A massive monster with thousands of thin oily black limbs was fighting against a small army of armored goblins. Its body was made of what seemed like broken pieces of ancient ruins. Old weathered stone and shattered pottery were woven together with battered relics of bronze, silver and gold by oily black flesh forming a shell around the dreadful creature. It stood four meters tall and thrice as wide. Its countless limbs clawed and grabbed at the goblins' frontliners trying to overwhelm them with sheer mass. In turn the armored goblins kept it at bay with flaming greatswords almost twice their height. They were no savage tribe of goblins but the elites of a proud civilization.

The creature exuded an aura of dread affecting all who saw it. Even Elas felt his stomach churn at the presence of something that should not be. The soldiers and hunters were most affected being left stunned and listless at the edge of the clearing as old ancestral fear consumed them.

“CHARGE MEN! CHARGE!” Luka shouted so loud it snapped the soldiers out of their frozen state.

Elas watched as Luka sprinted forward in a mad charge. A second later the soldiers joined him. Elas could not help but admire the warriors quick thinking. The longer they stood still the deeper the fear would grip them and the harder it would be to bring the men into battle. Though he was sure the man ordered the charge out of instinct rather than cool headed strategy such instinctual understanding of battle was what separated the good battlefield commanders from the great ones.

Elas pushed mana into his staff and shot a firebolt at the monster while jogging forward. Normally he would have stood back and aimed for the monster's weak points but he was all too familiar with what this thing was to bother. He could drain all his strength battering the ancient horror with firebolts from range and it will achieve almost nothing.

Ancient horrors had unique strengths and abilities based on which accursed ruin they had spawned from and they all had tremendous regenerative abilities. Firebolts may be strong but Elas was far too slow at shooting them to outpace the horror’s regeneration. They needed to damage it constantly while giving it no room to recover.

The firebolt slammed into the horror’s shell shattering the ancient stone and digging deep into the pitch black flesh beneath. The creature screeched in pain with a thousand tortured voices as it turned its head to find the culprit. Its face was a golden mask the size of a great shield attached to a long neck black tears poured from its empty eye sockets. Just as it turned its head Luka had leapt on its back his sword blazed with blinding light as he swung at its exposed neck.

Luka’s sword bit deep, almost decapitating the monster but its neck was simply too thick. Elas gathered his mana and prepared another firebolt when he saw Luka strain while trying to get the sword free from the horror’s rapidly regenerating flesh. A mass of writhing hands shot out from the gaps in the horror’s shell grabbing and clawing Luka as he tried in vain to wrench the blade free. The horror’s claws slid off Luka’s enchanted armor but the sheer weight of hands holding him down had forced him onto his knees. Elas launched the firebolt aiming for an area close to where Luka’s sword was gripped by the horror’s flesh. The firebolt tore a hole through the horror’s neck, loosening its fleshy grip around the blade. Taking his chance Luka’s sword exploded into a blinding blaze once again as he tore the blade free from the horror’s neck. The horror’s hands tried to keep their grip on the warrior but with his sword on hand it was trivial to cut himself free from the swarming limbs. Luka leapt from the horror's back causing it to give a short chase as it tried to catch him.

With their arrival the ancient horror was effectively surrounded on all sides by goblins and men. Seizing the opportunity the goblin warriors pressed the advantage, slashing down as many limbs as they could reach. The soldiers of Farhaven had also joined the battle, swinging their halberds at the monster. But even then Elas could see no difference to the horror’s form. With every limb chopped another emerges. The gaping holes his firebolts had made had quickly closed. This was the difficulty of fighting ancient horrors, being closer to an elemental than any living creature it had no organs to destroy and no blood to drain just magical writhing flesh and endless hunger.

“FI RA! FI RA!” one of the goblin warriors yelled at them while gesturing at its blazing greatsword.

Elas had no idea how to understand goblin dialect but its gestures were obvious enough.

“SOLDIERS USE FIRE! USE FIRE!” Elas shouted at Luka and his men. Though he wasn't sure if the horror was truly weak to fire he trusted the fact that the goblins have been fighting the thing far longer than they have.

The soldiers took turns breaking off from combat to oil the heads of their halberds with Finnan’s special hearthfire oil. With a strike of a flint the weapons ignited into a blazing fire. Soon enough the horror was getting battered from all sides with blazing swords and polearms. Yet still it healed every wound.

The magic of countless trinkets and artifacts buried within its mass acted like a battery sustaining its magic. Suddenly dozens of its arms raised up into the sky, ice spikes the size of spears formed in the air before being sent down towards the closest warriors. The surrounding warriors either leaped back to dodge the ice spears or blocked it with their shields or weapons. But not all were so lucky; a handful of goblin warriors and two of Farhaven’s soldiers were sent flying as they were impaled by the spikes. The warriors quickly re-engaged while predetermined medics hauled the wounded away from the battle.

