B4 Chapter 512: Mop Up, pt. 1
Niles stared at the skills that had been offered to him, grappling with what he was seeing. Sepulchre Attunement? He had no clue what an Attunement skill was — but if it was the reason it felt like his bones were splintering inside of him, he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing.
The other, Gravestrike, must have been what he did with his blade. Some weapon enhancement Skill with a sepulchre affinity, most likely.
Feeling his heart squeeze in his chest, Niles’ mind raced. Whatever he’d done had left its damage. It was building even now, a slow degradation that gnawed within him. Would the Attunement skill fix it? He only had two skill slots left — if he took it, he’d never get the chance to take Identify.
But if he rejected it, would he ever see it again? Would he even live?
White-hot pain ripped through his chest, stealing away his breath. Niles staggered, feeling the inexorable touch of mana within him build.
He had to make a choice, now — before it was taken from him. He’d have to head for the healers afterwards.
Not that we have any worth mentioning — barely more than midwives and those with a few first aid Skills. It was a bitter thought; every true healer was above, supporting the defence of the city.
An explosion ripped through the dome before he could commit to a path. Niles snapped to the sound. It had come from one of the breached tunnels. Was it some fresh hell the gods had sent to torment them further?
All hints to the source of the noise were shielded by an eruption of ichor. It was a deluge of slaughter, hundreds of grubs liquified instantly as their viscera was ejected in every direction.
Mere moments later, a figure burst through the wall of liquified beasts, raking through a swathe of creatures with a sword that seemed to melt into the very air. Their motion was impossible to track — all Niles could follow was the evidence of their passing. Where they went, they left only the dead.
Niles blinked — was he imagining things? Had the mana sickness within him caused some sort of delirium? Surely not, it hadn’t even been half a minute.
Whoever the bladesman was, they were strong. Blue light flashed again and again, tracing the arcs of their strange sword as layered cracks ripped through the dome. Every detonation was joined by a brighter flash; the light revealed only splattered beasts as it faded.
Who were they? It wasn’t the guildmaster, nor the strange bone-armoured man from Grandbrook. Had other Golds arrived to relieve their siege? Niles couldn’t think of any other explanation. Not with how fast; how totally the sole figure was tearing through the beasts.
Frowning, Niles tried to focus through the throbbing pulse in his head. Gods, it was so bloody hard to think. He needed to get to the healers, and see if they could figure out what happened to him.
Something kept him rooted in place. It was the Gold’s movements. Swift as they were, he caught almost nothing — but there was something about it that was undeniably familiar. An impossibility that held him in place despite the fact that it felt like the hard stone floor was swaying beneath his feet.
Behind the swordsman, Niles caught sight of something that made him blink. A cloud of autumn leaves, howling on a nonexistent wind. They tore out of one of the breached tunnels like they were carried by a hurricane.
Now he was definitely sure he was seeing things.
Niles planted his blade on the stone ground, leaning on its hilt to keep upright.
“Kid?” a distant voice asked.
He barely heard them, focused on the swirling leaves. Others in the crowd were pointing at them — maybe they did really exist?
Swooping low, the leaves came to a swirling halt just in front of the front line of defenders. Sweeping in, they swirled into a tight, obscuring spiral.
Niles blinked again, listing to the side before he caught himself. Someone steadied him.
The leaves vanished, replaced by a woman. She held a bow almost as tall as she was, with an arrow already by her cheek.
He felt the twang of her bow — a concussive crack that washed over him as her projectile ripped towards the grubs.
The arrow seemed to fracture mid-flight, and the beasts simply…vanished. An entire section, gone; replaced by a carpet of pulped flesh.
Frowning, Niles struggled to focus through his blurry eyes.
“Hey, something's wrong with him! I can’t see any bites, but…”
The voice smeared into meaningless noise.
Was the woman a little blue? He’d thought she was just pale at first, but against the sea of yellow grubs, he was certain that her skin had a blue tinge to it.
Recognition cut through his pain and exhaustion. Kenva.
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His eyes widened in shock. Whipping his head over so fast the room spun, he stared at the swordsman who was ripping back and forth across the dome. He saw. The glow of magic seeping from the slits in their visor, and wafting from their sabatons. The faint impression of scalemail. The bloody blade that seemed more like a thing of smoke and vapour than cutting steel.
Oh good. They were saved.
Niles collapsed, overwhelmed by the creeping touch of sepulchre mana that had been building within him.
….
Kaius sprinted across the dome, his every movement splattering larvae and soaking his boots with more ichor.
He only wished he could be faster. Bloody swarms were such a pain in the ass. Even with Slipstep, there were only so many he could reach. Mystic’s Rend helped, but even with every detonation slaying the grubs by the dozen, there were thousands that remained.
Gritting his teeth, he slashed in a low arc. Yellow-brown ichor sprayed away from him, the only remnants of an enemy too weak to survive his presence.
