Chương 500: AF Chapter 499 – The Final Queen Part II

The end of the Chain dangled down, and Gros, Kopf, and Primus Atamarr all grabbed it and dragged the Queen's head down further. For a moment there was a hole open in the stone underneath the links, they dangled three feet of the Chain into it, and then the Stone flowed back into place and the Chain now anchored her to the ground, just as the other end around her taloned feet was also anchored. The Paradox Queen was tied-up and pinned, and now the beat-down really began.

Master Ben Ten's crew of Paramounts came out to do the Wolfpack. Technically it should have been left to Kris' crew, but they wanted in on the fight, and this was likely the biggest thing remaining in all of Dereth that they might get to kill, unless we went full bore on the undead. The rest of the Lost Light bearers went up on Disks above the Vanguard line and began to kill from there, even as the olthoi were going berserk trying to get to and free their queen, making themselves fine targets as they did so.

With a quiet surge of air pressure, the last few feet of my stone wall flowed shut, leaving my Wall of Fire running alongside it. There were no more reinforcements coming, although they were tearing into the stone on the other side in a frenzy trying to get through it, running through the other Walls, getting cooked, and dying all the faster.

I kept mending the stone up and making it thicker with one thoughtstream, while my Darts kept flying out, sometimes delivering minor nagging injuries and Burn damage, sometimes delivering waves of Healing through our people. Her brood guard died faster and faster as the Vanguard pushed out on the flanks, opening up room for more Archers to draw line of sight and hammer them down.

Half the olthoi here were immune, resistant to, or could Dispel Life Magic, too, but they were focused on aiding their queen, so when the Vulns flared, the cadre of devoted War Mages with Olthoi Slayer Wands were quick to hammer those targets down, along with the sniping Archers. Hundreds of olthoi Burning vivic were crushed and destroyed underfoot, no olthoi armor coming from these.

The Queen was trying to lunge and bite at Briggs, who was bashing her head around in return, slamming her from side to side with thunderous crushing impacts from Endure that sent bright yellow-green sparkling Health Qi rippling out. Their numbers dwindled as those of ours increased, the continuous damage from three Walls of Fire adding up over time as the olthoi had to keep running through them or staying in the burn area of the Flames. The back side began to open up, and suddenly there was space behind the olthoi.

The Wolfpack teams flowed around the edges as I let the Wall of Fire I'd set up lapse, as did Nippo and Thera. Scouts, Knights, Cloaked, and soldiers all raced up behind the olthoi, and Blades plunged in with relentless speed and pressure, rolling up the outside of the olthoi and pressing them in from behind.

"Tremble, for it is your time. Tremble, it is time to die. Tremble, never again to see the sky. Tremble, as the Hammer falls. Tremble, as darkness calls. Your brood, your swarm, your children's hordes, Ruined and wracked by thirsting swords. You lived, you reigned, fighting to the end, Now hear the call as down we'll send The Final Queen, and finally now, you'll Feed the Land!

"TREMBLE, WE COME!" Hearts were singing as Endure came down once, and a chitin carapace harder than steel finally cracked. The Paradox Queen's skull was hammered down onto the points of six different braced Spears who'd been amplifying the crushing impacts of Briggs' Hammer as he pounded her head into them. Up, down again. CRACK, and he drove a head nigh as big as he was down upon those Spears, gleaming points burning with Banefire punching through the top of her crest and ending her desperate struggles.

The sparkling glow in her eyes went out, the Nulling lights on her attack limbs faded away, and the psychic pressure of the hivemind went cold and still. The remaining olthoi wailed and shuddered as they felt the death of their queen. The Paradox Queen had not been allowed to breed other Matrons, only lesser Nobles. The olthoi would be paralyzed with indecision until one of them took control, and began the process of forming another queen.

The Hivemind was down, and would take some time to truly be re-established, as the natural hierarchy was now completely upended. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. We naturally weren't going to allow that to happen as they reeled in psychic shock.

Up top, the tunnel defense faltered as the lesser olthoi were stunned with despair and removal of all motivating force by the shock of the death of their queen. King Borelean pushed forward instantly, chopping and hacking the olthoi down with abandon, and the final clearing of the Black Death Catacombs commenced.

Down below, the stone wall I'd so carefully Shaped into place to deny reinforcements came down in a collapsing wall of mud, which flowed right over yonder and into that nutrient pool for the newest batch of eggs there, diluting and polluting it completely. Our raiding force pivoted into those stunned and reeling reinforcements and began to reap them. It was a huge hive, sure, and there were a lot of eggs to collect, grubs and larva to pop, and living olthoi yet to kill.

And then, then a certain someone was going to collapse a lot of key load-bearing walls and turn this hive into a big hole in the ground, purged by vivus and rendered free of the last olthoi queen on Dereth.

