Chapter 461 - 461: When a Giant Finally Looks Down (1)
The first of Reidar's forces to reach the Behemoth were the Vorathid Abyssal Horrors he just summoned.
Three hundred of the massive insects flew in formation. They reached the creature's flank and attacked without hesitation because Reidar told them to.
The Abyssal Horrors dove at the Behemoth's leg, the closest target available given the creature's size. Their Caustic Void-Spit struck the monster's skin and sizzled on contact, eating through the outer layer of flesh and leaving smoking craters that were each about the size of a car. But for that thing, they were nothing, and in fact the Behemoth didn't stop. It didn't even look down.
Besides, the craters healed in seconds as if the attacks had never happened. The Abyssal Horrors circled and attacked again and again; the wounds closed before they could do meaningful damage.
<It's even worse than I thought.>
The level gap was over 200 levels. Reidar's strongest summons, the Elemental Demon-Lords and the Shadow Specter-Kings, were at levels 577 and 582, respectively. The Behemoth was at 763. That gap reduced even the most powerful creatures' attacks to mere surface-level annoyances at best.
The Demon-Lords arrived next.
From above, two hundred of them swooped down on the Behemoth. Inferno Tyrants released waves of fire that covered the creature's torso. Ice spears from Frost-Blight Sovereigns shattered against its flesh. Lightning streaks of dazzling white-blue energy struck the Behemoth's head and shoulders after Storm-Wraith Archons summoned lightning.
The combined elemental assault would have killed anything at level 600 in seconds, but against the Behemoth, it did nothing more than leave scorch marks and frost patches that faded within moments.
<The attacks aren't strong enough to penetrate its thick skin, and that regenerates almost instantly. Even with 200 Demon Lords hitting it at once, the creature is healing faster than we can damage it. >
But that was not Reidar's goal. The goal was to annoy it and force it away; plus, Reidar hadn't used his trait yet, and he had skills that might help in killing that thing.
Reidar unleashed the Primal Chimera-Colossi, sending them scurrying to the creature's legs, where they unleashed a barrage of claws, bites, and blasts upon its ankles.
The Death Knights rode forward on their spectral horses, their battalions of Skeletal Warriors following in a tide of bone and steel that covered the ground beneath the Behemoth. 42,000 skeletons attacked the creature's feet with swords, spears, and axes, hacking at the flesh between the Behemoth's toes and the tendons above its heels.
The Behemoth took another step.
The foot came down, and three thousand Skeletal Warriors disappeared beneath it, crushed into mana dust. The Death Knights withdrew their remaining forces, rearranged their formations, and launched another attack, leveraging their ability to re-summoning the destroyed skeletons.
<Keep hitting it. Don't stop.>
The Behemoth's eye moved. The massive, galaxy-filled pit at the center of its face shifted and focused on the swarm of creatures attacking its lower body. For the first time since it appeared on the horizon, the creature acknowledged the attacks.
It stopped walking.
<Good. I have its attention. >
It was slow for the creature, but the Behemoth's arm swept sideways faster than anything of that size should have been able to. The arm passed through a group of Demon Lords, killing fifty of them. Even the air pressure created by the movement of the limb was too much for the demon lords to bear.
Reidar felt each death through the Overmind Consciousness like a needle in his skull, but he didn't stop. He redirected the surviving Demon-Lords away from the creature's upper body and down toward its legs, where they joined the ground forces in their sustained attack on the ankles and feet.
The Behemoth looked down. Its eye focused on the army of creatures swarming its lower body. Its jaw opened, and a sustained hum vibrated through the air, ground, and bones of everyone within a kilometer.
The hum resonated through the Skeletal Warriors, and ten thousand of them crumbled into dust as the sound wave shattered their bones. The Death Knights stumbled on their ghostly mounts but managed to stay together as their Unholy Fortitude ability kicked in, shielding them from the impact.
The Death Knights, however, were already resuming. Within seconds, new waves of Skeletal Warriors emerged from the earth to replace the ones that had been destroyed, as each of the 84 Death Knights activated Raise Lesser Battalion. The numbers replenished fast, and the attack resumed.
The Behemoth took a step, shifting its massive body sideways as it tried to move around the concentration of creatures at its feet.
Reidar responded by moving his forces with it. The demon lords circled in front of the creature and unleashed another coordinated barrage of elemental attacks aimed at its face, trying to get it to turn further away from the city.
The Shadow Specter-Kings materialized in the Behemoth's path, bleeding through the ground as solid pools of darkness into which the creature's feet sank.
The Behemoth was too big for them to contain. Their power was insignificant compared to the amount required to slow a monster on level 763. However, they caused a sensation, a wrongness in the ground—which the creature detected, causing it to pause for a moment before taking another step.
Each fraction of a second was one in which the Behemoth wasn't moving toward Kingsgate.
The Behemoth's arm swept again. This time, it caught a group of Abyssal Horrors that had been circling too close, and two thousand of them died instantly. The foot of the creature landed on a group of Primal Chimera-Colossi, crushing two Behemoth-Apes and a Spine-Back Rhino into the ground.
The losses were mounting.
Through the Overmind Consciousness, Reidar tracked his numbers. He had lost over a hundred Demon-Lords, thousands of Abyssal Horrors, and Skeletal Warriors in the first few minutes of the battle.
The creature wasn't even trying to kill his forces; these were just the incidental casualties from its movements, the way a man stepping through a puddle might accidentally commit mass murder against an entire ant civilization that had probably just finished building their little ant parliament.
<But it's not moving toward Kingsgate anymore, at least. It means it's working. >
The problem was that repelling the monster wasn't straightforward with so many creatures in the city. At this point, his army was just a fraction of the total, so the summons weren't appetizing enough to lure it away. That could happen, but Reidar would need to force the monster away first, at least enough for it to start focusing more on his army.