Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (43 page)

The death knights riding our way had produced long black lances—evidently, they were well aware of at least the basic points of cavalry tactics. Thankfully, though their leader may have grown smarter since the patch, he still wasn't smart enough to have his troops attack all at once. Perhaps not enough time had passed, or could be the undead were just naturally stupid, but the menagerie of monsters charging at us had already dispersed across some three hundred yards. Leading the charge was a group of thirty death knights atop bone horses. Waddling behind them were mini bosses of varying sizes and degrees of ugliness and decay. And bringing up the rear, with an enormous two-handed sword resting on his shoulder, was General Korg himself, walking practically hand-in-hand with Meresmet.
Well, yeah, no horse could carry that fat ass,
I thought, glancing warily at his weapon and realizing I wanted nothing to do with the business end of it. With the level difference, any blow that landed would bring serious pain. If this were happening IRL, an eighteen-foot giant would obliterate me into amino acids with a single swing of his twelve-foot sword. Praise Hart, this wasn't the real world. For want of anything better to do while we waited, I tried making an analogy with reality. Tanking a boss twice your level would be like letting a regular person in armor go up against a heavyweight wrestler armed with a rubber sword. The latter's blows wouldn't kill you outright, but they might just make you wish you were dead. And I wasn't discounting my superior Toughness skill at fifty three percent.

I couldn't help but crack a smile at the mental picture.

"Do they look funny or something?" mused Reece, appearing on my right. "I thought I was the only one sick in the head around here, but I'm not so sure anymore. Still, that funky bunch over there," He gestured in the direction of the undead, which by now were no more than three hundred yards away, "do look pretty comical."

"And here I thought the appearance of a tail in certain individuals might help trim their tongue some," I admitted. "How foolish of me. Anyway, are you certain your traps will slow them down?" I gestured at the numerous colorful rings covering the ground forty yards ahead.

"Not just slow down—they will stop them," Reece vowed. "I wager half of them will even get knocked out of the saddle."

"Good," I nodded, and commanded into the general chat. "A few changes! Mages and archers, you're helping the warriors until those two get here. Switch back to previously assigned targets on Elnar's command."

"I saw that coming," the mage noted philosophically, and spurred his horse toward his troops.

Once, a long long time ago, I saw a movie in which two huge trucks collided into one another head-on. My emotions then were similar to what I experienced right when the death knights reached the traps set up for them. There were explosions and a deafening racket, and moments later a wave of my demons, having received the order to attack from James, came crashing into the cloud of dust at full speed, their lances tilted.

Just then a gust of wind swept away the ash and smoke, courtesy of one of Reece's air mages, enabling our mages and archers to lock in their targets. The ensuing pandemonium made it difficult to make out the shouting voices of my officers. Bone horses covered in plate were on the ground, thrashing in agony. More and more monsters kept pouring from the direction of Xantarra, as if we were downstream of a junkyard in torrential rain, only to be promptly intercepted by trios of getare.

Bloody beasts! Is there no end of you?
I fought down the raging animal inside me, rounding the main site of the battle. Aritor, Vaessa, Reena and five more priestesses were right behind me.

Seeing what was unfolding before them, the general and Meresmet picked up the pace.

"Mages, archers! Back to your original targets!" Elnar's command reached me just as I popped Charge and unleashed the storm of cold fury inside me.

The bastard on the tip of my lance had been torturing and killing innocent sentients on the orders of a toady serving a despicable god. He and other bipedal wretches who had sold their souls to Vill had turned an entire city into a graveyard. MY city. Too bad Ahriman's getare had granted them such an easy death. It was good that he'd been able to rise from his grave, if only to give me the pleasure of putting him back there.

Upon seeing a rider charging him atop a razorback, the general shrugged the two-handed blade off his shoulder, grabbed the hilt with both hands and raised it high overhead.

"Die, asshole!!!" the tip of the spear struck Korg in his right knee, which was his pivot foot, and was immediately followed by my four-legged APC.

One and a half tons of weight moving at fifty miles per hour was no joke. No joke at all.

The steel tip broke through the blackened metal, though the lance's shaft shattered from the impact. The eighteen-foot-tall carcass of the former punisher was spun around, as the boss lost his balance and came crashing to the ground.

I pulled on the reins and turned the boar around, then rushed back at the general, trampling him as he was trying to get up. 

"I've only just begun!" I spat out while executing an Ice Blade, driving my sword into the dark slit of his closed helm, letting loose all the hatred that had accumulated in me.

The general twitched, emitting a deep-pitched growl—I couldn't make out the words. With my boot on his helm, I pulled out the sword and managed to land another Tongue of Flame before Korg finally recovered. 

Gray steel flashed through the air to my right. Ducking down to the boar's withers, I angled the shield so that the blow glanced off of it, and pressed the razorback to the boss' injured pivot foot, preventing him from executing full-strength attacks.

"I'll coat my sword with your guts, worm!" Korg bellowed furiously. "You and your pitiful bunch will spend eternity in my army!" 

"You moron," I shot back, hacking away at the general's pivot foot by alternating attack skills and parrying the angled swings of his sword. "A few hours from now you and your entire wretched army will be standing before Celphata in your underpants. You had better pray the goddess doesn't have you reborn as a muckworm!"

"Die!!!" roared the commander of the undead army, leaping up with nimbleness belying his size, delivering a crippling chopping blow as he landed, and following up at once with a warrior's whirlwind. 

To be fair to the devs, when designing these abilities there was no way for them to predict that the boss would be tanked by a mage who could simply Jump away from the deadly storm of blades. 

