Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 62
🕑 Added 2023-06-06 13:01:00 +0000 UTCNow that his mowing speed had almost tripled thanks to the axe, Felix could feel himself finally making progress. The area around him kept growing and he was actually, slowly, moving towards the encampment. The Devoured General had vanished at some point during the fighting but Felix was betting that they had run back into the camp. His health was starting to fall due to all the pokes and prods from the Devoured spearmen around him but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been before he had bonded with the axe. He had only lost a quarter of his health and his natural regeneration was fiercely fighting back.
Felix was starting to feel like he was actually going to make it, with just a hundred or so meters left to get to the draw bridge when he was suddenly stabbed in the back. He quickly whirled around and found Devoured pressed right up against his back. Peering beyond them, he saw one of his shadow men standing at the edge of an empty house hundreds of meters away staring right back at him.
Son of a bitch.
Felix spun around with the axe like a whirlwind, which was far from effective at killing anything. It did serve to make space around him though. Just past the Devoured army, he spotted a shadow man spinning his axe into the walls behind him. Felix shoved mana into the axe resummoning his second shadow man in the army in front of him then went back to cleaving through the army.
How the fuck do I move them.
Felix tried everything from willing them to move to providing more mana but no matter what he did, they only moved when he did. A few minutes later he had to resummon the shadow man that he had just recreated once again as it had apparently dissipated at some point. The first one was still happily swinging away at the wall in front of it. The next time he had to resummon one of them, Felix watched and almost immediately figured out what was happening. They seemed to have a health pool of their own and when they took enough damage, they dissipated.
Fucking hell.
Felix summoned a shadow to his left facing the same direction as he was and then launched a Fire Ball at the shadow stuck on the wall way in the back. As soon as it dissipated, he resummoned it off to his right side facing the same direction as him. Now, when he started cleaving through the Devoured in front of him, the two shadows on either side of him did as well. Felix began constantly fueling the axe with mana in the hopes that the shadow’s would instantly resummon if one of them fell but found that they weren’t dissipating at all.
Together they tore through the Devoured and cleared a wide path around him making quick work of their ranks. By the time he had made it to the draw bridge, it was half way to being pulled up but Felix launched a barrage of Force Bombs at the Devoured winding the cranks as well as the chains themselves. In hindsight, as he saw the cranks and Devoured explode in every direction, it was likely overkill, but he didn’t think too hard on it as he rushed across the drawbridge and into the camp.
Looking to the side Felix’s heart sank as he saw one of his shadow’s was standing off the bridge but he almost instantly realized it didn’t seem to mind not having anything beneath it’s feet. He readjusted to be in the center of the bridge so they could both make it through the opening in the palisade then jumped the last fifty meters into the camp. Felix was happy to see both of the shadows jump into the air alongside him, even though they didn’t have any force spells propelling them.
Around the apex of his jump, Felix turned back and dropped a massive bombardment of Fire Balls on the wooden draw bridge. The bridge exploded in every direction, trapping the massive army of Devoured outside the moat. Felix watched them begin to walk into the moat, though they did not swim and they did not float. He figured he should have at least a half hour or so until their corpses formed a bridge across.
Seeing the camp from below the makeshift canopy, Felix realized it wasn’t nearly as impressive as he had been expecting. There were siege weapons off to the side and racks of weapons, shields and armor neatly arrayed around them but overall it seemed like most of the space had been occupied by Devoured. Felix rushed towards the center building, which was the only enclosed space in the camp and his first guess as to where the general was. There were barely any Devoured around so he simply tore through the camp, cutting down anything and everything in his way. He was mostly cutting through posts and makeshift roofs, but he was having fun with his shadows anyways.
Running up the stone cube in the middle, Felix quickly found the door and began cutting through it with his axe. It was made of some kind of metal and seemed to be at least half a meter thick, almost like a vault door. His shadows to either side of him hacked away at the wall, perfectly mimicking his own actions on the door. He finally managed to get through the door and started to head in but stopped when he saw both his shadows were ineffectively walking into the wall in front of them. Realizing he was going to have to resummon them, Felix turned to the one on his right and lifted the axe over his head to take it out but stopped just a few inches short of hitting it. Peering over his shoulder, his other shadow’s axe loomed over his own head. Felix swapped over to lightning bolts and dissipated both of them then headed into the cube.
He was tempted to immediately resummon them as soon as he got inside but decided he was better off waiting until could position them more intelligently. He was also walking down a long, tight corridor so he wasn’t exactly sure where he would put them. Having learned a thing or two from the vault’s in Ky’bel, Felix summoned a large Mana Shield in front of him and prepared a couple of wind spells to deal with any pink gas he might encounter.
Walking down the hallway, Felix saw doors every few meters on his left and right. He tried opening one but it was locked and they were all just as thick and sturdy as the one he had to destroy to get in. He didn’t have time to break them down at the moment and he sensed the seal above him anyways. Continuing down the hallway, Felix reach the end where the hall turned to the right and quickly turned into a stairway. Before heading up though, he pulled out his enchanting quill and quickly inscribed a spell into the wall opposite the doorway he had busted open. When it was complete, he affixed a solid-mana battery to it then stood off to the side and activated the spell causing a massive vortex of wind to fire down the hallway and out of the building.