The survivors were holding — just. The Castellan had been right on the verge of activating its defenses. Only his latest spell had made Kaius ask it to stay its hand. All he’d needed was a glimpse through one of the boreholes the grubs had left as they’d tunneled in from the catacombs.
What a spell it was — the sensation of ripping his way through the very foundations of distance was intoxicating. It was an experience he’d paid for. Every part of him ached — those spatial fluctuations had been no joke. They’d torn right through every defense he had, pulverising him from the inside out.
Iron still hung heavy on his tongue, but Kaius refused to let the pain show — not when it was clear how desperately those sheltering in the dome needed him to be strong.
A crowd thousands strong, crammed into as small a space as possible. Even squeezing into the maintenance tunnels that surrounded the dome, they still took up a third of the immense space.
Keeping the pressure off of them would be rough — but far easier with Kenva’s help. Her Shattering Rain filled the dome in a constant deluge as she fired as fast as she was able.
Thank the gods that she’d gotten the skill evolution that she had. Alone, it would have been impossible to protect everyone — especially now that the grubs were beginning to mutate. Another sign of the tyrant's influence. Such forced growth was unnatural — but far from enough to provide them with a challenge.
Cleaving through the massed beasts, Kaius took in the full state of their situation. The survivors had been battered — he could see wounded aplenty in the centre of the mob. Thankfully, they were rallying. He’d taken some of the pressure off, but he could do more.
Checking the tunnels that the grubs were still spilling in from, Kaius saw the creatures piling into masses of writhing flesh. He grinned — Zone of Discombobulation had worked. Trapped in its confines, the grubs fell to utter confusion, wriggling senselessly as their acid jaws ripped into the flesh of anything that drew too close.
He still had five more casts of the spell. Not enough to fully cover the defenders, but enough to take the pressure off. Reaching for Eirnith, he willed the magic to exclude the fighters on the line. Five domes of shimmering magic fell upon the grubs, holding them fast. He outlevelled them to the extreme — simple disorientation empowered to the point it rendered them insensate. Each cast was nearly eighty strides wide, capturing hundreds of the creatures.
Seeing their enemy frozen and scattered, the defenders tore into them with a chorus of roars on their lips— a sight that made Kaius grin. Good, they still had their fighting spirit.
He turned his attention back to more pressing matters.
“How far are you? The grubs pressed these folk hard — the sooner Ianmus can get to the most injured, the better.”
“Seconds. The Castellan’s been opening the way.”
Before Kaius could even reply, a rumbling grind resounded from a tunnel to his left, halfway between the encroaching beasts and the clustered survivors.
It was followed by a low roar as an armoured titan sprinted into the room. Porkchop’s Dominance of Claw rocked the larvae, pulling the attention of almost every single beast within. Ianmus was atop his back — his staff already shining bright with condensed solar mana.
Porkchop summoned his Ethereal Phalanx. The puppeted shieldwall charged, ripping straight through the carpet of beasts and leaving an open corridor in their wake.
Their entrance secured, Ianmus leapt to the floor. He slammed his staff down with a focused frown on his face.
A wall of sunlight burst into existence, stretching across most of the dome. The spell looked similar to the one Kaius had seen the mage use to help Kenva take down the beast that had harassed Porkchop on the first day of the siege. Spread so thin, it felt weak — but so were their enemies.
Radiance washed over the grubs in a wave. Kaius laughed as the wall of light raced straight for him, watching the shimmering heat consume grubs in their thousands.
He was next.
Heat prickled at his skin. It hurt, a little — like he’d shoved his hand in scalding water.
Once it passed, Kaius only saw smouldering bodies. He turned, just in time to see the spell flicker out of existence a few strides before it hit Kenva and the edge of the defenders.
Four fifths of the beasts gone, just like that. The sight of it made the heat in his blood swell — thank the gods’ for mages.
“I’m going to go check the wounded!” Ianmus called, already running for the crowd that had pressed itself close. Silver mana flashed through one of the geometric circles atop his staff as he moved.
Already knowing what he would find, Kaius turned his attention to the tunnels that the grubs were using to enter the dome. Ghostly lilies filled both of them utterly. The grubs had no hope — pressed flat by Ianmus’s spell, they may as well have been fish in a barrel. Even with more of them constantly falling from the tunnels in the ceiling, they were captured immediately, steadily piling higher.
The sight of it eased the tension in his heart. Kenva was already mopping up the remnants that had escaped Ianmus’s burning wall, now all that was left was busy work.
“I’ll watch the left, you take the right? I figure we may as well force feed some of these folks some levels,” Kaius said, eying the defenders. With most of the grubs dead or disabled, he could see them watching him. They looked exhausted, but they’d just have to manage.
Every level they gained now could be the one that kept them alive to the very end of the siege.
Porkchop let out a grunt, “No difference to me.”
Kaius nodded. Turning to face the far off crowd, he wracked his brain for the right words to encourage the crowd to kill the frozen grubs. Few enough of them were true fighters, most were simply men and women who’d picked up arms when there was no other choice.
Somehow he doubted that telling them there was enough for everyone was the right tact.