NOVEL FROG Chapter 337 - Lord Sloth Reveals His Hand
You have successfully dodged Sniper Blaster Fire!
You have avoided Icy Barrage!
Lead revenant takes fire ball in your stead!
Perception check made!
That which you so desperately study, you finally understand!
And much to her surprise and delight, Lilly DID finally understand as she rapidly approached the lip of the caldera filled with hard-eyed goblin mercenaries who were only now beginning to flinch as they faced down over a hundred Shadow Pumas and several thousand revenants charging forward at the exact same speed as the Pumas… or, unbeknownst to them, the tiny bunny carefully nestled in silky dark fur.
It was surprised disbelief and fear that made another dozen goblin mercs turn on the shimmering forcefields that Unified Perception made clear could resist both kinetic and elemental damage. Pretty much anything in the electromagnetic spectrum, and where mana, in the form of elemental attacks, intersected it. Which meant that their high-tech energy shields could counter weaker bolts of fire, lightning, and blaster fire, in addition to countering very physical spears of ice, arrows, or bullets. Whether it would effect Blood Lightning, Lilly wasn’t sure, and sure as fuck it would do nothing against Psionic Blasts or just filling an entire region with plasma from all directions, but BunBun hardly cared. At that moment she understood the shield’s nature, the elements of its construction coming together as if it were just an extension of her runic arts.
She might never be able to string together a half dozen runic words of power into a chant on the fly like her sire could, but damn if she couldn’t deduce the building blocks of any spell she dared to invest a portion of her level-up points, potency, or soul into mastering, and claim it as her own.
Congratulations! You have successfully deduced the components of: Tier 2 Force-Shield!
This shield has FIVE Runic components! Ward / Elemental / Physical / Shield / Focus!
The cost to reinterpret this technomancer construct into it’s Primary Runic components is a portion of your endless potential. 3 Character points worth!
You have had a breakthrough!
You have a successfully forged the spell: Force Ward! (Intego – Protect!)
This spell generates a scutum-sized translucent shield that wards against all physical and elemental attacks! Concentration… minimal! With a basic Runic Spell Forger or Force Ward skill check (use whichever is higher) you may shape this shield as you see fit, and will receive no penalty when using Force Ward when casting spells using shouts or your ears!
Mana & Spiritual energy drain is 1 point per minute divided by Runic Spell Forger Rank + Force Ward skill rank. - Note: additional Mana and Spiritual energy will be drained with every attack countered! Drain is equal to damage done divided by Runic Spell Forger Rank + Force Ward skill rank!
Force Ward is currently: Rank 1!
Lilly wasted no time. “Intego!” She cried out, surprised despite herself to find a shield of force forming right in front of her, leaving room only for her ears to peak out as they crackled with crimson lightning, which might have been a mistake when half a dozen goblins squealed and pointed her way.
“Kill the rabbit! It channels magic! It’s a Classer!”
Immediately all fire was focused on her for the seconds her revenants shifted into position, and her shield got to prove its worth as it flared with sudden brightness.
Force Ward successfully counters 5 Tier-1 Blaster Rifles!
Force Ward successfully counters 2 Ice Spears!
Force Ward successfully counters 3 Lightning Bolts!
Force Wards have stopped a total of 574 damage!
Mana & Spiritual energy cost of 19 points drained from your reserves!
Force Ward is now Rank 2.
Your Shadow Puma has been crippled. Finesse check (effortlessly) made.
You have switched mounts!
Your revenants have now turtled around you!
Lilly couldn’t help but flash a fierce smile as she leaped through the air to a puma running at a sharp angle around their targets that the goblins just couldn’t track. Because the time her enemies took focusing on her shield meant that they hadn’t taken those precious handful of seconds to flee the revenants who had just leaped off the steel cable and were now charging right for the suddenly flatfooted goblins.
Lilly couldn’t deny a sudden fierce sense of exultation, now knowing exactly how her sire had felt whenever he crashed into his foes and the air rang with the grunts and screams and sprays of hot blood from bodies tossed about like rag dolls as her foes were pincushioned by dozens of massive 25-foot long spears from revenants charging many times the speed of ancient knights as her own sprinting shadow pumas leaped right over the dismayed goblins while they drowned in a tidal wave of charging revenants.
Congratulations! You have successfully shattered goblin regiment!
