The middle of Deon’s back itched fiercely and it was hot. Right at the line dividing discomfort from pain.
It was a small price to pay in exchange for blocking that Skill-enhanced shot with a mana shield.
Everything about his spellcasting was so much better than before sticking the eidolon’s gift in his back.
Sure, the fact that over time the mana-generating stone would slowly merge with his body was a little disconcerting, but he’d already be dead without it.
He had cast the mana shield before the failed attempt at negotiation and made it invisible to the human eye. He hadn’t been able to do that before.
Now that subterfuge was no longer necessary he let the shield remain visible.
Blue light sparked and cracked in front of him as the Golden Eagles fired from the areas of the fort that somehow managed to stand up to the massive curtain of fire Karna had drawn over the entirety of the curved wall.
“Get the bunkers!”
Three bulging bunkers sat at the base of the burning wall spread out equidistant from each other.
Karna thumbed the striker of the lighter-like artifact in her hand.
The eidolon had claimed that it contained the heart of an elemental lord from a plane of fire.
The truth gem had been inconclusive, but he was inclined to take her at her word seeing it in action.
The pyromancer flicked her free hand over the flame.
Three thin streams lashed over a thousand feet and into the thin slits from which the mercenaries were shooting.
Eternal fire reflected in Karna’s eyes as she cackled.
He winced.
How many dead was that?
All those in the bunkers for sure. And most of the ones that had been on the wall.
“Okay, Karna, cool it down a bit. We don’t want a massacre.”
Her face was fixed in a rictus of hunger, but she relaxed after a tense moment.
“Jesus! This shit is addictive!” She closed the artifact, snuffing out the essence of fire. “Yeah, uh, I think Elandria was right. Half a day practice probably wasn’t enough… don’t tell her I said that.”
The shots from the fort dwindled down to almost nothing.
Only the sniper at the top of that tall tower kept at it.
Single shots continued to spark off his mana shield.
The eidolon’s intel had been spot on.
Two Level 40’s, the captain and the shooter.
Judging by how much mana was being burned by each shot, he had found the latter.
As for the former?
She had been on the wall when Karna’s fire had fallen.
It’d make the rest of it easier and less bloody if she had been killed.
“What are we waiting for?” Karna said, flinching with every shot off his shield.
“Relax.” Deon raised a hand and beckoned.
His team emerged from behind the large pile of monster and mutated animal corpses and hustled to his side.
The sniper tried to take shots at them, but Deon’s shield covered an enormous area.
“Creepy magic stone working, I see,” Russ said.
The nimble fencer had his rapier out and took a few unconscious swings and thrusts.
It was a nervous habit.
The silvery bands around his wrists caught the sun light.
“Fuck, those things are shiny!” Xander said.
The normally serene and composed archer shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Boots still giving you issues?” Deon said.
“Yup. Still feels stiff,” Xander said. “Don’t worry. It won’t affect my performance.”
“Remember, don’t feel like you have to use them.”
Xander nodded.
“Are we going yet?” Saint said.
The blood mage cradled the small clay jug in her equally small arms.
The artifact was unadorned, unassuming and somewhat lopsided. It looked hand made and not expertly at that.
In Deon’s opinion it was one of the most disturbing out of the eidolon’s gifts.
“We’re just waiting on the others.”
“Mana stone working properly?” Xander said.
“Obviously.”
“You sure? Cause we’re kinda needing it to not get dead.” He gestured at the mana shield.
Cracks appeared with every bullet impact, but were quickly repaired.
“She wasn’t lying. Pre-stone me would’ve already run out of mana five times over. I’ve got plenty and my head isn’t even remotely close to hurting. This artifact is orders of magnitude better than any outside mana source I’ve ever used. Feels so clean and pure.”
“It’s only going to merge with your body, so… there’s that…” Xander shrugged.
Deon was just about to defend his choice when a thunderous crash sounded from higher up the mountain.
Followed by an explosion of stone and steel from the top of the sniper’s tower.
“That’s the signal. Let’s go!”
Deon ran up the slope, maintaining the mana shield just in case.
It was nice not having to pay attention to his mana usage.
The upper half of the fort above the entrance to the Bat People Encounter Challenge mirrored the half below.
Walls of stone, earth and metal, which was a surprise hidden within.
Brand was strong enough to punch his way through a bank vault given half an hour.
A running punch with the gauntlets the hot and scary giant lady had given him broke thick stone like it was bubbles, hard-packed earth like fine sand, and a three-foot thick slab of iron like wet cardboard.
What had she called them?
Ironbreaker Gauntlets!
He remembered.
“Stop standing around and staring at those things and go knock that tower down!”
Hollis jumped off his back and vanished from his notice.
Right.
The plan.
She was going to do rogue-y things at the entrance to the encounter challenge cause it was sealed up tighter than—
Never mind.
He shook his head.
Bullets had peppered him on his mad downhill charge.
His thick armor was covered in tiny dents, enchantments notwithstanding.
