Green Tide 5 (2/2)

And few people could match Hilda when it came to anger management.

“Oh!? That’s some big talk comin’ from a pansy wearin’ a napkin on his head!”

All of the orcs suddenly froze and shut up at the dwarf’s words, making it obvious she had struck a nerve.

“Ye might make me shiver if ye weren’t dressed in a nightgown!” she continued yelling. “Ye look like me nanny!”

Admittedly the other party did not know some of those words, but the sharp tone of Hilda’s voice was more than enough to make it clear she was spouting insults.

“Ye call that thing in yer hand a weapon? Looks like a toothpick! Ye won’t hurt anyone swinging yer leftovers around! Ye’d be better off usin’ yer face as a weapon!”

The orc overseer glared over his shoulder, the grip on his staff tightening and making it shake in direct proportion to his urge to kill that loudmouth.

“This! Is a weapon!”

Hilda reached into her extra-dimensional armory and pulled out a massive war axe. Whether this thing was intended to slice things apart or simply crush them with its overwhelming size was anybody’s guess.

“And it’s bigger than yours!”

After stating the obvious, the dwarf gave the weapon a sharp swing that produced a localized gale, then hoisted it above her head and rested its shaft on her shoulder. She then employed Belligerent Roar once again to deliver the finishing blow.

“What do ye think of that mister pajama-wearing, shovel-faced, stick-wielding, clype-dreep-bachle, gether-uping-blate-maw, bleathering, gomeril, jessie, oaf-looking, scooner, nyaff, plookie, shan, milk-drinking, lime-faced shilpit, mim-moothed, sniveling, worm-eyed, hotten-blaugh, vile-stoochie, cally-breek-tattie!”

“WAAAAAAGH!”

The orc warlord let out a warcry that was quickly echoed by the rest of the greenskins, amplifying it to deafening proportions. The ground shook and rumbled as roughly two hundred and fifty tons of enraged muscle stampeded towards the silver-tongued dwarf. Hilda grinned ear to ear as she lowered the visor of her helmet and gripped her axe with both hands. To say she was looking forward to this next bit would be a gross understatement. After all, it wasn’t very often she got to truly cut loose.

“Miss Hilda, please don’t forget your part in the plan,” a distant voice whispered in her ear. “It won’t matter how many you cut down if you get overwhelmed and die in the process.”

“Wow, even their nagging is the same,” she grumbled her breath. “Those two really are way too alike.”

Having been helpfully reminded of what she was supposed to be doing, the dwarf dug her feet into the ground and braced herself. The orcs, on the other hand, encircled her from all sides, with many of them leaping several meters into the air. They piled on top of Hilda like an almost literal tsunami of green, threatening to drown her where she stood. The orcs were violently thrown off in the next instant as the armored dwarf threw them off her through sheer brute force. Her axe was swung in a wide arc, tearing through muscle and bone and drenching the surroundings in bright red orc blood.

Hilda roared and screamed as she carved her way back towards the jungle. Several orcs were cleft in twain each time her weapon sang through the air, but it was like throwing pebbles against a flood. They kept rushing at her with no regard for their own lives, their primitive weapons clattering incessantly against her armor. The high-tier equipment, which was also bolstered by Hilda’s Armsmaster Skills, did a splendid job of shrugging off those attacks without so much as suffering a scratch.

However, the same could not be said of the dwarf within. As good as her armor was, Hilda’s gear was not capable of completely absorbing the sheer number of heavy impacts. Her bones rattled and muscles groaned as her body was being thrown around inside her armor. This slow but steady loss of HP only proved that Keira’s concerns were more than valid, but there was an upside to it. The more injured a Berserker got, the faster and stronger they grew. After losing a third of her overall vitality, Hilda got the edge she needed to break out of the orc-bog around her and make a dash for the jungle.

“After ‘im, ya gitz!” the warlord bellowed. “Don’t let that scum get away!”

“WAAAAAAAGH!”

The rest of the orcs raised their voices as one as they charged after the intruder and into the brush. Unlike his simple minded kin, however, the overseer stayed firmly in place. Even enraged as he was, he recognized his own importance as a warlord and a commander. Not to mention that he was a Necromancer and could therefore make good use of all these fresh corpses. It was only natural he’d not give chase personally. And now that the dwarf had disappeared from his sight, he began to realize his knee jerk reaction might have been a mistake.

