“This is the nearest major settlement to the rift,” Nallia said as she and the rest of the first lance stepped off the cutter almost before it had settled, “there’s something called a ‘golf course’ southwest of here where the main rift appeared.”
Orlan simply nodded, no changes to the plan were needed. The second cutter with the second lance of his knights was already headed that direction. There were a couple small mountains between the town and the rift, so the main host of monsters hadn’t appeared yet. Being humanoid the monsters tended to stay in groups, ranging from a few members to a couple dozen from what they’d seen so far. Several of such groups had already been cut down by the knights as they spread out through the town, but over all there were too few monsters. A single rift could contain hundreds or even thousands of monsters, most emerged from the main rift with the rest being scattered over a two to three mile radius from there. But it had taken them nearly an hour to arrive at the small town of Jefferson, more than enough time to travel from the rift to the town by foot.
The terrain was rough, but there were plenty of roads for them to follow. There was another large town some distance to the south, but surely the monsters would prioritize the closest concentration of people, that’s how they always worked. A few would scatter about wreaking havoc, even becoming just another part of the wilderness, but most should be headed here.
There was one thing that could have stopped them, an alpha monster. Something that could exert some level of control over the hoard. A humanoid alpha was bad, if true, as alphas were both more powerful and more intelligent than their lesser kin.
Orlan shook that thought from his head, reaching out and pulling his short, bladed spear from his personal space. The weapon sung for blood as he stepped through space, appearing a street over, another step brought him directly before a group of three of the monsters. And these ones truly earned that title, they were vaguely reminiscent of large, bipedal ants, with insectoid limbs and a hard chitin that covered their entire bodies. Their heads had the large, sharp mandibles, oversized compound eyes and long antenna that would be expected, but between the mandibles was a forest of what looks disturbingly like human fingers. Seeming to take the place of both lips and teeth, judging from the razor-sharp nails each ended in, they wiggled unnervingly constantly.
Each hand was similarly replaced with a mess of fingers, but that didn’t seem to impair their ability to carry weapons. As if things couldn’t be any worse, every one of them was armed with a short sword or spear, all made of bronze if Orlan was any guess. They were low tier three, high tier two, making them far above any normal human. But Orlan was another level higher, he seemed to flow through their attacks like water while his spear lashed out like lightning to cut through bronze, chitin and flesh alike. In a handful of seconds the monsters were all dead, and Orlan vanished in another step before the last of them could even hit the ground.
He tore four such packs apart before a faint buzzing in the back of his mind indicated an incoming message.
“Yes?” Orlan asked, rift stepping onto a building so he could scout out the surroundings.
“Second lance has run into a problem,” Lailra’s voice said in his mind, “They weren’t able to land near the rift, the monsters seem to be swarming around it, protecting it.”
“Damnit, an alpha,” he cursed.
“That was my guess,” she agreed, “doesn’t seem to have emerged yet, but most of the swarm is waiting for it.”
“They look like ants, a queen?” Orlan offered.
“Hopefully, ant queens are large but not exactly built for combat,” she replied, “I’m worried she’ll have a royal guard though, would fit with their appearance.”
Orlan simply nodded, while monsters were odd beings, they tended to follow natural roles. If a monster looked like a wolf, it would likely hunt in packs. It wasn’t perfect, monsters tended to have bits and pieces from multiple creatures or things that didn’t match up with anything on Earth, but it was a good guess.
“Worst case would be a princess,” Nallia added, “she’ll still have the royal guard, but her body won’t have changed to focus on reproduction yet.”
“Tell the second lance-,” he paused as a pair of fighters screamed by overhead, “tell them to stay away from the main swarm, focus on containment.”
He felt her agreement before the connection snapped, this looked like it was going to get difficult.
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Long gouts of fire erupted from the ground as the bombs dropped by two fighters struck the ground, covering several holes of the golf course in a raging inferno. The napalm covered hundreds of the bug monsters who cried out in rage and pain. For nearly a minute the flames burned before the napalm ran out, leaving scattered brush and trees aflame. The ground was covered in ash and blackened bodies of the strange ant monsters, and for a long moment all was still save the crackling of the random secondary fires. But soon one of the heavily burned ants began to move, pushing itself to its feet, burned chitin flaking from its body like dust. Then another began to move, and another, and soon most of the monsters were standing once more. They were covered in burns, their carapaces cracked in multiple places from the heat, they struggled to breath as the spiracles along their sides were scorched.
Barely a third of the monsters had succumb to the flames, the rest were injured, but still alive. A circling recon plane reported in, shock evident in their voices, but the imagery they sent back was undeniable. More conventional bombs weren’t any more effective, they’d learned earlier. While the blasts were enough to dismember and kill a handful of the humanoid ants, the shrapnel was largely ineffective, bouncing off their exoskeleton.
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To the south multiple national guard groups, the ones that had been fastest to respond, were hunkered down behind their Humvees. They’d only encountered scattered groups of the beasts, yet had been forced to stop when a couple ripped a tree from beside the road and threw it at the lead vehicle. Now the rest were pouring fire into the ants from behind cover. The rifles proving to be less that effective, even armor piercing rounds failed to penetrate the chitin. Direct hits to the eyes could still kill, and there were gaps in their carapaces around the joints where the rounds could do some damage, but largely the weapons did little to the monsters. The only reason they hadn’t been overrun was due to the heavy .50 cal machine gun mounted atop each of the vehicles. After several of these rift events the army made sure that some heavier weapons were available to the national guard, and it was proving effective. The heavy rounds broke limbs and cracked armor from their sheer power, it still took a couple seconds of directed fire to ensure a kill.
