Grand Game 581: Killing Machine 

My plan was simple. To kill as many nagas as I could and in as short a space of time as I could manage. And the best way to go about that was using my telepathic abilities. 

So, weaving psi, I cast.

You have activated fearsome aura.

You have failed to petrify any hostiles. 

Your targets are shielded from mental manipulation by the protective aura of a level 340 young void tree. 

I grimaced. The spell’s failure would only make what I had to do harder.

But the outcome of my casting was not entirely unexpected. I’d been hoping that being airborne would weaken some of the stygian Power’s abilities—or perhaps even remove them entirely. Alas, it seemed this would not be the case.

Still, I had other weapons in my arsenal. Drawing stamina, I cast anew.

You have cast vanish. You have failed to conceal yourself. 

Multiple hostile entities have detected you. 

“Damn spores,” I growled. Sector 30,199 was obviously still rife with them. I didn’t dare stand idle long enough to cast oblivion and get rid of the tiny creatures, though.

A pack of hydras were pounding toward me from the right, while from above, two dozen flying serpents had reversed course and were diving down. Then there were the nagas. Nearly all of them had broken off their attacks against the brotherhood and, instead, were turning their attention inward. 

To me.

Even as powerful as I was as an elder wolf—which was the true form I wore beneath the doppelganger disguise—there was no way I would survive a concentrated assault from forty-odd elites. Right then, I guess that means it’s time to split the enemy’s attention.

“Ghost, you better join me.”

The pyre wolf had been eagerly awaiting the instruction. “My pleasure, Prime,” she replied with bloodthirsty glee.

My familiar exploded onto the battlefield—literally.

She emerged fifty yards to my right, in almost the exact center of the incoming hydras and wreathed in flames. Billowing out, they consumed everything in a ten yard radius.

Ghost has cast explosive manifest, taking the form of a level 273 stygian pyre wolf.

27 hostile entities have been critically injured. 

6 hostile entities have been killed.

2 hostile entities have blocked your familiar’s attack.

The hydras shrieked as all unexpectedly they were subjected to searing flames. Their skin charred, their eyes melted, and their insides smoldered.

“Excellent work, Ghost,” I murmured. Leaving the pyre wolf to her mayhem, I swung to face the opposite direction. Six nagas were bearing down on me, their eyes gleaming with righteous fury and their shields brimming with energy. 

As if that will protect them. 

I didn’t turn to run. I didn’t use shadow jump to flee. Instead, I charged headlong across the dunes to meet the six, drawing stamina as I went.

You have cast ponderous step. You are now heavy (causing the ground to shake with each step) Duration: 1 minute. 

New energy coursed through me, giving my body new weight as the spell took effect. The ground underfoot heaved, trembling at each strike of my paw, and all about me in a ten yard radius the sand rippled and the dunes shook.

The six nagas slowed.

Perhaps, they finally realized what threat they faced, or perhaps the void tree was in their ear, telling them to flee. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. It was already too late for them.

Flying across the ground at breakneck speed, I rushed into the nagas’ midst.

2 of 6 stygian nagas have passed a physical resistance check. 

You have knocked down 4 stygian nagas, disrupting their concentration for 1 second.

A snaking head snapped down. Altering course nimbly, I evaded the attack.

A tail whipped through the air. Dropping to my belly, I let the slashing appendage pass harmlessly by.

Two nagas opened their mouths, spewing out a malign mix of noxious bile, hissing black fumes, and who knows what else. But I was done with dodging. Trusting to my void armor to fend off the attack, I leaped upward and straight at the closest.

2 x sprays of cloying death have hit you. Nether and death magic damage repelled!

A level 241 naga’s shield has blocked your attacks. 

Using my lupine skull like a battering ram, I struck the stygian elite I targeted head on. My attack failed to penetrate my foe’s shield, of course, but it did send the black bubble encasing it tumbling backward—and away from the rest of the naga pack. Which was what I’d been aiming for.

I didn’t drop back down to the ground either.

Instead, using three of my clawed paws to cling to the naga’s shield as tenaciously as any cat, I lashed at it with my final paw.

Five strikes. 

That was all it took. After five daemon-fast strikes empowered with overpowering blow, the naga’s shield burst like an overripe fruit. 

It should have come as no surprise, really. Many of the buffs the forerunners’ elites had cast upon me in sector 18,240 continued to bolster my attacks. Still, I was almost caught off guard as the black bubble collapsed beneath me before the thing had completed so much as a quarter turn.

But only almost.