He didn’t get much of a chance to consider calling off his ‘boyz’ before something slim and shiny hit him in the side of the head. The orc’s head recoiled and threw him off balance as a result, but he did not fall. He had the haft of a solid mithril arrow poking out of his cranium, but he was still very much alive. The sheer amount of vitality needed to still function with a foreign object lodged deep in his brain was beyond the comprehension of most people.

That was when the arrow suddenly flared up, flooding the orc’s head with magical flames. Yes, being made of pure mithril made it a heavier and therefore more devastating projectile, but that was merely a bonus. The precious metal’s true worth was that it could hold powerful enchantments that would make most other materials snap in half. In this instance, the shiny shaft was imbued with the raw power of fire. It cooked what was left of the orc Necromancer’s brain inside his skull, making jets of flame and smoke spew out of his nose, eyes and ears.

The other orcs that had yet to move out barely even registered the fact their leader just fell over with a piece of charcoal where his face used to be. His last words still echoed across the Green Tide, compelling them to chase the dwarf into the jungle even if it meant walking around or over his massive body. Once the last remaining greenskins had cleared out, Keira appeared out of seemingly thin air on top of one of the larger tents. She wasn’t here to perform sabotage or anything like that, though.

Boxxy just wanted its shiny arrow back.

Meanwhile, Hilda was still goading the orcs further into the jungle. She had given up on swinging that ridiculous axe around and had swapped it out for a pair of shields with sharpened edges. They were nowhere as lethal, but made it far easier to keep the greenskins off of her, which was in itself a huge challenge. The orcs were native to Velos, so they knew how to use the jungle to their advantage. Using trees, vines and other vegetation allowed them to keep dropping down on the dwarf from above with a surprising degree of accuracy and agility.

They certainly had the edge when it came to mobility, but that also meant they were far more prone to running into the ‘presents’ that Fizzy and Keira had left for them. The Artificer duo had lined both the treetops and the soil with an obscene number of booby traps that the orcs ran into head-first. Tripwires were tripped and pressure plates were pressed, leading to the jungle being rocked by a series of gut-wrenching explosions. Hundreds of greenskins were ripped to shreds or turned into mulch within a matter of seconds, yet they showed no signs of stopping or backing down. Without their leader to direct them and tell them to back off, the mindless peons continued to charge headfirst into their deaths.

This reckless, borderline suicidal behavior was one of the orcs’ weaknesses, but it was also their greatest weapon. Keira’s Artifact-grade belt could only hold so much ordnance, so it didn’t take long for all of the surprises to be used up. The greenskins suffered significant casualties, but their morale remained as fervent as ever. Hilda herself hadn’t gotten out of the danger zone entirely unscathed either, as she had stepped on two or three landmines herself. The armor had deflected all of the shrapnel, but she was pretty sure she had some internal bleeding from the shock waves. On the upside she got a bit of breathing room, allowing her to reach her target destination.

The dwarf burst out of the treeline and into a small clearing, where Gux and Fizzy were already waiting.

“Ugh, this is the last time I go along with one of that Merry Popper’s plans,” she grumbled as she came to a stop. “My ears will be ringing for a week.”

“This coming from the woman that had me make an explosive helmet for her?” the golem asked while crossing her arms.

“Hey, I never said my ideas were any better!”

“Gux suggests you tend to her wounds, metal one,” the raptor said in a serious tone. “The orcs will not be far behind.”

Fizzy nodded and proceeded to use her holy magic to restore Hilda to full health. The two heavily armored shorties then stood in front of the raptor as if to shield him from the incoming monsters, but it was actually Gux who would be protecting them.

“Psychic Blackout!”

A faint purple wave of magic washed over a cone-shaped area in front of the scaly Psionic, covering a distance of roughly twenty meters. It passed through Hilda and Fizzy with little to no effect, though the same could not be said for the incoming orcs. The Spell had severed their connection to the Green Tide, nullifying all the various bonuses that came with it. Their movements slowed, their voices weakened and the burning fire in their eyes diminished greatly. A bunch of them even tripped over their own feet or each other in a pathetic display of coordinated clumsiness.

The raptor, who had been float-sitting with his legs crossed the entire time, then raised his scaly hand into the air. He swung it downwards as if trying to swat a fly, invoking his telekinetic might to crush the orcs and leave a palm-shaped dent in the jungle floor. He then made a backhanded horizontal sweeping motion to his left, sweeping away a group of orcs that his mental jamming Spell had missed. Simply throwing them around like ragdolls wasn’t enough to kill them, but it still bought Gux the time he needed to repeat his incantation.

