I’d had a good time in the Beast Realm, and had been gratified that I hadn’t had to fight any Beasts there, or at least non-Corrupted ones, save basic Servants who’d thought I was a meal. That didn’t mean I didn’t realize that these Beasts were basically in a territorial war, were being motivated by their intelligent Ruler, and War had no favorites, as elemental as a storm in what was happening now. It was fight or die, there was no morality involved at this point.
It being triggered and really expounded on by a greedy fucktard, well, that was a different matter. It was also the problem, as Evil’s ability to profit from this sort of thing while other people paid the price for it was one of their greatest advantages in the Alignment Wars. All the Good and Lawful people stepped up to defend the weak and their fellows, while Evil miiiight get involved to save their own asses, as might the Chaotic. Regardless, they set themselves up ahead of time to profit from the deaths of others and cement their own positions, cloaking themselves in the blood of others and lauding the survivors and the dead with empty platitudes and hollow glory that cost themselves nothing.
Ugh, I did hate this sort of shit, but it was what it was, and one thing I was damn good at was endurance Casting.
The wide thrust of the Drone attack had failed. I looked west at the fighting there.
The vanguard line was heaviest to the West. The line of the Horde was wider than ours there, and thus it outpaced us as we slowly ate away the advancing Ants. It would threaten to come in from the side and try to flank and envelop us if it could. A significant number of powerful Mages were deployed in that direction just to intercept any such attempts, including at least two Archmages from Fort Hood, as I recalled.
The Shale Ant Queen and the Tarantula King were both going to be here. I didn’t know who or what else was getting involved. I’d asked, and knew the Thunderclaw Strider King had territory further west, but it was no friend of the Tarantula King. The Sidewinding Maze Ruler might jump in, we’d know if we saw more Snakes, and the Ebon Death Scorpion King might come, as well.
If any of the Avian Rulers came in as opportunists, that would be totally possible, too, and be really bad. Having to deal with constant potential attacks from above was murder.
There were no Emperors nearby until you got to the Firelands, the expanse of volcanic territory that stretched from the faultlines in Oregon and California over to the Big Burn under what would have been Yellowstone Park in another time and place. Supposedly a Fire Phoenix nested in the area, dominating all the Fire creatures... which was fortunate, as if it had been a Dragon or Drake, things could have been really dicey.
No, wait, Racing Thunder, the Plains Wolf Emperor, was reputed to be active anywhere in the middle plains, but probably not nearby. Crowned Moon, the Timber Wolf Emperor, preferred the northern forests. Coyote Emperor, famous for his cleverness, could be found anywhere on the continent.
Further north, in the great woods of the Canadian North, the Shaggy Man Emperor dwelled in the great pine forests there, the most powerful Wendigo/Sasquatch/Yeti on the planet, His writ law across millions of square miles of the greatest stretch of forests in the world, as well as its northern tundra, influencing the entire continent of North America. The otherworldly magic of the Northern Lights dancing across His territory gave the people here the greatest affinity in the world for Void and Chaos Magic, or so Red said.
Supposedly Thunderbird True Emperor, Emperor of the whole continent, ruled out of the northern Rockies, while the Glacial Bear Emperor dominated the Northern Shore. Infinite Crag Horn, the Stag Emperor, was somewhere in Alaska, along with Mountain Hoof, the Moose Emperor, and Six Broken Hills, the Mountain Bighorn Ram Emperor. Kodiak, the Great Bear Emperor, strongest of the Bears in the whole world, wandered the Aleutians and the Lands on the Bering Strait.
Red was pretty enthusiastic about the topic, and had quickly brought up a list of known and suspected Emperors in North America when I had asked about them. There were at least a Fox and Lynx Emperor, a Crow Emperor, at least three more Raptors (Condor, Hawk, and Falcon), a Robin, a Butterfly, a Black Widow Spider, two Owls, a Goose, and a Puma. The Woolly Mammoths still existed and had an Emperor in the North, too, along with the Smilodons and Giant Sloths, and there was a famous Tortoise Emperor in the Great Lakes!
I had asked about Wolverines, being curious about that, and he had given me a strange look.
“We’re all from Michigan, it’s called the Wolverine State.” I just lifted an eyebrow at him. “We earned it because we killed all the Wolverines in the state, including their Emperor. It took most of a century to do it. There’s still some Wolverine Rulers around up in Canada, but none have managed to jump up to Emperor since then.”
“Dragons or Drakes?” I had to ask, impressed despite myself.
“There aren’t any native to North America,” Red had stated firmly. “We believe there’s a common agreement among the native Emperors to keep them out. They’ll tolerate a Contracted Dragon while it’s bound to a Human, it seems, but once one gets out into the wild, well... there hasn’t been too many fights seen, but the aftermaths suggest a local Ruler or even Emperor comes to visit, and if the Dragon doesn’t run, it dies.
“For the same reason, no domesticated Dragons or Drakes exist in numbers here. If they are brought in, something disastrous tends to happen to them fairly quickly, and the Archmages and Sages won’t lift a finger to investigate or avenge them. Everybody thinks Thunderbird is behind it, especially given how many Whitecrown Eagles serve with the military, and how many Ruler-level Birds are under Him.
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“Even the Feathered Serpents from down south don’t come up past the Rio Grande. Talk about Snake and Bird fights if they try!” He had shaken his head emphatically.
Definitely a different world.