Dropping down on the naga—which needless to say was even more astonished than I was—I locked my teeth around its neck. This time around, I didn’t bother with using my jaw to keep it subdued while I raked at it with my paws. There was no need for such. It had taken me this long, but I finally realized, courtesy of my allies’ buffs and my elder form, I was a veritable killing machine.

So, I did what I should have with the previous naga I’d killed.

I closed my jaws tight around my foe’s neck and yanked.

Scales compressed. Flesh tore. Bones shattered. And a split-second later, I found my mouth full of revolting meat.

You have killed a level 241 stygian naga with a fatal blow.

Urgh. Turning my head to the side, I spat, ejecting the stygian’s foul remains. In a single bite, I’d ripped away the greater part of the creature’s neck, leaving its head clinging to a strip of flesh too meager to hold it up. 

Damn, this may be easier than I’d—

A voidball has hit you. 

A voidball has hit you. 

A voidball has hit you.

Nether damage repelled! Void armor charge remaining: 85%. 

Void thief triggered! 

Warning: you have reached the limit of your stolen spells. Do you wish to replace any of your 3 tier 6 stolen spells with the tier 5 voidball spell? If you refuse, knowledge of the new spell will be lost.

I didn’t bother stealing the voidball spell. There was no point. I was already immune to nether damage, and besides the naga’s spell was less powerful than those I’d acquired from my allies.

Still, I couldn’t afford to be needlessly struck. Whipping around, I spied another dozen orbs of churning dark energy sailing toward me. They could be easily dodged, though. My gaze darted back to the remaining five nagas in the pack. The three voidballs had come from them.

They’ve had their shot. My turn now.

Rushing forward, I threw myself into the fray again.

✵ ✵ ✵

You have killed a level 241 stygian naga with a fatal blow.

You have killed a level 220 stygian naga with a fatal blow.

You have killed a level 233 stygian naga with a fatal blow.

…

…

I killed the five other nagas as easily as I had the first. The entire time I had the void tree screaming in my ear. He railed, ordered, threatened, and even begged me to stop.

I ignored him, of course.

The stygian Power was doing exactly what I wanted—rushing groundward. And if it was my killing of his creations that was spurring him on—and it seemed it was—I saw no reason to stop what I was doing.

The six elites’ deaths affected the battle in other ways too. 

The nagas’ response was the most noticeable. Not only did the three dozen remaining elites stop converging on me, they reversed course with pleasing alacrity and rushed south through the rest of the swarm. 

The nagas, it seemed, had decided to flee the battlefield.

On the young void tree’s orders, no doubt. Content to let them go, I turned my attention to Ghost. The pyre wolf was inflicting her own brand of mayhem on the swarm. Exploding in and out of the battle, she left a swath of mangled and twisted lesser stygian corpses in her wake.

Recognizing the pyre wolf for the threat she was, much of the swarm had refocused their attention on her. I was not concerned, though. Ghost’s nether and fire magic resistance had improved to the extent that she was immune to both, and even the nagas would have a hard time hurting her now. 

Besides, if the pyre wolf did get into any serious trouble, she could simply unmanifest and escape with impunity. No, Ghost was not in any danger, not from the lesser stygians, anyway.

My gaze drifted upward. The void tree, on the other hand, was another matter.

“Will you flee too?” I shouted. “Are you as craven as your creations?”

The stygian Power was not, in fact, fleeing. He was descending toward me at what I suspected was the fastest rate he could manage, but I didn’t let the truth dissuade me. 

“I… WILL… KILL… YOU… SLOWLY… FOR… THIS… WOLFLING!” 

I eyed the void tree speculatively. The wormlike mass of fleshy white appendages that hung below the Power—his roots—were writhing violently.

By all appearances my foe was furious—so furious, he was behaving irrationally and rushing heedlessly into danger. But could I trust to that? Or was this all some sort of ploy?

In my gut I knew it wasn’t.

For all his power and mental strength, my foe was no tactician. During my week-long probe of the void tree’s nest—former nest now, I supposed—he had erred in too many ways for all of it to have been an act. The two overlords he’d sent away, the two he had kept dormant, the lesser stygians whose lives he’d spent so frivolously, and even the harbingers who had walked into a trap on his orders, all pointed to one thing. 

The young void tree was arrogant.

So convinced was he of his own invincibility, that even now, after being forced to flee sector 18,240, he didn’t seem to truly comprehend the danger he was in. It was a mistake for which I would make sure he paid the ultimate price. But before that—I glanced back over my shoulder at the brotherhood army—there was the small matter of allies to attend to.