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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 54
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 17:00:09 +0000 UTC****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eEWnZt6XD219kEvN_h9gh_pHJMR2Z_uT57Np2KqavaY/edit?usp=sharing
*****
Mia glanced askance at the redhead swinging her long, leather-clad legs back and forth. Focus.
“There are a few pieces of news I have which I think all of you should know,” Carmilla started, looking up and sharing a glance with everyone in the room. “The beastkin Pack have launched a slew of raids over the last few hours. They struck mainly at family homes like this and took every piece of food and water they could carry. Casualties have been … low, but not zero.”
Mia’s hand tightened into a fist as a scowl spread over her delicate features. Here it was again, people killing people when monsters were here to bring about the end of the world.
Worse yet, they were stealing from the weak, the ones down on their luck and unable to fight back. Stealing their water, food along with their hopes of a better future. Lowlives. Pathetic lowlives.
Mia’s opinion of the beastkin Pack hit rock-bottom. What they’d done was like robbing a homeless person, or mugging a kid running a lemonade stand for a few coins in her mind. There were few things one could do to be even more of a waste of oxygen.
There were worse crimes of course — like rape, murder and such — but few were more pathetic.
“Then there is another set of news,” Carmilla continued while everyone was still stewing over her previous words. The redhead looked over her shoulder at Mia. “The general’s men pursued the refugees for a while from what I could see, but the group lost them when they entered the forests up north. They would have likely been tracked even there from what I’d heard … but every available soldier had been called back to the inner city just half an hour ago.”
“Could you figure out why?” Brent asked, his expression darker than the rest of the group’s. Everyone had stormy expressions since they’d been told of the refugees Mia and Carmilla sort of helped, so they knew how messed up the general’s soldiers were.
“Rift Break,” Carmilla answered, her voice serious. “The Goblin Rift spat out its first Guardian, and by what little I overheard, it was bulldozing through whatever defences the army had set up around the Rift.”
“They found the Rift itself? Do you know what level it is?” Mia asked, the mental image of a gigantic goblin the size of a gorilla ripping apart tanks and stomping soldiers playing out before her eyes.
“Yes, to both,” Carmilla said. “The Goblin Rift is apparently the only one they know the location of for certain since it’s out in the open. In the middle of a playground. The rift’s level 10.”
“I meant the guardian?” Mia asked, but she just got a shake of her hand from the vampiress.
“We shoul-“ Lina started, then frowned a bit. “Wait. Don’t those army guys have tanks? How did what Guardian thing go through them then?”
“I don’t know,” Carmilla said, shrugging easily and back to her nonchalant demeanour. It seemed just relaying the new information she knew had taken off all the weight from the girl’s shoulders.
Why? Mia wondered, then thought it through. There was … no practical use in them fighting another Rift Guardian, not with all of them having gotten to level ten over the last week. And she doesn’t care for the chaos it could cause if it got to one of the few surviving communities?
From what Mia’d managed to tease out of the Colonel, Andritz was hardly the last surviving part of the city. The south was utterly fucked, overran by a horde of wolves — real ones this time, not some potted plants masquerading as such — and of course, the inner city was the territory of the rats and the goblins so it was also pretty fucked.
Graz was a pretty big city though, and a good third of it lay on the west side of the Mur, away from most monsters. They only had to fear the birds there, but many have managed that by the looks of it.
The same went for the far east, where the critter rift with the murderous rabbits and chipmunks was suspected to be. The little furry horrors seemed to be much more interested in beating each other to mush than hunting down survivors, very much unlike the goblins.
“Before any of you get any suicidally stupid ideas,” Helene said, sending a piercing glare towards Brent and Lina before continuing. “We, at the moment, gain nothing out of risking our lives fighting something the army is having trouble with. It is also very unlikely that any survivors are close enough to the Rift itself to be endangered, not with how you said that the goblins have taken a panel building far out of the inner city already.”
“And going over to fight it would reveal our strength to that general,” Carmilla said. “I … don’t think we want that. Not if we want to have any peace in our lives going forward.”
“Agreed,” Brent said surprisingly. “The soldiers knew what they signed up for. They fight to protect us, as they should. I … wouldn’t want any of us to risk death just for Eisenfaust to make our lives hell in return for helping him.”