Continuing up the staircase Felix ascended into a large open space that easily took up the entire footprint of the building. All along the walls were desks and shelves covered in plants, animals, glass bottles, alembics and tubes running everywhere. The scariest things in the room though, were the bottles and vials all around the room that contained various liquids of vibrant colors. In the center of the ceiling was a large open hole, no doubt acting as a vent and completing the cycle of air being vented out below. Standing at the center of it all, right below the vent, was the Devoured General, whose collared shirt and large apron was starting to make a lot more sense to Felix.
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[D] Partially Devoured Second Kroterran General (Lvl 584) .________________________________________________________________________________________
As soon as Felix walked into the room the general threw a series of vials at him. Two of them shattered on his mana shield splattering a black and green liquid that immediately exploded into a mist that was subsequently sucked down the stairway behind him to little effect. The last vial though, missed completely and struck the ground next to Felix. It exploded splattering Felix’s right side with the liquid and throwing him to the ground. His robes caught most of it and the resulting fumes were immediately sucked away, but a few droplets had hit the side of his face. Instead of burning his skin like the pink gas had, Felix felt the droplets seep into his skin and quickly hit his blood stream before he could wipe them away. As soon as they did, it attacked and killed every cell it came in contact with.
Felix ignored the necrotic liquid for the time being and rushed towards the general in an attempt to end this fight before it got too chaotic and the poison had time to settle in. Just as Felix got within range of the general and started to swing, the general quickly stepped into the strike and past Felix ending up somewhere behind him before his swing finished. Felix used the axe’s momentum and spun around to keep the general in his sights and was suddenly struck in the foot by a vial that sprayed fire in every direction. As soon as the vial ignited, the rushing wind from the hole in the ceiling stoked the fire causing it to explode in size almost immediately.
Felix ran and dove out of the pool of fire in the middle of the room, his only thought to prevent himself from being burned. Felix hit the ground and lifted himself to his feet whirling around and instantly felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck shortly followed by poison spreading itself through his body. Felix ignored the object in his neck for now, spinning around until he spotted the general hiding behind the pool of fire at the center of the room. Felix stared them down and summoned a shadow right behind them. As soon as he did, the general lifted a glass bottle to his mouth and chugged some kind of oily looking blue liquid, instantly vanishing from sight.
Invisibility potion? Fuck off.
Felix turned to the stairway and summoned another shadow halfway down then started swinging to make sure he cut off as many exits as he could. The general didn’t try to escape though, instead he threw a vial straight at Felix’s head that seemed to contain some kind of fine grey powder. The vial shattered and the powder was quickly vented out of the room but not before Felix felt parasitic spores root themselves in his lungs and all along his airway.
Felix searched the room intently, filled with both anger and fear that he wouldn’t be able to deal with whatever he was now infected with. He turned towards the stairway to see if he could spot the general when he suddenly felt something right behind his head. Luckily, it wasn’t a physical feeling. Instead, Felix felt mana spiking and ducked as fast as he could.
Without increasing the weight, to keep the strike as quick as possible, Felix flicked the axe behind him. The general, now visible with a dagger in hand, leapt over the blade and towards the other side of the room but tripped on one of their own bottles that had fallen to the ground.
Felix leapt at the opportunity and swung his axe down at the general’s head. The general was too fast though and managed to scramble out of the way keeping their head safe. The axe still managed to catch them in the middle of their calf though, removing their left foot entirely. The general pushed himself to his foot and managed an impressive single legged leap towards the stairway but Felix simply jumped and swung causing his shadows to mimic him. The shadow in the stairway caught the general in the arm and flung him across the room.
The general desperately reached up to a desk near him and threw a vial at Felix but he simply pushed it aside with a wind spell he still had prepared. The vial struck the empty wall near the stairs and caused a massive explosion where the resulting shockwave almost knocked Felix over from over a dozen meters away. The general was in the process of downing as many potions and elixirs as they could get their hands on when Felix stepped forwards and removed their arms with a couple decisive swings. A moment later, the General’s body slumped to the ground.
Ding You have slain a [D] Partially Devoured Kroterran General (Lvl 584)
While he waited for the body to explode and reveal the seal, Felix quickly ran around the room grabbing hold of every intact bottle and vial that contained anything. By the time he had finally killed the general, the majority of the room was on fire and Felix was hoping a few of the bottles contained antidotes to whatever the hell was festering inside of him. Looping all the way around the room, Felix saw the general’s body exactly where he had left it so he scooped it up and stowed it in his inventory. He quickly confirmed he could no longer sense the seal to make sure it wasn’t in one of the severed limbs then jumped through the hole in the ceiling. He launched himself off to the side and ducked low to avoid the pink cloud floating ominously above.
Before he landed, Felix saw the Devoured had finally made it across the moat on the backs of their comrades and the smoke from the cube started to funnel through the chimney instead of the door. With his makeshift ventilation system down, the fire quickly started spreading to the rest of the building, though that wasn’t Felix’s problem.
