Chapter 7-207: Firefall (1/2)

Magos, prepared! From the first moment I saw a pyre knight in the surrounding area, I had retrieved that niche spell and prepared a Heat Sink, just in case.

As long as I didn’t use a Fire spell, it would have no effect on me whatsoever. Guess who had more than Int 6 and wasn’t going to use a Fire spell against Burning Undead... although I totally could have, just to surprise them.

As a reply to that wonderful surge of attention, and to their utter astonishment, since there were continuous volleys of fireballs incoming now, my Shardrays swirled out. They were cold, holy, and serene, and the pyre knights got the shock of their unlives as my barrage of killing spells was not interrupted in the slightest.

They kept Casting, because there was no reason not to, trying to overwhelm whatever effect was doing that to their fireballs. Alas, the Rules of Magic said that unless their spells were properly Conjoined in Ritual Format, they were all considered separate attacks, and the Heat Sink could eat all of them... even though if there was any realism the total sum of the heat energy it was taking on would have melted the sphere to slag pretty damn quick.

Magical energy’s here-and-gone nature was so fun to exploit at times.

My bombardment of the enemy didn’t stop, and swathes of pyre knights ran up, hit arcs of Chained energy that averaged over 150 points of damage, and went away forever, cryotechnics of vivic whiteness in between the black and molten red of the caldera.

Kills of His servants were rising rapidly, indeed. Now sure, if I was an Eternal Caster, I could have brought out some AoE goodness with some colossal damage, and started killing His little army. But I wasn’t an Eternal and couldn’t; I could only wipe a lot of these bastards in series with octupled-spells in endless series, getting back the ki I used to Cast them as fast as it was spent.

They still drew closer and closer, pounding towards me on their fiery-hooved skeleton horses, hundreds of fireballs still streaking at me, totally filling up my visual field with exploding death that never made it to me.

It was a good thing I could see in multiple spectra. I continued about my remorseless slaughter of them.

Still, I wasn’t going to be able to stop them from getting to me, and I knew it. I was only delaying them and wiping out their advance ranks, which was basically the job of soldiers, so they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

But, seriously, did these creatures think the only thing I could do was blast them and tank? It had been too long since their boss was in a fight. He probably wasn’t a spell duelist, and both His shooting and His gaze attack were likely special things. If he wanted to try tossing spells at me, he was going to have to get within range.

He probably wanted to Teleport up close and confidently face me at close range. With the huge Health Qi bonus from His minions of being a Shroudlord, it would take forever for me to kill him.

Meh. He was going to learn that denying the enemy options was often far more powerful than just having bunches of them.

Ergo, I just kept at it as they charged in, getting closer, and closer, and closer; dying and falling and milling and forcing their way ahead, an incoming arc of lances all aflame, riders nocking fiery arrows to shoot in mass volleys that would light up the sky with fire, and suchlike and so forth.

A Wind Wall blew up in Arcane Fusion to deal with that last item as they hit the hundred-meter range and released. Arcing streaks of fire went up, came down, and were spun harmlessly away from me by a virtual tornado encircling me, which didn’t affect my own Casting at all.

It even would have worked on their leader’s arrows, but it had been more fun to annoy him.

They were charging in from all directions, multiple layers and angles, only a hundred feet away when I Sang a short, sharp note, and King Gravity on his massive and solemn throne woke up from his dozing, looked around, and grumbled angrily.

Then the SuddenWidened Stillflight Field blew out for two hundred meters all around me, and everything fell out of the sky.

That did include me. But, my Disk slid out of my Masspack and under my feet, Featherweight slowed my fall to a foot a second, and a Gust of Wind started blowing underneath me, up against the bottom of my Disk. I stopped falling, surfing and balancing on the stream of wind from below me.

My Concentration was more than enough to keep the wind going and myself airborne within the Stillflight Field. My balance and lightfoot was more than enough to keep me stable.

I was also more than a hundred yards in the air, and as the hot draft blew past me, all those flying bonemares fell down, down, down.

20d6 damage on impact was enough to blow apart the bone horses, but not their riders. That was fine, because I started filling the area with vivus remnants by simple dint of a Cryoclasm going off even as they were dropping.

It wasn’t that it was a massive amount of additional damage, it was that everything that died was on vivic fire, and they were sitting in the middle of it all. Pyre knights charging in gung ho who didn’t realize what was happening went plummeting down as well, and I took up my Shards and started my volley fire again, adding to their woes.