“I guess training is better for progress at the moment anyway,” Lina mused. “But if we don’t destroy that rift now, it’s going to keep spitting out stronger and stronger monsters. And if the first one is strong enough to overpower the army … “
“Fair point,” Brent said, looking thoughtful. “We might be dooming ourselves in the long run if we do nothing. Maybe we could sneak into the rift and destroy it while the army is distracted.”
Helene looked like she’d bitten into a lemon, her face twitching between a scowl and a worried frown.
“And that’s just one rift,” Mia said, looking up from her clenched fist to stare at her mother, the main opponent of risking their lives. “The rift called ‘The Forest of the Wolf King’ was also level ten, which is supposedly responsible for the south fifth of the city being overrun by wolves. We could be overrun here in a matter of weeks. If we do nothing.”
“And it seems we can’t trust the army to do it, can we?” Mark chimed in sourly, he looked a hint afraid, but he quickly buried it under a mountain of anger. “Waste of tax money.”
“We could leave,” Carmilla said, quickly elaborating as a fair few gazes landed on her, none of which looking all too kind. “Vienna has that Marshal who can clear Rifts by himself, with an actually powerful army division protecting it. With mine and Mia’s abilities, we could get there while dodging the more dangerous monsters and beasts. Five days tops. On foot.”
That put thoughtful looks on everyone’s faces, and Mia even caught a relieved sigh escaping Mark’s mouth. His bushy moustache covered it well, but it couldn’t escape Mia’s ears.
Helene looked conflicted, likely torn about leaving the house that’d been her home for the last decade. Or, about leaving the entire city to its fate. By what Mia knew of her mother, both likely played equal parts in Helene’s reaction.
“I don’t … particularly care,” Lina said slowly. “ I think we could take on a rift, as it is now. But I wouldn’t mind ditching the city and going to Vienna either. They probably have an active Obelisk there already.”
Mia herself was conflicted. She wanted to help people, of course she did, but not at the cost of her own, or her friends’ lives. It too wasn’t heroic, but she never wanted to be a hero.
Being a hero was just a synonym for self-sacrificial and suicidal in Mia’s books. Mia enjoyed living and planned to do so until her five centuries long lifespan ran its course.
She helped where she could, when it didn’t hurt her or had a high risk of death. This? This could very well be over the line for her.
I can go around saving however many people I like once I’m strong enough to not worry about a super goblin bashing my head in.
Still, she’d never be strong enough without taking calculated risks. The question was whether going into the level ten goblin rift would be a calculated risk or a ‘heroic’ sacrifice. Or just assisted suicide.
“We know too little,” Mia mumbled, blinking as she noticed Carmilla and Helene staring at her, with the rest joining in a moment later. “What? I mean, I have no damned intention of throwing myself into that rift to die if we know we wouldn’t even have a chance against the Guardian that’s out there. I’m not suicidal.”
“But if we did manage to clear it,” Brent said, like he’d bitten into a rotten apple. “That could save thousands of lives down the line. Even if we’d be helping Eisenfaust by doing so.”
After another half an hour of arguing and compromising, the group decided that Helene, Mia and Carmilla would be going out to stealthily scout out the inner city and ascertain their chances of killing the escaped Rift Guardian.
If they could kill the weaker Guardian the Rift had thrown out like a used sock, it was likely they had a good shot at the new one inside the Rift. If not … then a long hike to Vienna was likely how they were going to have to spend the next week.
***
“Down here,” Mia said, tugging at her mother’s sleeve as she wasn’t sure her voice would travel over the wind blasting in her face.
It was night, the moon barely a crescent up in the sky and only its dim light there to guide anyone brave enough to be out at this hour.
Helene started into a gentle dive, circling in a spiral as she descended. Mia was thankful, she always liked roller coasters, but that and free falling with her mother’s arms around her waist was something else entirely.
Mia felt her revulsion spike, like her Spirit was trying to vomit but couldn’t for its lack of a stomach. As they got closer to the ground, the shadowy contours of the buildings down below and the small playground in the middle of a little park between them cleared up.
Mia heard it then, that disturbing cackle-like laugh of the goblins. Only by their voices, there must have been at least a hundred down there.
Helene landed atop a two story building and let Mia gently touch down. Nonetheless, Mia’s knees buckled instantly and were it not for Helene grabbing her, she would have fallen to her knees.
