Chương 158: AF Chapter 157 – Spiders and Fire and Black Breath

I pulled at Quaver and Bunita, and the Lost Light swirled out and around Axe, Claymore, Saber, two Bows and two Autobows, in addition to circling about the head of Crown. Brilliant, the dragon-slaying enchantment. It clad the weapon in solid radiance, and in doing so ignored the natural armor of creatures. A foot of hide, scales, or blubber in the way? Didn't matter, it would be carved through like it was air. Main drawback? It couldn't cut through inanimate matter much at all.

So, objects and Constructs were largely immune to it. The protective value of metal armor was doubled against Brilliance as the Weapon would simply slide right over it, and you couldn't Sunder anything (or the Weapon be Sundered in return). Amusingly enough, Brilliance was thus almost useless against most humans, who didn't normally have any natural armor to speak of. On the other hand, Umbral, its dark twin, ignored all forms of armor, and was often called the mortal-slaying enchantment because of it.

Brilliance also occupied four Slots of the ten on a Weapon possible when it was active, which could really hamper a Weapon's other effects. However, powerful creatures tended to have nasty strong hides, and relied on it a lot for their staying power. Those of the Bile Grievvers weren't going to work against us here, and so other Slots were best suffused with pure damage-causing effects, if possible.

With no armor protecting them, things like Power Attacks suddenly became standard instead of situational, and would be employed to their fullest here. They could even lather Combat Expertise on top of it for a parrying bonus, and they'd still be able to carve into the things!

While everyone here had been forced to face these things in melee repeatedly, to the point where they had to be able to take one solo and survive to run away to 'graduate', as it were, the best four fighters were going to stop the grievvers from advancing, and the four archers on the Disks were cutting to drive broadheads deep into those vulnerable spots the damn bouncy things hadn't evolved to protect against ranged fire.

For the bugs, it was throw some Debuffs on instinct and programming, weakening any enemy that didn't want to close, then advance to attack or wait for them to charge or flee. An enemy shooting pointy sticks at them was not something they were used to dealing with, or anything beyond the gouted acid of olthoi, which would do next to nothing to them. Sometimes coming to a new world and meeting new opponents was not good for you, and their Summoned status meant they couldn't run away.

This was going to be a fight, because the grievvers were on guard right at the bottom of the ramp, their squeals alerted the other Summons, and they were all pulled towards a fight if one next to them was. The Bile Grievvers here were the same size as the Grievver Shredders were in Tou-Tou, but a paler green, with spots of rotting yellow and black on them and edging the crest along their abdomen.

They weren't that big in mass, but they occupied a huge area with their four long legs, each segment as long as a man was tall, commanding decent reach and threatening great speed, while the flowery tendril that was their main sensory organ and source of Casting twisted and opened and closed, testing the air, looking for targets. The opening fight on a normal day was usually a storm of magic and arrows behind a desperate shield wall holding back the enraged, gigantic grievvers.

Once they were all dead in a mad and explosive hackfest, the Fellowships would separate to work the independent spawn points, wolfpacking each new grievver down one by one with careful, grim teamwork. Without the powerful Weapons of the past, and lacking the most powerful magic in many circumstances, the creatures were much harder to bring down, and their attacks much harder to deal with. That wasn't going to be as much of a problem with us.

Split Vulns went off on the grievvers at the bottom of the stairs, just as they pivoted and caught sight of Kopf. The big lugian grinned inside his armor as the Mick and Kris flanked him, sealing the corridor against their advance, and the first two sent out their spells to Debuff us. That was fine. One of the big things to invest in was Stat-buffing equipment, and we'd been doing that JUST to offset Debuffs like this.

Also, using Dispel Magic gems, here normally called Gems of Stillness, one of the few magic items the people of the Vesayans could still make reliably. The only one affected here was Kopf, who took the Debuffs with a grunt. My Dispel stole over him a second later, shattering them and wiping them away for only a couple of mana. Gems of Stillness were for emergencies! My base Mana Conversion was over 280 base, a number respectable among even the paramounts, before any Buffing.

I could use Isparian magic for very low amounts of mana now, and a buffed Dispel was nothing to me, Silver magic around it making sure it could punch through higher Scarabs of magic in a straight Caster-Level check... and I had tons of weight on my Dispels. If they didn't want to prance ahead, that was fine. The archers let go, and broadheads punched deep into center mass, making the creatures writhe in pain as the glowing missiles ignored their carapaces entirely and plunged very deep, indeed.

Lightning crackled and hissed up for us, crashed against ready Shields and went nowhere. Volley two, three, four… and the first grievver went down, just as the first arrivals in the side chambers sprang into the corridor. The long, narrow, splayed-out body of the dead Grievver twitched and seemed to shrink and fold in on itself, becoming basically a narrow tube as muscle reflex brought the overlong limbs back in tight, suddenly occupying much less room. This novel is published on a different platform.