I now had an open field of fire two hundred meters wide that they could not cross. They could try their arrows, they could toss fireballs (the Heat Sink was now on a chain attached to the loop on it, swinging below my Disk), and if they continued forward, all that they were going to do was die.

Even more fun, I was blowing away the pyre knights in front who could actually see what was going on, so those behind were kind of confused when those ahead started ‘diving’ to the ground, didn’t realize they were falling, and so ran into the edge of the effect and dove down right after them.

It was actually pretty damn funny to watch. Me ripping all sorts of violent explosions in the midst of them, even as they were still tossing endless fireballs my way, was vastly entertaining.

The ground around me, and especially close to the edges of the effect, was soon blazing with vivic fire from the mounds and heaps of collapsed and shattered pyre knights and their steeds.

When the pyre knights finally spurred their mounts to a halt in midair, the instant response of all of them at the same time indicating it was a mass order going out, I just smirked, renewed my Featherweight with no effort, and start gliding forwards on a hot updraft of air... and my Stillflight Field, anchored to me and not set in place, went right with me.

I went in one direction, splitting my targets to expand the vivic inferno below as hapless pyre knights fell from the sky, and a literal wall of them began to drop, unable to help themselves.

Their numbers were packing up thickly, those from the far side of the caldera still racing here, all of which was fine by me. The more of them there were around, the more could enjoy a swift fall to the uncaring slopes of the caldera, away from the fiery lake of blood whose impact they could live through and whose heat might even heal them.

Nope, wasn’t having none of that stuff.

I did NOT lose track of the vector upon which Hastsezini had been coming after me, and didn’t quite move that way, contenting myself with ripping through the hordes of His underlings, my kill counters cycling up, up, up. Ten minutes of combat became the death of over half of His pyre knights, massive numbers of minions hitting the dark magma slopes and burning to death in the vivic inferno that was blanketing a massive area in whiteness, even as the exploding Shardrays scythed down and ripped His servants from His control.

Ah, there He was, with an honor guard of bigger, brighter, more robustly burning undead; some spectral, mostly just bigger pyre knights. Still didn’t know how to make proper armor, which was a plus, and yes, they were undoubtedly much tougher.

I Sudden Topped and Energized my main salvo, while Master Fred Topped his Wrath, already geared for fighting undead, and 9d6+19 or something became +73 and heaped itself on top of my Chained Shardrays with our Eldritch Theurgy.

300+ damage blew through two hundred of His tuff-tuff elite guard, and even the godling or whatever He was paused in shock as His most favored soldiers screamed sepulchral cries and became screaming crystalline white fuel for vivic flames around Him. The unwhite fires overwhelmed and crashed against Him as His servants blew away, surrounding Him in a sea of vivus eating at Him, and generating an outraged cry of pain and disbelief from Him.

That cry grew a little more shocked when I came tumbling over on the wind in His direction, and He and His bigarse not-a-horse suddenly dropped out of the sky.

Certainly His minions could fall, but never Him!

And with that, the trap was sprung, and I had Him.

He probably ‘knew’ it, but had never really processed it. Dark Clergy had to remain within connection range of their March at all times. That range is five hundred paces. As long as they can build a chain with connections five hundred paces long, they can keep their connection to their March going, no muss, no fuss. With enough minions, they can control their March from hundreds of miles away, chained through thousands of undead smoothly and completely.

But, if all of their undead are outside that control range, they are seized by the compulsion to return to the control of their master!

My Stillflight Field was six hundred feet in radius. All I had to do was eliminate any living Marchers on the ground, which was being done for me by the fact it was covered in vivic flames, and there would absolutely be no choice: all His servants would have to keep charging in to their doom as long as I could shrink down His control area.

My next two salvoes wiped out everything undead within five hundred feet of His impact point as he hit the ground. As He surged angrily to His feet and started sending fire spells up at me and into the Heat Sink, the entire army of Marchers in the sky surged.

He could feel the loss of His control, but probably didn’t think too much of it... until, unable to hear His commands, but compelled to come to Him, that massive army of undead started forwards.

In a continuous firefall of burning bones, they tumbled from the sky.

I had actually shifted position so I was between Hastsezini and His army, exacerbating the problem, and He just stared in disbelief as He saw His minions pressing forward, falling out of the sky, and me igniting mounds and mounds of undead that were growing and stacking higher and higher by the second.

Knights and mares crashed upon one another, more vivus exploded as they came apart, and I even erected a couple of Walls of Icefire in the middle of the hills they were falling in, just to add to their misery and kill them all even faster.