All doubts that she’d have any difficulties locating rifts faded from Mia’s mind. The source of that near tangible wrongness that prevailed everything was like a sun to her Spirit Sense. A dark, twisted sun, but a sun nonetheless.
It was a tear, she could feel that rip in reality from this close. It was unmistakable with how it exhaled that wrongness like an arterial wound fountained blood.
Mia got a grip on her body in a few moments, when she stumbled over to the roof’s edge and took a look down at the rift itself.
It was a simple arc, maybe four metres high and two wide, made of some marble-like rock. Inside that arc, the air shimmered, ripples bouncing around it from corner to corner like it was a disturbed water surface.
Only, the water was also glowing with an otherworldly glow, casting an ethereal light over its surroundings and revealing dozens of shadowy figures buzzing about around it.
Mia thought they were goblins at first, but then she did a double take. Her sense of distance and scale shouldn’t be so skewed just yet that she couldn’t guess the height of the arc correctly.
So if that marble structure was three metres and the greenish forms rose to almost two-thirds of it …
Those are some tall goblins. Mia thought, squinting to make more of them out. Muscular too, great. Bodybuilder goblins on steroids.
Worse yet, the faint glow made weapons and armour made of silvery grey metal glimmer in the dark like little stars. Those weren’t the misshapen, rusted tools the goblin raiders Mia’d fought were equipped with, but real weapons. Good weapons.
Mia plopped down onto her butt and forced herself into a deep Meditation with an exercise she’d practised over the week. Being able to deep meditate to recover mana even when her surroundings were the furthest thing from ‘zen’ was a useful skill to have, after all.
Her Sensitivity jumped up a bit, and Mia got to slowly, carefully feeling out every vomit-inducing presence she could feel.
With every monster she’d encountered so far, she could guesstimate the levels of the goblins with a fair degree of accuracy.
Around half of the horde down below was made up of goblins under level five, around twenty were six or seven, ten were level eight and only five were level nine with a mere two at level ten.
The Guardian is not here. She concluded, frowning. That was suboptimal, but perhaps Carmilla would have better luck running around and checking up on the nearest army installations and how they fared against the monsters.
The vampire didn’t have any Skills for skulking about, but she was unnaturally talented at stealth, even if most people with magical means would be able to locate her with little trouble.
Thankfully, the army at Graz was painfully inept when it came to utilising magic or even soldiers with more powerful Classes. They had little to fear from them in that regard.
Mia caught a screech, then another and another as a swarm of rats rushed into view from afar street outside of Mia’s Spirit Sense’s range.
She squinted, tilting her head in confusion as she saw the dim moonlight illuminate the swarm. They were an ugly bunch to start off with, but that was made worse by almost every rat having parts of their fur burnt right off and left with horrid burn marks all over their bodies.
Five of the larger rats were ridden by Ratlings, all carrying those repeater crossbows the one Mia had killed had.
The rats looked starving, skeletal almost and even the Ratlings' lanky forms looked even thinner than before.
The goblins cackled, some letting out what sounded like the high-pitched laughter of hyenas. A horn blew, shaking the trees in the park and Mia felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, the back of her neck tingling.
Unlike the first time she felt it, she caught on much quicker this time around, even if the feeling was much more subdued since the Guardian wasn’t coming right at her, just closer.
She looked down and saw the creature bound down a side alley before bursting out onto the main street. It looked left and right, then focused on the swarm of rats.
It was a towering creature, at least three metres in height and with limbs thicker than trunks and a club larger than Mia’s whole body held in one hand. I looked vaguely like a stereotypical Troll, but with the rumoured dull gaze of the creatures swapped out for a piercing dark gaze filled with malicious intelligence.
It roared, then let out a cackle as it jumped in the way of the charging rats with the five Ratlings in the lead. It smashed its club into the ground, cracking the asphalt and making a thunderous sound.
That thing is at least level 12. Mia thought sourly, watching on as the Troll lookalike got bored with waiting for the swarm to arrive and charged at them.
The rats screeched, splitting to run around the Troll and get a bite out of the less challenging prey hiding behind it. Most succeeded, but a good dozen ended up getting splattered either by a wild club swing or a stomp.
The Ratlings fired their crossbows, circling the Troll on their steeds faster than it could turn around and chase them.
Chunks of its body got torn out as the corrosive projectiles pierced through the Troll’s body, but it was to no avail. It moved as if uninjured even when only a bare joint kept its right arm attached to its torso.
