Anything ~ 40!

- Luke -

“Why, Luke? Why must you kill us all? We tried to make peace, we made so many offers… didn’t even one of them sound good?” The Murderhobo stood at the end of Zone twelve, his chest heaving as he brought Cookie into the air above his head with shaking hands. He stood over Shelly, the first Unicorn he had ever met, as she trembled in fear at the single human that had managed to reduce the grand herd to only a single living member; and even now was about to make them extinct.

“There’s a problem with that line of thinking.” Luke brought Cookie down on the unicorn’s head, letting the horn powder on its own before finishing his thought. “The problem is, you’re made of both loot and Exp.”

He collected the last of the powdered horn, then turned and went to take another step toward Cookie-

Duration of Hard Light Illusion ended. Mage Hunter’s Moccasins has reduced the duration of the spell by 60%.

Luke blinked and stared down into the swirling fog at the very edge of the Zone. He heard a voice behind him, and almost reacted right away; barely managing to remain still as if he was ensorcelled. “Oh, just kick him over the edge, will you? He’s been walking toward the edge for like… an hour!”

“Any direct attack will break him out of it, Francois!” A deep voice called to calm the herd. “After all that preparation… years of effort and planning? To think that the first trap he stumbled across was what got him. It’s almost a disappointment, but this is also a good reminder: never pity your enemies. Clearly, the fact that we overprepared is an excellent thing. Now we know what to do when setting up a stronghold in the next world we find that is full of meat!”

There was a huge wave of whinnying laughter, and Luke’s blood started to boil. Now that he thought about it, there had been a strange gap between entering the Zone and encountering the first of his targets. Everything had seemed so real, so bright, and he wasn’t able to be caught in hallucinations or mind-affecting spells; frankly, he might have been a tiny bit overconfident. “Hard light illusion. That means it was real, at least… kinda?”

“Did he say something?” Luke realized that he had made every single unicorn go silent. A hushed tone sounded from behind him, “Something is wrong, I’m kicking him over.”

“No!” Came the deeply toned refusal from Coral - too late. Luke dropped to the ground just as a pair of hooves swept over his head. He punched upward, hitting the horse body in the stomach and popping its intestine and midsection like an overfilled waterskin.

*Crack.* The Murderhobo stood, grasped the horn, and shattered it; allowing the powder to fly away in the breeze. The entire time, he maintained eye contact with the others in the herd. Silence filled the area for a bare moment, then a *whoosh* of flame erupted from the front line of unicorns, the one named Francois. “Kill it with the lance-flammes!”

“Oui!” The shouted reply was repeated up and down the front lines, as more and more fire was added to the assault. Luke didn’t take the attack head on, sailing over the flames with a rapid application of Bum Flash and Feather’s Fall. He was clipped by two streams of fire, but the heat seemed extremely muted.

Damage taken: 8 (Mage Hunter: 50% reduced magic damage taken.)

You’ve been hit by 2 spells! Speed increased by 20%! (Spell Hatred: Each spell that deals damage to you increases your movement speed by 10% for five seconds. Stacks up to three times.)

Luke would have lost his balance as he moved to attack upon touching down, but his Pristine Balance compensated perfectly. He lashed out with his Chain-blade Rope at point blank range, the mana-made blades extending hungrily from the weapon and slashing across three throats before being unable to reach any further.

Damage dealt: 518 slashing!

Damage dealt: 414 slashing!

Damage dealt: 331 slashing!

The first creature hit had its neck nearly entirely severed, and the next two were slain; albeit in a less spectacular fashion. Luke allowed a wild smile to appear on his face, the blood-soaked visage splitting to show perfectly white teeth. “Let’s find what the average minimum is to kill you.”

“How can it move like that?”

“It’s a demon! Destroy it!”

“Throw anything we have at that!”

“No!” The deeper unicorn voice, Coral, bellowed in an attempt to restore order, failing miserably as the panicked creatures started blastin’. “Get back in formation!”

As the first three horses fell, Luke took a moment to see what he was actually up against. There were only several hundred unicorns in the area, which made sense to him: horses could only reproduce at a maximum of once per year. They had only been using horses for their most powerful troops for a few decades, ever since Cookie arrived in such a spectacular fashion. They simply hadn’t had time to build an invasion force of unicorns alone.

Since each creature with a Skill Pearl would go *pop* when it crossed a Zone, they could only expand slowly, and there would be no backup coming. Yet, in the two years that they’d been ‘free’ to go to easier Zones, they had fully captured one and created a large airborne force on pteranodons. They spread like a disease, and Luke would make sure that they didn’t get the chance to go further.

A beam of icy blue light hit him full-on as he mused over the species’ impending doom, and he tumbled toosh over teakettle.

Damage taken: 21! Slowed by 80% for 10 seconds (reduced 60%) 4 seconds!

Speed increased by 30%! (Third stack of Spell Hatred.)

Luke jumped into the air in what felt like slow motion, somehow barely escaping the several beams that tore through the ground he had been knocked onto and turned earth to molten lava. He Bum Flashed and punched a unicorn in the face, his reduced speed reducing the damage significantly.

Damage dealt: 55 blunt!

The horse collapsed, unconscious but not dead. The Murderhobo reached for its horn, speeding up to normal halfway through the motion. He snapped off the horn and shoved the powder in his pocket, then moved to the next in a blur of motion that left afterimages in the eyes of the natural prey animals that the snails had taken control of. The strangely-accented unicorn bellowed, “Lanciers, chargez!”