Plus he had taken a particularly powerful Skill-enhanced bolt to the dome.
In fact…
He reached up and pulled it out.
Went straight through his thick helmet and actually pricked his otherwise bulletproof skin judging by the wet trickle down his neck.
It had to be blood.
He hadn’t done enough to work up a sweat.
His bare arms were looking swole and ripped.
Good striations and vein-age only marred by a few tiny welts and cuts.
He flexed, giving the stunned mercs on the wall an intimidating double biceps pose before running deeper into the fort as their return fire chased after him.
Hopefully, that’d be enough to get most of them off the wall so that Elandria could sneak through without too much trouble.
Sure, she could just shoot them all, but Deon didn’t want a massacre.
Stolen novel; please report.
It made sense.
Didn’t want to burn too many bridges.
No one liked murderhobo-types.
The Golden Eagles would probably hate them forever, but that couldn’t be helped.
It was the rest of the mercs and adventuring bands that they didn’t want to draw hate from.
Hell, they’d probably be grateful once the encounter challenge was opened up to everyone.
It wasn’t fair for the Golden Eagles to hog it all to themselves, anyways.
Further up the slope, roughly two thousand feet as a human climbed, Elandria lay prone in the bunker Brand had hastily made for her by throwing several large rocks together and punching a hole for her to shoot through.
The modular gun she had built herself was configured in long-range mode.
She’d just slammed an explosive round into the side of the sniper’s tower.
That had been an impossible shot even with all her tech and Skills.
Distance, wind, gravity, the flapping of a bird’s wings in the nearby strand of trees and any other number of variables meant that on her best day with all her class’ aids she could reliably put shots at that distance into an area the size of a dinner plate.
Don’t get her wrong.
That was objectively awesome.
Especially, considering that she wasn’t a sniper or a sharpshooter, but rather a techgunner.
She wasn’t specialized for long distance shooting, but could fake it pretty good.
The eidolon’s gift changed that.
A Helm of Unerring Aim.
It felt like leather, except not cold and lifeless, but warm and…
Well, the eidolon had sworn on truth spells that it wasn’t alive.
It enclosed her head without any holes for her mouth, nose and ears, yet it felt like she wasn’t wearing anything at all.
She could’ve sworn that she wasn’t looking out of the large, blinking eye in the middle of the helm.
The only difference in her vision were the HUD-like indicators.
It operated on thought and intent, placing a single dot on her target.
It moved as she moved her gun, but once she was ready to pull the trigger it locked in place.
The dot and her entire body with the exception of her trigger finger.
It allowed her to put her follow up shot through the thin slit from which the sniper had fired a very accurate shot that had thrown a cloud of dirt and dust over her own shooting hole.
She waited.
The mercs on the wall acted like ants that had water poured into their farm.
It looked like they were shooting into their fort, which meant that Brand was doing his thing.
So, she focused on her primary job.
Keep the sniper busy.
She fired into the slit once again.
A regular bullet.
Not one of her special ones.
Subdue before kill if given the opportunity.
Especially for the two mercs over Level 40.
They were more valuable to the greater cause of humanity alive then dead.
Deon was pretty confident from all the intel that once they could get inside the encounter challenge the Golden Eagles wouldn’t chase.
She concurred.
It was odd.
The mercs put a lot of effort into keeping the encounter challenge closed to everyone else, yet it seemed that they rarely went into it.
Maybe, the level requirements were too high for them?
That made sense if they only had two to four Level 40’s stationed at any given time.
Elandria’s one concern was that their team might not have been strong enough to face the horrors that waited inside the mountain.
Her fear dwindled and her confidence grew with how much stronger the eidolon’s gifts had made them.
Brand punched through reinforced walls like they were paper. Barely slowed him down. Without the gauntlets it would’ve taken him some effort to get through.
Bullets, spells and other crap chased him as he ran straight for the shooter’s tower. Hard to hit something his size going faster than a car. Especially with all the structures and people in the way.
Speaking of people.
Poor bastards didn’t stand a chance.
He left a trail of broken bodies in his wake.
Deon had told them that it was hurt before kill unless their lives were in danger.
Easier said than done when the slightest punch from his superstrong fists could pulp organs and break bones even through armor.
That’s why he didn’t try.
He let glancing blows from his shoulders mow people out of his way.
The buildings ended and he found himself in open space.
The map Deon made them memorize said that the shooter’s tower was in the center of a wide open space, but all he had to do was rush straight to the base to take away the shooter’s angle as quickly as he—
The bang sounded in his ears a split-second after searing pain bloomed in his back.
He stumbled.
Wetness spread from the back and front of his left shoulder.
So much for bulletproof skin, let alone multiple layers of mildly enchanted plate. Steel, ceramic and even a padded kevlar underlayer did nothing.
Also, the shot came from behind him.
“Fucking high level bullshit,” he muttered.
The shooter must’ve curved the shot on top of making it strong enough to get through everything Brand had going for him in terms of being better than an actual main battle tank.
On the plus side the shot was so strong that it went straight through.
