Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2019 10:37:37 +0000 From: wayne unknown Subject: Vainglorious 19 Authors Note: From now on all in game communication with be placed in between <> Eg Let the story proceed. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Chapter 19 The Road to Hell Stage 1 Recruitment 9am Before I could properly plan my next move, I heard the sound of trumpets & horses off in the distance, thanks to my inhuman hearing. I used [God's Eye] with [Hawk Eye] & saw that there were enemy reinforcements advancing in our general direction. There were a lot of them, like fifty thousand, about five thousand of them were mounted on horses, it looks like they called up everyone nearby to reinforce/investigate/attack. Who knows. Fuck that shit. I'm out of here. I don't have another one of those battles in me right now. "HELLO EVERYONE. I AM A DHAMPIR & YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BE AWARE OF THIS BUT I AM IN CHARGE OF TROLL TOWN AND HAVE MADE IT INTO A FORTIFIED CITY." I took a moment to take a deep breath and think how best to lure them over to my side. Oh yes, greed for more power. They were all looking at me now. Some with recognition, others with confusion and the rest were truly taking stock of my unusual army for the first time. "I am offering to convert anyone into a Dhampir if they're willing to come with me to help me defend Troll Town. As a a Dhampir you'll be able to gain stats, skills & spells from anyone you drink blood from. It's quite useful. Especially when you drink the blood of Trolls & Lizard men & gain Rapid & Total Regeneration. Really useful for staying alive in large battles." I received a trickle of interested Necromancers instead of the mad rush of Necromancers I had hoped for. Apparently my ability to convince the masses to follow me into uncertain circumstances was at the level of a mere commander rather than a legendary hero out of some movie or story. Still, I did manage to get 50 new Necromancers willing to take me up on my offer. These Necromancers were mostly of the support variety, which I'm more than happy with. I told the others that an army was heading towards us, with the mounted forces proceeding first as scouts. We retreated back into the Vampire Fortress where we had to carefully step around the spike traps, pit falls & poison traps littered around the place. The walls were enchanted with all sorts of runes to increase magical defense (reinforcement, mana shield, magic resistance) & damage attackers with poison & curse magic (Life Drain, Plague, Poison Nova). I had a brief chat with Xerxes, the Vampire Cave Fort commander, the necromancer in charge of fortifying this position in Steve's absence. "I'll be coming back as soon as I can to help deal with the coming army and also break the siege on Necropolis." "Sure, whatever you say." He didn't seem convinced that I'd be able to follow through but I didn't really care what he thought, as far as I was concerned he was just a irrelevant bit character. Despite that I added him to my friends list to make it easier to communicate with him later in case of future developments & attacks. I planned to make use of these Necromancers & the forces of Ratede whether they wanted to be of use or not. I planned to make full use of unconventional & diabolical methods in order to ensure a high death toll, whatever it took, come hell or high water, I'd complete my Quest and get Ren back. I led my forces deeper into the caves before stopping abruptly. I told Bone Zone that I'd be heading deeper into the Caves to have a chat with the Ruler of the Vampires in this area, Lord Ratede and I'd need him to keep everyone together & organized in my absence. He agreed to happily enough. I left them in the tunnels half way between Vampire Fortress & the vampire city. I went alone to visit Lord Ratede to update him on the current situation. Keiran escorted me to meet LR & once in his bedroom/study. I explained how the Necromancers were under siege and that my army, Zombie Ren and myself were under threat of attack too. "I'm sorry to hear that but I can't get involved, the more we are noticed, the more dangerous it becomes for us." "But you have a massive army, you can help break the siege of Necropolis." "Not as such, we only have about ten thousand soldiers between the 12 factions & they're unlikely to work together during what appears to be a Crusade. I'm sorry." Ten thousand soldiers belonging to different factions, vulnerable to holy magic, may have trouble dealing with the fortified positions of Erand or the Capitol as both sites have permanent Sanctuary magic. I guess hoping for the vampires to go out and kill all my potential enemies, so I could resurrect Ren would have been far too simple. "Fine, what about getting some of the necromancers upgraded into vampires, they'd be more willing to stick their necks out for vampire rights if they're also in the firing line." "I suppose, I should be able to have each faction sponsor at least one of the Necromancers, they have been somewhat useful in fighting off our enemies and Steve has been helpful in providing me some new spells & strategies." "When do you think you'll be able to sort that out for me?" "The very earliest would be tonight, when the sun sets and I've had some time to discuss it with the heads of the various factions and determine their terms. Each of them will have their own preferences as to how they'll choose a sub vamp." "Does it really matter? Any of them will be good enough to get a power up, I just need more bodies to throw at the problem." "Despite the actions of my youngest son, we do not usually take the Gift so lightly as to offer it to anyone who desires more power. They must display worthiness to receive the gift of eternal youth & power." "Okay do as thou wilt, I can't really force you to go any faster." LR gives me a smug smile. "No you cannot, you have gained power quickly, I do admit, but just