85 Battle Lines (1/2)
The second that the first reptilefolk warrior stepped out of the tunnel and laid eyes on my reanimated gug servant, the battle began. The gug I had called to my side, just to see firsthand how the thing fought, was still leisurely devouring the warrior it had defeated.
His agonized cries were music to the undead. Behind me, they ambled, shuffled, and in some cases dashed or flew in my direction. They were lured to my side by so many things, my presence, the smell of blood, and the sounds of both the tortured reptilefolk and his approaching allies.
The first warrior to lay eyes on my ghoulish companion darted towards us, and hurled a spear much like the other warrior had. This time though I wasn't a passive observer. I didn't let the spear get very far away from the warrior's grasp before I smiled and let loose a single spell: gravity well.
When I cast the spell it wasn't aimed at a location per-say, it was aimed at a person. I targeted the very warrior who had hurled the weapon at us, specifically his face. I also filled it with magical energy, overcharging the spell's power and making it even stronger than it would otherwise be.
I watched as the spear stopped in mid-air and then flew backward. I was disappointed that it didn't turn in mid-air, but when I watched it violently slam into the warrior's face I grinned, satisfied. My satisfaction increased when the warrior slumped to the floor, unconscious and bleeding.
My horde of undead servants was getting close, and the rest of the reptilefolk hadn't been bold enough to exit the tunnel. I decided to give them some motivation.
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By now I had a pretty solid grasp on the ways my powers worked. In almost every case I merely had to focus on the power, and envision the end result becoming a reality. And as I considered how to ”encourage” the reptilefolk to leave the comfort of the tunnel they were in, I wondered which of my powers would be the most useful.
Immediately my mind turned to the powers I possessed over the earth. They were fun, reliable powers that were useful in a number of situations. I could use them to cause a cave-in, to separate the reptilefolk from their allies, or even to kill the reptilefolk outright.
Another set of fun abilities I could easily use in the situation were my powers over the wind and air. I could force them into this cavern and out of their cramped tunnel by manipulating the wind and pulling them towards me. But that didn't feel sufficiently fun.
I wanted them to run out of the tunnel of their own volition. I wanted them to come towards me, not to be forced towards me. And as I mulled over the powers I possessed that may achieve that, I realized that the answer laid in a handful of my newest abilities.
I glanced into the tunnel and envisioned a number of separate things happening at once. A smile crept across my face as I did so.
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Twelve reptilefolk lurked in a tunnel that connected two portions of their strange encampment. It was a tight thing, just a few meters wide and tall. It was wide and tall enough for them, and for something a bit larger than them, but not for the teeming horde they could hear rushing towards them.
They had been paralyzed with fear for the past few moments. In fairness to them they had watched one of their companions dart out, hurl his spear and then immediately saw the very same spear hurl backward towards him and painfully collide with his face.
That said, their opponent was a god they had no way of knowing they had upset. He wasn't kind enough to give the astonished creatures a centimeter of breathing room and he took advantage of their paralysis.
The first thing the god did was cut off their one other route. He did this, by starting a fire on the other side of the tunnel. The fire came to life with a ferocious boom and was a hideous shade of violet. Even looking at it was painful for the reptilefolks, as it was both hot and bright and threatened to burn their eyes if they looked at it for long.
The air in the tunnel closest to the other exit then grew incredibly thin, manipulated by their foe, and the creatures furthest from the exit facing Althos' horde fell to their knees and began to cough, gasp, and suffocate. All of them possessed a warrior's constitution and instincts and darted forward, trying to get to where their allies were because they didn't appear to be struggling to breathe.
Even as the reptilian humanoids closed rank with their companions, the air they were all breathing took on a greenish tint and gained new qualities. Hostile qualities. Their allies began to feel pain wrack their bodies, as invisible, inhalable poison aggressively invaded their lungs.
As a growing mob, the reptilian creatures were darting forward. This was all going according to Althos' plans, and the god grinned as he grew the monsters deeper and deeper into his clutches.
He slowly drew the invisible poison closer and closer to himself. He let it sweep over the entirety of the tunnel, right as the creatures closest to him darted out of the tunnel. And as they did, the speediest of his minions dashed past him. The creature that did was a wright, a bloodthirsty and cruel reanimated and unusually speedy dark-elf.
