Grey arrows were let loose with wild abandon, given the vast quantity of targets accuracy was of little concern to Mooch. The strange physiology of the incoming hoard was just as strange as the outer shell suggested. Vital components were never where they ought to have been or simply didn't exist. Wherever the monstrosities were shot, they only continued to lumber ever onward.
When the hoard reached the halfway mark, between the walls and the small group of five, the walls shifted again. Between each of the segments of walls, a countdown clock shifted into existence within the rock.
1:00:00
0:59:59
0:59:58
Unlike the usual team fight, this was far more rare and several times more deadly. As if coordinating an orchestral imagining of impending doom, the grating of the shifting stone and thunderous approach of the hoard formed a morose drumbeat. They wouldn't ever get close to the commanding force that had created the hoard, nor would they likely see it. All they could do was hope to survive what was sure to be the longest hour of their short lives. Even still, the mangled, pale, bodies kept streaming through the walls. If they made it through this, none of them had any doubt that it would be by the skin of their teeth.
"Give me some range to work with and then hold. We need to conserve energy," came Mooch's quick assessment.
"An hour though... fuck me," groaned Zlatan. He was a tank but for any one of them, an hour was a long time to be in a combat of this magnitude. Usually, they'd all be limited by what they could do against similarly levelled opponents but these were overwhelming numbers that they were working against. None of the things quickly lumbering towards them even looked as though they were conscious, let alone used mana. Who or whatever controlled these fleshy constructs was at a level they couldn't even consider reaching in the near future.
"Who's the part-timer now," came Bolo's grinding voice as the golem ground forward, earth and stone rose towards its heavily fortified core only to fall away as it moved. The perpetual pillar of shifting debris twisted as the golem threw a casual punch. Tons of grating stone launched forward, barely deviating as it threw back two of the pale fleshy creations. Thick flaps of shredded skin hung from Bolo's fist and the open wounds of the figures before them.
Rage remained stoically silent, though the sudden reddish aura said she was ready. Around her hands, the aura was so dense it looked like a thick oozing blood. Darting forward, a lingering haze of red drifted like oil floating in water, a separate trail for each savage hand. Quickly arriving before the first of the monstrosities before her, a clawed hand tore through its grey flesh just fast. She dipped and dodged through all manner of assaults but never let her arms cease their destructive twirl. Severed limbs and chunks of flesh began to be quickly torn from their host body as her assailants came close to her windmill of death.
Despite Rage's brutal artistry, Nightmare presented the biggest surprise. Tearing, cracking sound emanated from the still ordinary image of the boy.
Bloated and spiked, the boy's forearms were huge clubs of brutalised flesh. The bloodied limbs crumpled the bodies before him. Spattered blood and ribbons of flesh were left scattered across the surface of the arena. Each lumbering swing made the boy look comparatively minuscule against the sheer heft of his forelimbs. Covered in gore, unlike the matted flesh that clung to Bolo's own limbs, the pale matter fell wetly to the ground, as shifting undulations dislodged the debris from Nightmare's body. The blood-smeared distortions of his anatomy looked more like writhing creatures than a human arm as the subdermal movements rippled.
"Holy... That's metal as," Zlatan laughed
The boy smiled, shyly; a stark contrast to his gruesome physiology.
"Fucking disgusting, but metal as f-"
Nightmare's smile dropped as quickly as Zlatan was suddenly battered away, by an amalgamation of fused pale limbs, as he stared at the boy's mutated body.
More focused on the battle than the battle-mage, Mooch noticed the slight blurs to his vision cleared around Nightmare's unveiled limbs but still hung around the rest of his body. Whatever trinket or ability that was hiding Nightmare's mutations, there was more yet to uncover.
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The sea of broken was thickly layered around Valruck's workshop just as Otis remembered it. Not one of the faces looked familiar, every injury looked fresh and raw. Each disfigured husk sorrowfully bemoaned their fate, begging for the workshop to open its doors to them. Every one of them was just as desperate as the others had been. The fate of those other denizens of the slave city was something Otis forced from his mind. It was too close to home to consider, too much of a likely possibility.
Ignoring the wailed and whimpering tones, Otis tried to keep his composure. Recalling the door they had gone to last time, he knew they were watching him already. Somewhere, the strange unknowns defending Valruck's workshop knew he was here. Nearing the wrinkled metal, Otis steeled his courage.
"Mana toxicity," he croaked.
Silence emanated from the darkness but the door suddenly appeared to hung ajar.
The darkness was more than a trick of the light, an agent close to Valruck didn't permit sight without cause. The slave city's best or rather only doctor afforded him a high level of protection and devotees who were enslaved within the city but also directly to Valruck. Otis had seen it before but it was no less jarring as he crept towards the inky black of the workshop. If the obscuring forces around him took it upon themselves, he would be dead long before he realised they had moved against him. It had been jarring the first time he had come here, but as his understanding of his own strengths became more apparent the power these individuals wielded became increasingly unfathomable.
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The team didn't have the practised coordination gained from practice; instead, the group operated independently each taking a different angle of attack. Mooch stood in the centre of their formation, continuing his barrage. From here, unlike the others, he could see past the immediate front lines to observe the wider scope of the battle. There was no way that they would be able to keep up this pace of fighting before the timer ran out.
