Nearly solid warpfire came screaming down at Briggs, eating at the air, space, whatever. The demons he was educating screamed in fear and terror, but didn’t get out of the way in time as it came wailing down and ripped them to shreds.
Naturally, his Source field was being held tight, as he had no reason to protect them from the various spells and effects being sent his way. They could enjoy the splash damage like the frenzied maniacs they were.
The warpfire reduced them to ash and sludge, and then happened to strike the edge of his Hammer as Beat administered a drumming to an over-armored idiot with three arms, and there was a loud POOF as the warpfire and everything it had eaten away went up like tinder.
Mmm. Briggs came striding out, not stopping his progress, as Beat came down on the skull of a lizard-dog the size of a rhino, crushing that flat, and launching its charging rider forwards in an arc. The rebound caught the rider in midair, a wedge of force crushing through his plate with a Sun Strike, and sending his corpse flying twenty yards away with a flick of his wrist.
Damn, but these Hagspawn Levels are strong, he mused to himself.
Sama said he was her Briggs, they were set up to be a fighting pair, and given how all the boys and girls were interacting with Hag Curses and stuff, he had to agree. Not to mention suddenly getting endowed with an ExLite Template. Wow, that had been quite a power-up...
He knew his memories were artificial, as he’d compared them with his many, many sons, and yeah, they were all completely matching. Since he was the dad and the ExLite who’d made them all Advanced, he got to keep the main name, and they all picked other names based on their inherited souls, with Briggs as their family name.
As far as he knew, the original Briggs didn’t have any kids, and the fact he had so many who were so much like him was very amusing. Almost as fun as the circumstances they had all come from.
Damn, that woman did not get tired of him...
Some sorceress was throwing spells at him, which were entering his Source field and being ripped apart an inch from his skin, detonating and making a mess of the area around him. He reached out as a razor-beaked killa-bird mounted by some twit in grandiose armor charged him, stepped aside, grabbed its extended neck, and took over a thousand pounds of raptor and rider and threw them at the woman, while Beat slammed the helmed heads off two armored infantry, AND he brought his boot down on a flaming demonling’s head hard enough to create a small explosion, ignoring the burning scimitar that whined impotently off his Energized Armor.
There was strong, and there was strong...
His strength was well past the range that could be defined by biology or physics. Human blood couldn’t pump through veins as tough as his, for starters, and flesh couldn’t be both this rigid and this flexible. His Vajra was thrumming through him, providing reinforcement of will and reality, his mind and soul, spirit and magic providing him reinforcement to every cell and atom, making him this strong, obdurate, and tireless.
Needless to say, that was extremely useful on this battlefield. A lot like the game character he was based on...
A cavalcade of gunfire roared, the sound reaching him as dozens of sharp metallic pings echoed off his armor. He vented the combined kinetic energy down, the ground about him exploding with the force, but didn’t even bother to turn at the line of mounted gunners, wading forwards as Beat, a light shadow of a bladed axe about its head, swept through another line of incoming demons, rising into an evisceration of their Slaughter Demon commander, sending its big burning sword flying.
Lots of Karma in those things. Briggs hummed to himself about the post-battlefield looting, even as Sama came in on one end of that firing line, and exited the far side of it six seconds later. Heads were popping and withers falling away as both riders and their fanghorse mounts collapsed before they could get off a second volley, although only the latter had the chance to scream as their spines were severed, while the former lost their heads in beautiful golden swirls of light. Burning thorns scattered in all directions and poked chaff in the head, dropping them in mid-stride abruptly.
That was his girl. He smiled, and kept up his advance.
This was a demonic battlefield of square leagues in size, so there was always stuff to kill. He remained calm and detached, analyzing the force and the vectors, wielding the weight of Beat with physics-defying control and speed. His Heavyfoot meant he was always as anchored as if bolted to the ground, his strength could take the massive accelerations and decelerations, and the Enhancements on his Weapon, the soulbonding and soulhammer aura, made it seem nearly as light as a feather as he spun it about like a baton.
Those Warped and Demons looking at him naturally marked him as a deadly threat, because he was simply striding forward and not stopping for anything. If something managed to charge in between his swings, he simply kept walking into it, and drove it back with raw, brute strength, backing up whole lines of Warped creatures, and then Beat ripped through multiple bodies like a reaper’s scythe, sending burning corpses flying in every direction.
Bolts tinged, bullets pinged, weapons rang, horns scraped, teeth rasped, claws skirled off his armor, which was burning with vivic fire that couldn’t quite keep up with the gore exploding over him. They came screaming at him from all directions, cannon loads were exploding around him, shrapnel and earth whining from him, and still he came and reaped.
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Rarely, he let Beat go, the Corona-shrouded Hammer leaving his arm like a ballista bolt, crashing into and through anything in its way on its path to whatever subject of interest deserved his attention. When he did, golden claws rippled into existence over his fists and feet, and his advance didn’t stop, it only got closer and gorier.
This was what he did as he came up on the cannon line, a clear space opening at a trot, the cannoneers all desperately trying to aim at him. He could vector the path of their weapons at a glance, but it didn’t matter, as Beat went sailing out.
It hammered into a cannon, and fire exploded, detonating their powder even as the cannon was blasted off its carriage, cracked and useless. As Beat roared back to him, he struck it with the back of his fist, and the Hammer ricocheted back out, sending the next cannon in line flying, and powder erupting wildly.
