Outrage of the Ancients

The Third Challenge, [The Waking of the Unliving], has now begun, giving life to objects that never should have had it.

The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], has concluded, and the dead will no longer rise. However, existing undead will continue to exist until they are slain.

The Fourth Challenge, [The Wrath of Natural World], will begin in fifty days.

Time remaining: 49:23:59:51

Yep, called it. Golems. But it was actually less bad than expected, what I’d thought everyone would be facing was random bits of inanimate matter morphed into monsters. Instead, it was “just” a metric crapton of statues and other living creature-shaped objects given life.

And the Fourth Challenge, that would either be what I’d actually expected the third one to be … or animated natural disasters. The second one, if I had to pick one, it was much more of a step up in danger level than just dirt and water monsters.

I suppressed a yawn as I made a mental note to write that down for later. I’d stayed up way too late last night. I’d managed to learn [Ember], a simple fire spell, and [Lesser Telekinetic Push], the inverse of the [Lesser Telekinetic Pull] Fionn had taught me.

But the only reason that had been an okay thing to do was because I was fairly superfluous in a fight. Outside of the random event of me catching something that everyone else, the veterans and experts, somehow missed, I had one job.

I used my [Guide’s Shortcut] Skill, opening a portal to the HMS Queen Elizabeth, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for one Vice Admiral Francis Drake, who’d been in the fortress with us only to draw in more monsters, but had an actual job that lay elsewhere.

The portal opened a couple of meters above the carrier, however. I couldn’t tell the ship’s elevation from waves and the tide without being present, so I needed to put the point of transport high enough that it would clear the deck no matter what. Either way, the Ancient was above Level 50 to my knowledge, and even if he was below that, he was still damn durable.

“Thank you,” Drake said and marched through, the portal automatically snapping shut behind him.

And then, it was just me and Charlemagne sitting in the throne room, watching the screens on the wall.

The fortress had been rebuilt yet again in preparation for the wave. There were now several massive corridors present that Dietrich, Ogier, Fionn and all the rest of the melee focussed ancients could stand in and fight, then retreat up a ladder or through one of my portals when the need arose. That allowed them to engage under circumstances that actually suited their skillsets, rather than being stuck on the other side of arrowslits, reduced only being able to use a fraction of their abilities.

The main entrance had also been entirely reworked. The doors had been moved deeper into the mountain, creating a long corridor with free lines of fire from the gates and no chance of monsters approaching from outside the field of fire.

The original section with the murder holes was still there, set against the roof halfway down the corridor, ready to drop all manner of unpleasantness onto the invaders.

And, of course, the entire thing was set up so that someone could get to the corridor from the inside with minimal risk of said paths being used to invade, and one could also collapse the various paths into the mountain if required.

After all, with the various magical rock-shaping abilities of the people in the mountain, it would have been quite doable to just seal and reopen the entrances as needed. But that wasn’t why the paths were there. They were traps, the “paths of least resistance” the enemies were bound to use and could be planned for. If they hadn’t been there, the enemy would just have started digging and probably succeeded.

I certainly wouldn’t have trusted the rock to keep out any Raid, let alone Nation Bosses.

***

Dietrich

He stared out at the sea of enemies, scanning them, applying his usual battery of sensory Skills. As per usual, [Conqueror of Legends] told him the enemies were indomitable and would not submit to anything, they would have to be killed, while [Equalizer] obviously said that there was no way to turn these walking statues mundane. Their power and their very life was one and the same, as long as they lived, they had their abilities.

But [Slayer of Myths] was telling him some interesting tidbits. The regular monsters would last until they were broken to the point where they no longer resembled living beings. Knock off the head, break the torso in half, and so on. Limbs could be lost, but a good strike at their center would instantly destroy them.

Field Bosses needed to be broken a little more thoroughly, and finally, the Raid Boss he could see in the distance had to be torn into tiny pieces to kill it.

Hermann (animated monument), Level 44 Raid Boss

Though it was important to note that even though these statues were moving, they were still made of rock or metal and even parts in the middle of a motion still had all the properties of the material they consisted off in its rigid form. In other words, pushing over a stone statue would inevitably see it shatter. Though his current enemy was made of metal, which had at least a little give to it.

