The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha 239 Two Hundred And Thirty-Nine – More Rules Abuse

We swept into the inner plaza.

That ring of vivic energy burning on the walls above us, ALL around us, was particularly impressive. Mental thumbs-up went all around. Wayfair led an appreciate round of applause from those watching the show.

And the looks on the drow's faces as The Trembling Song went up behind them, even louder and clearer than before. The Wake in the sky was right above them, exploded widely at the presence of so much fresh vivus, adding in some light so we proceeded from deep gloom to shadowy twilight, and getting brighter. All those spells going off probably really stood out in the darkness, active Helices sure did, but everyone on our side had Devilsight on Clarity Masks active, so n.o.body really cared what the illumination level was.

Still, if it improved enough, the drow were going to have light sensitivity issues, which would be absolutely hilarious.

They were totally shocked, totally aghast.

Worse, there were seven of us... and our weapons were bigger than the dual-wielders who'd been Cutting their Lives away.

Ancientaxe's Helices of old gray and faded black led the way. On his right, the burning rainbow hues of Brother Firesword meshed flawlessly with the swirling, fluid whorls of aqua and pearl and deep blues of Waterspear. On his left, the deathly pale and inky black of Bonescythe looked like death before a mountain as they perfectly synched with the dimly glittering crystalline arcs of Mountainhammer.

Seven people, each claiming a swathe fifteen feet wide. Technically, we could have done twenty, but no reason to be greedy.

Oh Ohhhhhh oh, Tremble, they come...

We didn't follow the same exact path, as part of it was empty, and that would be wasting kill-yardage. Nah, we all juked left by the same amount, and then we slammed into the drow, who had just about enough time to scream before we crashed into them.

The primary armor of these guys was chainmail and buckler, only the officers wearing breastplates or anything approaching plate.

All our Weapons were functioning at +VIII, and chain+buckler is effectively +5 AC. In other words, we were ripping through them as if they weren't wearing any armor at all.

Ruby-blood banefire tore through them, making crippling injuries lethal. Heads and limbs flew, torsos were severed, chests eviscerated, throats slit, skulls crushed, chests crunched, and a line of drow over a hundred feet wide virtually exploded before us.

To keep things quick, Fall, Sparky, and Wayfair were targeting those who looked like officers or tougher, administering that polite application of 20-30 damage that would crash their Soak or Health to just below one-hit level as they staggered from getting a bolt or spike in the shoulder, gut, chest, or occasionally a lucky shot to eye or throat.

Between the three of us, that was about fifteen shots going off every six seconds. I was acting as a firing line in addition to a Cleave-Training fountain of blood.

Just to annoy them, I had my Halo Crown out, with which Wayfair being Bound turned into regal succubi horns on both sides of my head, as well as stubs in front and back.

They glowed as bright as the sun. I was saying something about light sensitivity, right? Now amp that up to rock concert level of flare and throbbing brilliance, combined with Tremble, Quaver, and all the Weapons here beating with the Song at over a hundred decibels, Minstrel-ki and magic totally dominating their pitiful screams and battle-calls, and yeah, this was a complete Heaven Falling Down On You nightmare for these guys, who were already half out of their gourds.

You could tell from their eyes that what they were seeing as they looked at us wasn't us, but something worthy of a spores-generated fever dream. Throb, throb, throb...

Oh, we had devasight, too, no effect on us, nothing to worry about here.

Straight ahead we plowed, behind a curtain of banefire, Helices, and blood, accompanied by some kicking, thumping music only slightly marred by the constant screams and sounds of bone crunching, flesh parting, and metal screeching. Blades so sharp they were slicing s.p.a.ce slid past, blunt impacts so forceful they were pulping cells and shattering souls crushed home. If the arms swinging them started flagging a little, there were no worries; a Revitalizing Strike from a.r.s.enal was trotted out, a drow died, and bright cheerful energy piped the wielder right up as if it were a new day, and got him back into the mood for endless slaughter.