He trotted down the line of cannons, moving at least twice as fast as he looked like he was, Beat bang-booming the artillery one after another about every half-second while his other hand clawed forwards and backfisted to match, sending bodies flying and dismembered corpses crunching beneath his feet.
He was naturally paying attention to the greater battle around him, and these cannon were slowing it down. Their shot or balls could blow holes in the lines of their enemies, which prevented everyone from coming to grips, blobbing up, and making it easier to kill bunches of them all together. He and Sama weren’t playing favorites... everything on this field was there to be reaped.
With this line of artillery neutralized, it was time to wade back into some numbers and reap some more. Ignoring the continuing fire and the eruptions of spells around himself, Briggs steadily, inexorably, unhurriedly, yet with inhuman speed, gripped Beat into his hands and continued on.
There was some grim satisfaction in the killing, knowing he was reaping Karma, but mostly what he saw was waste... waste of time, waste of energy, waste of souls. All this killing frenzy, intensity, fanaticism, and drive could have been put to use in so many productive ways, and instead was being expended on ways of killing one another. Getting rid of them, feeding them to the Land, and starting them over free of the corruption of the Warp, was just what had to be done here.
He sighed inside, but that didn’t stop his focus or his drive, or the killing arcs of Beat.
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Many, many acres of unwhite flames were burning behind us, and seemed to be bending to the east. The vivic energy was being drawn away to feed the lines of Interdictions we’d left behind us as we advanced, solidifying them, and drawing an immovable, immutable pathway to the outer wall of this strange battlefield.
We hadn’t seen any sign of where all these creatures and beings came from, not that it made much difference. Everything was pretty much batshit crazy and unrelentingly hostile so far, and the sum of any conversations with the locals was “Aarrrgh!” and “Ahhhhhh!”, along with an interesting panoply of bloodthirsty cries.
Chalice was drinking heavily.
These days had been refining my personal experience of battlefield slaughter. If you are going to kill lots of things, you have to be able to kill them quickly. The only two ways to do so are Area of Effect attacks, and/or a whole lot of attacks.
AoE’s is how the Powered did it, delivering burst attacks, or single attacks with splash damage, or rampaging runs that affected everything around them. Briggs and I were doing it with Cleaves and Attacks of Opportunity.
Briggs had the advantage in single-hit damage and reach on me, scything through a wider array of opponents and able to one-shot bigger stuff than I could. I was doing it with greater speed afoot and a higher Dex, granting me more Attacks of Opportunity, which in turn generated more attacks or greater movement.
He was a plow, and I was a racing whirlwind.
Anything I couldn’t finish with a swordstroke generally ate a quarrel or spike in the head to seal the deal. Unfortunately, my inherited Sagedom didn’t work anywhere near as well as Mom’s had, probably bent the rules of reality too much? Briggs’ Everything is a Nail Grandmastery was down to a ‘mere’ +50... and seemed to be working on the level of an Advanced Mastery. His Smithing Ranks and Sculptor/Stonemason seemed to be the only things applying, probably because they were the only Skills that demanded great power with a hammer. He had the feeling he could apply Lumberjack, Miner, and maaaaybe Gemcutter, but not yet, because they were not pure Hammer skills.
My Sagedom likewise seemed to be an Advanced Mastery, with only two Slots open. I had gamed it with Mastersmith, which was four Skills in one, just like Briggs had, and then gamed it again with Stoneworker, snaffling up Gemcutter, Miner, and Sculptor together. Seven Skills at Ten Ranks each, synergy bonus of +3, +21 damage. Still very impressive, but a far cry from the twenty-plus Skills that Mom had working for her. Hells, probably thirty-plus, now...
I would have to find more Skills I could group together when the Mastery advanced. +21 was a good damage addition for chaff, but I was hit or miss on officers while I was doing my reaping here... the Warp didn’t tolerate softies commanding psychotic killers, so those in charge were indeed much tougher and nastier than their fellows.
What was taking up a bunch of the load was the soulsword edge shining around and accentuating Chalice. Stacking with Profound Weapon, it made Chalice effectively half again as long, extending my reach and cutting arc, with faux mass and soul-driven impact adding onto real mass of the Heavy Long Sword doing its thing. Ki and psi made a very potent combo, and then, when I added the Golden Fist of Nogdom with my Vajra to the mix, well, things got serious.
My damage base was in the 15-40 or so range, which basically meant I could chop a standard magic Weapon in two with a flick of my wrist and no other bonuses... or effortlessly take off a man’s head, or literally cut them in half at the waist with a little effort.
The chaff was inhumanly tough by human standards, what with Warp-boosted stats and sorcery at work on them, but the chaff was still chaff by our standards, and was the tinder on the fire. Knights and officers might take a little more attention, but not much... they weren’t prepared for Tens operating at our level, and so weren’t prepared for us.
As for the Champions, they were usually worth a few seconds of directed attention, appalled as they were at how hard we hit. The Greater Demons... well, we double-teamed them to save time, Nulls and Sources enough to deny their magic, and hitting hard enough to punch their defenses, whether they liked it or not.
Going from high-tech to medieval-level was a thing, but we had places to go, and things to do.
Unbeknownst to these bastards, death was coming behind us. Young men and women with Weapons to feed and Karma to gain were seeing all of this with stars in their eyes, and working very energetically to get here.
-Briggs, we should probably back off and collect our spoils...- I /murmured in amusement. He just grunted assent, and we started to arc back to start picking up our goldweight equivs.