Luke seemed to be everywhere at once as the horses flailed about in an attempt to kill him. Each time one would rear up and try to batter him with their hooves, he took the opportunity to punch them in the gut hard enough to send organs flying like party streamers. At one point he managed to grasp an entire intact spine, and used it to whip a horse a single time before both the bone and his target broke into several pieces.

A thundering of hoofbeats caused the first wave of magic-focused unicorns to sprint away, and thickly-armored ‘unicorn lancers’ charged at Luke horn-point first. His first thought was to punch the horns off like he had with the others, but some instinct caused him to instead Flash to the rear of the creatures just as they reached the point where they would have hit him.

*Rumble.*A shining barrier sprung into place, converting the force of the charge into momentum. It scooped tons of land up and into the air, chucking it bodily over the edge of the cliffside that was the edge of the floating land and into the open air. Luke grunted, turned, and ran deeper into the Zone. “Too close, that one.”

“Phalanx!” The deep voice called, and this time Luke was able to lock onto the creature shouting orders. It was the unicorn that had brought him to Cookie’s pool and kicked him in when he first arrived: Coral. It appeared that he was in charge of the magical side of things, and perhaps this ‘Francois’ was in charge of the lancers?

Dozens of unarmored unicorns ran to join the two large ones, who were then were surrounded on three sides by the Lancer variety. “Prepare the …friendship ball!”

“No, not the Friendship ball!” One of the weaker-willed unicorns shouted. “We don’t have the required control-”

*Splat.* Coral’s horn whipped across the speaking horse’s neck, and the unicorn died in an instant.

Seeing that there would be no escape from duty besides death, each of the mage-focused unicorns’ horns began glowing brightly as their mana interacted and poured out in front of them, swirling and collecting into spell circles. Luke saw what was happening and charged at them, ready to Flash to the side as needed. High-level spells had plenty of energy here, and he had no doubt that there would be very little preparation time needed for whatever was coming his way. “Friendship ball prepared, Grand Sorcerer!”

“Sorcerer? So what?” the Murderhobo scoffed as he sped up to his maximum sprint speed. “I’m a Source-cerer. No idea what that means, but mine’s better!”

“Unleash!” The Coral’s horn bellowed into its surroundings. The collection of unicorns were hidden behind a flash of light that put the sun on his home plane to shame. Luke couldn’t see where he was going, he couldn’t see where the source of the light was even slightly. The light expanded into a sphere around him, and soon replaced the world at large and dimmed. All he could see were rainbows and unicorns: utterly terrifying at this point.

“Tier ten. Domain: Friendship Ball.” Coral grand unicorn sorcerer summed up the situation grimly, his voice echoing strangely in the closed-off area. He locked eyes with Luke, who for the first time ever realized that these horse’s eyes were both facing to the front of its face, instead of the sides like normal horses. He was sure that meant something, but he decided to worry about it later. “Would you please do the submitting to us so that we don’t need to friendship the you into meat paste?”

Luke replied by charging forward at the collection of unicorns that had been pulled into this strange sub-space. They whinnied with laughter as he closed in on him, then scattered like grains of sand in the wind, a triple-helix of color-shifting light propelling them faster than he had ever seen any of these creatures move before. They literally left afterimages in his eyes, and Luke could track the movement of arrows as they left their strings without issue.

“Friendship charge!” The warrior unicorns, lancers, shot into the sky and shaped out a star formation before swooping down and flying at him horn-first. This time, Luke was hard-pressed to get out of the way; barely managing to get above them and missing his return attack as they stampeded past. As it turned out, that had been their aim all along. The star that they had drawn out was following in their wake, and crashed into his body: turning into an inferno as soon as he was within the confines of the outline, passing by him just as quickly as it had arrived.

Damage taken: 110 flame! (yes, that is with the damage reduced by 50%!)

Health critical!

Luke flopped to the ground as a charred husk, his body barely able to listen to his commands with so much of his flesh burned off. Only the fact that he had a speed boost from taking spell damage allowed him to pull his now-leaking waterskin to what had once been his lips and drink. His body began reconstituting, but the half-full drink wasn’t enough to bring him back to perfect.

Health: 125/377.

“Not. Ideal.” Luke hopped to his feet, and dove to the side, following that up with a Flash as a sketched-out heart slammed into the space he had been standing. The white-light-soaked ground cratered, sending dirt and debris into the air around him. “Got it… not in a sub-space. Just can’t see the ground. Not good. Where was the edge…?”

“High Powered Friendship!” The deep voice echoed across the area, and triple-helices sprouted from dozens of unicorns in the sky. All of them were converging on him, zig-zagging through the air like-

“That’s about to turn into lightning. Guess that’s it for me.” Luke sighed as the first of the unicorns reached him. Instead of dodging, the unarmored unicorn hit him directly and sent him tumbling.

Damage taken: 11 blunt.

Luke bounced and was on his feet in the next instant as the air turned to plasma where the unicorn passed. It seemed as surprised as he was that the human hadn’t been burnt out from the inside, which made Luke smile darkly.

“I see.” He cracked his knuckles and walked toward the incoming unicorns still in lightning-formation mode. “No dodging allowed. I can work with that. You want friendship? Come get some hugs.”