51:24
Already they were breathing hard. Small injuries were beginning to take a toll and the initial barrage of attacks already had less strength behind them. As a construct Bolo didn't have the same limitations as the rest of them but the mental effort used to pilot the rock golem was sure to have a drain on the mage too, although it was less obvious.
Fighting as they were, they wouldn't last more than half the time. Even with Zlatan's ability to endure, he too would be overwhelmed after everyone else fell. They had to figure out how to work together or more efficiently or they wouldn't last long. Even then, how much longer would they be able to last? Mooch's own attacks relied on targeting weak vital points but each construct pale abomination flailed about with a different assortment of limbs and differently located organs. He was limited to shooting arrows through joints and feet to slow them down for the big hitters on the team.
Less than a sixth of the total time for the bout had passed and each of them showed different signs of fatigue. Bolo was the least obviously affected with obscene levels of greyish flesh stuck to the construct's rocky protrusions. Already, they were beginning to look like a child's attempt at building a clay figurine, albeit far more morbid.
Zlatan's high endurance allowed him to sustain himself, whilst his purple aura bristled to life, slowly draining the constructs of their mana but he was struggling more than he would care to admit. Normal combatants cared for their lives but the pale hoard advanced without a single thought of self-preservation. He couldn't rely on whittling down an enemy's strength as he usually would, there were too many targets to attack. He was stuck using his most exhausting, detonating, physical attacks wreathed in his purple aura, that exploded against the rubbery flesh of the constructs. The mana he drained from the constructs helped alleviate some of this burden but it was only a supplementary aid.
Rage and Nightmare were fairing far better in their ability to attack the hoard but their methods were far more exhausting, no matter how high their agility or endurance they would falter eventually. Opponents lumbering towards Rage were quickly decimated with the powerful bloody hue of her swipes. 'Hobble and dispatch' seemed to be her method of fighting and it was highly effective against the hoard. Nightmare had revealed more tricks, as fleshy shields separated from his back, attached by jutting piston-like shafts of skin and bone. Clearly, his body was grotesquely adaptive. Still, the shifting flesh of his bloated forearms appeared to be exhausting his stamina such was their mass. Although there was a definite strength and explosive power, he was the most visibly fatigued as he breathed heavily.
Sweat beaded heavily on Mooch's face as he took in their efforts. It would only get more difficult as the round went on. Somehow he would need to direct them to combine their strengths. He was the only one of them able to see the whole fight and glimpse a bigger picture.
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Screams reverberated off the walls of the workshop. Otis' strained shouts were indistinguishable from those around him. Beds cluttered the inner sanctum of the workshop. Different chambers within the workshop housed different "projects", each chamber housing a different type of experimental treatment.
Otis hadn't seen any sign of Tarot or his men but he was now in too much pain to care. unconsciousness wouldn't come. Last time, he had been weaker and unprepared. If it had been possible to think past the agony of it all, Otis would have realised how significant it was that he was even able to bear such intense pain. Veins close to bursting littered his body in thick bluish protrusions. Writhing on the table it felt as though he had lost several pounds of body weight in sweat alone. Bracing against the intruding forces, blood vessels in his right eye had burst early in his "procedure," before he could get more accustomed to the worst of the pain.
Straining, his flickering eyelids saw intermitted visions of horror as Valruck prowled his workshop. Otis had seen some of the man's "projects" for himself as he was guided towards the central operating theatre. Every figure was differently afflicted but the pain seemed to be universal. Now, the twisted visage of the "doctor" loomed over him. Jet-black eyeballs stared down into his own. The thin lips embedded against the heavily muscled face of the man stretched wide to show off teeth better suited to a great white. The hulking frame of Valruck benefitted from only the best of his experimentations, the monolithic heft of his scarred physique sloped off a long way behind him. The sight had been shocking the first time Otis had been presented with the "doctor's" appearance but, like Tarot, it was an example of the extremes some people were willing to take. If the man had ever resembled a humanoid figure this hadn't been for some time now.
Flickering to Valruck's other "project" to his right, Otis eyed his neighbour enviously. They had willingly subjected themselves to the excess mana rampaging through his body and were surely leagues ahead in level. Linked by strands of translucent gelatinous film Otis was connected to another inhabitant of the slave city. The figure was a bizarre armoured stone-like being who was wholly androgynous, their grunts of pain sounded computer generated as it toed the line of masculine and feminine tones. Although Otis was definitely a significantly lower level than his fellow patient and capable of holding far less mana, uncontrolled foreign mana was still capable of ravaging their body's defences. It was like a transplanted organ that the body desperately wanted to reject.
Absorbed in the pain and unknown fate of his friends, Otis was unaware of the fury that sat only a chamber away. Unlike the senses of higher level mages but particularly those of a mental mage, his ability to detect those around him was still limited. Yet, for Tarot, he was all too aware that the reason for his suffering sat only metres away. The chance he needed to advance was devastatingly close. His eyes burnt with a fury that felt tangible in the air. He felt a sense of powerlessness that he hadn't felt in years but all was not lost yet.