Chương 342: AF Chapter 341 – Down in Freebooter Keep

Kris naturally earned a surge of the moarsmen and sclavi coming in at her there, which only made those attackers even more oblivious to those chewing into them so aggressively from behind. Quaver wasn't individually visible, slicing in arcs of glittering, dazzling motion that left searingly cold wounds behind on Kris' targets.

Opportunity attacks flowered repeatedly and with great speed all around her as she took their curved scimitars, acidic claws, heated bite attacks, and long-reaching kicks and blows with equanimity, punishing them if they hit, if they missed, if they moved, if they didn't move, and for every attack coming at them from behind or the sides. She actually worked herself around to the moarsmen and sclavi still fixated on the Mick, just so she could add more targets to her damage output.

Stand and Tall were ringing repeatedly, the Shields wielded in her Arakne Arms and taking blow after blow, impaling limbs on their spiked surfaces if the attackers were stupid enough to attack with natural weapons. Everyone there had seen her ripping out attacks in a whirlwind of slaughter, and it simply inspired them to greater efforts to match her speed and savagery.

It took less than four minutes for them to work through over sixty moarsmen and sclavi, with Princess Kristie's murderous defense and terrifying ability to seize every opening accounting for probably half the damage output at that time. The Mick did jump down about halfway through the slaughter, gathering his own little circle of moarsmen and sclavi and keeping their attention. The Roaches jumped to flank his attackers, and they were slaughtered with ferocious speed and practiced coordination.

"Vivisize all spawn points!" Kris ordered immediately, promptly jumping back up onto the wall and trotting down it, Quaver plunging down every couple steps to hiss and leave a misty mark on a Summons Point. The teams raced back to the middle of the courtyard while the Mick also hopped back up on the wall to do the same thing. A minute later, the Mick and Kris led the charge into the tower with the magical array that indicated ownership of the place.

There were a full dozen sclavi and tough moarsmen guarding the array and the Blighted crystal that powered it, a thing almost completely overgrown with rotting cracks and oozing mold. Shields bashed and shoved, and the defenders found themselves spun, moved around, and suddenly in the middle of highly-coordinated teams of attackers who cut them down with great speed. The Mick actually reached the array first, but held off, focusing on killing the last of the defenders.

When they were done, he just stepped aside and let the Knights and Roaches unload on the unreasonably tough object, Lost Light flaring and spitting every time it hit the Blight on the thing. It took them a minute to completely hack through the crystal at the center, which exploded in a blast of vivus and stinking black fog, peppering the array with shards of crystal as it did so.

"Don't think that thing is going t' be working again," the Mick observed, glancing over from where the last of the Spawn Points was being vivisized, too.

"Pity, that," Kris said.

"What was it supposed to do?"

"Oh, changed the flags hanging from the tower, Summoned in a bunch o' Faction guards depending on who destroyed it, an' opened the Portal t' the Black Market ta members o' that Faction." Kris considered the mechanics of that.

"So… instead of scalvi and moars, there'd be Faction guards you had to kill to split this array, if you wanted access to the Market?"

"Aye. A fine way t' keep the Factions at one another's throats while the Freebooters laughed at them an' took their gold." The Mick sighed at the cruel irony of it. Kris just shook her head.

"You smelled the Dungeon." The Mick nodded slowly.

"Aye. There be shite down there… shite that wasn't there back then. It were basically an open run through the place t' find the Portal an' get t' the Market." Kris looked over the teams assembled there.

"I have no incentive whatsoever to keep the Blight present in any way, shape, or form here. We're going down in there and going to purge the place clean. I want vivus touching any Blight we see."

Kris had her Manticore Tail out, something none of the teams had seen since the fights on the Tou-Tou Peninsula. Her Autobow Fall was in her right hand in hand crossbow format, feeding the Tail's Main-Gauche through the stud it emerged from on her Girdle.

The slender Gold-Rainbow edged thing of pale black energy hovered over her head like a waiting scorpion tail, four foot-long icy spikes rotating around it, ready to be launched out at any thought, all of them dripping the same assorted flames and cold motes of light as Fall was. They had lined up by the ramp, collecting only the fallen, broken crystal of what the Mick had called an Array Crystal that once Buffed whoever touched it with all the Life Protection spells at Platinum. Perhaps it could be rebuilt.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Unlike normal, she led the way down, since they had no idea whatsoever what they were going to be finding there. The Mick took up the lead of the Roaches behind the Knights, their missile Weapons out and ready to cover, or be swapped quickly for melee Weapons if needed. She halted abruptly as she coasted slowly down the steep ramp, Shields snapping up and her Tail posing instantly.

"Knights, kneel." Shields up, all of the Knights knelt down, clearing the view for the Roaches, who promptly drew up in a double archer line, one set kneeling, the other standing. The Mick calmly walked over the shoulders of the Knights, all them hearing a scrabbling below that was coming rapidly closer, and a wave of fresh stench.

"Them be not Summon tactics," he murmured, taking the left side of the corridor, Kris, the right, leaving the middle open for the archers and a rather large number of braced and ready Weapons of Lost Light.