Althos heard a cruel, coughing laughter emanate from the corpse as the thing dashed towards the gang of reptilefolks. It held no artificial weapons, but from the certainty the creepy corpse possessed, Althos didn't doubt that the thing had no need for weapons.
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The squad of guards hurled themselves out of the tunnel, all of them in some pain. I studied them even as the quick dark-elf wright my necromantic powers had created sprinted towards them.
They all wore armor of various types and held weapons. Most held spears, but some were armed with little more than clubs. That said, they weren't clutching their weapons tightly and in a few cases even tossed their weapons to the floor as they struggled to breathe.
The dark-elf wright my dark powers had created continued to laugh sinisterly as it closed in on them and opened its hands to reveal elongated, ebony-colored, animalistic claws. When it was almost within striking distance the creature leaped at them, pouncing like a wild animal.
It flew through the air and landed right in front of the warrior closest to the horde. It suddenly stopped laughing and lashed out at its chosen foe. Its claws cut through the air and I watched as they raked across the warrior's face, tearing through skin and scale alike.
I could hear a slick slashing noise as the claws scarred the warrior who had been approached so speedily that he couldn't actually dodge the strike and had to take the blow. That said, the wound didn't appear to be particularly deep.
I hissed in annoyance, but my servant wasn't done. Even as the walking corpse retracted one hand, it lashed out with its other hand. And this time it chose a different tactic.
It closed its fist and hurled a potent punch at the reptilefolk warrior, landing a clean and crushing blow that smashed into the warrior's nose and hurling the warrior backward into his allies. The creature followed after its quarry, not giving any chance to breathe easy.
Now the other speedy undead I had created were nearly caught up to me. I quietly lifted myself into the air and turned to face the flood of undeath I had created. As I did I smiled.
When I turned I could see all manner of undead creatures in front of me. I could see zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghosts, shadows, wraiths, wrights, vampires, and mummies. They were positively ghastly, and the sight of them filled me with joy. As they crawled, flew, dashed, ran, or otherwise transported themselves towards the reptilefolk I could sense their emotions.
I could feel joy, hunger, and desire emanate out of them. It was a fascinating jumble of emotions.
They were all overjoyed. Even my oldest undead creations, which were here as well aside from my gifts to the goblins. They were happy to exist, happy to serve me, and above all, they were happy to bring harm to the living. I could sense their legitimate joy and delight.
They were hungry. I could feel their starvation. It pained me to feel them starve so.
I could feel their bloodlust. It colored their every movement. It was their desire. They desired not just violence, but the sensation of warm, living flesh on their tongues.
They weren't angry. It wasn't rage that drove them forward. It was joy. Which was altogether more frightening to me.
I could understand if they felt hate towards the living and it drove them forward, but they were motivated by something else. They were motivated by a desire to acquire joy, and to them, nothing brought more joy than the chance to feast on the living.
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Numerous reptilefolk were able to dash forward and save the lives of their peers by the time the second, third, and fourth speediest undead monsters had reached their ally.
The warriors lashed out with their spears just in time to slash at a few more wrights who had hurtled themselves past me right as I began to ascend into the sky. Their reflexes were incredible, and even as their enemy, I felt a bit of grudging respect for them on the basis of their physicality alone.
All that meant in practice though was that their demise would be prolonged a bit longer. If anything the reptilefolk living a bit longer meant that their suffering continued unabated as they were still in great pain from the effects of the poison ravaging their bodies.
I moved forward and closed in on my enemy while envisioning a razor-sharp blade of air shooting from my fingertips. I rose my fingertips in the direction of one of my enemies and aimed it at the thing's throat. I watched the creature, it was preoccupied reaching for its weapons and trying to fully recover from my other, less targeted attack.
And then I unleashed my attack by activating my ”Aerial manipulation” ability and allowed the envisioned wind-blade to become a real thing. A sharp current of air shot out of my fingertips met zero air-resistance and impaled the throat of the monster I had aimed it at.
The reptilefolk warrior flew backward, an airy sword visibly extending from his throat. He continued to fly until he slammed against the wall beside the tunnel that he and his peers had just escaped from. That was when I received a fascinating notification.
[Alert: One of your minions has killed an enemy of yours. Would you like to activate your 'Soul harvest' class ability? If you do so, you'll automatically gain the souls of those murdered by your minions or by your attacks.]
