Screeching triumphantly, the Golden Cliffs Buzzard Duke slammed down onto the Ant, great talons firmly grasping both the abdomen with the poisoned stinger and its neck, making sure neither could threaten it. With several beats of its hundred-meter wings, it took off back up into the sky, a whole vortex of winds following it as the utterly massive Bird soared up with impossible agility for its bulk, and was into the night and heading away with aplomb and glee, getting what it came for.

Which left one more Ruler up above to feed to its satisfaction...

“East end forces, we’re shifting west to reinforce those troops!” There wasn’t any question as to why, as there was literally nothing in front of us coming this way, it all having been pulled west. The backwash of the Spellflare and the spillover of the Vulture Duke’s attacks had shredded everything around where the Ant had been, and no Bugs were moving to fill the area in.

It was one of them there morale-raising moments, as we’d seen the end of at least part of the Swarm, and one of the lesser Rulers was being carted off as Bird food. Instead of being enveloped by the Swarm, we were the ones folding in upon it, despite the fact that at least a mile more of them was still trailing behind the main mass just in our line of sight. It was doubtless much, much longer near the middle.

Reinforcements would probably be coming, but for a short time at least, we were going to tear up the flank of the Swarm like nobody’s business.

The harvesting of Soul Crystals did nothing but pick up as we moved on down the line to find more things to kill.

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The pitch-black Night Screamer Bat Duke flapped off with his twitching Black Dragon Ant Baron prize, most of the Obsidian Shale Ant’s head burned away from eating Adept-boosted Shardrays point-blank. That one had simply charged the wall, not pausing to Cast, certain it could dodge enough to escape the fate of its fellow, so I’d focused on its head, specifically the eyes and mouth.

Five thousand-plus points of damage to the head seemed to rather exceed its tolerance levels, although I was sure it Soaked a lot of it. Regardless, the Horde was down at least two Rulers, I didn’t know how the Army was faring with all of the others, and the threat of the flying Beasts was basically gone as they finished grabbing their meals and flew away.

Yeah, it was over a thousand Warriors and every Commander that had come in range, but what could we do? In the end, we’d fed them, and they’d helped us kill tens of thousands of the things. What more could we ask for?

I continued my harvesting and the moat line continued burning, although we soon received word to abandon it after the western end was compromised once again. It seemed the Scorpions there had breached the top while Ants burrowed underneath, and a webbed dome from the Spiders had caught nearly a thousand troops in a trap, slaughtering them and flooding over the wall there.

I was very aware that the same thing would happen to this flank if I wasn’t here, and I wasn’t sure how I could deal with a Ruler quickly without the fliers there to clean up. I’d just have to wing it... and make some preparations, as it didn’t look like there were really any Archmages nearby to help, given the magic I could see being tossed about to the west of us.

The Ants had learned they couldn’t raise a Wall to stop my Rays, as the Seeking Spell Metamagic just bent the Rays up, around, and over the obstruction to hit their target regardless. If a Commander got within a thousand feet, that was how I popped them, spending a point of Tier-7 Novice Mana to do so.

The additional forty-two Stars currently with fourteen Mana each meant 588 more Mana, on top of my base 343 from seven Stars with forty-nine Mana each. At only seven points a pop, I could toss out a lot of Adept-level Boosts, but since I only needed such things for the Commanders or Rulers, they were lasting a very long time.

Also, my initial Stars were at Tier-7, and my new ones at Tier-2. Suck! It was good that spending seven Mana at a time was a big damage multiplier on its own...

If I spent one Mana, I had a multiplier of x64 I could use to Boost my spells. If I spent seven from the new Stars, because of the lower quality, it only rose to x80. If and when I finished upgrading them all, I’d have a colossal x2560 modifier Casting at Adept, and those Rulers had better watch out...

I was watching the next Ant Ruler, I think it was nearly a Duke by its greater size, which meant it was even tougher, maybe even the Head Ant for all of this. It definitely had its eye on me after I helped kill two others of its kind, and I could tell it was sidling forwards slowly, trying to get within range to do something, or charge quickly enough that I couldn’t stop it. Considering it was thirty feet tall and weighed tons, it would come up and just explode through this wall, barely stopping as it did.

Yeah, I definitely needed some other things in place, which I had to work into place by stutter-stepping my other Casting.

The Ant Duke hit two thousand feet, and I adjusted my default Casting to start pounding it all the way out there, further away than it thought I could hit it at.

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I abandoned the triple set of Darts for Split Admixtured-Chained Dartrays and Fastcast-Admixtured Split Shardrays, abandoning Burst and focusing on nothing else but the Ruling Ant for the moment. One point of Mana each to juice the damage from 2-12+90%, +14 or so +Kickers, to a x32 multiplier as I worked in the range increase, as well.

It was about 800 points for each of the four Rays coming in, which was enough to overcome a huge chunk of its incredible Resistance as I blasted into its left leg joint on its thorax with all four of the Rays.

I didn’t take the leg off, but it definitely felt it. The Black Dragon Ant Duke bounced away from the hit, oversized mandibles working angrily, brought its head up, and expelled a literal wave of Acid in my direction.