It always sucked worse having to dig the projectile out.
He picked him his stride and put on a burst of speed.
The shoulder hurt, but he wasn’t having any problems pumping his arms.
Bit of luck that.
Went straight through meat and didn’t ding bone or ligaments.
And he had a lot of prime meat. Boulder shoulders, a monster back with both width and thickness.
A bullet might as well have been like a splinter.
“Enjoy the ride.”
Brand smirked as he approached the base of the tower.
He swung his fists as he ran through, reaching and destroying what looked like load-bearing pillars.
It crumbled in his wake, but he didn’t look back as he ran toward the entrance to the encounter challenge cave system.
There were more walls, gates and what not to bust through.
Deon had kept an eye on the tower as he led his team deeper into the base.
When it crumbled and kicked up a great bloom of dirt and debris he picked up the pace.
“Drop your weapons and lay on the ground! Hands on the back of your head and cross your legs! If you fight then you die!” Russ called out in a cheery voice.
Deon didn’t want a massacre.
So, any merc that complied got cuffed and left behind.
He figured that since they were moving quickly into the caves then any surviving and hidden merc could help out their fellows before the monsters came sniffing around.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot left alive to take the generous offer.
He had underestimated the damage Karna could cause.
The wall and the area around it was a charred wasteland.
He saw piles of metal glowing red hot that could only have been armor. As for the people that had been wearing them… well, there was a lot of ash and not much else.
Resistance stiffened as they continued deeper into the fort.
He held their fire at bay with his impenetrable mana shield while, Russ and Xander stowed their rapier and bow respectively to cuff a pair of surrendering mercs.
“Drag them over there.” Deon pointed to the corner of the nearest building.
“Huh?” Russ blinked.
“I don’t want them to catch strays. Saint, check the buildings for ambush. Wound first.”
A flat look on the blood mage’s face greeted him, but she complied.
The ugly jug the eidolon had gifted sat in the small young woman’s hands.
The stopper popped off and dangled from the frayed-looking cord, swinging back and forth like those old clocks.
Hair-thin streams of red emerged, snaking their way through the air and into the two buildings through open windows and cracks in doors.
It didn’t take long for Deon to feel the tell tale buzz of nearby spellcasting.
Saint had always been limited by the medium of her specialization.
She did her best work with her own, which was a double-edged sword.
She only had so many pints to work with as a small-bodied young woman.
The jug created a nearly endless supply from less than a pint.
“They’re retreating,” she said flatly.
“Don’t let them.”
“It’s harder if I had to be careful.”
“Just take their legs out.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t cut them off!” Deon didn’t want to leave permanently crippled mercs. Every one taken out was a loss for humanity in the struggle against the monsters and the invaders.
“You make this harder than it has to be, but okay.”
The resistance softened considerably after Saint finished her work and recalled the blood.
“That’s creepy shit, you know that, right?” Karna eyed the jug.
“What?” Saint kept her eyes forward.
“The whole ending up with more after a fight thing.”
“I didn’t take more than half a pint from each. I left them in much better condition than you did those poor mercs on the wall.”
Karna shrugged.
“Fire burns.”
Deon brought them to a halt.
Still no attacks.
The avenue up to the gatehouse protecting the entrance to the caves was covered in thick smoke.
What sounded like a truck rumbling from their right had them aiming weapons and spells.
“Hold!” Deon place another shield between his group and the rapidly approaching Brand.
“Damn. You guys beat me.”
“You’re wounded.”
“High level bullshit.” Brand poked at the bloody hole in his armor. “No worries.” He rotated his arm and flexed. “See.”
Deon nodded.
“Hollis and Elandria?”
“She’s inserted and she should be on her way. I cleared a path.”
“Saint, Xander, make sure Elandria can get here safely. I’m going to give the mercs one last chance.”
Deon hoped that their attack had properly shocked and awed the remaining mercs.
Surely, they knew they were overmatched.
Their strongest were probably dead. The shooter in the fallen tower and the captain on the wall.
There was no need for further bloodshed at this point.
“Listen up!” he called out into the smoke. “This is your last chance. We just want in the encounter challenge. Let us through and you won’t see us again for a long time if at all.”
Silence.
The only sounds were the soft scrabbling of Saint’s and Xander’s boots as they ran up the way Brand had arrived.
Deon counted the seconds, hoping that they saw reason.
Beside him Karna fidgeted with the lighter-like artifact.
They had a plan for what came next if the mercs continued to resist.
He regarded the hungry look in her burning eyes.
They’d have to figure out how to better control that.
A voice suddenly rang through the thick smoke. A rasp, hoarse and pained.
“Young man, your greed for loot and gains is going to doom us all. You can’t go inside. None of us can.”
“Yesss,” Karna hissed.
“Don’t!” Deon stopped her before she could activate the artifact. “Explain?” he called out.
They had the advantage.
He judged that it wouldn’t hurt to hear the merc out.
Besides, a short talk would give Hollis more time to do her thing and they were waiting for Elandria anyways.