NOVEL WEB (Vol 5) Chapter 16: Clash of the Phantoms
A horde of burning, floating specters swept toward her and her golems at great speed, all of them like various stage corpses inside of a fiery aura, their hands flung out before them to send the oily, shimmering flames still further out.
The auras seemed to sustain them even when blackened to little more than skeletons. A few even had gaps in their limbs where the middle was burned to nothing, or half of a chest or head burned away.
I’m not going to run. This is something there is no choice but to face, I think.
Having the range for perhaps long enough to pull something, Sammy spun out mental commands to the automated formations and otherwise opted to use the opportunity to utilize [Mirroring Duplicates] and summon Ozra at the maximum distance away.
The Queen of Gremlins popped up far to the left in a puff of smoke. She hopped up comically in alarm as she saw the horde coming, and began preparations to dish out something nasty in response. “There’s no minute like last minute, eh, girlie?!”
“Just shut up and blast ‘em!” Sammy commanded, even as she prepared her next move. “No fire, though. They’ve burned enough.”
“Eh, maybe it’s just me, but fire against them was not my first instinct here, boss!”
Three of her golems, Sammy arrayed in front, one kept as a rear guard. Within the seven meters allowed, her small army of phantasmal doubles surrounded her in the radius, all feminine bodies of light wreathed in the jagged outlines of armor like her. They brandished shields and prepared, awaiting their moment to strike.
Does my butt really look that big with this getup? Yeesh, I need to- never mind that, Sammy, focus-focus-focus!
She kept a small radius around her own person clear, as she was unsure how much aid any form of illusion would be, and wanted space to move freely.
Just as the speeding horde drew close enough to feel the heat wafting off of them, Sammy drew upon [Light Manipulation: Twisted Light]. She unleashed a massive 16-meter cone of icy converted light energy angled to the left, attempting to forestall Ozra’s flank as much as possible.
The pneumamancy-intensified energy, fully affecting intangible spirits, vaporized perhaps a third of the entire force in a flash, banishing the corpses and freezing their fiery auras in place. Despite the cold wave, the fires refused to die. They continued burning upward from the substrate, seemingly eternal.
Ozra, meanwhile, created some contraption like a ridiculously giant funnel tapering its top outward-first, connected to a fat, insulated box with a rather makeshift harness around her shoulders to hold it something like a giant, under-the-hands-held Big Fucking Gun. The box had a thick tube connected to a backpack tank.
Holy fuck, that’s exactly what I expected her to do with Pillar of Force.
Sure enough, she unleashed a massive cylinder of ghostly energy out of it directly at the specters, cackling with mad glee as it impacted them like a giant water hose, only instead of water, it was like being hit by a solid truck. Many — not all — in radius were obliterated by it, and being fully effective against the intangible, the force-like effect even threw their aura far away, which was odd to see.
Unfortunately, the attack was very friendly-fire-prone, so Ozra could not sweep it over the whole line charging them before it crashed into their front lines. Nonetheless, Ozra could mitigate ensuing enemy waves as her spell effect would be persistent.
The phantasms were readying the whole while, and when the specters got close enough, they summoned long spears of ice to thrust into the ghastly bodies spilling into them. Only a few of the half-real phantasms managed to score a hit that fully neutralized them, but collectively it helped to blunt and stall the charge.
Meanwhile, the golems pressed in and blocked angles of attack to Samantha, who was their seemingly singular point of interest until otherwise distracted. The bodies of the golems were spirit-stuff themselves in that realm, and their heavy punches with arms of long reach shattered the specter bodies with ease. This didn’t stop their attack, but did make them switch to dealing with the golems.
The initial attacks she saw on her forward forces were crude and thoughtless, just grabbing and sweeping burning flames into bodies. It was effective mostly in that it was hard to avoid while standing one’s ground. Her phantasms pretended to be hurt, crying out in pain, but still fighting, all in her customary style of stalling bullshittery. It seemed to work, as they were not perfectly homing in on her specifically.
With the Sheath up, though, her phantasms couldn’t really hide her, and she wasn’t about to let it drop just to stall them.
The golems took hits from gouts of flame and grasping, ghostly hands fit to melt their tough steel. They all shed both wound negations in short order, largely doing their job in blunting the wave that got past the phantasmal figures. Two of them took some damage but held their ground.
A third was melted clean through, its top half seemingly dissolved, from the attack of two elder ghosts who’d rampaged clean through the phantasms with ease.
Well, shit — those two are going to be a pain.
She had two packs of specters coming around from the far flanks, so she shifted in a slight retreat leftward to meet that pack while the rear golem and the larger portion of the stalling doubles moved to mitigate the right pack. Hopefully, they could prevent any back attacks.