Multiple revenants have leveled up! Necromancer experience earned!
The screech of strained metal killed whatever exultation Lilly might have otherwise felt, her panicked gaze all but disregarding the final handful of fleeing goblins as her eyes desperately strove to find whatever was controlling that cable, suppressing a groan when her worse fears were realized, the giant cable leading right to the soaring tower of rock and bitter steel at the highest point of the caldera. She cursed softly under her breath before patting the glossy silken fur of her newest mount.
“Well, girl, I guess we got an entrance to find! But before that, if those fucks actually think I’m going to disregard their sorry little fleeing assess and let them live long enough to take out my family… because of course that’s what will happen... the fuck if I’ll let that bitter note play out!”
And to her absolute horror, more than one retreating goblin actually flinched, clearly making out her words and reminding her that even 40 Perception was pretty absurd compared to a human.
Which, as far as Lilly was concerned, meant that there was only one option left on the table.
Of course that’s when the cluster of four goblins glaring their hate and hissing in her direction turned on their force wards to full… and Lilly got to see just how tough the spell she had invested 3 points was in it’s original form.
“Sanguis Fulmen!”
Lilly frowned, strangely disappointed when three collapsed as smoking charred corpses when one massive bolt of crimson lightning managed to take out all of them, save for a single terrified goblin remaining.
“No, please, mercy!” Squealed the one surviving goblin.
Lilly nodded. “Sure! Just as soon as you give me your oath that you never once killed a human, or took pleasure in their dying screams… fucker!”
The mercenary’s eyes bulged in dismay, quickly cowering behind his force shield which did absolutely nothing to stop his head from exploding with all the force and fury of a skull-sized container filled with C-4.
Lilly couldn’t help smiling in fierce satisfaction at that. “Good. Controlled destruction DOES mean more than just neutering my psionic rupture. I can channel it for an extremely focused eruption… or let it spread out to maximum effect, whatever that might be.”
Lilly grinned down at her mount. “Isn’t that awesome?”
Her shadow puma happily purred.
“I agree completely.” Her momentary cheer instantly turned to panic when the increasingly strained sound of grinding gears and steel stretched past the limit made it clear that the goblins were just minutes away from sending sixty thousand souls, including her mother and brother plummeting to their deaths before they could make it to the other side.
“Fuck! We gotta get moving. But before that… how about we invite our hosts to join us, so we actually have a chance of surviving this clusterfuck?”
Lilly turned around, glaring at the fallen goblins, waiting only long enough for a pair of revenants to strip them of the blasters and force shield bracelets that she hoped at least a few former captives could use before her voice rang through the caldera.
“Surge, centuria! Ave praefectus abedimus!”
Lilly felt a glorious surge of exultation shiver through her soul, quite unlike the runic magic she had poured so much of herself into mastering so damned quickly that her psyche was still shuddering with the forced-rank reverberations. But this? This came as naturally as sipping ice-cold lemonade that had that perfect mixture of sweet tartness on a hot summer’s day.
She could sense every one of those weak-willed confused goblins mercenaries jolt to horrified, agonized clarity as a choice was suddenly before them. To embrace oblivion and whatever torments awaited their kind after years of callously throwing innocent victims into the soul-crucibles used to forge the most vile steel imaginable… or to embrace the memories of countless sarissophoroi now linked to this world after this realm had been ascent-linked to Earth, and serve her as loyal soldiers until the final days.
It was almost startling how fervently the rather short spearmen with their fifteen-foot long spears snapped to attention before immediately racing to match her stride, and it was downright chilling to sense just how fiercely said fallen goblins wished to delay their ultimate punishment.
For Lilly herself, it had been like half-waking in a daze from a languorous dream when she first found herself coming to as a bunny. It had taken a bit of TLC from the hero who brought her back before she truly felt in the game. Before she felt truly alert, alive, happily caffeinated and in the moment once more. For undead to show such raw emotion so soon after being raised, especially when most of her other troops still seemed to be in a dreaming daze, made it damned clear that this place was so vile that deities invested in punishment were ready to snatch her soldiers just seconds after their death.
And the worst part of it was, that if things were truly that bad… there could be absolutely no doubt the twisted nightmare that Greed had hinted at had been anything but simple showmanship to manipulate her hero.
