his poetic assertions.
The lines stabilized as the flow of leaf monsters were split up by the giant jacks that had been placed around the base of Igna and their monsters started fighting back. Dozens of different kinds of goblins with an even broader assortment of weapons cleaved through leaf monsters as they struggled to use their superior agility within the tight confines of war.
Goblins and leaf monsters weren't the only combatants though. From Igna's side, worms the size of a Dragon Pike would burst out of the ground. Each worm had three heads with wickedly sharp teeth that would spin around like a flail, slashing into every nearby monster before descending again.
A contingent of more recognizable Fighting Drakes flew in formation around the Queen's battle of flame and shadow, but were met by a group of giant moths. They didn't even attempt to fight, but instead released some kind of pollen or dust that seemed to keep the Fighting Drakes from closing on them. That left the Drakes to use their group to zone off the moths from bombarding their main armies.
Creatures that looked like a human skeleton with a withered husk of skin over their bodies and twin flames where their eyes should be sprinted to wherever the gap was weakest and then started to pulse red. As they did, long blades extended from their forearms and they struck about in a rage, mostly killing the enemy but not always.
Serving like Calvary, wolves that looked similar to the one he'd seen after first spawning in Igna except much smaller shot through the enemies numbers. Sparks of fire erupted from their paws and bowled over the smaller leaf monsters and the fires left in their wake forced an ignition.
The enemy wasn't all leaf monsters either. As fires started to spread on the bridge and among their jobbies, mushroom folk in robes came out and started waving their arms and chanting. A rain started to fall on the battle, putting out fires before they could spread too far.
As their own type of cavalry, boars ran across the water, gathering it in a building wave around them as they ran before slamming the water into their forces. The ground near the front turned into mud from the blood, rain, and water that had erupted in earnest from the battle.
Gi saw all of this happen in less than a minute. Jalx and his goblins were still far back from the front and most of the classers on their side had remained out of this part of the battle. It seemed that most of the higher ranks were in check by their counterparts, leaving this to mostly be a battle of jobbies with classers in reserve.
Not wanting to miss out on the resources, Gi sent internal energy to [Divine Bolt] and fired out a three-shot burst into the crowd of approaching leaf monsters. While he couldn't miss, his attacks weren't guaranteed to be deadly at this range. Thankfully, two of his shots plunged into one of the creatures and it fell back, its body trampled by its fellows.
Leaf Elemental defeated!
1 Soul Orb received. Current Soul Orbs: 10.
He fired another three round burst as soon as it was up and this time two of Leaf Elementals fell. That surprised him, but he realized that he'd just increased his Wisdom by two levels and that power was showing. He wondered if his glancing blows against the Pikes would actually deal damage now.
A spear of shadow scorched the pillar of the Underbridge right beside his head, interrupting his lagging thoughts. He flipped back behind the pillar just as more shadows lanced into the ground around him.
"Shields," Jalx said in his typical stoic voice. The blue goblins around him picked up flat rocks that Gi hadn't even noticed at their feet and held them above their heads. Occasionally as one of the jobbies muscles would tire, they'd pulse their arms, having them grow in size just like Jalx's had done when he'd kill the Leaf Elemental to save Gi.
Gi really needed to take notes about all the abilities he was seeing, but first, he needed to get some more Orbs. He dashed out from behind his pillar and fired off another three shot burst into the crowd. His eyes fell on the shadow spear wielders who looked like long shadows of trees much as Queen Siht's opponent did, though obviously much smaller.
Gi fired off into the group of shadow trees, but his first burst didn't manage to take any down. He glanced around to see where their ranged fighters were and they were all almost exclusively on the first or second level of Igna, firing down into the massed group of monsters. A very safe place where Gi wished he was also.
He darted back out from his pillar spraying bolts of light across the river and he finally managed to pin one to a tree.
Ligneous Slenderman defeated!
1 Soul Orb received. Current Soul Orbs: 13.
The name of the monster didn't tell him much of anything besides what he could already see with his own two eyes. Still, the Slendermen were far enough away that while Gi had to be wary of them, he wasn't likely to be hit if he was careful. Their attacks were a little bit slower than his own. He didn't know if that was due to his increased Wisdom or just the nature of their different attacks, but he used the advantage.
