Chapter 31: The Monsters of Murmurin (1/2)
When Victor reached Murmurin, he found the village under siege. The Ishfanian scouts had reached it first.
Thankfully, all the training and drilling had borne fruit. Everyone in the V&V Adventurer Company was armed, and the citizens had set barricades south of the village, where the bulk of the army came from. Allison and Rolo had summoned a thick, dense barrier of thorns and blackberries around the village to delay the invaders, entangling soldiers with plants.
Rushing on the back of the Black Beast from the north, Victor rode to the town square, where the minions fought off dozens of invaders around Vainqueur’s statue. Most of the enemies were armored elf soldiers with tridents or cursed bows while huge gargoyles served as their heavy hitters.
Thanks to the weapons crafted by Barnabas or bought from Malfy—both of whom participated in the battle—the gnolls, kobolds, and undead held their own against their opponents, swarming them at the numbers of three against one. The werewolves, fully transformed and led by Croissant, handled the stronger gargoyles.
Vainqueur Junior, too, had joined the melee, grabbing elves with his hands and swallowing them whole. Other mimics, shaped like chests, swords, and cakes, followed its lead, feasting on the elves like wolves among sheep.
The sight of everyone working together warmed Victor’s heart a little.
The strangest of the attackers were ethereal, demon-shaped living shadows; they cast lightning spells at gnolls and kobolds, killing one with each strike. Red and the Rangers attempted to shoot them with arrows and musket bullets, but they phased through them. Only Chocolatine, who kept her human form, and the priest of the Moon Man managed to hit them with light spells.
“Chief!” Red rejoiced at Victor’s arrival. “Our weapons can’t hit the shadows!”
But Chocolatine’s spells could. As incorporeal beings, they were probably only vulnerable to magic… or to specific abilities. Victor used his [Monster Insight] on the closest shadow monster.
Sombreux
Shadow Fiend (Demon)
Strong against: Unholy, Darkness, Frost, Physical, all status effects.
Weak against: Demonslayer, Holy, Light, Necromancy, Magical effects.
A veteran of three downsizings. Immune to physical attacks as a bodyless soul; doesn’t know you eat them for breakfast or would have fled. Hopes killing everyone in Murmurin will earn him a promotion to Financial Affairs.
“You must be the Infercorp representative,” the shadow fiend hissed at Victor. “Genocide Choc!”
“You’re half-right,” Victor replied. “No fiend from Hell can hit me, from what I heard.”
“But we aren’t from Hell,” the demon said with a smug, amused tone. “We’re from Happyland.”
Your [Get out of Hell Card] Perk has been canceled, because, duh, demons.
Son of a… Trusting his [Monster Insight], Victor charged at the shadow fiend, and cut it with his weapon. The shadowy monster laughed it off, only to find itself dragged into the scythe by surprise.
Critical hit! [Helheim] and [Steal Life] activated!
Aha! His Helheim perk worked well against incorporeal beings!
Victor felt the lifeforce of the creature move into him, reducing his fatigue, while the fiend’s soul joined Furibon’s in the scythe. “A roommate,” the lich said, with a tone that sounded both irritated, and strangely happy. “Finally, some company to talk to.”
By the end, he would have a lot of it. “I’m always here,” Victor pointed out.
“Good company.”
Victor, like a mounted grim reaper, struck down any soldier or fiend he could, receiving notifications of critical hits with half of his strikes. Months before, he doubted he could kill so many enemies so casually; hell, he would have probably fled while using the chaos of the battle. Surviving Vainqueur’s antics had made him braver.
A fearsome monster looking like a fiend covered in bone spikes engaged Victor in combat, parrying his scythe with a shield and trying to drag him off his mount with a spine-whip. His Black Beast mount attempted to crush the attacker, but the agile fiend leaped backward. Victor prepared to target him with a necromancy spell, while his foe swung his whip threateningly.
Then the monster gargled blood, as a reptilian hand pierced his back and went through the chest. The corpse collapsed, revealing Savoureuse in full assassin mode, her claws sharp and bloodied. “Sav!” The sight rejoiced Victor. “You haven’t run away?”
“I couldn’t!” she replied, causing him to facepalm with his free hand. “Fairy beasts coming from the north cut my retreat!”
Fairy beasts? “Melodieuse,” Victor cursed, as he cut down a gargoyle’s head before it could drag him off his mount. If she came from the north, then the entire village was now surrounded.
Rolo and Allison joined the fray as well, with the iron golem hitting a gargoyle with a shovel. “[Sheepinize].”