The black soul steel being used to make Goblin starships really did promise eternal torment to all the lost victims who fell into its white-hot cauldrons. And her mother and brother and all the other exhausted captives were STILL being hurried along the cable… and she dare not rush her revenants any faster, lest they fall in or the hapless prisoners even now being carted across with pumas patrolling their perimeter might not survive the trip if the revenants went too fast.
You have successfully embraced your necromantic heritage! As is the sire, so is his immaculately conceived daughter!
“Sorry, I’m not that pure, and I know who my daddy was...” Lilly murmured, deciding not to dwell on the ramifications of what the System was implying, just happy that her first fifty or so revenants had been raised without a hitch, feeling as natural as breathing did, which was weird, since she really shouldn’t need to breathe at all, yet somehow… she did.
It was breath that caught in her throat as she rapidly approached the cavernous maw of the citadel front gate, no desperate search to find it. Of course the massive portcullis was abruptly slammed shut in her face as countless scores of howling hooting goblins revealed themselves from crenelations and arrow slits to shriek, cackle, and pelt her and her troops with everything from blaster fire to lightning to chunks of basalt and iron ore.
For the second time in her brief existence, Lilly embraced the slow-time battle state that had served her master so well. Even if it was just a tiniest fraction of what it could be. Yet the effect was still noticeable as all the goblins began to move at half their former considerable speed as she took in the dozens of glaring faces before while shouting a single pair of words.
“Integro!” Instantly a half-dome of force formed over her sides and head, exactly as she willed it, a heartbeat before he or her puma could be pummeled with chunks of stone and lazer fire.
“FRAGOR!” She screamed, her lips curling in a fierce grin despite the peril of her situation when the thick iron grillwork of the gate before her, metal she was pretty sure was a hell of a lot stronger than any normal steel had any right to be, was abruptly torn free of its mountings to explode deep into the citadel before her, accompanied by the screams of countless shrieking goblins that had been torn apart with the gate’s passage, almost as if she had shot a cannon ball in her wake.
Congratulations! Inhuman Finesse, Quickness, and Perception means you have achieved Battle Time! - You already know what you need to do to think and act even faster than you are right now!
“Yeah, I know. I need higher Finesse, since my Quickness is almost double that and my Perception is off the fucking charts,” she muttered to herself as further messages and a flood of potency pinged against her soul.
You have successfully countered shrapnel and blaster fire barrage! 19 Mana & Qi drained.
Force Ward is now Rank 3!
You have slaughtered 7 Goblins between levels 20 – 32 and critically injured 6 additional goblins!
Experience earned!
You have achieved level 9.
Congratulations! You have achieved level 10!
You have elected not to infuse your core, because you are a revenant echoing in your sire’s footsteps without any core to saturate! You might be more alive than dead at this point, with the blood of contenders now flowing through your veins, but until you take a human form and actually join the living once more, you have neither a Lower, Middle or Upper Dantian to infuse, nor any future as a cultivator!
But what does that matter? You already have Two Master Classes that allow you to embrace the height of absurdity, just like your father!
Congratulations! Consistent and steady slaughter of multiple opponents higher level than you has actually earned you a single rank in Psionic Rupture achieved the hard way! (And maybe a few final tips from a Mind Lord just as eager to conquer your planet as Aurelia herself!)
Psionic Rupture is now Rank 21.
Aren’t you proud? It’s going to take a hell of a lot more killing from hereon out to raise this skill any further without doing it the way you do so well!
Lilly’s eyes bulged in surprise.
She had come to understand from her master’s sardonic remarks that the System had a bit of an edge. Or at least his interface’s interpretation led Eric to that conclusion.
But she had no idea it was such a smug asshole.
“Charge those motherfuckers, men! We take them out fast and hard, and we do it now!” Lilly screamed, deciding that she didn’t give a fuck how snarky the System was, as long as she could get stronger and blast the FUCK out of all the goblins that had dragged her family to literal hell, as far as she was concerned.
When her eyes caught sight of the shrieking injured mercenaries scattered across the hard stone ground, she had only one response to give them as her ears thrummed and crackled with the white-hot currents of her fury.
“Sanguis Fulmen! Sanguis Fulmen!”
She flashed a bleak smile when a single bolt thicker than her present body tore through the air before exploding at the point of impact, utterly annihilating the closest trio of bodies as ricocheting crimson currents tore through the remaining goblins, simultaneously stopping their hearts and tearing free additional life force that came roaring back to Lilly in a glorious rush of fierce potency and sweet sweet healing potency that jolted her to glorious alertness like her favorite cup of Wildstar Expresso.
