She managed to animate or claim another few dozen regular servants and a few more large monuments as arch-servants before running low on divine energy again. She gifted each of the regular gargoyles the ability to see potential and a quest to find champions worth gifting an item from her little vault world. The Monuments were tasked with a similar goal, but they were also to use their size and thus large voices to tell the large populated cities who she was and what was happening.
The pair of now animate statues of liberty carefully marched into the city. Their twin soothing metallic voices carried across a huge area. They Informed the citizens that people had nothing to fear from them, but that many great dangers would be coming soon. Explaining that the new yorks were now in a high mana density zone of the inner world, in what would be a “high level” area with dangers based on what usually happens to new york in disaster movies and media. Tsunami, zombies, werewolves and other urban fantasy creatures getting stomped by Cloverfield, or Godzilla style kaiju on top of everything else.
The statues occasionally stopped and handed out a few magic items, mostly mid-tier magic weapons from Terrania, with the occasional more powerful item given to those with the most potential. The Copper Liberty Twin with the book and torch mostly handing out spell tomes and staves to potential champions. While her alternate reality bronze double with a sword and shield gave her champions weapons or defensive Items.
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One of the better potential champions was on a rooftop gawking at the passing colossal divine gargoyles when it stooped down and reached out towards him. Energy tingled up his arm forming a deep purple shield With a golden Ankh embedded in the center of it. He had seen the statue gift an old woman with a glowing sword, a couple of minutes earlier. He just kind of accepted the magically equipped shield and it clicked into place in his mind, then vanished from sight. Leaving him unsure if he even still had the Item or what it did.
So he naturally began to complain to himself, as he watched the alien version of the statue of liberty slowly walking down the street yelling about the end of days and some weird goddess.
His complaints were cut short by the deep growling coming from behind him.
He turned to see three large black-furred werewolves, looking frailer then some movie monsters, with foam froth dripping from their snarling muzzles. A little box above their heads told him they were 'Rabid Werewolves' like he couldn’t see that for himself. One charged him where he stood, paralyzed by fear. The creature's claws swung forward to tear his stomach open, and left a line of deep but superficial scratches across the man’s stomach.
It only had a moment to widen its eyes in disbelief before barreling full force into the decidedly average-sized man near the edge of the roof at full speed. The arm with the claw snapped like a twig with an audible crack as the wolf’s momentum carried it into, then over, the man like it had charged something more immovable than a granite golem. The creature's cries were quickly silenced by the tag-team efforts of gravity and sidewalk, signified by a final sounding crunch and squelch.
The man felt a bruise forming on his shoulder from the impact, but the minor pain was ignored in favour of the messages telling him how much the shield had reduced the damage of the attacks by. Plus, more importantly; how the effects of Magic Rabies, Werewolf Curse and Knockback had all been stopped by the shield's ability to apparently make him immune to those effects. He quickly scanned the massive list of over 25 effects he was now apparently immune to Because of his new Lucky Ultra Alloy Ankh Shield and came up with a stupid plan.
He quickly Ran to a board laid out between his building and the neighbouring one. His run jostled the other two wolves out of their stupor from having watched their leader commit suicide by human. Instincts to chase prey overcoming their shock.
He stopped halfway across the makeshift bridge, turned and braced himself to get hit again. The two wolves were moving more carefully towards him. Before they got in striking range he stomped hard on the makeshift bridge. It buckled, dropping them all to the alley below. He closed his eyes and hoped the little box wasn’t lying about the Lucky modifier of his shield making him immune to fall damage.
A minute later he emerged from the alley holding a crystal heart, the message informed him that his benefactor goddess said if he used it he would gain a bit more maximum health. She also left him a quest. Defeating 17 more would give him 5 items of his choice from a part of her vaults of magic gear.
He used the heart, feeling himself get a bit healthier than ever before, his health apparently going from 100 to 120. Whatever that really meant.
He walked over to his parked car, unlocked it and pulled a heavy crowbar out of the trunk. He stalked down an alley looking for a monster to start a fight with.
Two rabid beast-man skulls caved in later, he found three more of the Rabid creatures cornering an old lady. She barely blocked one strike with the edge of the magical blade. Then her sword snaked out around the claw, nearly severing the arm. Then a large ball of energy formed above her, it quickly descended. The magic blast from above took the beast in the face, red magic acting vaguely like flames burning the beast's face to a crisp.