Rather addictive, really.

------

Rather greedily, the first team of Brothers had made it to the teams on the inside of the formation, the best of the best. Drow Werewolves, Lesser Exemplar Hagborn Drow, Pseudonatural Drow, Umbral half-Fiend Drow and Lesser Exemplar Drow Werewolves, the cream of the Melee crop, awaited them there. Interspersed with them were succubi and incubi, mezza and nycodaemons, more Temptation, Gluttony, and Sloth demons... and hey, were those elite cambion drow on nightmares? How cool!

They thought they'd be able to take to the air and charge everything with life-draining lances or just shoot them down from the air. Indeed, quite a few of those with wings, as in almost all of them, decided it was a prudent course of action to take to the air and get out of reach of the wave of murder proceeding towards them. All of them had ranged attacks of one kind or another, and soon arrows were falling from above in number, trying to pick out the Void Brothers in the confusion below, or actually indiscriminately ma.s.s-firing down into the mess and confusion below trying to hit something.
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The Wind and the Arrow was naturally the only Brother who could tie his Helix to a ranged attack. The other three just shrank their frontage and he started returning fire calmly from down below, while the swirl of their interlinked Helices really did make it hard for archers to find a target in the ongoing mess, and their severely upgraded defenses, including anti-ranged Augment Stones attached to their Bracers, made hitting them even with ma.s.sed arrows almost impossible.

Arrows wrapped in misty whorls flashed up, and found hearts and brains with disconcerting ease. The nightmares were no threat without their riders, so Windarrow just sniped them out of their saddles, one by one, daring them to come down closer and dare the Sharding attacks that would come up to slice them down. Sure, he was only returning one arrow for every hundred or two coming down, but the difference was, his were hitting and killing, and there's nothing for morale like walking your shots down a row of archers and daring them to stand in position as the man next to them is picked off...

Of course, it was actually just a delaying tactic to annoy them and disrupt the arrow fire long enough for me and Briggs to get there. His shots stopped a few casual seconds before our Interdiction, full Stillflight in effect, hit them, and then they, their wings, levitation magic, smoking nightmare hooves, I-wanngo-ethereal-mom-aieeee, and such were all falling from the sky as they screamed.

Being shameless opportunists, they were also our main targets as we came rolling up. They were barely staggering to their feet and trying to get out from the corpses of falling nightmares when we came up on them, led by Sparky and Wayfair's enthusiastically accurate spiked Tail fire. Demons screamed with fear and drow wailed in disbelief, both quickly quashed by the light and sound show going on, swallowed by light and terror and spit out as corpses going vivic.

The first team s.h.i.+fted course so smoothly it looked ch.o.r.eographed, and the rest of the landbound riders who came charging up behind them suddenly found themselves heading into a swirl of Helices and coming out the other side impossibly dead. Our team pursued, sandwiched the elite riders without a care, and as they tried to fight and live we were moving over, under, past, and through them, with a certain fuzzy fellow launching nightmare corpses flying as Endure patiently ticked and tocked from right to left, as fast as any sword and equally remorseful to any impediments in its path.

More to the point, the bone-crunching impacts were right on the beat, and the drow and Fiends instinctively froze when they saw it coming to defend themselves, which was totally fine with Briggs; it made it much easier to crunch them.

Nothing below a Twelve had a chance of surviving Briggs' Hammer. He was easily breezing through 150 points of damage a swing, which made no sense using physics, it just meant that not only did every blow have an unG.o.dly, magic-a.s.sisted amount of kinetic energy behind it, that energy went to where it did the most harm. Nothing below a thousand pounds had any chance of keeping its feet at the impact, and inevitably went sailing off in one direction or another, caroming through the crowd and upsetting any semblance of a formation or teamwork that they had. Any drow bowled over and fallen was just a victim waiting to be walked over, which was precisely what happened to them on the way.