“Fucking hell yeah, no additional perks needed, save raw fucking power!” She squealed with delight, doing somersaults on her purring mount before glaring at the fresh dozen kills.
“Rise, motherfuckers! Rise and serve! Your general commands it!”
And what a wondrous rush it was when mangled limbs straightened as ruptured entrails slithered back into self-sealing abdomens before the dozen newly raised goblins high tech mercenary equipment which she had no time to claim warped and twisted into ancient bronze armaments and deadly long spears, their eyes now blazing with unwavering devotion for the only thing that stood between them and torment unending for their part in the most hideous of crimes.
“Fucking hell yeah! Even dozen!”
At that moment her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Twelve? Seven plus six equals… fuck!”
Lilly, having inherited more than a bit of her master’s paranoia, spun around with a scream, jumping at pointless shadows as she shrieked the word that made the closest shadow about to plunge his Bronze-tier poison covered dagger into her flesh.
“FRAGOR, motherfucker!”
The goblin hissed, gazing with genuine surprise when monstrous quickness of at least sixty, a true speed specialist for a level 30 who was still strong and hardy enough to actually use their strength, still wasn’t enough to match Lilly Quickness of 90, to say nothing of 250 Perception, her ears alerting her to the nature and direction of her peril even as prey instinct demanded that she MOVE!
But it was the predator with her that demanded she roar her challenge with a word potent enough to cause the startled assassins eyes to keep on bulging until they popped right out of his head as his entire brain underwent a pressure surge more intense than the waters of the Marina Trench, his skull exploding like a shrapnel grenade, and not a single bone fragment touched Lilly or her stoic revenants.
“And you’re one asshole I’m not bringing back. Burn in hell, you fucking fuck!”
Lilly snarled and spat, pretending that her Rank 31 Spirit Mastery and too sensitive ears wasn’t allowing her to hear the doomed goblin’s soul immediately doing that, or the hideous cackle of beings that had absolutely no place in the physical world or claiming any souls that had even a patina of grace tied to their form.
Insight check successful! You’ve had an epiphany!
“And that’s why the damned go to hell,” She whispered in sudden horrific understanding. “It’s not necessarily that any benevolent god is rescuing or redeeming us, at least not in the version of Earth that I call home. It’s that any soul with at least a bit of decency, compassion, and love… the gentle traits that callous politicians, used car salesmen, and criminals mock and belittle, are glowing with such brilliance that the truly corrupt nightmares beyond the mortal realms can’t touch them!”
Lilly shook her head, not sure if the desperate screams and cackles she heard were real or delusion, or if her flash of insight was brilliance or armchair bullshittery, and ultimately it didn’t have any bearing on what she had to do next. Because if she didn’t hurry the fuck up and stop that cable from being unmoored, cut, severed, or whatever the hell they were going to do… everyone she loved would be suffering torment when their souls were fused to cursed steel, regardless of how naughty or nice they had been before.
It was a doom that was all but assured, unless she fucking acted NOW!
“Come on! Up the far stairwell. Go, go, go!” Lilly said, her eyes widening with an odd mixture of both familiarity and awe.
Awe, because a Contender Conquest Interface Map had just populated the upper left corner of her mind’s eye, with a blinking light letting her know EXACTLY where she had to go for quest completion. Familiarity because her sense of direction was a hell of a lot better than Eric’s, and she had helped him with his own conquest map a heck of a lot more than either of them bothered admitting aloud. “Boy do I hope that idiot’s not getting lost while trying to take over New York or whatever the hell that glorious goofball is doing,” she thought aloud before turning all her desperate focus to the task at hand.
Racing up the stairwell just as fast as she could, her Force Ward crackling with all the mana she could pour into it, just knowing that she was charging headlong into a trap, not giving a fuck that it was a trap, and damn well determined to make the assholes trying to kill her pay as she slammed 11 points in both Spiritual Energy and Arcane Potential, shooting both Mana & Qi pools to 492 as she screamed out the words to spells that would change absolutely everything as she burst up the stairwell in a shower of ricocheting crimson lightning tearing through another half dozen goblins before finding herself on the top of the keep, facing at least hundred of the fuckers, no less than a full dozen goblin shaman / barristers among them. And all of them were sneering at her with such contempt with their puce and lime green robes clashing so terribly with itself that it was a mental assault all on its own, even as the full dozen surviving shamans threw a shower of warrants for her arrest and damnation in one coordinated assault.
