NOVEL WEB (Vol 5) Chapter 17: Spell Synergies
True to her internal intentions, Sammy blasted the specters right in their backs as they remained distracted. Dispensing with pure AoE to ensure she put down these tougher types, Sammy crammed in two precision shots of [Light Manipulation] with [Twisted Light] for an elemental change and [Pneumanic Empowerment] for improved wounding.
She switched from (Cold) to (Acid). She got the sense from intuition and [Exploit Weakness] passively drawing info throughout the struggle that they were slightly resistant — in the lesser foes, she’d overcome this but the beefier ones not so much, who might’ve also had higher resistances across the board.
Ozra’s (Force) effect had seemed just as good as Sammy’s attacks, and Ozra didn’t have her bonuses by any stretch. Acid attacks seemed like a safe bet for neutral or even bonus wounding against them.
Her blasts took them in the back of their heads, both made into a thick beam as precision strikes were less useful than sheer, catastrophic damage.
Both zombie-like heads veritably exploded from the acid beams, carving right through their auras instead of fighting against it like the cold. The bodies and auras shambled around aimlessly, after. She was correct that they still needed their eyes to see, even though her blinding effect from the light sheath did nothing to them. Despite that, she’d noticed the ones with half a head still had a good eye they were using.
Sammy kept moving the entire time, sprinting into the forest, back down the known path she’d taken — not exactly tunnel-like, but something of a bottleneck with the numbers she was dealing with. She had no intention of retreating, but keeping the remainders from ganging up on her seemed the best play. She couldn’t go as fast as their charge while also blasting them, so it remained a temporary measure.
The debuffed elite that was closest remained in range and charged at her, reaching out once more with a great gout of flame. Sammy dodged the attack easily while continuing her retreat.
Behind the one attacker, the others were all barreling forward through the forest to catch up. The two elders and the two elites were the nearest, with perhaps two dozen mixed mooks and elites further behind as stragglers.
She attempted some quick, free action autonomous illusions and phantasms, but the specters completely ignored and shook them off, their hatred and disbelief piercing right through to the truth of who was behind them. She’d likely exhausted her advantages there without dedicated constructs or some specific novelty.
The specters' speedy movement was still insufficient to reach Sammy before she could prepare a greeting. Instead of raw blasting, she decided to pull a double spell. She’d need to pull out all the stops against the elders, while stalling those behind. Preferably she could stall out all of them.
Despite all the Hard Light Layer castings, she still had plenty of MP, so she prepared [Tweak Spell] with the whopping +7 modifier, both to Pillar of Force and Web. 66 MP. Naturally, the option to have it affect the intangible for free was included.
She dropped the Web spell with its AoE starting at her closest foe — its radius was completely enormous thanks to [Pneumamancer] standing in for raw class power (even if, sadly, it didn’t add to things like ‘deity levels’). Caster levels of 23 made 16-meter radius webbing. Weak to fire, but stalling was the intent, and the caster level power of the strands wasn’t just going to evaporate instantly to their weaker-EL auras.
Thick, sticky webbing with an odd, ghostly glow threaded through the area, anchoring between many trees on the wide path. The Web was much wider still and extended well into the forest on either side to boot.
None of the specters were good at dodging things or even inclined to do so, and they all got entangled immediately by the strands. They shrieked in offense at the audacity of being stopped, and their charge was powerful enough to even push forward… a couple of meters. The strands were all lit on fire almost immediately, but the auras themselves were not high enough level to clear them immediately, as she’d hoped. They held, the initial burning effect slow.
And then the next spell dropped. With Pillar of Force’s 5-meter diameter, she was just able to get the closest specter and the two elders in the radius, primarily thanks to the latter pushing forward against the more and more taut strands blocking them.
With zero chance to evade, the three were slammed and crushed by the giant, pulverizing pillar of magic coming down on their heads. With their defenses heavily penalized, their resistance was effectively around the same level as Sammy's ‘light’ attacks. Even worse was their chances against the physical contest to avoid being smushed into the ground.
They all got super-smashed. The elite one screamed as its whole body was crunched, and though it was right at the edge of the Web, it wasn’t going anywhere and writhed in place, one hand rather forlornly stretched out to Sammy from the ground.
Yeah, well, sorry, but I don’t want to be a patty melt, buddy.
The two elders were tough as nails, resisting the wounding with nothing but minor damage to their decaying bodies. But they failed to resist the smash down, so ended up wrapped up like a tortilla in webbing, crawling in the dirt to get to her. Slowly.
None of them were able to reach her. The webbing did take some ‘damage’ from being crushed, but it was way more durable — nearly immune — to such crushing effects, and the more vertical layers of the structure had actually been pressed down into the specters. Considering the effect also somewhat smothered the fire, it was a net benefit.