“Psychic Blackout!”

The old sage then proceeded to toss around and/or mentally neuter each group of orcs as they assaulted his position. The relentless greenskin onslaught didn’t give him the breathing room to pull off more devastating magic, nor did he necessarily need to do so. Robbing the orcs of the power they gained through their excessive pack mentality was his main purpose in this invasion. He was no different from other Psionics in that regard, though he was probably the only one around who could hold off hundreds of them completely by himself.

As for the actual culling of the brain-scrambled orcs, that was where Hilda and Fizzy came in. The dwarf in particular was already back to happily swinging that ridiculous hunk of metal she called an axe. She moved from one incapacitated group of orcs to the next, mowing them down like weeds while letting out screams of grim delight. Some of her victims tried to fight back on instinct, but Gux’s brain-jamming had left them lacking in any sort of coordination - both amongst themselves and between their own limbs. In their current state they were about as threatening to Hilda as sacks of potatoes with pointed sticks sticking out of them.

The mithril golem was doing much the same, except she could not hope to match the howling Berserker’s wide reach so she had to make up for it by cooperating with her alternate selves.

Minus had been given full control of the construct’s body, and was currently using it to play ‘Pop Goes The Meatbag.’ It was a game of her own invention that involved separating the heads and limbs of her enemies from the rest of them with her bare hands. This also let Fizzy focus the entirety of her concentration on making six solid steel bricks fly through the air with her magnetic abilities. These ‘handleless hammers,’ as she called them, were repeatedly launched at orcish faces with skull-crushing force. Then there was Plus, who mostly contributed by smiting the godless green freaks with repeated casts of the Judgement and Lightning Bolt Spells, the latter of which she learned by studying.

The only one of them not taking part in the orc bashing was Null, the third and final entity born of the Parallel Plot Skill. Unlike the perky Plus and the violently pessimistic Minus, Null was either incapable of or unwilling to express emotion. She had a cold and calculating personality that always looked at things from as logical and objective a viewpoint as golemly possible. Fancying herself an intellectual, she very rarely spoke or shared her inner thoughts with the others other than to point out what she deemed to be mistakes or inefficiencies. These traits made her an invaluable asset when it came to fine-tuning and improving upon Fizzy’s original Artificer designs, but at the same time turned her into an insufferable know-it-all. Her smart-ass attitude wasn’t limited to the inside of the golem’s head, either, as she recently used one of Fizzy’s magically animated armor sets to write a certain dissertation.

It was titled ‘Meatbags: An Outdated and Horribly Inefficient Form of Life,’ was ninety six pages long, and it basically boiled down to ‘you’re all going to die anyway so save us all the trouble and kill yourselves.’

Bottom line was that Null did not care for the art of combat, as it was something she saw as a terrible waste of her time and intellect. She did technically participate in the violent proceedings, though it was questionable whether keeping track of everyone’s kills was of any practical use. Then again, it wasn’t as if Null’s help was even necessary with Gux on crowd control and Hilda assisting her alternate selves with the actual killing. Once the group had gotten in sync with one another they were able to maintain a steady pace of orc-slaying that allowed them to cull the beasts faster than they could arrive. Unfortunately the orc corpses kept piling up and getting in the way of Hilda and Fizzy’s footwork, so the trio had to change locations a few times during the skirmish.

The seemingly endless stream of orcs finally began to die down about half an hour later while the adventurers were in an overgrown thicket. Seeing that there were only stragglers in the single digits left, Hilda finally allowed herself to take a breather while Fizzy mopped up the leftovers. The dwarf sat down on a nearby stump - the result of her accidentally chopping down a tree in one swing - and took off her helmet. Her braided ginger hair was a mess, sweat rolled off of her forehead in several thin rivulets and there seemed to be a concerning amount of dried up blood all over her face.

“Gux is surprised you’re still capable of exerting yourself so much, old friend,” the Hero of Rain commented. “And Gux uses the word ‘old’ lightly.”

“Har, har, har. I’ll have ye know I can run circles around these morons for hours if I have to. It’s this bloody heat that’s the problem.”