“You have broken treaty and covenant with the Terran Council! You are forbidden from being here, abomination! You are forbidden from fighting back, resisting arrest, or even existing! So be damned for your transgressions and face the ultimate punishment, as ALL humanity and your necromantic abominations must do for committing the ultimate crime of occupying a planet that WE the Bloodtear Syndicate, have rightfully claimed as our own by right of Greed, Malfeasance, and Mastery!”
Lilly blinked, bemused to find that the mercenaries were no longer among them. There was nothing but the dozen arcane barristers and what seemed dozens of lesser goblins glaring their hate as together they concentrated on a crackling Force Ward beyond anything they had managed to summon before.
The largest and most bloated of the goblins, face covered in ugly red pustules as he floated above the rest of his cohorts like a certain mad baron, cackled like the demonic mongrel he truly was, the tip of his twisted staff of bone, twisted runes, and torment glowing a vile shade of pustulent green. Yet even that abomination couldn’t hide the strain beneath his twisted smile as Lilly’s revenants continued to pour in behind her. First by the dozens, then by the hundreds.
“Enough!” the creature roared. “Your crimes are undeniable, indefensable, and irrefutable, thus you have no defense or recourse save to SUBMIT To your master, Lord Sloth of the Fire Pits! Master of steel and pain!”
Lillian’s eyes widened, shocked out of her dark bemusement as she found herself gazing at the true mastermind of this entire hellhole. The sneering puppetmaster who, like Greed, was responsible for countless thousands of desperate starving shell-shocked victims forced to endure cruelty beyond imagination.
The source of her mother’s agony and her brother’s despair.
“It was you,” Lilly whispered even as the ground began to hum, so fiercely were the ears on her tiny head vibrating, having hopped off the Shadow Puma who could no longer bear the weight and fury of Lillian’s soul.
“You did this.”
The goblins’ eyes lit up with unmistakable glee. “Yes indeed, foolish little bunny! The greatest Starship manufacturing center and refinery in the entire sector with reinforced plating rated for Deep Bronze integrity at absolute rock bottom prices was my dream child and mine alone, cursed creature!”
The entire goblin cohort clapped with approval at those words, save for perhaps a dozen groaning goblins who clearly maintained the core of the massive Force Barrier protecting them all.
Find Weaknes Skillcheck successful!
You are now attempting to Taunt your opponents!
Lilly crossed her tiny arms. “You think you’ve won, you puffed up troll? You failed so hard that all of Earth’s contenders are laughing their asses off at what a joke the Bloodtear Syndicate truly is, after Greed over-extended so fucking hard, trying to stop my master! You thought you could burden us with sixty thousand doomed children? Well the Sylvan Alliance is now up 400,000 soldiers, fuckwad! How do you like them apples, shit-for-brains? You and Greed have already lost! I’m just here to clean up lose ends.”
Lilly girded herself for a furious rebuttal, ready to unleash absolute hell the moment Sloth’s minions lowered the barrier to punish her for rubbing their failures in their faces.
But much to her surprise and growing dismay, they did nothing of the sort.
In fact they were smiling. Eyes twinkling with what a horrified BunBun realized was downright malicious glee, none more than Lord Sloth whose booming laughter echoed across the battlements as he continued sinuously moving his clawed fingers in patterns it sickened Lilly to witness.
“Oh yes. I’m well aware of the contract forged between my associate, your mongrel master, and his whore of a mother! With Caliban, Scion of House Blue, witnessing our masterwork!”
Sloth’s sharp-toothed smile grew. “Tell me, familiar, do you think Caliban’s famously stoic features will remain unmoved when he discovers just how flawed his counsel truly was? Do you think Aurelia, that self-important Sylvan harlot, will be feeling quite so smug when she finds that all her Silver-tier insights availed her so little in the arenas of contractual minutia and legal precedents of which my clan reigns supreme?”
Sloth began to laugh, great heaving bellyfuls of laughter, his chortles mirrored in perfect counterpoint by every goblin present, save for the dozen in the center of their double ritual circle, the ones responsible for the barrier which BunBun knew even she couldn’t breach.