Good fucking gods, spell synergies are sick! I guess it makes sense. Weird spell physics might be reasonably balanced by themselves in their self-contained rules, but when they start interacting and combining, it just gets silly.
Still, the elders remained tough nuts to crack. She could tell the Pillar wasn’t going to finish them.
The greater mass behind the elders continued trying to barrel forward and contributed to setting off a gradual bonfire as they caught themselves into the Web trying to stupidly force their way through in their frenzy. Some at the very, very back, she thought she saw circle around and disappear into the trees, perhaps realizing finally that their more-forward compatriots were fucking themselves over. It would take them a good while to navigate around, however.
The two elites just behind the elders conveniently pushed their way forward through the webbing. This was more effective as they used their intense forward flames deliberately, melting the webbing much quicker. But their charge still failed — they just got closer within the Web, in between the elders that slowly crawled forward and the ‘stunned,’ doomed elite in the front.
Sammy remained untouched through their stalled advance.
Before she forgot to bother with it, Sammy tried [The Unseen Animus] as an instant effect on one of the elders… it worked! Barely. But it meant her willpower was higher. Unfortunately, she was unsure how to use that — [Removal] wouldn’t work on the strange, virtual remnant beings, and she couldn’t use [Mirror Maze] in that place.
I’ve got to find some way of dealing with them. But first…
She maintained Pillar of Force for the reduced MP cost of 4, refreshing it right back on top of the backs of the prior three targets and adding the two new additions. Like a spiritual jackhammer, the Pillar came down and smushed them into the ground once more, webbing remaining all stuck to it in a great sticky, burning stew. Ghostly marshmallow stew, perhaps.
Despite the concentration, she continued backpedaling, creating more space between her and the edge of the Web effect. One extra shot, perhaps, when the elders got free.
The closest elite was taken out of commission by his second beating, technically not entirely destroyed but quite severely wounded and smashed, with a bony leg and an arm shattered completely, with the torso jammed halfway buried into the dirt.
The other two elites went down like the rest had. Unsurprisingly, the elders resisted the wounding effects once more but were unable to avoid being squashed. Instead of trying to right themselves, they just inched forward from low to the ground, burning strands with their hands to make slow, inexorable progress toward the edge of the effect now a few meters away.
Further back, the other stragglers remained bogged down struggling and burning through the sticky mass. The flames grew and grew into a quick immolation from the concentrating heat and fire.
Strange as it was, they began wailing as the fire came back on them from the burning webbing. It wounded them! They weren’t immune to fire, after all, at least something essentially made external to their auras.
Even their auras slowly consume them, I suppose. Ugh. It’s horrible.
“Why are you making me do this, God of Elves?!” Sammy cried out to the sky. “It isn’t my desire to torture! You brought me to them, you set them on me. This is your doing.”
There was a bout of hysterical laughter from that voice in the sky and then sudden dead silence. Finally, he answered, “Undying pain, Pretender. Unending animus is the response. We’ll see just how supreme you are when they rise to burn you again and again and again! Is their agony already distasteful to you? Perhaps just one little eternity for you to suffer. Just one.”
Scowling, still backpedaling as much as possible, Sammy debuffed the other elder with [The Unseen Animus] successfully, then maintained her spell once more. The hammer dropped down on the tortured souls before her for the third time, disabling the two elites, delaying the elders, and largely finishing off the most forward elite completely.
The elders crawled up to the edge of the Web, burning and brute-force ripping their way through it with an unstoppable ardor. Behind them was a great conflagration, with all the other specters trying to ineffectually scramble in every direction even as they gave their death throes and burned up. All of them were immolated. The webbing was beginning to free them up, but it was far too late to matter.
The moment of truth was arriving. She felt like her physical attacks were coming up just shy against the specters. She ran through her head what she could use. The mental or will-based abilities she had were just not going to be effective as she did not have a plain ‘psychic scouring’ or something like that.
If out in Limbo or even most spirit realms, she probably could with raw Pneuma, but the realm she was in was restrictive. She could replace classes with [Pneumamancer] but had to use hard abilities rather than just make shit up.
Argh! I hate places where I can’t prepare. I could’ve come in here with another custom spell or something. And extra mana. And my stupid magic item selection I wanted to take my bloody time on. And another Avatar upgrade. Damn it! How did I forget that? Real smooth, Sammy…
Whatever the case, she had to act quickly or lose her advantage. It was maybe just going to be some brute force bullshit…
Wait. The Realm Rule… physical projectiles? Does it apply to just him or to everyone?