She lifted a hand as if to wipe away the sweat from her brow, but gave up when she saw it was caked with orc blood. Gux seemed to sense her predicament and handed her a napkin, which she eagerly accepted.

“The jungles of Velos can be a harsh place,” he said sagely, “but it is far from inhospitable.”

“Aye, could be worse I suppose. At least it’s not rainin’.”

“Not yet.”

The old lizard then pointed to the sky, drawing Hilda’s attention to the heavy cloud coverage. He may have been sightless, but being both a Shaman and the Hero of Rain gave him a rather impressive knack for predicting the weather. Granted, his forecasts weren’t a hundred percent accurate, but he was significantly better at it than the dwarf who had been too engrossed in decapitating orcs to realize the sun was gone.

“Fan-fooken-tastic,” she exclaimed. “Now I’m gonna be soggy and sweaty.”

“A little rain never hurt anyone.”

“Tell that to the poor sods that’ll be pickin’ up our handiwork.”

Needless to say, the thing Hilda was most thankful about was that she wouldn’t have to lug these orc corpses back to Castle Arin. That particular chore would be handled by copious amounts of teleportation magic, courtesy of Gux’s fellow Sagescale tribe members. They were currently on standby and waiting for Keira’s squad to inform them via Comm-crystal that the orc camp had been secured. And seeing as how the remaining orcs were currently running for their lives from a cackling mithril golem, it was safe to assume their part in this was done.

There was just one minor problem.

“What of the Chosen of Chaos? Gux has not heard from her since she felled the orc warlord.”

“Aye, she kinda skipped out on all the work, didn’t she?”

“That is not what Gux meant.”

It was without question that Keira was the main reason this operation had gone as smoothly as it did. Yes, Fizzy, Gux and Hilda did the vast majority of the killing, but their formation would not have worked as well as it did if she hadn’t taken that orc Necromancer out of the equation. Not only did that make the orcs highly predictable, but those booby traps helped thin out and disperse the horde, making the others’ jobs easier.

“I know, I know,” the dwarf said dismissively. “I wouldn’t worry about her though. She can handle herself, but more importantly she knows her limits. Not the type of lass to start a fight she can’t finish. She’s ten times better at this adventurer stuff than I was at her age.”

“Is that jealousy Gux hears in your voice?”

“… Maybe, a little,” Hilda admitted. “I cannae complain too much, though. She’s earned her status after all the crap she’s been through on account of that flaky boss of hers.”

“That seems like all the more reason that Gux should personally confirm her safety.”

“Hey, knock yerself out. I’ll call yer twinkle-finger buddies to pick up the greens while yer doin’ that. Actually, ye should try calling kitty-face’s Comm-crystal before- Ye’re already gone, aren’t ye?”

Indeed, though the raptor’s body remained seated in a meditative state, his Wandering Mind had already left the scene. Invisible, weightless, and virtually undetectable, Gux’s consciousness drifted over the trail of carnage he and his companions had left. He found his way back to the orc camp, whereupon he stumbled on what seemed to be a trail of greenskin corpses. It started from the warlord’s remains at the edge of the camp, which had been mysteriously reduced to black ash, and moved in the opposite direction of where Hilda was.

As the old lizard followed the bloodbath hoping to find Keira, he couldn’t help but notice the condition of the corpses. From pinpoint cuts to vital areas and precise headshots to dismembered, charred and half-pulverized remains, the sheer variety of violence that had been inflicted upon them was mind-boggling. He began to question whether this was truly the work of a single person, but didn’t get a lot of opportunity to think on it before he heard a sound like rolling thunder. However, this was not the sky preparing to unleash its watery payload, but the rather distinct roar of Artificer-made explosives going off in the nearby jungle.

Gux willed his Wandering Mind towards the direction of that disturbance with all due haste until he found Keira, who was currently in the middle of fighting a group of several dozen orcs. No, perhaps it was more accurate to say that she wasn’t ‘fighting,’ but ‘dismantling’ them. Unlike Hilda or Fizzy, she didn’t overwhelm the orcs with strength, but with speed and finesse. The brutes swung at the crimson-haired woman with savage intent from all sides, only to hit naught but air as she slipped between their axes, clubs and swords. Her ability to dodge and evade attacks from all angles was so ridiculously high that Gux couldn’t help but wonder if she had eyes on the back of her head.

