Still, seven-to-one in spell combat sounds brutally ferocious, except they weren’t hurting me, and I was certainly pounding them down bad.
It was the death of one of the mummy advisors that really turned the tide. I was basically just ignoring or avoiding the Beast Rulers, which infuriated them and their deluge of Psychic, Curse, Poison, and Sound attacks, while the Undead were trying to wrangle me with all sorts of Elemental and Shadow spells on top of things, only for said spells to explode badly and repeatedly in their faces.
The true Beasts were intrinsically bigger and tougher than the Undead, if not as adept magically. They were really good in their own Elements, of course, and that Medusae was trying very, very hard to Curse me and get into my head Psychically, except her attempts kept getting Spellflared or redirected onto one of her associates, which was totally annoying her and definitely aggravating them!
The Pharaoh had already taken a direct hit with all the marbles, but it was the only one who realized just how hard I could hit. They thought their numbers were going to do the job for them... a situation, I realized, that was the exact reverse of what normally happened when Humans faced off with equal or higher-Tiered Beasts or Casters.
Unfortunately for them, I was basically slamming every single one of those four undead with quadruple damage Archmage spells with Sage-tier Spell Power, and they were getting blasted repeatedly as the Spellflares took out their spells. I only had to wait for one of them to break and retreat, and...
Yeah, the weakest of them, the one not a half-Sage, started to pull back in retreat.
It meant I didn’t have to Spellflare it and blow up its own Casting in its face to fry it. I could just straight-on pummel it!
The half of the Paired Greater Arcane Fusion which had been two Spellflares became a Spellflare to #3 and a Greater Shard volley to the face of the fleeing #4.
It had no chance whatsoever. The incoming flights of Shards individually hit like sniper’s missiles, a grand total of one hundred and twelve of them. They were all Weaponized, received the full benefit of Necropotence and Shard Specialization, and they had all the anti-undead Goodness upon them.
The fleeing mummy advisor exploded with a shriek, a huge eruption of Dark Mana escaping it as its internal Galaxies were breached... and that shriek continued as Disrupting vivic fire clawed its way up the mighty Mummy’s spirit and consumed it utterly, feeding the sot to the Land.
There was a little bit of a pause in the shouts and screams and curses from the other Undead as they felt their compatriot die forever.
And now, I could focus on its companion with a Spellflare AND a Shard volley!
#3 realized it, already turning to flee and get up some defensive spells to protect it as it did so. The Spellflare blew its attempted defenses to tatters and sent #3 flaming towards the ground, but it never reached the teaming Undead masses watching from on the ground before a hundred Shards exploded over it, reduced ancient bone and gristle to white ash that shattered and consumed its spirit entirely.
The Pharaoh and its right-hand mummy were already retreating, staring at me in aghast horror at such impossibly-layered spellcasting. The Rulers below paused in shock as two of the Undead Viziers lit off so close together, and then realized they were the three weakest entities left in the fight.
I wasn’t concerned in the slightest as the Pharaoh and its companion retreated and desperately brought up defensive spells, massive Walls of Earth and Water hanging in the air as they dove for the protection of the Pyramid. All they did is allow me to place my full attention on the three Beast Rulers below, especially the Medusa who commanded them.
I’m sure her hackles rose when she realized she was the center of my attention, but it was a bit too late for her. Their instincts were to defend her first, then flee, which meant I could blow their defenses apart, hurt them, and then pound her with everything else.
Which is precisely what I did.
They weren’t Undead, which was a pity, but they had plenty of Dark Mana, so vivus fed the rest of the magic and tore her a goddamn new one.
From her perspective, the sky came falling in as over a hundred Shards juiced to the nines fell down atop her, smashed through her Spell Resistance, and pierced through her scaled hide with razored edges before detonating inside her.
Half her serpentine locks blew right off her head, and her shrieks of agony were unrestrained and ear-splitting. The Death Tongue Python and the Crimson Agony Scorpion leapt to protect her, expelling vast amounts of Poison at me as cover and offense, attacks which exploded and blew back and over them with their own magic igniting from my Fastcast Greater Arcane Fusion Spellflares.
The Medusa was trying to flee, but I was locked on her, and the Echoing Shards went off as I turned my attention to the Serpent. It was poised to lunge at me, easily able to cross a thousand feet with that strike, and it struck as it met my eyes and the Echoing set of Shards materialized and sped away and past it for the retreating Medusa.
The Python wasn’t going to ram me, of course. Its mouth gaped open like a fanged cave, just as four more sets of Greater Shards materialized around me and went streaking out to meet its lunge.
Its insides were not nearly as well-armored as its currently-seared outsides. Spear-sized Shards gleaming with arrays of opposed energies, the combined power of my Firefrost Seed dominating all others, drove right into its gaping maw and found all the happy weak spots with easy access to critical points there.
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Dozens of Shard-tips were suddenly protruding out from the inside of its skull and neck, gleaming for just that instant as the Snake realized things had gone all bad. Then the Shards dumped their loads into the meat and bone around them, Banefire to Magical Beasts guiding it to all the best spots, and liquified and blasted away some crucial portions of its insides.
Its lunge whipped by below me, long body trailing after as its jaws gaped rigidly, its death writhings already starting as its pureed central nervous system went nuts at its abrupt demise.
The Medusa tried to bury itself, but that didn’t stop the Seeking Shards from finding a home. They plunged into her spine and the back of her skull as she burned and shook with residual energies from the previous salvo, and her death scream came at almost the same moment as the Python’s. The rest of her snaky locks were blasted off of her head, her spine was shattered and her back split open as she slammed into the ground, and her own quivering death rattles began, residual damage blazing over her inside-and-out to finish the job.
