“Remember, wound them! It’s not necessary to waste power trying to overwhelm and kill each one right away! As they burn, they bleed and die!”
The group of Franceville Adepts and Mages clutched their temporary Staff Implements possessively, boosted with Greater Magic Weapon and Vivic Weapon, already thinking of how to use their magic. The former spell would boost Spell Penetration and minimum damage, the latter would set any Undead on vivic fire and practically guarantee their dissolution with some speed.
None of them had true Staffs of their own, but I had just created a new market for them in the future, without a doubt.
The idea was to eliminate all the chaff as rapidly as possible, which would make it much easier for the Adept and Novice mages to defend themselves and use Formations to defend against the more powerful mages and Beasts among the undead, as well as helping out the Plants a lot.
The biggest wildcard was the power of the King, which was not going to be small. King Beasts had a LOT of Mana, which meant they had a lot of corrupted Mana, too...
“Sunrise!” a local Light Mage called out just as the turn of the day came, the sun rose in the distance, and a beam of light streaked across the distance to touch the city’s Ward, which promptly lit up with golden glory and began to expand in all directions rapidly.
The fight with King Magogo had moved ten miles over the past five hours. As I’d expected, he was just living enough to not be affected by vivus and anti-undead stuff, and just undead enough to be tougher than freaking shit and ignoring the vast majority of stuff they were pummeling him with, while being capable of ripping out with corrupted Earth attacks of incredible lethality if anyone lost focus for even a second, as well as mauling through even the best defenses in almost no time at all. As a King Beast he was also incredibly fast, his Earth Magic was capable of dragging fliers down out of the sky if they weren’t incredibly strong, and all-in-all, it was an incredibly dangerous fight.
Briggs had managed to cost the King Honey Badger its left eye and right lower canine. What few actual wounds King Magogo had were inflicted by Endure and then continuously exploited by bombarding spells. Alas, they didn’t slow the King down at all on his path of slaughter and feasting on unfortunate animals that got in front of him, regardless of their size or power... and as he ate, the glutton healed from their bombardments continually, even faster than the raw power it was sucking out of the earth while leaving ashen waste in his wake.
Yeah, the King had to go.
Then the sun rose, and the Wolverine Hunters saw it stare at the wall of Wardlight coming towards it. He snarled, ripping down a towering hawthorn tree with one effortless swipe of yard-long claws, and his course changed abruptly, heading directly towards Franceville and into the oncoming Ward!
There was no stopping his progress, and the countryside was largely empty of anything that might divert his attention. With untiring vigor and deadly purpose, he headed directly for the city of Humans there, and the Wolverine Hunters could only try to keep up and keep assaulting him.
As he rumbled along at incredible speed for his size, darkness began to gather around him and before him, fighting against the coming dawn with unnatural shadows and lengthening blackness that painted the very skies with ghoulish darkness, the sun reduced to a gibbous, moaning moon in the distance that held no strength.
The wailings and shrieks of things long-dead began to echo in the air, and power gathered about King Magogo in his distorted, debased Domain. Normal Wolverine Hunters would have certainly fallen back at this display of power, but the eight KIA men in the lead had all affixed Maces to the heads of their Staffs, the crystalline heads of the Weapons glowing with a new and formidable power against the Undead.
Maces of Disruption, the identifying Weapons of the Undead Hunters!
Getting the Maces to work as Scepter Implements hadn’t actually been all that difficult. Disruption was a more weaponized form of vivus, in the end, with a severe bias against undead, unliving, and Evil Outsiders. The form of vivus that did not leave Soul Crystals was actually a downgraded form of Disruption.
The effects were quite nice. Immediate doubling of the damage of all spells against Undead and Evil Outsiders, with a chance at instantly obliterating them. That chance was next to nil against anything at Commander or higher, but against chaff, it was one more means of wiping them away!
It could only be used successfully by those of Good Alignment, too, as they were essentially Blessed Weapons. The crystalline heads basically made the mages’ Staffs into Polemaces for the moment, not that they’d get into melee unless they had to.
Briggs was striding through the air, spurts of mist coming from the Soul Tats shining brightly on his feet and calves. He grinned fiercely as he easily kept up with the Mages and King Magogo without needing to be towed, a feat that was sending more than a few eyes his way as he raced along as fast or faster than a Mage with Wind Trail howling behind them.
Soul Magic didn’t work here externally, as normal, but ‘fake’ Soul Magic would... or better yet, dumping in entire Stars pulsing with Mana from a Forsaken Galaxy!
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Briggs couldn’t spend Mana on his own. Technically, he couldn’t even absorb it normally. He had to let his Source Field generate it, and then accumulate it into that first Typeless Star...
But once he did that, everything else had become quietly inevitable.
He didn’t need to spend hours in Meditation drawing in Mana to accumulate it. No, his Source Sun just produced it, and he had devoted the equivalent of exactly one point of Mana per hour to expanding his Stars, only needing to temper them as he went, easily done at the slow and steady rate of expansion.
There’d been no sudden expansions of space. When the Stars were filled, he started on a new Star, and there was always enough room, slowly and continually getting bigger and bigger.
Was there much point in him slaughtering stuff in a Littoral Zone? Yes, his Stars could get bigger and brighter, too, and hold more passive Mana with Soul Crystals tempering things... and if moved into his Soul Tats, start amplifying the effects of them beyond anything typical Soul Magic could do.