The massive fan of it jetted up with unnatural speed, spreading out at the standard 1:3 cone ratio. It would be seven hundred feet wide when it hit the wall, and reduce every single being underneath it to sludge, including every Ant and Spider in front of the Duke.

But, it wasn’t a breath weapon, it was just another spell.

Screams of horror were arising, along with defensive spells that would be cut right through, as I Spellflared right into the teeth of the incoming Acid, ignoring the way it was falling onto the Ant’s own forces and the drops of green-yellow were burning right through them. I wrenched at the construction of the Mana making it up, tearing apart the construction of the spell with a +58 Dispel Check and setting it on spellfire.

I was using the Sublime Chord constantly. Everyone around me loved it, because the +4 Caster Level doubled the power of Novice-Level spells, a marvelous increase in basic power for the soldiers around me, and the biggest reason why we’d been able to endure when other wall sections with more people had faltered. Taking a base d6 fire attack to 5d6, or the Tier 3 version from 4d6 to 8d6, was a massive damage increase for normal soldiers being frugal with their Mana.

Now that deluge of Acid coming at us flared with a thousand burning cracks, every droplet set ablaze with arcane fire, and shot back towards the Ant that had launched it.

Importantly, this bypassed a lot of the Ant’s defenses, as it was its own magic gone wild that was coming back at it.

The splashing, liquid fury of the arcane fire blew out around it, and promptly consumed everything within two hundred feet of the massive Ant and for a great distance past it. Into this confusion came my Fastcast Dartrays drilling into its leg as it reared up in pain, and this time the charred limb went flying like a burning log, the hole into its body gaping wide, surrounded by frost around a charred opening.

I chanted a completely new spell, the Elementally-adjusted Crackling Cacophany, and Lightning Magic swirled around the reeling Ant, playing over its skin and sinking into it, opening up paths and conduits for the Lightning Magic that was about to follow.

Lightning Magic had the basic effect here of ‘Armor Penetration’. While it didn’t cover the area that Fire or Ice Magic could, for single-target damage, it was among the best to use.

All of my Magic had the Good, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Thunder, and if Vivic was being used, the Healing Descriptors.

The clouds crackled above as I Called down the Lightning I had worked into my Casting reps.

It was only a single Thunderbolt, but it was raging with multiple energies and it was Cast at 40+, backed by a full 7 Adept Mana. It had hit the 25d8 mana cap with an additional +6 per die, but that Topped figure added on an 80d6 hammer of the gods, all of it at +90%.

It was 1400 or so points of damage in a single gargantuan Bolt of Lightning, definitely the biggest damn Thunderbolt I had ever seen. It came down not with a boom, but an aria of Zealous enthusiasm that lit the entire battlefield up clear to the horizon with Holy light.

It pounded the Ant’s head right into the ground, its entire body lighting up as the force of the Bolt was conducted throughout it by the excited music of the Crackling Cacophany making it Vulnerable to Lightning. I was sure it was in utter agony at the power of the hit by the way its legs were all spasming, and it probably didn’t help when the Fastcast Shardrays drove into the gaping wound in its thorax and totally lit it up inside.

I was sure Banespell and Bane of Legends were having a field day together, delivering all that Crackling Firefrost to where it needed to do the most damage.

The Ant’s legs started spasming, and it completely collapsed as the whole center of its body started to glow inside.

But, vivus wasn’t burning on it, so it was not dead.

There wasn’t much of anything in front of the Wall here that was still alive, but I could still send out Dartrays to the west to keep things going. My Fastcast Dartrays now hammered into that thorax hole repeatedly, accented by one point of Mana each time, driving the damage back into its abdomen and ripping apart all of its organs and magic.

It still took another six shots until the Ant Duke’s carapace suddenly flared in hundreds of lines and split open, vivic fire raging up busily as it burst out and over the insides of the creature. Its massive head and twitching feelers went still, its eyes soon luminous with the vivus that was devouring it from within.

The area it had washed in Acid was now a field of vivus, too, bubbling and oozing with Acid that nothing was going to intrude on.

What members of the Horde were left beyond the Ant Duke shifted west to avoid the area. Its surrounding escort of Warriors and Commanders were also quite dead and burning vivic at this time.

“Captain Mick, hold the far end and pick off any stragglers!” I told him, pointing at the random Ants and Spiders still hesitantly ambling this way under the overarching Horde’s directive.

He was a bit too shellshocked to muster up more than a “Yes, ma’am!” immediately, and he and Hopper zipped off that way in a sparking run.

Now, I had potentially forty more Thunderbolts I could Call down. The extra effect was, however, completely mutable if you knew what you were doing, and I definitely did. My Control Lightning modifier, the Skill to manipulate the Lightning Mana here, was +40, and shifting the focus of the Lightning Magic from sledgehammer to area effect was certainly possible.

I was only going to get one Thunderbolt every ten minutes per Call Lightning spell as the power built in the brooding clouds above, but that was totally fine. This fight still had hours left in it, and so I was relatively sure I’d get everything I needed out of the spell...

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Note they are inside the Warded area. It probably would have taken five to ten times as long to kill the Ant Rulers without being inside it.