The Crystal heavyfooters felt it first, the initial collapse of the bracing walls down low, either blowing out or summarily turned to mud. Whatever, the deep supports collapsed under the weight above, and that weight couldn't hold itself upright without them. Stone broke and collapsed down low, the ground shaking as the levels of the hive gave way, the collapse moving up and up and up as the stone cracked all around us.

Suddenly a massive pit was falling down and away from us all at once, while rock dust blew into the sky as it swapped places with the falling stone and the bulging mass of the hive, still Burning with vivus, dropped into the gaping pit below. Dutiful Air Elementals forced the dust back out of the sky, down and over the slopes, clearing up the sky rapidly and not letting any contamination spread.

Compacted dust fell down in dirty rain, pattering back down into the hole it had come from and coating everything down below in a new layer of uniformity. Most of the troops had left after the long grind of clearing and vivisizing this Hive. Most of them headed to the other Hives, to kill off the Summons left behind, Seal the Spawn Points, and then vivify any remnants of the olthoi ecology left behind. New olthoi were not spawning on the random landscape Spawn Points any more.

Ergo, wiping any olthoi on the landscape was now also a chore, as they'd not be coming back. Out in the Direlands, the tuskers and banderlings had happily added that to their list of tasks to do. The only places that were Spawning olthoi were the various hives, and most of those were being closed down. As I could make it to them, I'd collapse them, seal them in mud, turn that mud to rock, and they would be erased from the landscape as little more than bumps or ponds or lakes to be filled in over time.

It was a lot of work in terms of volume, but within two months, the only olthoi left alive in Dereth would be those in Dungeons we used for training purposes. After all, there was no guarantee that they wouldn't return in the future.

"How many other Olthoi Matrons are you looking at?" Kris asked, as we regarded the map of Auberean, the rest of the world upon which Dereth was located. Dereth was a tiny island out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, no other landmass within over two thousand miles of the place.

It was a place that should not really have been discovered with the level of technology and the dangers of seafaring existing here, yet it had become the birthplace and cemetery of multiple Empyrean empires, the playground of Old Gods, and the focus of massive magical events which had impacted the entire world.

"Hivemind echoes indicate that there are at least nine of them, all of them waiting for me now." I waved my hand as the three-foot globe spun, and lights lit up in different places, no real rhyme or reason as to their locations as regards geography, needing only hills or mountains nearby so they could dig their tunnels.

"A whole planet waiting to be resettled," Kris murmured, shaking her head.

"Maybe. Harlune intimated that the Empyreans had other servant races who are probably roaming free and squatting in the ruins of the Haebrean Empire, and there might even be Empyrean survivors running around that the olthoi didn't bother killing off, ones that Asheron's spells didn't scoop up.

"Then again, they might have died during the Fall, too." Kris shook her head.

"So, you'll be the only other person than Harlune to have left the island and seen any part of the rest of the world. Orbital Linejumps should get you to each of the Queens fairly easily, right?"

"Yes. I can probably use a Vivisized Nature Elemental to do the work on at least the main Hive behind them, rather than sticking around to do all the clean-up, or bring in a cluster of Earth Elementals to just collapse the surrounding hives that are there."

"Well, it'll be a fuckton easier without Summons all over the landscape."

"That's true." I sat back in my chair as I let the Holo fade.

"I can remove the last of the olthoi as quickly as they can gather their swarms and depart. So, pop in, erect a Pyramid, send them on their way, possibly dismantle or re-task the Pyramid."

"With potentially a Portal or Gate effect to a Pyramid here on Dereth?" she inquired knowingly.

"I am leery of making a quick means to come here," I refuted her partially.

"Having an easy means of getting away from here? That's money." Kris considered that slowly.

"Here I thought I'd be spending half a lifetime journeying around the planet and getting rid of the olthoi. You took my dream of epic grinding away, you know!" She shook her fist at me.

"Apologies for excessive competence. Gamer's curse, you realize." She snorted and presented that fist, and I bopped with her.

"Based on Harlune's experiences, their slave races, monsters, and old enemies of the Haebreans are likely to be around out there, so there's going to be stuff to do, especially if they are dragging their own Patrons in to this world of interest."

"And so you don't want them coming here. Right," Kris nodded, pouring herself a brew and kicking back.

"What about the undead here?" My lack of reply had her arching an eyebrow as she studied my face.

"You got that shitass difficult decision you and everybody else don't like look," she judged ruthlessly.

"I want to kill them very badly. I estimate there's at least a hundred thousand non-System undead in their holes around the island."

"A hundred-?" Kris repeated in alarm.

"Hey, I know that face," I deadpanned back to her at her expression.

"It's the 'Fuck, I can't just go kill them all?' face." Her scowl looked remarkably like I felt. If we went after the undead, they could wipe the civilian population, without a doubt. We might kill them all, but who would be left? Kris scowled as she considered our options.

"What about Nuhmudira and her bitch of a daughter?" she finally asked.

"Her, her we need to kill before she brings catastrophe upon us in her hunt for power." Kris' smile was relieved.

"Good. Still got something to do, then."