Book 5: Chapter 47
The main force of the nanomachines was moving toward Sel fast according to the woman who could sense them with her Skill, and she wasn’t wrong. They hit the opposite edge of the island before Kay’s group could get close and clumps of eldritch monsters were battling against guards and adventurers, pushing up the slopes toward the city when they finally arrived on the scene. Blobs tried to engulf homes and businesses, humanoid and monstrous shapes were attacking people of every walk of life, and robotic looking forms were ripping buildings, roads, and everything else into chunks and hauling it all away.
There was no need to discussing anything. Kay launched himself at the nearest enemy and started destroying. Torrents of blood gushed from every surface of his body, simulacra leapt from his armor onto masses of nanomachines, weapons formed in his hands to lash out at the closest targets, and a sea of blood grew beneath his feet. Eldritch corruption was destroyed en mass around him, and still there was more to rid the world of as the Lord of Spilled Blood advanced.
More soldiers, guards, and adventurers fought their way forward as reinforcements flooded in from every direction but the one the enemy controlled. A burst of thunder marked Alahna’s entry onto the filed, and the tide of black was fought to a standstill the eldritch force no longer gaining ground. Buildings were leveled as powerful attacks went off and massive amalgams of nanomachines stomped forward. Smaller forms began pushing together into bigger ones and the majority of the defenders attacks suddenly became mere annoyances instead of strong blows. The ones Kay was facing grew even larger, fusing dozens of shapes into single enemies that had enough mass to toss of the bits Kay was corroding away and keep fighting.
The tide started to push forward again, and Kay decided to fight size with numbers. He reached deed into the wide pool of blood beneath his feet and activated one of his most powerful Skills. “[Create Blood Champions].”
Six faceless copies of Kay in his armor stepped up out of the pool facing the enemy. Each one created its own weapon and charged into the fray. None of them were as strong as he was, but they had access to most of his Skills, including his current trump card, Purify Blood. The Skill originally designed to purge contaminants, parasites, and diseases from someone’s blood stream was now purifying the world of eldritch taint. Each of the champions took control of some of the blood Kay was sending everywhere around him and started striking out at the enemy.
As they did, Kay invoked another Skill. “[Create Blood Army].”
Ranks of red soldiers rose up and started marching in a row at a time. They crashed into the black tide and halted, solid blood body after body slamming into one another as they hit the enemy and were halted. The initial setback ended quickly as a pair of the champions took control of the growing army and started having them hack into the mass blocking the way. Pseudopods, tentacles, claws, needles, pincers, fangs, stingers, and countless shapes and weapons beyond that cut, smashed, stabbed, crushed, sliced, and ripped into the soldiers, but they had no fear of death. The ones that weren’t destroyed immediately got back up to fight and the ones that were broken apart just became fuel for the champion’s attacks.
Kay’s front began to shift the flow of the battle as more nanomachine reinforcements were shifted from other parts of the battle to hold back his army and champions, leaving other areas weaker for other forces to punch through. Kay briefly made out Alahna’s shape rising into the air and sending down bolt after bolt of lightning, followed by a swirling cloud of razor sharp winds and twisting balls of water that tore through the enemies below her, before she sank back down out of sight. He also saw a colorful shape out of the corner of his eye that looked like a gigantic two-dimensional trapdoor spider made out of multicolored paints burst out of the ground, grab a particularly large enemy and drag it out of sight before vanishing.
With both of his “summoning” Skills in use and it costing too much in time and mana to double up on either of them Kay went back to personally fighting. The sea of blood centered under his feet grew thicker as it turned into a moving platform a few feet thick that followed him around, melting the bottom of any enemy that landed on it and dragging the nearby foes closer, and to their doom. He felt something that he hadn’t in a while, the hint toward a potential Class from his title as he made the sea drown his enemies in blood. He set aside the feeling for later as more and more shaped and shapeless monsters charged him.