"Real or real commanders, same difference. It means we're going to have sweep Spawn Points, too." Kris didn't hide her irritation as flashes of color entered the edge of the illumination coming off Tall's boss, painting the corridor ahead of her and revealing a whole lot of moarsmen coming into view, picking up the pace after they saw the shadows of intruders above them, their strange ululating cries starting to rise as they began to surge forward.

Sharding attacks, missile Weapons, and Tail Spikes hissed down the corridor at them, and the first eager attackers went down rapidly, ignored and trampled under the eager claws of those behind.

"I see scars. These are real," Kris noted with some relief.

"I've a feeling we've stumbled onto a hidden den of these things. Black eyes, they're all Blighted!" Which officially meant they were Killing Them All. Lost Light flowed forth, finding much to attack and dazzle in the goggling eyes of the creatures, who attacked with savagery and great skill, but not great coordination.

The big gap between the two weaving a net of swordplay was in fact the greatest killzone, with three Swords, three Spears, and eight archers all prosecuting it aggressively, in addition to inheriting attacks from Kris and the Mick as the moarsmen entered their killzones.

A steady stream pressed up the middle as the ones in front of them fell frozen and erupting into vivus, clambering over the dead uncaringly, and receiving the exact same treatment, while the Shields of those in the front impaled their claws and didn't yield under their strongest blows, all the while dazzling streaks of motion slashed and stabbed at them with biting cold that could shatter off limbs, freeze hearts inside their chests, and immobilize them in mid-step.

Instead of backing up under the pressure of the moarsmen rush coming uphill, Kris took a step forward, and everyone, crouching and otherwise, followed suit. A lot of frozen corpses were Burning and sending a stream of vivic mist down the ramp as they ground through the incoming rush of corpses. They followed the rain of white dust as the Blighted corpses Burned down with supernatural speed.

The first spells came shooting up at them as the press of moarsmen thinned out, illuminating half a dozen bent and rotting-scaled moarsmen at the foot of the ramp. Energized Shields sparked and shuddered under the impacts, but held firm enough… and then the ranged attacks converged on the middle one and blasted him off his feet, the brittle, heavy body shattering as it hit the ground, frozen solid.

The arrows and quarrels followed the Spikes of her Tail, shining needles of frost leading in a flurry of razored ice to each target, while Kris' immediate defense did not falter in the slightest. The last two broke and ran as the last of the moarsmen fell… or rather, they tried to. Kris blurred into motion with a quickness not many living had seen, the Mick on her heels, chasing the bent spellcasting moarsmen with terrifying speed and intent.

The Knights and Roaches pounded after her, but did not pursue into the darkness, slamming to a halt in silent accord, bright Shields up and in all directions, protecting against any attacks as they built an instant hedge wall. The Roaches arrayed themselves in every direction against any more surprises. The Mick also caught up to his target, expeditiously ramming the moarsman shaman into the slick Blighted stone of the wall and letting the icy Spikes on Clan bite cold and deep.

Bunita, shrunk down to half her length, opportunistically drove up three times into the moarsman like a pumping piston before he could wriggle free, and then the Claymore shot out to full length as the Mick spun, circling and pausing, assessing the area and looking for more threats. Behind him, the shaman managed to take two steps before his head fell free of his frozen chest.

There was no blood, as it was all reduced to slick black and crimson solid veins, too, all of which promptly blazed with vivus like oil feeding a misting fire. Light from the side of the tunnel indicated that Kris was on the other side of the ramp from him, this tunnel looping back underneath it… and down through the opening located right there. He pulled out his flashlight and shone it down that tunnel with his shield hand.

There was a glimmer of scales and dark eyeballs at the far end, and he could certainly hear cries and noises down below, but nothing was coming up. Kris was abruptly right up next to him, looking down that way.

"They're regrouping," she stated.

"Sweep the rooms, in series! Scouts, hold the ramp! If there's trouble, pull them into the arrows!" she ordered over her shoulder. Behind her and around the corner, the ranks of armored men and women broke up into four-man squads, and began to work around the right wall in the opposite direction to where the other shaman was nailed to the wall with icy spikes driven right through its head and limbs, Burning vivic like a dry bush set on fire. The two commanders waited there calmly as calls of "Clear!"

rang out repeatedly, before Kris shouted out, "Withdraw to the ramp and wait for potential Summons! One minute to possible respawn!" There was a quick clattering of withdrawing feet, and more of Weapons striking at the floor with a thorough pattern to cover every surface. The shield wall was put up again, silent blades leveled and archers ready to draw and shoot, waiting for the sound of… Fwzap! …

"Eleven o'clock," Rogar said firmly, his longbow shifting in that direction. More soft puffs heralded failed Summons hitting the vivus and failing, Sealing it permanently as they did so, along with four more fwzaps everyone heard distinctly.

"Pull them in!" Kris ordered, and two Knights in bright silver Armor and Shields and Swords glowing with all sorts of happy illumination down here promptly stood up and advanced into the mist towards the section of this cave they hadn't managed to clear before having to pull back.