This odd feeling of awe was also reinforced by the fact that Keira mixed offense and defense, using her body’s athletic movements to strike at the orcs at every turn. Rapier in one hand and dagger in the other, every greenskin she slipped by suffered deep cuts. Some were merely disarmed by having their fingers and hands cut through, while others had their bellies sliced clean through. There seemed to be no pattern or reason behind her strikes, as each of them was an attack of opportunity that was made on the spot, yet executed flawlessly. That being said, Gux couldn’t help but notice that there was a certain flowing rhythm to the violence. It was the first time in a long while that he had seen a Blade Dancer so completely embody their Job’s namesake.

The bloody performance began to draw to an end when the last eight orcs finally managed to completely encircle Keira. Unlike the ones her companions fought, this bunch were still empowered by the Green Tide, so their movements were perfectly synchronized with one another. Just as she seemed like she had no way out, Keira leaped at one of them as he lifted his axe. She lodged her mithril dagger into his skull with a disgusting noise and used it to pull herself over him as if she was scaling the orc with a climbing pick. In a flash she was already stepping on his broad shoulders, after which she leapt up and away from the others while doing a spinning front flip.

She then used the athletic movement to temporarily let go of her weapon, as she needed both hands to dispense a half dozen fist-sized metal canisters from her storage-belt. The explosive devices went off in tandem as they hit the ground, turning the orcs into a puff of smoke, flames and chunky red bits. Keira had somehow managed to grab onto a dangling vine and used it to swing around a tree trunk, shielding herself from the blasts. She then landed on the ground with a small roll and raised her hand upwards just in time to catch her mithril rapier by the handle. Afterwards she calmly lifted her other hand as her dagger’s Recall enchantment removed it from the mangled orc skull it was stuck in and teleported it directly into her open palm.

Keira looked at the short blade curiously, seemingly studying the bits of blood and brain that were still stuck to it. She then tentatively licked the fresh red liquid, only to immediately start coughing, spitting and gagging.

“Blech, that was nasty,” she complained out loud with her tongue hanging out. “I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.”

The blood-soaked woman then looked over her shoulder, her bright yellow eyes practically stabbing through seemingly empty space.

“I know you’re there, Gux,” she stated confidently. “I’ll make my way over to you in a bit. However, I seriously don’t appreciate you spying on me, so get lost!”

She then idly swung her rapier through the spot the raptor’s Wandering Mind was occupying. That wouldn’t hurt Gux in any way, shape or form, but it still got her message across as the faint presence the Mana Locator Gland in her chest cavity sensed immediately dispersed. Yes, it was rude of her, but so was the Psionic’s conduct, so her actions were entirely justified. And if the lizard later questioned how she felt his presence, she could easily chalk it up to one of the Perks she obtained from her high Level Ranger and Artificer Jobs.

Legendary Perception

Description: A being whose senses are the stuff of legends.

Requirements: Reach 500 Perception (PER).

Effects: Reduces the effects of sensory overload by 60%.

Can perceive ambient magical energies.

It was admittedly nowhere as accurate or reliable as a mimic’s MLG or the enhanced eyesight of a webstalker, but it still allowed the user to see things they wouldn’t otherwise. This also meant that Boxxy had to be wary of others using it against itself or its minions. Things like Snack’s illusions, Claws’s optical camouflage and the invisibility of its Prismatic Cloak could all be theoretically seen through. As for the monster itself, the tastiest part about this Perk was the extra resistance against sensory overload. Having overtly sharp senses made one especially susceptible to being potentially incapacitated by blinding lights, deafening sounds or sickening odors. None of which were things Boxxy needed to worry about now that it had Legendary Perception.

Granted, 60% resistance was not total immunity, but it reduced the adverse effects enough to let the monster power through them through sheer force of will and its MNT Attribute.

Right now, however, the shapeshifter was more concerned about that nosy Psionic. It had expected Gux to poke his snout in where it didn’t belong, which was why it had to stay in character as much as possible. It momentarily slipped when it tried to verify the local orcs’ flavor earlier, but that wasn’t something that couldn’t be explained by Keira’s quirky personality. The point was that it couldn’t cut loose as much as it wanted under these circumstances without having others question its Facade on where it was and what it was doing. It needed some sort of excuse, something that would allow the inquisitive beastkin it was roleplaying as to put a significant amount of distance between itself and that damnable lizard.

Something like, say, that giant pillar of blue light pouring out of the cloudy skies far to the south.