“Foolish abomination! Are you truly so stupid? Do you truly not understand? Greed didn’t lose his head! He knew precisely how many cannons were unaccounted for, and after your master’s completely unauthorized and unlawful heist of the Gilton Black Book Repository, he knew exactly how many cubic feet that boy’s Extradimensional Storage Space can hold!”
Lord Sloth’s gloating smile grew ever wider before Lilly's involuntary flinch, her growing sense of worry and dread a tell that her foe could effortlessly sense, even from a revenant rabbit.
“That’s right, familiar! Everything’s gone precisely as we wish it!”
“Because you want her troops to starve,” Lilly said breathlessly, unable to help herself. “Winter is coming, and if Greed plays his cards right, Aurelia will owe Greed a fortune in grain, because elves can’t live on livestock or monster meat, like pure-blooded humans can.”
Lord Sloth sneered and spat. “Grain? You think our brilliant gambit was about squeezing Aurelia for a bit of extra gold? Fool! That was the feint, the ruse! Exactly what we wanted her to think!” His expression grew smug. “What we wanted was exactly what we got, the moment your master danced to his mother’s puppet strings and foolishly signed our contract!”
Lilly tilted her head in confusion. “You wanted his signature?”
“We wanted you fools to pay the full price of the transfer!” Sloth roared, eyes alight with manic glee. “And they accepted! They accepted in full! Fools! They accepted in full!”
Lilly blinked, a surge of panicked insight leaving her feeling almost like she was being infused with her master’s thoughts. Like he was hovering over her furry shoulder, which she damn well knew was impossible. But still… the information seemed solid. “It doesn’t matter,” Lilly said with all the arrogance she could muster. “Lady Aurelia herself will bear the energy expenditures of the gates to her own worlds, where her men are coming from, and no place else. Just as the contracts stipulate.”
“WRONG, FOOL! THEY’RE ALL TO BE CHANNELED THROUGH THIS REALM FIRST!” Lord Sloth howled the words with twisted glee, spinning about in the air with his chortling mirth. “Absolutely no provisions were made assuring a direct transfer! Each and every elven fool Aurelia would doom was forced to enter Earth via this realm first, as this is now a shadow world fully attached to your own, happily sucking down the power of your own ascension to further our own great works!”
Lilly stiffened, heart pounding in panic as the implications of what this monster was saying fully sunk in. Yet as the smirking diabolical goblin soon made clear, it was far worse than even she had realized.
“Oh fear not! Each and every elven warrior, conscript, artisan, and specialist that steps through our shaman’s gates WILL make an appearance within Sylvan Alliance territory, as per the stipulations of our gloriously bloody contract. But once the last man, woman, and child steps through those gates, once the deal is done and the shamans are ready to close the portals, then and only then will the debt come due! Four hundred thousand souls channeled right through this very forge, foolish girl! Allowed only the briefest of respite under brilliant skies and lush green grasses before contractual law TEARS THEIR SOULS RIGHT OUT OF THEIR FLESH AND WE CLAIM OUR DUE!”
Lilly froze with horrified dismay at the mocking words tormenting her, sensing the distant screams of fury and despair of a boy she feared she’d never see again as the true depth of their foes’ malignant subterfuge revealed itself at last.
“Impossible!”
“Very possible, foolish rabbit! And Aurelia can do nothing! Nothing at all as she finds herself hamstrung by the very contracts she signed, our great master proving himself the better of every Silver who thinks to cross him on his glorious ascent to Gold as we forge starships that we will name in the Winter Queen’s honor… for it will be the souls of HER beloved troops, THEIR eternal bitter tears that will make our soul-steel armored hulls neigh unbreachable! A true masterwork of construction, and we will make sure that the entire galaxy knows who to credit with its forging!”
Lord Sloth puffed up with overweening pride. “Then absolutely everyone who’s anyone will know that if you want quality starships at rock bottom prices, you shop with US! Worry free investments further secured with the Bloodtear Syndicates 100% guarantee. We’re you’re go-to resource for all of your galactic conquest needs! Even better, we offer significant discounts for every 60,000 unwanted slaves and sapient flesh bags you deliver to us! Why, we’re considered the best kept secret in the cluster, and Aurelia will serve as the hostess of our coming-out party! We’ll even send her an invite to attend our premier auction! Hell, we’ll even let her bid on her own ship!”