And Endure, Endure could spend the Mana, if there was need to!
The Artificers who knew him and Sama, and enough techniques, just figured the Weapons of the two had at-will Teleport as a power. If it meant horrendous amounts of Naming Karma, well, what else did the two of them have to spend that on?
While that was certainly possible and all, one point of Mana from a Tier-Six Typeless Star was enough to power a Greater Teleport that could take them anywhere on the planet instantly.
That Mana could also vent a humongous amount of Arcane damage on impact from Endure or Tremble. That damage that was the equal of any tossed spell, depending on how much power their Weapons drew out, and how they plunged it deep, deep into their enemies.
The Littoral Zones had been test sites for doing that, pulsing in fixed, precise bursts of damage on hits, absolutely pure damage releases of Spell Penetration and damage, nothing else, driven deeply into and through their opponents. The two of them were easily able to hew through Warriors, cripple and kill Commanders, and could now stand against Rulers if need be!
That fight against the King Blacktip had been his own big test. A Stillflight Field big enough and powerful enough to drag a King Beast out of the sky, damage enough to chew through over two feet of impossibly tough hide, and enough pure Arcane damage to blast through its insides and kill it, despite all its Mana and incredibly tough flesh and bone.
Endure had blocked a swipe of King Magogo’s claws. Blocked it! Those claws could rend through King-level hides and bark, slice stone like tofu, and he had blocked it, digging in with his Cloudstepping Sandals, anchoring himself on air and ground alike with dual Heavyfoot, and stopped a swipe of those claws cold.
King Magogo had been so astonished his jaw stayed perfectly in place as Briggs had slammed it so hard he’d shattered one of the King Honey Badger’s gleaming, razor-sharp fangs, things reinforced with Earth Magic and far, far harder than even the most obdurate of Energized Metals.
Harder than an Indestructible, Impervious Greathammer Enhanced as far as Briggs could possibly make it, however?
As the many Artificers he’d trained had noted, he had precious little else to spend Naming Karma or Invest Goldweight into of his own, and so that’s what he did.
+VI Greater Soulbound Bane/Magical Beasts Enmity/Supernatural Bane/Legends Thunder/Crystal Blooding was a base +XXII/+XVI, and not even a King’s Damage Reduction could hold out against the potency of the magic driving Endure now. Combine with Pierce Damage Reduction and the Way of Water Feats, and Endure was one of the few things on the entire planet capable of punching through the steely fur, elastic hide, and rubbery muscle underneath a King-class Honey Badger’s skin and actually injuring it, and keeping it injured as Blooding made sure the injuries weren’t just healed away.
Most of the magical damage from the mages attacking was trivialized and being mended away... except for the KIA boys with Blooding on their Implements. Still, even they were seeing eighty to ninety percent reductions in damage dealt, if not more, and Magogo was just enduring what were, in the end, just collections of minor flesh wounds.
Given the negative energy pooling where King Magogo’s dark eye had been, and the strands of it licking across what flesh was exposed, King Magogo likely couldn’t even feel that he’d been harmed.
A near-Undead King Honey Badger. Even Briggs had to grimace, looking down at the King as he scuttled along at a tireless sprint. He was at least twice as tough as he had been, and when they killed him, he would likely just rise up again fully Undead, and they’d have to kill him again. He was also leaving a trail of death behind him, the plants in his wake rotting and decaying, as was all the small animal life.
The KIA boys were spacing out Cantrips as they moved, lighting that whole trail en vivus so the contagion wouldn’t spread. It wasn’t stopping King Magogo’s new Domain from rising and blocking off the sun, or what would soon be following that...
Briggs watched the King Beast’s scarred and battered muzzle rise, open, and a motion which could only be interpreted as vomiting shuddered through its muscled bulk.
Dozens of Beasts were spewed out in a spray of darkness, tumbling through the air, yet managing to land precisely and steadily as they set down. Lions, wild Dogs, Rhinos, Buffalo, Antelopes, Crocodiles, Hippos, Snakes.
None of them were alive. All of them had flesh sloughing off their bones, had been obviously stitched back together after having been torn apart, or had lethal wounds visible on their hides.
Nonetheless, all of them were now whole, mostly intact, and capable of untiring exertion!
The vomiting continued, King Magogo not even breathing as the dozens became scores, then hundreds, then thousands of the Beasts, all immediately turning and racing in the same direction as he was at top speed... and spitting out magical attacks at the mages flying above them!
The Wolverine Hunters had quickly realized the KIA men had far more devastating offensive power than they, and deeper Mana Reserves. They quickly moved to defending, while the KIA men swiftly began to hose down the multitudes of Beasts below... and the once-human zombified Undead who began to join them!
The Humans couldn’t run nearly fast enough to keep up with the Beasts, but that wasn’t an issue, as they simply grabbed onto the nearest Beasts and swung up onto their backs. If they were former mages, they also promptly began throwing spells at the Wolverine Hunters following them!
It didn’t save them, as Walls and Rains of various Elements, broadened across large areas, formed in their paths and pummeled them. The spells were gleaming with Disruption and Vivus, with high-Tier Mana, and with Seed effects... but they were meant to wound EVERYTHING, and get it to Burning, and Burning repeatedly!