Chapter 10-322: Bringing the Hammer (2/2)

If we didn’t kill him today, somehow, we could always kill him tomorrow. The main thing was stopping him from Reanimating anyone else who was killed.

Technically we were outnumbered, but there was nothing to say that I couldn’t soften things up quite a bit, or Shardray them down if they were close together.

The flying undead Daoists thinking to rain death and more death down from above weren’t going to like it when Sama and Briggs and all these Forsaken put their foot down, either.

Given everyone was in Allegiance, putting a Heavens-Up Display in effect for everyone wasn’t much of an issue, and they ooh’d and aah’d over the mental display in the sky, X’s and O’s revealing enemies and friendlies, instantly conveying range, while colors conveyed Levels and thus how threatening they were.

The thing was, we definitely didn’t have to go out there and engage in a slugfest. Save for the Outsider himself, I had the range advantage, and with my recharging, could effectively wipe the entire force myself. Guns traded very effectively with spells as far as range went, and all the shooters down below were more than prepared to display it.

We progressed ahead in good formation, shooters and ranged assets on Disks, Melee types trotting along on the ground. Everyone who could fly without cost was in the sky, dwarfed by the number of dots doing the same in the distance ahead of us, not wanting to give them any warning of what was going to happen.

Had he gotten information about them from his minions? Probably. He probably thought it was some strange spell effect, and he could just overcome it.

Nope. King Gravity and the Veil getting reinforced by the Forsaken wasn’t a dispellable spell effect, it was a fundamental strengthening of the default laws of nature.

I was plenty happy to start opening up with Shard volleys at range. I wasn’t looking for kills, just crits, and -1/+4-5 ki per spell was a good tradeoff for me.

The depowered Dark Clergy had been sent ahead of them as useless chaff. I laughed to myself at the arrogance in that attitude, spreading Shards around, getting my ki back, and noting the typical 150+ Health on all these Congregants. The Clergy could easily spike to triple that with Health Qi, even with their minions gone.

The Purgers didn’t much care. Since these undead were merely melee types, that meant they were extremely vulnerable to ranged attacks on the approach, as long as we didn’t take a route that gave them lots of cover doing so.

Knowing right where they were sure helped the snipers, too.

Burning shots replete with vivus, Reserves, Chi, and Warlock Wrath launched streaks of unwhite out over hundreds of paces; mostly bullets, some arrows in the mix. Sama and Briggs were idly taking potshots with everyone else, just looking to soften them up so a kill-team working together could slice them down quickly.

They were coming in a ragged and uneven loose formation, every undead just told to kill us and doing whatever it thought on its own. Truly not valued at all...

There were dozens of them blown apart and burning before they got within a hundred yards of us. Progress slowed at the edge of a wide city intersection, the men fanning out as the more numerous undead tried to do something like flank us. That was rather hard to do when I was perfectly aware of them the whole way, and conveying that to everyone else.

They started hitting open ground and charging us. The line stopped, and the Warlords got to work.

I could certainly have been Chaining them and picking at least some of them off, but all that was needed from me was softening them up, and Toppling them over, smashing them off their feet and breaking up areas and charges, the ones still standing quick to inherit some fire coordinated by two maestros, while I filled my Pool and looked ahead at the things waiting for us there, shaking my head to myself, and staying ready for any massive distance AoE attack.

I was tossing only a single Shards spell out, rarely killing anything unless it was already wounded severely, but knocking down knots and clusters of undead, messing up their advance, and generally just softening them up as I stayed on overwatch.

The first of the depowered Congregants hit the melee line, and basically exploded as teams moving in combination tore through them almost instantly, especially given how peppered they were by the time they reached our lines.

Their surprise flanking was more like a surprise walking into shooters facing behind us, and the ones in the front ran into a wall of burning Shots that even their enhanced undead endurance couldn’t totally deal with. Optimized base +4d6 opposing ranged fire is nasty strong.

Here and there the strongest of the Congregants managed to reach the Melees, and were brought down by focused hacking as quickly as focused Shots dealt with the rest. Many of the undead were inhumanly strong... but then, so were a good number of the Purgers, and watching the faces of rampaging undead swollen in size, their muscles gleaming on skinless bodies, getting slammed back by brutally powerful blows from their living not-a-victim-thanx-bye was entertaining to see. Ogre-sized walking corpses went flying in shock, and not from me.

Snapshots by the Archers and Gunners generally took care of them before they became a problem again.

Sama and Briggs were not showing their power, and the Windgraf was right with them, pumping an Autobow non-stop and sending out swirly-flaming shots. The two angels had procured glowing long bows from somewhere and were sending out arrows like shafts of sunlight, which the undead didn’t seem to like much.

The Purgers below did their jobs, while we coolly waited on overwatch, making sure no surprises were coming in.

Which naturally there was, as the number of Congregants ran thin, and the ruined streets about us were filled with things burning vivus.

“Incoming!” I Announced to everyone.