Lilly had no words, no witty rebuttal, so filled with unspeakable horror and dismay that all she could do was tremble and stew in rage and fury as her ears crackled with ever greater currents of crimson retribution.
Lord Sloth’s hideously wide smile so reminiscent of sharks and insurance salesmen instantly snapped back into a hate-filled snarl. “And you, little abomination, will not be permitted to interfere with our great work!”
Even as he said the words, the most massive pulsating contract of lies, deception, malice and greed imaginable formed into being in his hands, covered in bulging eyes and toothy maws filling the air with demonic whispers of debt and obligation that had several of the closest lesser goblins shrieking and tearing at their own ears, even as one shriveled to a mummified corpse with the final whispered words of “Penalty Fees!”
An ignoble death under usurious debt that earned the fallen goblin nothing but a contemptuous snort from Sloth before turning to smirk BunBun’s way, making it damn clear that his showmanship hadn’t been the act of an unmitigated egotistical madman who delighted in crushing the hope and spirit of his opponent, but that of a master tactician using the lull in battle to set the pace and strike between the beats.
Lilly would have given him credit, if she weren’t absolutely speechless with rage… and doing much the same thing as he was.
Instead her furious, vindictive smile was a mirror of Sloth’s own, no matter the dread she felt for what were close to half a million souls that were now in dire peril. Even if it was half-bluff, Lilly just desperate to make the vile monster before her FLINCH! And wipe that awful look of smug superiority off Sloth’s features.
To Lilly’s bitter satisfaction, a flicker of worry flashed across the goblin lord’s face, before it was replaced with malicious fury, Lilly’s every instinct suddenly screaming at her to MOVE!
Yet there was nowhere to go on top of the battlements.
“You’ve been Served!” Lord Sloth snarled, hurling his twisted, multifaceted curse that was beyond any dodging or physical manifestation of the arcane.
“FRAGOR!” Lilly simultaneously roared, the smug look on Lord Sloth’s face becoming sudden surprise when the floor right before the dome of force shattered, revealing dark corridors and the screams of goblins being chased down by multiple companies of Lilly’s autonomously hunting revenants.
But Lilly had no time for that, darting down the hole as fast as a 90 Quickness rabbit could tumble through the air, feeling the bubbling screams of an Eldritch summon clawing at her soul… and missing entirely, for all that she swore to avenge the handful of shrieking revenants whose souls were forced into indentured servitude that Lilly wasn’t nearly powerful enough to counter.
But damn if she wasn’t able to make the bastards that were now above her pay.
“Hell Vines! Hell Vines! Inevitable Doom, motherfuckers! Time for you all to feel the BURN!”
Lilly shrieked her fury as mana and Qi came pouring out of her as she summoned for the very first time one of her master’s favorite spell combos, panting with awe and exhaustion she shouldn’t even be feeling as she quickly hopped away from the massive fiery trunks erupting from the floor she crouched upon. Massive writhing vines that grew so quickly they were ripping completely through the unwarded ceiling in the blink of an eye. The entire ceiling now above her head immediately shattered in rubble and shrieking goblins who were now extremely vulnerable to both Wood and Fire as they were quickly tangled up in not one or two but dozens upon dozens of furiously whipping fiery thorn-covered vines far stronger, hotter, and more resilient than any Rank 1 manifestation of the spell should be able to summon, boosted as they were by 30 levels in Runic Spell forging and a full 137% Triple Perk Appetite for Destruction bonus damage multiplier.
Numbers that her foes could appreciate only in agonized shrieks and wails that were immediately cut off when blazing hot vines wrapped around panicked torsos with rib crushing tightness before those furious vegetative appendages forced themselves down dozens of doomed goblins’ throats.
Yet Lilly refused to allow herself to savor the furious vengeance that her foes so richly deserved. Not when the largest fish of all was escaping, and she could still sense the increasing strain of the steel cable holding so many lives in the balance. So Lilly leaped free of the shattered roof that was the keep ceiling, darted past dozens of writhing goblins bursting into flame even as her soul trembled with the levels suddenly pouring in, and raced for the citadel tower these psychotic fools had actually made from the bones of their victims.
The very same tower that Lilly’s enemy was flying toward, as if he too understood that the final act was about to unfold, the ultimate prize nothing less than the fate of the entire refinery and all the souls trapped within.