Support the original author by finding the official source. The grievvers began to swarm, heading up the center tunnel towards us. The Chain Vuln lit up over a dozen of them this time, yellow auras of Blade Vulnerability playing over them all as they didn't so much scuttle as bounce and jiggle their way up the hallway, aborted attempts to climb the walls making it plain they couldn't lift their weight very easily here. Their forelegs were as long as a man with a spear, and could chop down from above like scythes…

but they couldn't stab or thrust reliably. Thus, the tactic was to raise your shield to protect your head from the chopping forelegs, and hack the fuck out of the thorax and tentacular sensory organ and magic-casting limb in the middle there.

It required a lot of strength to take those impacts, and a lot of courage to basically end up looking a giant alien spider-thing and its lightning-shooting tendril in what passed for its face, and then go to town on it while defying its attempt to bull you over and gather you in. Which is why Rogar and his Glaive were in the second ranks, Accent glowing with Brilliance as the stolid, grim Aluvian began to chop at those extended limbs flailing away inside his reach.

Chok, chok, chok, the overlong forelimbs went spinning away, chitin glowing yellow for an instant, and the grievvers losing any kind of gathering/encapsulating leverage. Sword Beats Fist. Inside its reach, gain an extra Attack of Opportunity when natural weapons are used against you, once per round. Riposte. Once per round, if your melee opponent misses you, gain an AoO. Opportunist. When your ally strikes a mutual foe, you gain an Attack of Opportunity once per round on it. Touch of the Wasp.

When your melee opponent is struck by a missile attack from your ally, gain an AoO once per round. The Fire Dragon combat style was fueling a massive barrage of attacks, doing in layers what had once been done with overpowering force. Rogar and Kopf were supplying Opportunity and the archers were supplying the Touches as the two grievvers in the front tried to get past or clamber over Kris and the Mick as the shorter obstacles and easier prey. Oops on their part...

Bunita and Quaver were blurs of motion, two-tone Notes rising as the two deadly Melees moved their blades with fantastic speed and lethality. Chopped forelimbs rendered the grievvers unstable, and the two punished them, removing first one, then the other, the grievvers rearing back to try and keep their balance as they hissed and shrieked… and then finishing salvos punched in, found something vital, and they dropped, limbs snapping up in close, and the grievvers behind advanced to the attack.

Kopf was denying them the middle, and assisting the Mick by hewing at forelimbs with Land's glowing edge, also providing Opportunity for one another. As a result, the grievvers on the right side were dying faster… but not that much faster, as Kris was laughing and everyone's spirits were surging as she began to Sing. The grievvers couldn't really understand it, but Intimidation is about guts and fear, and this wasn't a Buffing Song.

No, we were getting our Morale bonuses from Hunter/Slayer Masteries here, the product of a lot of practice against these bugs. It was now a full +5/+5 To Hit and Damage, just a part of the Matrix investments that didn't show on any Assess, and left curious paramounts wondering how we were killing stuff so fast when we didn't really seem to be improving any faster than anyone else. I could see the grievvers shiver in instinctive comprehension.

Being able to Sing in the middle of a fight was a display of strength, of nonchalance, of them Not Being A Threat. They were fighting something that was totally confident of beating them, and it didn't matter what they did, they were going to die. They were Summons, so it didn't affect what they had to do. If they were living, they would have quivered, considered the threat we were, and likely slowly retreated to lairs and hiding points, letting us pass.

But the words jangled and danced upon their simple nervous systems, letting them know they were going to die, and despair was all they were going to harvest from this.

"Tremble, oh ohhh oh, Tremble, we come… Things from afar, slaves to a lie, Dance and prance and when you die, Draw your last breath, you danced with Death, And Death didn't even try. Your doom, it comes. Your fate, it ends. Food for the Land, cold steel sends You off to sleep, and to remember, To Quaver there, and to Tremble! Tremble, we come!" You just have to love that Song. Edges of ki, dancing along the nerves, playing on their templated spirits, driving the memory of it into the grievver akasha.

She'd been driving it into their memory collective for months now, and I knew that when we finally went back to Tou-Tou, those grievvers there were going to remember this, too. Humans, with bright and shining Brilliant steel, carving through them with speed and fervor, Singing without a care in the world!

Rogar was helping Kris now, Accent chopping down from behind and beside her to give her more openings, while Quaver wasn't even visible in the flowing streams of radiant motion that were tearing apart the grievver in front of her.

She was advancing into it, its magic sputtering and fading in the silence of her Null, and each one seemed to be thrashing in desperate fear, trying to react, and finding only flowing, beautiful, and mesmerizing death coming for it in the darkness and corruption that had bound them to service. No need to Imperil anything here. Brilliant ignored their natural armor regardless, no need to reduce it. I would have liked to Gold Scarab the Vuln, but getting them all at one time seemed enough.

I flicked out Heals here and there, Rogar actually the most vulnerable because he wasn't using a Shield. Occasionally plunging forelimbs would crash into his head or shoulders, looking to impale, and threatening to break his bones as he took the hits on his Armor and helmet. One Healing spell, get back that Soak, ignore the hits and keep going, trusting me to protect him.

Rogar grit his teeth and kept up his chopping and hewing at those limbs, opening them up for deadly revenge from Kris, while she likewise opened up the grievvers for his further attention. Overhead, bowstrings hummed and actions racked, salvos snapping out regular as clockwork, grievvers twisting and writhing away from the shots on instinct, Brilliant steel hacking in to take advantage of the openings they made.