While Korg spun like a top, I took a look around. A hundred yards back Elnar's armored troops were mopping up what was left of the general's half-century of knights. Bristling with arrows like a hedgehog, Meresmet was hounded relentlessly by Vaessa's puppies, who had him surrounded and cornered like a wolf pack hunting a moose. The lich's mantle was in tatters, and his HP bar below half. There were no gray icons in the raid window—everything was going according to plan. 

As Korg concluded his whirlwind, I cut the distance between us with a gallop. His next blow overpowered my block attempt, and I swerved to his right leg as before. The general tried his damnedest to shove me aside, but to no avail. While he would have succeeded if I were alone, but between the boar and I, we probably weighed as much as he did. Ice Blade, Tongue of Flame...

"Die!" I hopped to the side, and the dance continued...

You have gained a level! Current level: 192.

You have 2 talent points to allocate.

Class bonus: +1 to intellect; +1 to spirit.

You have 6 stat points to allocate.

As the staff slipped from his hands, the lich collapsed to the ground like a broken doll. The mages and archers spurred their horses in my direction.

"Stay out of his melee range! Only Vaessa's hounds can come in!" I shouted into the general channel, though I imagined Elnar didn't need the warning. 

As I blocked yet another of the general's blows, one of Vaessa's hounds pounced and locked its jaw on his wrist, and the first arrows and spells started flying into his torso. His death was now just a matter of time. 

In phase two, instead of a whirlwind the general hurled Spears of Darkness around him, which weren't particularly troublesome for the raid. Through it all I kept on hanging around his right leg while being overhealed to oblivion by utterly bored priests, and Jumping away whenever the boss attempted any kind of special ability.

At ten percent life Korg roared something along the lines of, "You shall all die in terrible agony at my hands!" and summoned an Army of Darkness—a century of level 200 ghouls—but even that did little to delay his death. Immobilized by a Blizzard, the undead century was obliterated by a torrent of arrows and a Fire Storm in the span of ten seconds.

Not five more minutes later the sword slipped from the general's grip, and the giant's lifeless bulk fell to the ground.

You've earned a unique achievement,
Korg's Slayer
. General Korg is a unique boss that can only be killed once. You and your allies have been granted a permanent 4% increase to your physical and magic damage.

The morale of your party has risen by +15 points. Your party's current morale is +31 (a 31% increase to your party members' physical and magic damage).

That's better,
I nodded with satisfaction at the running system messages. The morale had dropped precipitously—from forty percent to just sixteen—after four hundred recruits were accepted into the clan. All the new arrivals started out with a ten percent bump thanks to my rank, and the system had merely spat out the arithmetical mean. A thirty one percent increase to damage output was nearly twice better than sixteen, and that should certainly prove useful in the upcoming battle with the undead army.

"It's all a bit too easy, don't you think?" Elnar rode up to me, regarding the general's corpse with grim suspicion.

"Well, this wretch is no Nerghall," I shrugged. "And we're no longer just a century."

"Dar! Two undead legions are moving your way from Xantarra!" Hyld announced without sounding particularly panicked in the recon channel. "They'll be there in about seven minutes." 

I looked out and indeed—the skeletal warriors were on the move.

"His summoning an Army of Darkness must have reached them," Elnar pointed at the skeletons with his sword, then turned to me. "What's our plan?"

"Did all our horses survive?" 

"No, we lost about twenty," James shook his head. "Horses aren't a priority for our priests." 

"Put all the units who have lost mounts into saddles with others, and have them retreat towards Farot. The rest quickly collect the loot and follow after. I doubt the skeletons will pursue us for long," I commanded. After a few seconds of silence I added, also into the general channel: "Since when do I need to repeat my orders?" 

"You heard the commander! Get moving! Reece, if I see anyone from your crew of slackers twiddling their thumbs, I'll have every mage polishing pots and pans for the next week." 

"Beings of superior intelligence are inherently inclined to indulge in reveries," the mage mused. "And what are reveries but a certain dissipation of the mind..."

"And you had better believe you'll be polishing them without magic!" James snapped, ignoring the mage's objections. "Now get to it!"

Four thousand gold were recovered from the general, two and a half from the lich, and nearly seven more from the death knights and skeletons. Every private in my army stood to earn almost ten gold coins as a bonus for this battle, which was nothing to sneeze at by local standards. All the loot dropped by Korg and Meresmet—six epic pieces, twenty eight rares, plus vials, reagents and recipes—I tossed into my inventory without even checking them. There would be time to sort out the trophies later. The haul was a good one, no doubt, but the important thing was that my strategy had worked! Four hundred skeletons, two raid and five mini bosses were annihilated without any casualties. Suddenly Olta appeared before my eyes, sweet Olta with that coy smile of hers. I gritted my teeth and gazed in the direction of the burning carts.
I'm coming for you, you bastards! It won't be long now!

The skeletons running our way were less than two hundred yards away. It was time to split. Surveying the battlefield one last time, I steered the boar after the retreating half-legion, and that was when I glimpsed a solitary figure standing by the wayside. 

"You promised me a ride on your razorback, dar. Is now a good time?" Tilly smiled at me impishly, throwing back a mane of pitch-black hair in a classic womanly gesture. 

I leaned over without dismounting the boar, grabbed the girl by the waist and hoisted her up before me. As the demoness cozied up in her seat, she pressed her back against me so hard that I had no choice but to put my left arm around her. 

"This is nice," the girl purred dreamily.

"Uh huh. Nice that I have plate armor on me," I chuckled. 

"Dar, I heard there are rituals that can turn one into a succubus."

"Uh..." I let out a heavy sigh. "Don't worry, girl, we'll get you a husband soon."