Her spirit wouldn’t be going to the Pyramid to become an undead thing, either.
The Scorpion realized it was going to die if it hesitated even a moment. Earth and soil erupted around it as it buried itself with maximum speed, gone from line-of-sight almost instantly, and covered by a hundred feet of earth and stone as it burrowed urgently away from me.
Now for this, I spent Sage-level Mana, building a Starry Heaven of seven Star Palaces, infusing them with Earth Magic I drew in, and I bid the ground to rise.
The Elemental Monolith, powered by Sage Mana, looked like a great and towering knight made of the local granite and shale. It exploded out of the ground to hundreds of feet in height in an instant... and in its hands it clutched the astonished Crimson Agony Scorpion.
The Monolith completely ignored the plunging tail that drove into its helm, instantly blackening and rotting the stone, being an Elemental and innately amorphous. The claws the Scorpion sank into it didn’t bother it much, either. It raised the King Scorpion high and slammed it down on the ground, which had hardened to something tougher than steel to greet the impact.
The crunch and crack and flying stones were deafening, but most importantly, the Scorpion’s softer underside was exposed to me now, and the Monolith was pinning it with uncounted thousands of tons of mass.
It took me two volleys of Shards: one Weaponized to open the path, and one Split Ray follow-up to roast the Scorpion’s insides like a lobster, boiling blood and water squealing through its carapace as it was cooked alive.
Scorpions, the lobsters of the deserts!
I let the Death Tongue Python burn with vivus, all of its flesh laced with lethal poison, but this Scorpion I was going to break down and harvest ALL the meat from, as well as its armored carapace, still intact after a thousand tons of earth and stone had hammered down on it.
There were a lot more Snakes and Scorpions around. They were attempting to retreat at the death of their Duke, but the Doors on the Pyramid had slammed shut in fear behind the Pharaoh and his servant, leaving only dispersing with wild speed into the blighted valley around for them, or burrowing to hopefully be ignored.
I thanked the Monolith, instructing it to go over and absorb the vivus from the Python as payment for its services, and it rumbled over with surprising grace and solemn respect for the land as it did so. I wanted the hide, so it manifested a gleaming knife of something harder than diamond and proceeded to cut the massive Snake open, letting the vivus expand faster as the Monolith cleaned off the skin and bones and set them aside for us.
The head would naturally make a Greater Baneskull. I also emptied its venom sacs of its poison, and got some blood and flesh samples for the Alchemists to analyze. No doubt they would help revolutionize a new line of anti-venoms.
The Beasts were fleeing from me, and the Undead troops, even the normally courageous Shade Swordmasters, had withdrawn to careful distances.
-Get the Plants out of here,- I /said into Markspace, hovering over my kills. Those troops weren’t going to go anywhere as long as I was here, or while the Monolith was sucking a rich current of vivus into the visor of the helm that was actually its face.
The Plant mages and Summoners behind me moved out quickly. The other Doors on the Pyramid were still open, and I knew countless more Undead troops were waiting inside, ready to march out... but probably not until I withdrew. The memory of those focused spells going down the deployment corridors from our little traps was probably still fresh.
That pausing would give my helpers all time to get the Plants away without interference, including the most important Plant of all.
I wanted the Pharaoh’s attention focused on me for now, its pride hugely stung, and a crazed need for vengeance and raw ego dominating it. It would be racking its brains repeatedly for a means to oppose me, perhaps working out that intercepting my Spellflares with lesser spells cast by its underlings would be a viable defense, allowing its own magicks to reach through to me, and not allow me to stymie so many different enemies at the same time.
Of course, maybe I would just take my trophies and leave...
In the meantime, while it was worrying about me, it wasn’t doing the deep investigative work into just how badly its Pyramid was hosed!
At the end of the day, the Pyramid was an extension of the Demiplane the Pharaoh’s Chaos and Void Magic had spun together for itself, used as the anchor point to the Prime Material plane. The Pyramid could actually be dragged through the Nether Realm and moved from place to place with expenditure of enough power. That meant it could be taken away from here and returned to its place of origin in the Valley of Kings in Egypt, where all the other Undead Pharaohs formed a long line of tombs leading up to the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu and the Sphinx that guarded the mightiest of the Pharaohs.
Well, it could have been taken away before. Now? Not so much!
Driver Sam’s Void and Argent Magic had been particularly diligent in seeking out those paths of power, and he had shredded them completely with both physical damage and Disjoining de-powering them entirely. This Pyramid was staying right here, there was no running away from this fight!
Most importantly, I wanted as many of its troops marching outside as possible, so they could be killed out here instead of requiring a thrust into the Demiplane within. I knew we’d have to go in after the Pharaoh at some point, and it would likely flee further into the Netherworld if I did so... but if I made it that far, I could find the Command Array for the Pyramid and destroy the damn thing, making it just another homeless Undead Sage, instead of a Pharaoh able to draw on the power of its Pyramid!
As for the Medusa Duchess over there, her body was slowly disappearing, being drawn underground by the insistent pressure of my Fire and Ice Roses, who seemed to have some plans for her. Nobody was going to stop them as they devoured her in their own way, the tauroid serpentine corpse soon gone from sight in the embrace of gold-razored thorned Vines.
They seemed to be quite satisfied with their prize, as the Monolith was with its. The armies of the Pharaoh could only look on impotently. I could tell by the fluctuations in magic that it was fuming and dithering, wondering what to do about me as I came down out of the sky, began to rip the meat out of the Scorpion Duke, and salvaged the carcass wholesale.