A couple of the men had shotguns that, at close range, delivered enough force to force the ants back even if it couldn’t kill them reliably. But they couldn’t kill the monsters as fast as they arrived, and it was only a matter of time before they were overrun. Considering the beasts could run fast enough to keep pace with the Humvees over short distances, running wasn’t an option.
They had all but resigned themselves to death when three warrior women seemed to drop out of the sky. The largest of them wielding a massive steel axe with enough strength that the ants were more blown apart than cut to pieces. The second woman carried a pair of shorter axes, moving with such speed the soldiers could barely keep track of her. The final woman carried a massive shepard’s crook that glowed with an eerie light, phantasmal beasts sprung into existence around her with each swing of the crook, biting through the monsters with supernatural strength only to fade away moments later.
The soldiers could only watch in shock as the women tore through the small hoard that had gathered around them, though whether their shock was due to the power on display or the fact that the large woman was laughing as she fought was anyone’s guess. Despite their strength the fight wasn’t entirely one sided, bronze weapons struck the berserker, many of them encountering seemingly transparent armor as they did, but some did manage to draw blood. The woman only laughed harder as she was injured, ignoring the pain.
A minute later, all three women were covered in blood, most of which wasn’t theirs, the two axe wielders letting out screams of anger as they sprinted north looking for more prey. The woman with the crook paused to apologize to the soldiers in a soft voice before running after her companions.
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Orlan had been fighting for nearly an hour when he got the call in that the rift had collapsed, meaning the alpha had come through. The town of Jefferson looked like it had been bombed, which wasn’t completely inaccurate as the air force refused to give up on dropping ordinance. It seemed they figured that, even if the bombs were of limited effectiveness there was no risk to the plan.
“All the remaining monsters are retreating towards the ‘golf’ place,” Nallia reported from next to him, “looks like the alpha is calling them back.”
“Damnit, hoped we had more time,” Orlan grumbled, “first lance with me, we’re going to sweep south down the valley, second lance is to remain on the south end of the rift zone. Casters with heavy area spells stay back and regenerate mana, we’re going to need you when we hit the main hoard.”
A chorus of agreements answered him as they set off. Protector Lords and their knights were uniquely suited to fighting beast rifts, as even a strong fifth sphere warrior would have struggled to fight at full strength for this long. But with the bonus regeneration provided by the anchorheart, even tempered by distance, Orlan was still going strong. It didn’t hurt that his combat style largely revolved around the inherent abilities granted by his spheres, rather than spells which weren’t as mana efficient. Anyone could learn spells, given they were had enough spheres and the right attunements, but inherent abilities were unique to everyone.
He and the dozen members of the first lance swept south like a wind of death, culling any monster they found. Even those who weren’t immediately killed weren’t safe, as one of Lailra’s inherent abilities caused her spells to infect those they injured with a terrifying rot. Being sixth sphere herself, a single scratch was often enough to kill these monsters. Being a higher sphere than her Protector Lord meant she didn’t get full benefit of the bond, but by restricting herself to lower tier spells and making liberal use of rot ability had preserved her mana.
Nallia focused more on intelligence gathering, using her light magic to illuminate the world, as she put it. Alia was the defensive magic user, her winds rebuffing anything that got too close. After long years of fighting together the group almost seemed like they could read each other’s thoughts. While many of them had a telepathic message spell they didn’t need it to fight as one.
In less than fifteen minutes they’d covered the mile from the town to the golf course, leaving a scattered trail of dead monsters in their wake. But, as they looked down from a ridge top to the mass of ants below, they realized they had barely scratched the surface of the swarm.
“Look,” Nallia said, holding her hand up to display an image to the others, one of her inherent abilities was far light, allowing her to see things at a distance so long as she had line of sight. By modifying an illusion spell she could display what she saw, and what she saw made Orlan scowl.
In the middle of the hoard, near where the center of the rift had once stood, were four ant creatures that stood far over the smaller monsters. Unlike the main swarm, these four had six limbs arranged in a centauroid fashion, with the four rear serving as legs, while the front two were used as arms. They each wore heavy bronze plate over their upright torso and something that resembled barding over their rear half. Each carried a massive bronze shield in one hand and a long spear in the other.
The four stood in a circle, facing outward, as if watching for threats, and they were the first to react when the distant scream of a jet engine could be heard. Acting as one they raised their shields and moved to cover each other, clearly intending to defend against the incoming fighters. But another odd looking ant had a different idea. The image projected by Nallia showed as another ant monster, larger than the normal ones but smaller than the four massive beasts, pushed aside one of their shields and held out her hand. The Protector Knights went silent as a spell formed in the air before the dozen wiggling fingers that made up her hand.
Spears of earth rose from the ground around her and rocketed into the air as the jets cleared the mountain. Without any time to react the spears tore the jets apart, ripping through the metal like it was paper. Only one pilot managed to eject, the other looking like it was hit directly in the cockpit, and both jets slammed into the ground at the base of the mountain moments later.
“A Princess,” Orlan said slowly, “and one that can use magic, great.”
“She’s forth sphere equivalent as well,” Nallia added, “though I estimate her magic abilities are only second sphere.”
“The those four monsters around her are the royal guard,” Lailra finished, then looked at Orlan with a smile, “been a while since we’ve been pushed like this.”