My internal cold was keeping my Snowcasting Buffs active, so I had a working 41 Intellect now, balancing target acquisition, constant scanning of my Detects, keeping an eye on the soldiers and KIA people I felt responsible for, and watching for surprises coming from the Ants as I recorded our position for later returns.
It was a great opportunity to stock up on a lot of Crystals, and I was going to take it.
-------
The orders eventually came to empty out the middle and prosecute the sides before they could bend around and flank us, so that’s what we did. Our rapid and steady erosion of the Ants attracted the attention of some of the elite Mages, who were astonished at how steadily and quickly we could grind down massive areas of them.
I got to witness a lot of Area of Effect magic when said Mages opened up, all of the Elements having at least some combat viability at that level. Massive bladewinds, plunging rains of glowing sword-lights, rains of meteors, waves of flame, pounding and drowning flash floods, murderous sleet storms, and dancing walls and fields of lightning, all of which could sweep away acres of Ants at one time, drove some big holes in the Swarm... and the rest, of course, just kept right on coming.
The problem was the low, broad power wasn’t there. Just an upgrade to Tier-4 Stars was helping the KIA men a lot, but the Mick had told me that such upgrades as Soul Remnants were normally something like 1/100 kills, and could only be collected if you had an Undead mage around with an appropriate device that could store souls. This getting a virtual Remnant from basically everything that was burning en vivus was unreal!
I imagined the slaughter that would be unleashed if such became widespread news. Every powerful mage alive was going to want all their Stars upgraded, and be willing to massacre armies of Beasts to do it.
Yeah, no. We’d be keeping that secret of Vivic Weapons tight to the chest, we would.
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Tens of millions of Ants were dead before we hit the Ward boundary, mostly the weakest level of Servant Ants who perished to use up the magic for the larger Servants and Warriors behind them, and the towering Drone Commanders and what seemed to be a foursome of Baron Black Dragon Ant Rulers who commanded them all.
Behind them was the main force of the Tarantulas, at least ten times as many as the prior Swarm, and weighted more towards the stronger end.
The west was also dealing with an invading force of Desert Scorpions, although not the full Swarm of the Scorpion King out there, and a large number of Sidewinders and Desert Rattlers seemed to have jumped into the fight, too, lengthening the line we had to fight across and causing tons of trouble as they did.
But then they hit the Ward boundary of Human territory, and the Horde tactics showed their weakness.
The weakest Servant-class creatures could barely move under the force of the Ward, and were slaughtered easily. Warriors and Commanders were still slowed greatly, but now had to operate without the seething numbers of their lessers to soak the magic up for them.
The vanguard teams had numbered only a thousand men, and were scattered across miles of the front. Sure, they were among the more elite Casters, but that was what Formation Casting was all about.
Hastily-dug trenches weren’t designed to stop the Hordes, only make a convenient target for disposal of their corpses as Conjoined Formation magicks fell upon the Hordes in rains of power, burning them as they poured into the moats and didn’t make it out of them.
The more powerful Horde creatures could vault the ditches, of course, but that was what the more powerful soldiers were for.
They were also who I went hunting, as the KIA and vanguard members withdrew behind the lines to urgently get Mana back as the siegers met the incoming Horde, and more millions of the attackers died.
Eventually the Hordes got through, the defensive wall was breached, and the soldiers evacuated in reasonably good order, streaming back to the next set of walls and moat a mile back, once again hurriedly excavated and assembled by Earth mages. There was another set of trenches, and another going up even now beyond them, all being defended by new soldiers and militia coming in from the south in their thousands to take up positions there.
Those fleeing took Wind Trails and Earth bridges across the moats, the latter were destroyed behind them, and the Formation bombardments began again.
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“Both here, with their Rulers?” the Mick asked me, looking up at the night sky, in between tossing casual balls of Lightning that whirled and spun like bolas, tearing their way through incoming bugs crazily. The additional blue ‘wings’ of voltage on his spheres made them glom onto passing creatures faster, now nearly impossible to avoid.
There were a lot of big winged creatures up there. They weren’t tussling with one another, either. They were circling around, swooping down in regular runs, and lifting away dead Spiders and Ants as they did so.
A LOT of them were at the Warrior level... and there was way more than one Commander!
“They are a bunch of opportunistic gits is what they are,” I snorted, letting loose another salvo, but this one was of triple Burst-Shards and a Split-Ray, both Chained. Even the Servant-class Bats and Vultures were swooping down to pick off the dead Warrior-Level bugs I was targeting with whoops and calls of delight for the harvest.
The arrival of the fliers had been a dreaded moment for the defenders. The combination of Bats Shrieking and Vulture Air Magic would have devastated the defenders immediately, and turned the wall defense into a bloodbath.
To the shock of the Human troops, the Birds and Bats had all emigrated to the east of the line, where a certain someone happened to be shooting tons of Ants and Spiders. They had set up their buffet conga line literally directly over my head.
“They’re taking all the good stuff?” the Mick asked in an aggrieved tone, as feelers popped over the wall directly in front of us. Hopper’s sparking beak hammered down, and the polished carapace of the Ant exploded in purple-violet-blue, sending a headless body back into the moat below to burn vivic with thousands upon thousands of similar corpses. Unlike every other place else on the line, this section was having no problems with rising heaps of corpses, as even Fire couldn’t burn down the dead Ants fast enough elsewhere.