At least there were no Nation Bosses around, as far as he’d been told.

… Which meant if there was one around, it had somehow gone unnoticed.

Now wasn’t that a fun thought.

As for the monument he was facing, he actually knew about it, it had been a part of one of Tristan’s magical “lessons.” The son of an ancient Germanic tribal leader given to Rome as a hostage, who eventually returned to Germany as a Roman military officer and led three legions into a trap that permanently ended Rome’s northward expansion.

And when Germany had unified in the 19th century, a symbol of that unity had been needed, so that man had been settled on, except no one had known his German name anymore, this legendary military leader had only been remembered as “Arminius”, which was what he’d been called by the Romans. So, he was given a new, entirely fictional, German man … that could be translated as “army man,” albeit with a weird spelling.

All in all, the history of the monument was a tad strange, though the idea of a symbol for a nation to unite behind had more than a little merit. A problem for after the fight had been concluded.

Mimung leaped out of its sheath as he settled into a combat stance. The nearest walking stone approached so he lashed out, cleaving it in twain with ease. Regardless of how sharp his sword was, cutting through solid rock still slowed it down a little, but he’d earned a new Skill after helping defeat the Nation Boss. [Endless Cut].

Simply put, if he could keep moving after a strike, he could accelerate his blade up to the necessary speed for another strike in an instant and then chain these strikes together.

So even as the first statue, some kind of mostly naked marble creation, fell apart in two pieces, his sword had already in motion once more, leaping to carve apart the next one.

It sounded like a minor boon, and in a one-on-one battle it would have been, but it was invaluable in a fight like this. The fight of one man against an army was no longer a matter of striking down his foes one by one, then working hard to have his blade back in position to attack his next foe.

Unless his enemies managed to strike him while his blade was still in the process of bisecting one of their fellows, he was freely able to hack and slash his way through them in a single, long, continuous motion.

Dietrich practically flowed through the initial crowd of foes, leaving behind piles of rubble from where bisected statues had shattered as they hit the ground. Until Hermann moved.

It was a single motion, far faster than anything that large should have been able to move, Hermann hurled his immense spear. And Dietrich was still in the middle of taking down another monster.

Oh … the only thing that could make this worse if the reason the Raid Boss had waited so long was that h ad been working to learn his moves. Of all the various giants and monsters he’d faced, those that had known to use their heads had ranked even above those that had magic in terms of power.

Internally cursing his luck, he released Mimung’s hilt and threw himself backwards, [A Brush with Death Triggering] as the gigantic spear scraped across his chestplate.

In an instant, the world froze, granting him the chance to think, re-evaluate and plan, but he didn’t need it. Dietrich already knew what to do.

[A Blade Borrowed] let him summon a copy of any weapon he’d ever held into his hand, in this case, a of the giant cleaver once wielded by one of the giants he’d slain.

The massive weapon manifested in his hand and was flung through the air as time resumed and Dietrich fell backwards, completing the motion that had carried him out of the path of the attack.

He landed painfully on his rear but lunged straight back to his feet, hurling himself towards the towering Raid Boss as it stumbled backwards from the impact of the flung sword.

Urgh, in his youth, he would have been able to do that without winding up on the floor. However many supernatural abilities he might have gained, he was an old man, and it felt like universe was taking a perverse pleasure in reminding him of that fact as often as it could.

His sword reappeared in his hand as he got within range of his foe and he swung towards the giant monster, triggering his most powerful offensive Skill.

[Sword Art: Giantsplitter].

It did exactly what it was supposed to. Cleave giants in twain. Right down the middle. No cutting it at the waist, where the legs might be willing to walk and the torso would still be able to throw stuff, no diagonal slash across the torso which might leave behind a large, mostly intact, piece that could still strike, a proper vertical bisection. Top of the head all the way down to the pelvis.

Dietrich only heard the tremendous clattering of both halves falling to the ground as he’d already turned around, spinning around with Mimung outstretched, carving apart every monster within two meters of him until he was right back to facing his foe … as it was pulling itself back together. In two pieces.

Two perfect copies, each half the size of the original, each with their own spears.