Flesh sizzled audibly, but it re-knit itself even with the strong magical acid trying to eat through the Troll’s flesh.
Why does everything have a regeneration skill? Mia complained inwardly as the spell circle of Arcane Blast formed up in her runic-model. She pointed, eyeballing that the Troll was just about within the hundred metre range of her Blast spell.
“What are you doing?” Her mother hissed under her breath, a vice-like grip on Mia’s shoulder almost making her wince.
“Seeing how much my strongest spell does to it,” Mia said. “Should be a good checkmark. You can grab me and fly away if it turns on us, no?”
“ … fine,” Helene allowed, little arcs of lightning dancing across her fingertips as she stared worriedly down the street and then up at the sky.
She’d had to fight off a few iron birds, but surprisingly the avians weren’t all that good at aerial battles. They were slow, heavy and very conductive to electricity.
Their deadly high speed dives and armoured feathers were their top qualities. None of which worked in their advantage against a flying opponent who could bypass their defences with a lightning bolt.
Mia sent the spell off, then grinned. It hit the towering greenskin right in the back of the head and blew a good half of it into smithereens, exposing a brain that’d been turned to mush.
The monster went limp, collapsing bonelessly and falling victim to the second volley of four corrosive crossbow bolts.
Mia frowned, watching the supposedly dead Troll. If it was any other species, she’d have patted herself on the back for a job well done, but a Troll?
She’d read the Monster Encyclopedia’s segment about them and apparently play fights between their young including crushing each other's head with rocks and seeing who woke up from it the fastest.
What did it say? Crush the heart or burn the body to kill it. Dousing in acid should also work … not that those arrows are doing much good for the Ratlings.
Behind the Troll’s fallen, twitching form, the swarm of rats crashed into the horde of goblins. Some goblins died, some of the low level ones, but the level seven and above goblins made short work of any rat getting within reach of them.
The rats are exhausted, starving. Mia realised. Even their wrongness feels … diminished.
The Ratlings jumped down from their mounts and tore into the Troll, which was by now twitching intensely as if convulsing from a stroke.
Glowing green claws — likely coated in acid — long and sharp tore into leathery flesh with abandon. Some chunks of meat even ended up in the gullet of one Ratling or another.
Alas, the bipedal rats were dumb as rocks and failed to go for either the brain, which would have clearly kept the Troll incapacitated for longer, or the heart.
Mia shot off another Blast, but it was caught en-rout by a chucked rat which heroically sacrificed itself for its larger kin. Though said heroic sacrifice was prompted by a tail grabbing it and throwing it at the Blast.
Mia scowled, only for her fears to prove to be founded as the Troll stilled before jumping to its feet with a gurgling roar. Half of its throat was gone, torn out just like one of its eyes and a good third of its flesh.
It caught two of the Ratlings before they could back away and smashed them into the ground so hard both splattered across it like balloons of blood and meat.
The other three weren’t fast enough either, not without their mounts. The Troll bounded after them in a quick stomping stride with its arms spread as if for a hug.
Another Blast caught it across the chest, blowing away skin, flesh and bone but not quite enough to reach the heart,
The Troll stilled, its face twisting in horror before primal fury took it as its beady black eyes followed the Blast’s trajectory back to the source.
Mia stared into its eyes, stunned for the briefest moment at the sheer hatred and rage inside of them. A pair of arms grabbed Mia under her armpits, and she barely heard the roar of fury from the Troll before the rush of wind an intense upward momentum smashed into her.
A moment later, she was up hundreds of metres into the air and rapidly flying away from the scene with her mother flapping her angelic wings in a hurry.
Mia glanced back down, a hint of disappointment flickering across her face.
A Piercing Bolt would have finished the job. She thought. She could have finished the monster then and there if only she’d kept in mind all of her spells and made use of the one that fit her situation best.
Sure, Blast was good since it disrupted magic for a bit, but it was hardly enough to fully disable the Troll’s healing. I should have switched over for the last shot.
There was also a flicker of annoyance aimed her mother way down in her heart, thinking that if Helene let her get off another few spells they could have been done with this dangerous monster then and there.
Mia sighed softly, feeling the tight embrace her mother kept her in, much tighter than on the way here. Her fingers were trembling too as they held Mia.
I can’t be angry at her for worrying about me.