I chuckled and alerted the system that that was precisely what I would have liked. And then I felt a soul surge into me, and the feeling left me breathless.
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My monsters surged underneath me. They were an unstoppable tide of bodies and spirits. And as they dashed towards the reptilefolks I had gotten out of the tunnel, I felt... strange.
The sensation of the soul surging into me was an intense one. I felt the pain the reptilefolk whose soul I was acquiring felt in its dying moments rush into me and then spread throughout my body. It wasn't a fun sensation, as the feeling was one of being torn into by thick and powerful jaws.
I gritted my teeth and endured the flares of pain that ripped into my body but didn't actually hurt me. After the fifth bite, I learned to ignore the sensations and was grateful that by the ninth bite the sensations were beginning to slow down.
The reptilefolk in question was the one that the nameless gug had torn into and defeated. Each of the attacks I felt in the creature's last moments were echoes of when the thing was torn apart by the gug. Its armless corpse was mostly in the gug's stomach by now. I was a bit surprised when I received another alert, just moments after I gained the first soul I'd ever steal from a dying creature.
[Dual alert: You may now complete the quest for the subdomain of pain. To acquire the first tier of influence over the subdomain of pain, endure painful sensations from five separate sources.
You've acquired your first soul. Souls can be acquired in a number of ways. You gain souls when your worshipers die if you haven't established a divine realm, if you use something like the devilish ability to make contracts and a person you have a contract with dies, or if a person you're a patron of perishes. You can also acquire souls through powerful magic or class features.
Souls can be used in a number of ways. You can absorb them for power, which is how you gain the ability to create humanoid life from existing species, or you can transform them into other forms of life. This last one is tricky, but it's something that all gods can do.
Gods possess the power to convert souls into other forms of life directly, but only when they gain the third tier of influence over the domains or subdomains closest to the type of life they wish to transform a soul into. For example, if you want to transform a soul into a demon you need the third tiers of influence over the domains of chaos and evil, and in most cases another domain or subdomain pertinent to the specific type of demon.
Souls are a component in the creation of many powerful types of undead. Dullahans, liches, banshees, and reapers all require souls to be successfully created. Souls can be used as a currency when engaging with creatures from the neutral or evil dimensions, lands like Infernius, the Heart of Darkness, and the Wildlands.
If left alone souls can eventually reincarnate or will naturally become a type of extraplanar being once they've spent enough time in the afterlife. This is in fate what happens to the dead whose souls are not stolen by a god, powerful magic, or some sort type of extraplanar plot.]
When I finished reading through the notification I was pleasantly surprised at all of the things I could do. It was delightful to be armed with so much more knowledge. That said, the battle below me was now raging in full.
”I suppose this is the moment in which I ought to begin farming for domains and subdomains to influence huh?” I asked myself, chuckling as I did so.
I looked out at my enemies, who were currently fighting a losing battle. In order to help speed up the inevitable, I studied them.
They were in a tight formation, fighting with surprisingly effective tactics. The warriors closest to the undead horde had begun making use of their shields to hold off the impending wave, while the ones behind them were outstretching their spears.
Some of the undead who were throwing themselves at them weren't intelligent and were impaling themselves on the spears. That said, more undead were intelligent than weren't and so many undead were able to dash past the spears and were hammering away at the warriors who were putting their bodies on the line to stop the horde from advancing.
This sight fascinated me, but it was also the reptilefolks stubbornly refusing to accept that their lives were forfeit. I wondered how I could best disrupt their manipulation, before realizing I had acquired two powerful tools that were perfect for this. And both were biological powers.
I targeted two of the braver reptilefolk, the ones standing between my servants and the spear-users, and targeted their hands. And I willed for their bones to break, as soon as I activated my ”Dermal and skeletal manipulation” power. They both roared in pain as my power shattered their bones, and caused them to drop the shields they had held onto to keep the undead away.
The horde threw themselves at the newly exposed monsters with terrifying glee, and the ones that managed to reach them first were two vampires. One of them was a dwarven vampire, and the other was a human vampire.
Both of my servants had been harrying the reptilefolks they were able to overcome when the shields were abruptly dropped, and they proceeded to wrap their arms around their prey and pull them into the horde.