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Elas was about to move to tend to the wounded when the creature suddenly fixed its gaze on him. With a tremendous scream it blasted him with a deluge of frost from the gaping mouth of its golden mask. He pushed as much mana as he could into the fire manipulation structure within his mana heart. He countered the frozen breath with such expertise that the temperature around his body did not even change. It was foolish to attack an alchemist with a change of temperature for controlling such things was one of the pillars of their craft.

As if waiting for this moment a deluge of fire erupted from the goblins ranks setting the horror ablaze. A tremendously fat goblin bearing a staff was carried into battle on a palanquin by four others. The fat goblin raised his staff and brought forth another wave of inferno upon the monster but this time the horror was ready and countered the spell with a barrage of its own breath and ice spikes. A shimmering ward formed around the palanquin shattering the hail of ice spears.

As the tremendous show of fire power ended the battle was back to a stalemate. The monster's horrendous charred wounds healed within seconds as it once again drew power from its myriad artifacts.

This is going to take forever at this rate. Elas thought to himself as he racked his brain for a plan. Usually within the game he was more than happy leaving soldiers to slowly grind down this event but this time he was one of the participants.

The goblin mage once again lifted his staff and sent a concentrated beam of energy at the monster gouging a trench at its side but just as always it healed without issue. Yet in the short moment as its wounds closed Elas felt the mana of a great artifact from the monster's wound. He zeroed in on its location about a meter deep within the horror’s right flank.

“Luka, get back here!” He called for the warrior.

Luka leapt back several times traveling the distance between them in seconds while keeping watch of the monster.

“What's the situation?” Luka panted as he arrived.

“There's an artifact buried deep below its right flank. We need to remove it!” Elas quickly told the warrior while not wasting time on details.

“What's the plan?” Luka asked, placing trust on Elas’s judgment.

“Me and the fat goblin are going to tear into its side with magic. You go in and tear away anything that looks impressive from the wound. Now go!” He told Luka as he turned and waved at the goblin on the palanquin.

The goblin mage stared at him as he tried his best to emulate the gestures of the goblins previous magic in an attempt to convey his plan to repeat the spell. The goblin mage nodded and started to gather mana once again. Luka was already back in battle as Elas prepared his own firebolt this time pushing as much mana as he could to overload the spell.

Elas felt the goblin mage finish with preparations. They both nodded at each other before firing their attacks in unison. The goblins beam of energy struck first but was blocked by the horrors invisible ward. It was not so mindless as to allow the same spell to wound it so deeply twice in a row. The beam of energy consumed the ward and hit the monster's side leaving only a shallow gash as its strength was greatly diminished. The horror turned its head towards the goblin not expecting Elas’s overcharged firebolt to hit the wound within a second of the energy beam. The monster's side exploded in a shower of ancient rubble and trinkets. Elas heard the creature screech with its ungodly cacophony of voices as its body erupted with a torrent of frigid winds which caused most of the warriors surrounding it to step back.

Elas and most of the others were forced to shield themselves from the blizzard the horror had summoned from the depths of its being. When the wind died down the horror was once again healed. Its flesh and shell unblemished by any wound. Yet there a meter away from it Elas saw Luka grinning while covered head to toe in frost, his left arm was wrapped around a golden orb filled with countless inscriptions.

“ATTACK! DON'T LET IT GET IT BACK!” Elas screamed to no one in particular as he strained himself to cast another overloaded firebolt.

The horror surged towards Luka with a ferocity they had not seen before. Gone was the slow attrition warfare. The fight devolved into a chaotic mess of dozens of warriors wailing at the horror with their weapons as Elas and the goblin mage drew deep into their reserves to incinerate it with magic.

The ancient horror on its part sent waves of ice spears in all directions as it used its sheer mass to trample anyone in its path as it chased Luka in complete desperation. Luka sprinted away from the horror as fast as he could but it was obvious the warrior had used up most of his strength as he could barely outrun the gigantic monster.

“LUKA TOSS IT TO ME!” Elas yelled.

The warrior consumed with adrenaline did not question the order and tossed the artifact into the air. Elas reached out with his kinesis spell and pulled the artifact towards himself. The horror almost tumbled as it rapidly changed directions to chase after its most prized possession. Warriors tried and failed to block the creature as it charged across the clearing. Gone was the monster’s near infinite regeneration. Its wounds smoldered as its flesh was set ablaze and its sliced limbs lay limp dragging on the ground.

Just as the monster got close, Elas launched the relic with a kinesis spell towards the goblin mage but this time the monster was done with games. Feeling the end drawing near the hateful thing chose to charge Elas rather than continuing its failed pursuit wishing only to claim one more soul. Elas down to his last drop of mana planted his staff on the ground and pointed the grasping hand on his chest; its residual heat burned him as he poured the last of his strength into the kinetic catapult spell. Just before the monster's enumerable hands could get ahold of him he triggered the spell and sent himself flying unconscious across the battlefield.