With the word, the giant gargoyle turned into a black sheep, which Rolo kindly moved out of his way. “Farmers can do that?” Victor asked, astonished.
“At level fifty-one,” Rolo replied, raising his shovel threateningly at fiends. “You will all become Rolo’s sheep!”
“Sheeps, Rolo,” Allison replied, summoning giant flytraps to catch the gargoyles. “Here, it’s sheeps.”
Victor suddenly realized he didn’t want to learn where most of the sheep in Murmurin came from. Pink, who unlike the other rangers didn’t fire projectiles at the fiends, began to sing, “Arise, children of the dragon, the day of glory has arrived!”
[Bardic Song] has raised your Strength by one stage.
“Bardic Song?” Victor blinked, as he cut down an elf bowman before he could shoot him off his mount. “Pink, you took levels in [Bard]?!”
“Since I wrote The War of the Hoard!” Pink shouted back, before returning to her singing. “To arms, minions! Form your battalions, let's march, let's march! Let cattle blood fertilize our crops!”
Encouraged by Pink’s bloodthirsty anthem, Victor and the other minions backed the remaining scouts against a house’s walls and slaughtered them, with only the shadow demons managing to scamper off from the slaughter.
“Meat treasure!” Vainqueur Junior gargled, as he spat out the remains of a half-digested elf.
“What is the situation?” Victor asked Red, looking at their forces. Most of the minions had survived, but they had lost dozens to the initial strike, their corpses littering on the ground. Hundreds more minions and citizens gathered at the town square, waiting for instructions. His [Mook Promotion] Perk told him many could be promoted, having gained experience from the battle.
“We pushed back the scouts, but a lot more will come!” Red said, his claws shaking as he held his musket close. “Thousands!”
“Too many!” Croissant said, Charlene by his side. She looked very bothered by her boyfriend’s wolfish appearance but stood with him wielding a spear. “We’ve got to evacuate!”
“They’ve already encircled us!” Savoureuse replied.
“And they have cavalry,” Allison, who herself couldn’t leave the village, pointed out with a cool head. “They will catch up to us if we try to flee.”
“Charlene,” Victor turned to the one human in the group. “Have you informed Gardemagne?” Since the King was due to visit them soon with his retinue, they could warn him in time to mobilize an army and stop Maure’s.
“I sent messenger pigeons, but archers shot most of them,” she replied, clearly fearing for her life. “I have no idea if any of them got through, and it will take them hours to send an army.”
They were on their own.
As everyone looked at him, Victor realized it fell on him to organize the defense. “We can’t win a prolonged battle against their overwhelming numbers,” he admitted. Especially since those were just the scouts, and the bulk of the army was running at them. “All we can do is delay until Vainqueur takes down the flying fortress and causes the army’s rout.”
“The Emperor has taken the field?” Blue raised his undead skull at the skies, ablaze with flames.
“To lead us to victory!” Victor raised his scythe, bringing hope back in the minions’ heart. “The Emperor is fighting for the great hoard as we speak! Which is his gold, but also us! If these paupers take the village, they will steal our lives, our sheep, and our coins! Will we run away, tails between our legs? No! We will send them back to the nowhere from which they came! Remember how we won the War of the Hoard? We bested them once, and we will do it again! For we are V&V! We are mighty! We are the hoard!”
That was complete, desperate improvisation based on cartoon speeches he watched on Earth, but it worked. “We are the hoard!” the minions cheered, while the sanest citizens such as Allison or Charlene tentatively raising their hands in support. “We are the hoard!”
“They will meet their dooooooom!” Yellow the Kobone couldn’t help himself.
“For my local monopoly!” Malfy added his own battle cry.
“Follow my command, and we shall prevail!” Victor shouted. “For the hoard!”
[Rally Minion] activated! All minions’ stats raised by one stage!
Victor immediately singled out the minions whom he could promote, namely ten gnolls and all the Kobold Rangers save for Red himself. “Come here,” he said, before touching and causing them to evolve in quick succession. “You are hereby given a pay raise!”
As they evolved, the gnolls grew from tiny to a three meters tall, monstrous, and emaciated gnoll humanoids, with a skull-like face and ashen skin. Their eyes turned red, simmering with bestial fury.
Pink and Black, the living half of the Kobold Rangers, turned into pink and black colored copies of Red, albeit with Pink having a more effeminate figure. Blue and Yellow changed into skeletal versions of their kindred, with a black, beating heart in their chests; Blue’s bones turned deep blue, and Yellow’s golden.