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The old woman seemed as shocked as the wolves by her decisive and deadly counter-attack. The man took the opportunity to smash in the skull of another wolf before the survivor turned to attack the man not holding a magic sword. He blocked the first swing, but the force tore the bloody metal bar from his hands.
“Catch” the old woman cried, tossing him her blade. He reached out to catch it. Accepting the claws about to rake across his outstretched arm as a worthy cost for a way to potentially finish off the last wolf. He caught the sword, the claws left light scratches across his arm.
His arm burst into automatic action, it snaked out like a hydra. Leaving three afterimages of his arm and sword slicing the beast, then three bolts of red flame energy rained down, turning the beast to ash and a couple of coins he ignored for the moment.
The sword's description told him that it provided an automatic counter for every status effect he completely resisted and every attack that dealt less than 20% of its base damage. Meaning the claw swipe doing minimal damage and with two status effects that he was immune to gave him three automatic counter attacks. The blade was called the Vampiric Star of Wrath.
He laughed at the absurd combo, handing both items to the old woman, explaining his mirth in the dire situation. The old woman offered him the sword if he would escort her to her granddaughter's school.
Then she got her own laugh a minute later, straightening her gait and walking with more purpose.
After handing both items back, she explained that the brief time holding the shield had cured her cataracts and arthritis. The magic shield apparently categorizing the conditions as a minor form of blindness and a minor slow debuff. Blindness/darkness and slow were on the list of status effects prevented by the shield, so her brief immunity had cured the conditions. They both considered and discussed what else lending people the shield could cure as they headed for the school.
A pack of over a dozen of the rabid werewolves had the school under siege. A child commanded an odd crow that ripped the head from a wolfman in passing before tearing the arm off another wolf that tried to swipe it out of the air. It wasn't even attacking, just flying through monsters like they were a bit of turbulence, rather than flesh and blood. The Child stopped the crow from going in too deep, keeping it between the pack and the school.
The man escorting the old woman jogged towards the group of wolves, shouting to get them to surround him and attack as a group. They obliged, circling him before several surged forward at once. A half a dozen claw swipes ruined the last of his shirt. The shallow wounds were a small price for the 18 strike counter-attack, momentarily turning him into a storm of blades and blood. Each hit then summoned one of the even more deadly energy bolts. Many of the swings hit more than just the wolf targeted as well, so the 18 attacks created over 30 of the energy bolts, a blinding halo of malevolent energy formed before the bolts descended on the beasts like the wrath of his new patron Goddess.
Only charred corpses lay between his charge and the school.
Minutes later, he spoke to the child with the unstoppable bird while the old woman was fusing over her grandchild inside the school. He had a quest to defend the school until help arrived that also rewarded him with items from the Goddesses vaults.
They decided to turn in the rewards together. Both vanishing only to appear in a room with 5 chests on each side of the room, a simple wooden sign marked them as recommended gear for each of them.
Not wanting to take too long they skimmed the items in the chests for the five they thought would help the most. The man chose a set of armour with a set bonus that increased his life steal dramatically and increased attack speed and damage of swords or sword effects by a bit. The base defence stats of the armour paring with his shield to triple his old defence stat from just the shield alone. Any full suit of plate mail also stops him from always taking at least 1 damage from an attack like when he was unarmoured (clothes apparently didn't count). The Helm, plate and grieves took 3 of his allowed items. So he also chose an accessory called Warded Frost Jet Boots, the Description said they would grant him some limited flight time as well as a faster movement speed, they also gave him some movement bonuses on icy terrain, but he cared a lot less about that. The last item he took was a stack of 5 crystal hearts that could further increase his maximum health pool to a bit over double where he started, now totalling 220 HP.
The boy took a spooky-looking set of dark wooden summoner's armour, as well as a stack of 5 crystal stars to increase his mana pool. He also picked a Vampiric Reapers Harvest, a magic whip that projected magical scythe blades that inflicted a status effect that releases a wave of damaging dark energy from the afflicted every time a summon hit the target.
The man and boy re-appeared in the schoolyard to see a horde of werewolves being led by a huge silverback wolf the size of a school bus and a classic looking nosferatu knock off vampire approaching the school. The boy dismissed his bird and summoned 5 new, larger magic crows, clearly stronger and more numerous due to his armour set.
The man looked the wolf dead in the eyes, making sure his challenge crossed all boundaries of species. “Bring it Fido”