---

My own progress was impressive, true, and the expressions if they managed to make out Wayfair's half of my face were always interesting to note. But I had done my work well. The Void Brothers had claimed their Grandmastery of Cutting Life/Time, grabbed the Cleave Tree of Feats to make it work, and had Geared Up. They still weren't anywhere as Deep as I was, but they had the core of the slaughter build of a melee specialist down cold, and that would just lead to more depth in the future, catching up with Tats and Feats and whatnot.

Had I told them about getting Forsaken Matrix Levels to further slow them down? Well, no. At least, I didn't think so.

To be honest, Matrix Levels were a teamwork play. They did almost nothing for me unless I Nogged them, and the Archmatrix Level bonus spells and stuff couldn't be Nogged, so there was limited usefulness and a cap on them regardless. For the amount of Karma I was putting in, the benefits were truly marginal to myself. If I hooked up with a Bound Spellcaster, they would certainly love me to death for all the extra Magic I could loan them...

I guess I was just a completionist. I mean, I could have just been pouring all that Karma into Evolutionary Levels and jacking my Stats to the moon. Those Mu Spores had been sweet for the Karma, after all, and I was a bit miffed that the biggest demons I could kill were those six Mariliths s.p.a.ced around the Obelisk screaming out telepathic orders.

I also knew that I could probably step through to Eleven any time I wanted. The Warlord Karma I was getting over these past days had been monstrous, given the amount of slaughter we'd been doing... and I'd been a.s.signing it to that monstrous Karmic Wall stopping us from stepping to Eleven. I could feel it slacking, and I had Wayfair Right There with her innate +14 Attack Bonus for me to study and usher me through to newer, higher insights.

Buuuuuut... I had tons more Levels to get, and there wasn't any real reason for me to get them as an Eleven and pay the increased Karma costs. So throwing my Warlord Karma at the Second Ceiling and filling it so I could click it whenever, and putting my own Karma towards all these other Levels I had to take, made tons more sense.

And now, now I had a new goal.

Only a flicker of will as we crashed into the gathered demonic forces there, and the flas.h.i.+ng of ruby-red banefire changed to red-black for the Evilborn at the same moment. Vivus exploded faster, louder, and improbable Dire Weapons crashed and shattered, burning with their masters as the dumbfounded Fiends realized that their eyes really hadn't been deceiving them, those drow being slaughtered really weren't that weak... and these Void Brothers, and they definitely knew who Void Brothers were, were just that horrifyingly strong.

They Trembled, we came.

There was a cras.h.i.+ng and crunching of impact, a marilith half-snake six-armed terror of the battlefield was smashed back off her feet by Endure, all of her went flying past the other demons, who exploded into vivus in blurred arcs of swords, and she crashed into the Obelisk, fell back rather limply to the ground. Streaks of light flowed past and over the bound Wolf that was in the way, and she was Finished as more crushed and burning demonic bodies slammed into the uncaring stone all around her.

The wave of combat turned in a circle without stopping, and the Umbral Half-Fiend Drow, boosted on magic mushrooms with the requisite speed, strength, height, extra arms, burning hands, or whatever, screamed and surged to meat them. Meet them? Heh...

Them, because I was sitting down behind the wolf, artfully placed dead demons with thick carca.s.ses burning on either side of me. Screened by more stacked corpses, a Compression Jug with my Exsanguinating Tube attached was on the edge of the shallow moat of blood, and sucking that precious Exemplar juice up like there was no tomorrow.

Sparky and Mayfair joined up to jerk the marilith towards me, and Sparky nailed her to my Marks with the Tail. Quaver was currently being held by Brother Firesword, Briggs was holding onto Tremble, Briggs had subbed in his own Halo Crown to keep up the light show, and so only the shooting was gone... but I had, ah, let that tail off during the last hundred meters...

Time to free me a really, Really, REALLY, dangerous Dawg.