He would dart around the pillars, the shallows of the lake splashing as he did, but even with his strength it barely slowed him. He shot at the Slendermen for several minutes taking out a few of them when he realized his mistake. His singular actions weren't going to stop them and his kill per burst was less than one against them.
He didn't need to help Igna. He needed to help himself.
"Be ruthless," he mumbled to himself before turning his attention back to the swarm of easy to kill Leaf Elementals. As the battle continued, smoke and steam started to fill the air and bodies begun to pile up. With the monsters increased stats, many of them were just shunted into the lake where the remaining Dragon Pikes came up to feed.
The charging boars now needed to be more cautious as the Pikes would attack anything nearby. The mushroom folk had joined the Slendermen in shooting at their own ranged attackers on the first and second level.
As the battle wore on, the leaf monsters did gain ground, starting to push completely onto the soil and some lines bulged meaning that the combat had finally reached Jalx and his goblins. Despite their lack of weapons, they did better than many of the other jobbies with their oversized arms and Jalx wasn't content to wait like the other classers seemed to.
High above, Siht continued her barrage of fire. Though she'd broken off her intense stream and now hurled giant fireballs around where the shield had been, forcing the giant Slenderman to separate its shadows to defend against her attacks. It still had the ability to fling its own spears back at her, but her Elites were always in the right position to deflect any attack at the Queen. Fighting Drakes were pack monsters and seeing their coordination at that level was awe-inspiring. It was wild to think that they'd once been a regular monster like him.
Gi didn't have time to take more than an occasional glance at their fight though. Like his training time with Nori back in the Child Stage, he constantly had to run while firing, dodging the occasional attack aimed at him, and constantly churning through his internal energy. Assuming his reserves came from Vitality, he felt as though he was at least average, but every single shot took a little more stamina from him.
After an hour, he'd killed hundreds of monsters, mostly the Leaf Elementals, and yet still more were there behind them. He tried to squeeze out another shot, but it was too much and his [Divine Bolt] spluttered out, thankfully not ending with feedback. Gi collapsed back against one of the pillars, trusting Jalx's line of blue goblins to keep him safe there and tried to catch his breath.
His arm ached from the sheer volume of internal energy that had poured through him across the hour. Even his experiments in creating the wide blast [Divine Bolt] hadn't wrung him as dry as he was now. He wasn't the only one either. Many of the jobbies that had survived the initial battle retreated back to the lines of their classers to recover.
He started to notice the ones that had done the best seemed to have the largest groups of classers remaining: the fiery undead, the armored ferrets, the sparking wolves and even the worms from before had stopped popping back up.
The number of Leaf Elementals had thinned as well, but there was still a mass of them beyond. Igna had a ton of jobbies left as well, but it wasn't as many as the Leaf Elementals. They had to be a Swarm type monster like the Ghast. Though the prompts were different...
Something changed in the air of the fight that arrested Gi from his thoughts. The jobbies of both sides had completely backed off and the classers had now stepped into their lines. The same types of monsters that had looked ferocious as jobbies looked deadly as classers.
Golems made of dark rock formed a nearly impenetrable barrier at the front of the line. Behind them, the armored ferrets stood ready with gusts of wind playing about their fingertips. Spread throughout were the strange fiery undead with long blades, their arms much longer in the classer form. A handful of black and white mottled goblins that were barely taller than their jobbie counterparts were also spread throughout the army wielding slings.
As though they were both part of the same ritual, the classers from the other side stepped up. They were even more diverse than those of Igna with some obvious representation by the boars, mushroom folk, and Slendermen, but they also had strange vine creatures that snaked their way through the feet of everyone else.
They must have not wanted to exhaust their classers on the jobbies or maybe that was a way of getting rid of the weaklings. Gi wasn't sure, but despite the fact that the classers had finally stepped up. Both sides brought in a fresh contingent of jobbies and one of the new Myshkin jobbies was very familiar to him.
Standing tall with a conjured bow made of teal light was Krayli. The orc's eyes cast over both the classers and the dead or dying monster to land directly on Gi. Hatred seared her features and she drew her bow.