He whirled around to stare at where the original’s spear was still stuck in the ground, unchanged, then spun back to face the two miniature Bosses. At least it was just those two, this conglomerate could not outflank him by hurling weapons past him. Small mercies, he supposed.

Now he just had to figure out just how small pieces he had to cut these things into before they stopped regenerating. Even with his big Skill on cooldown, he could keep slashing through them merely on the strength of his arm and the keenness of his blade, especially now that they were smaller. It would simply take a long time.

***

Fionn

Statues. Ancient monuments to the triumphs of man and testaments to humanity’s failures, depending on the reason for their creation. And now, they were about to obliterate it all. At least in the modern age, there was enough documentation that they could all be recreated. A loss, but not the absolute tragedy it would have been a few centuries ago.

The fact that they were all statues also made this quite easy. Creatures made from heavy, dense, stone were vulnerable to mud and unstable ground. They hadn’t created a moat for fear of it giving birth to water elementals that could slither in through the arrowslits, but now that there were clearly only dealing with statues … Fionn cast [Century Storm]. Fat drops began to fall from the sky after a few seconds, the sound rising into a neverending staccato of water pounding against the mountain above barely a minute after that.

But by that point, he was already pressing his palm to the ground and triggering [Disintegrating Resonance,] even as the first enemy had come within ten meters of him. A statue, some kind of naked marble creation with a fig leaf over its crotch, had already raised its fist to strike him when the floor beneath it turned to sand.

It was a simple thing to jerk his head back as the monster fell flat on its face before him and promptly broke into several pieces.

The voice of the German emperor spoke into his ear at that point, sharing the information that had already been gathered about the enemies’ weaknesses.

“Thank you,” Fionn announced into the empty air as he straightened, staring out at his advancing enemies, staggering and stumbling as they reached the sand the floor had been reduced to by his spell.

Fighting on sand was a nightmare. Footing was precarious, the ground shifting underfoot robbed any movements of some of their power, and that was only in the event one managed to avoid fully winding up on the ground. Not something he’d ever do if he could avoid it.

But these issues grew worse and worse the heavier you were. In other words, he could, quite literally, dance around his foes in this environment.

Fionn dodged backwards again, stone fist swishing past his face, used the tip of his boot to flip the flanged mace he’d prepared off the sand, allowing him to snatch it out of the air and bring it down on the nearest stone head.

He normally preferred to use a sword or spear, something more mobile he could use to target weak spots, but these were solid blocks of metal or stone he was facing. He needed something with a little … heft.

So Fionn sidestepped another attack, smashed the mace against the statue’s chest to bring it down, then used that thing as a platform.

And for the next half a minute or so, that was what he was doing. A sober man dancing through a crowd of drunkards, the only one able to properly stay on his feet, smashing anything that came within reach. Until the water started soaking into the sand, making footing even more precarious. It wasn’t quicksand yet, but it was getting there.

Phase two.

[Hydrokinesis] was one of those spells that could either devour his magical energy in a matter of seconds or be kept active for hours, depending on how much water he was trying to control at any one point in time.

Right now, he just needed to keep a hold of around a single liter at any one point in time. Specifically, a tiny portion of liquid underneath his boots, which he hardened to become stable ground, while his foes became increasingly bogged down as the water from the thunderstorm outside flowed into the sand.

With each passing second, things became easier, his foes becoming more and more bogged down as the ground became ever more like quicksand, while his footing was always perfect.

And his mace had, in fact, been the correct choice for this enemy. A sword or spear would have long since broken, but this heavy, metal shod, club could crush stone and dent metal all day long.

Until eventually, the challenge shifted from attacking enemies to figuring out how to destroy living statues that had entirely been swallowed up by the ground, and figuring out where to plant his feet. There was so much stone in the sand that he actually had to actually search for spots that had water he could harden, rather than randomly-angled stone he was liable to trip over.

Then, finally, he cast [Message].

“This is Fionn, I’m done here. Where do you need me?”

He could have scried for it, but there were so many System-based effects flying around that he doubted it would have been very effective.

And it didn’t take long for him to receive an answer, so he reached out to the storm still raging outside and called upon its winds to carry him towards his next target.