Seven elven specters with ruined, melted faces descended on her, hands reaching out, oily fire licking from their fingertips, all of them hissing or howling in rage that overrode their pain.
The outer auras of the specters themselves were damaging as the fire and heat enveloped her — however, even her wound negations were not affected as this particular Lethality Grade could not overcome her collective resistance enough to deal even superficial damage.
Sammy blocked two attacks with her shield easily, and evasively dodged away from the others with feints and juke moves, which they seemed quite prone to — this made two more utterly whiff. She took glancing blasts from two, enough to trigger wound negations as the ghostly fire’s heat ate right through her physical armor protection.
Unfortunately, the final attack was one from a specter that guessed right when the others went left, and her over-extended body couldn’t parry with her staff, nor shift on a dime enough to dodge. She did so to mitigate the attack as much as possible, and — feeling that she wanted to avoid taking any nasty wounds for as long as possible — she expended her [Rogue’s Luck] use, adding +2 ELs to her defense.
She managed to avoid the grabbing hand of the specter entirely, but felt the fire bite deep into the flesh of her shoulder. Nonetheless, it was nonessential flesh and she even felt… a portion of it get absorbed.
You have suffered a Superficial Wound in the shoulder.
You have absorbed energy damage and gained 1 FE (Pneuma).
If it wasn’t for a slew of burning monsters all around reaching out ghastly hands to maim her, she might’ve laughed at the absurdity.
Instead, she thrust her staff and dropped a radial freeze-bomb via [Light Manipulation], right at the center of the melee, enough to catch her direct assailants and the two elders, so packed was the area. White-blue energy with speckles of ice and gusts of refreshing cold swirled all around her allies, avoiding them and scouring their enemies.
The majority were consumed by the attack, wiping out a great chunk of the horde, but a pocket of them around the golems and the one baddie that had almost wounded her resisted, though took some measure of wounding. The two elders had their fiery aura sink in only briefly, protecting them utterly and re-flaring once the flash of magic was done.
Regardless, in their frenzied state, the lot of them were unaffected by whatever pain they felt. Their howls were of only one thing: rage.
The golems fought back against the press of the remaining ghosties with great ineffectiveness, scoring mere chips and glancing blows on the more capable figures within the flames. Meanwhile, Ozra blasted the far edge of the melee and swept outward, pulverizing the mass or throwing them, and heavily blunting any second wave forces coming in after the first.
On the other hand, three had been making a hard bee-line for the gremlin after getting blasted, merely angered and slowed rather than kept back. With a final snarl, they swept in — yelping in alarm, Ozra managed to juke one out, but the other two were waiting. Twin gouts of fire blasted her in the body face-on and she was bodily caught on fire.
She melted down in spectacular fashion, holding her hands up in horror and crying, “Look what you’ve done! I’m melting, meeelting, aahhh! Oh, what a world, what a world…” Soon thereafter, she and her ‘gear’ completely flashed out of existence.
Welp, she’s certainly capable of drawing from my mind if she pulled that particular reference.
Unfortunately, she had little time to appreciate the act. Three of the smoking, corpse-like spirits were coming for the source of the nuke — two from the remains of her rear guard golem. He’d done his job admirably enough as she hadn’t been attacked in the back in the prior melee altercation, and she anticipated him and the other phantasms being overrun.
As it was a free action, Sammy tried [The Unseen Animus] on the one that had scored on her. It worked smashingly, and she succeeded by 3 or more.
A weaker will than me. Noted.
Their attacks came — short-range flares of destructive ghost fire from extended hands that ever hoped to grab and melt foes to nothing. They were well spaced out, so she could only block one with a shield, which she did effectively, absorbing damage though the shield got damaged with no more Hard Light layers to shed. It was the debuffed specter that was blocked, apparently a fan of attempting flanking maneuvers.
For the other two, she decided to do something a little different, and perhaps take a bit of a chance, as added complexity that didn’t work would penalize her. When they attacked, she darted directly backward, but to prevent pursuit, she created a believable, defending phantasm of herself where she’d previously been.
They bought it. With satisfied howls, they gouged ‘her’ with their oily flames, burning holes into the armor and melting flesh, to which ‘she’ screamed and pretended to dart sideways in retreat. Sammy created as much distance going in the generally opposite direction as she could, hoping for a little more space to deal with what remained of her foes.
Meanwhile, her golems were finished off by the two elders as well as two more elites, the steel reduced to collapsed, indistinct piles. Fortunately, this second line had also helped create distance between them and Sammy.
Their performance was impressive in doing what I needed them to do, all things considered. I’d have quite an army with more autonomous layers.
The two fooled specters were just hesitating in the pursuit of their false foe, as if sensing that they’d chased the wrong enemy out of two in the area.
Sammy had no intention of letting them so much as turn around.
Time to get blasted!