because you burn twice as bright as others, does not mean you'll burn for long." "That metaphor is totally butchered." He stepped away from his desk and pulled me in for a soft kiss, that quickly turns violent, he nipped at my lip, my mouth tastes of blood, which is not an uncommon occurrence since meeting Ren and my lips sting briefly before regeneration kicks in. "I like butchery. Just remember to the victor the spoils and to the loser only death and despair awaits. If you cannot overcome your enemies, endure them, until you are strong enough to conquer them." I think that was deep & profound, or possibly more inane vampire drivel, it's so hard to tell sometimes. "Well that got dark all of a sudden. Well anyway thanks for your assistance as always. Now I have to head back to my little hell away from home and figure out how to bleed a kingdom without dying in the attempt." Lord Ratede returned to his seat behind his desk. "I'm sure you'll be fine, you have the blessings of the Gods behind you & there are those in my fiefdom who think that you are the Legendary Dhampir they've been waiting for. I will pray to Sharn for your bloody victory & if you do survive I'll gift you a boon of your choosing." He glances at the bed and back at me suggestively & I'm reminded of our previous hours long romp and I harden in a mixture of anticipation and dread. He was a very thorough & rough lover. I simply did not have the time to play. "Um. Yes. Thanks. Got to go." I practically run out of the door. I could hear his amused laughter echoing behind me as I raced out of his Mansion. Keiran is outside the building with a couple of his guards, who I'm familiar with from our earlier orgy, which was a lot of fun. Mmm while Vampires may be pretentious assholes a lot of the time, their attitudes on sex is remarkably refreshing in it's unabashed hedonism. I'm kind of tempted to drag Keiran off for a bit of stress relief but I have a quest to complete first and so many moving parts to manage, a lot of them with names and competing agendas to corral. Ugh. Management is the worst. Once the Quest is done, I'll throw a giant party at Nightshade to celebrate Ren's true resurrection and invite a lot of hot guys to make Ren's home coming memorable. Ren after all is a sexy man with a carnal appetite to rival my own, which is why I love him so much. It's so nice to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't get jealous when you want to have sex with someone else & has so many hot friends to play with. It's also good that Ren is young, hot, hung & a horny fucker with a sweet smile and an excellent snuggler. I still have so much to do. UGH. I do take Keiran aside and despite my urge for more hot sweaty naked times with him, all we do is talk. I tell him about the current situation and how I have certain plans and I'll need the help of him & his Dhampir Guards to succeed. "I'd be happy to help. It is my duty to protect Ratede and my pleasure to serve." He smiles wickedly and I'm reminded of how good his body felt against mine in Ren's cave. FOCUS. DAMN YOU HORMONES. BRAIN GET BACK INTO GEAR NOW. Wars to win, Rens to resurrect. Anyway I head back to Bone Zone and my unusual group of humans, Lizard Men, Doom Wolves & Trolls and lead them back to Ratede and introduce the group to Keiran and his Dhampir Guards. Due to the time of day, only the Dhampir Guards are really active on the streets of Ratede so they have a quick tour of Ratede the city without too much disruption or attempts to drain, capture or kill my unusual group. to Xerxes From Xerxes I [Tunnel] from Ratede to Nightshade, bypassing the two opposing armies, with my own private army following me. While I tunnel back to Nightshade, I find myself thinking that I don't like the town's new name, it's not epic enough. Fuck it. I'll worry about that later. First I need to regroup with my forces & organize an offensive. Stage 2 Exploitation 10 am Once we've returned, I send everyone off to do their own things while I check in on Zombie Ren. Ren is fine, just sleeping the day away. When he's sleeping the differences between Real Ren & Zombie Ren are not apparent. Zombie Ren is so cute when he's sleeping, all naked and curled up around a blanket. Hmm... Nope don't have the time for a quickie. Must think, plan, coordinate the forces, all that tedious necessary management stuff, I've spent my life avoiding. UGH. I took some time to review my options & think about the previous 3 battles and what I learned from them. First of all, there is no such thing as too OP. Even with my absurd stats, it's hard to kill large groups of enemies when you've got allies nearby. Friendly fire is a real concern here. Second, choosing Blacksmith was probably a poor decision in hindsight, Enchanter would have been a much better choice. Third, being a Necromancer with super large mana pool was the very best. The only real downside was that I was a shitty necromancer with insufficient summoning experience & no control over my minions in stressful situations. Fourth dual wielding with stolen swords allows you to randomly throw aura powered swords through the air at random to confuse & decapitate enemies. Which is cool & all but highly inefficient. Fifth Doom Wolves were fucking fragile little burst damage dealers. I don't know what to do about them, I can't equip them with armor without depriving them of the use of [Gigantism]. Angus was the only one easily able to survive a battle due to him being level 100 with Aura Mastery, which allows him to make use of [Aura Body]. I don't know how to make the other Doom Wolves live long enough to gain level 100 as a Warrior & gain the ability. UGH. Maybe I'll need to teach the new dhampir Necromancers the value of a Doom Wolf Blood Thrall. Sixth, there is something so deeply funny about watching Dez tear through armored opponents with ease. Seventh, It would have been much more useful if I had more than three Necromancer dhampirs on my side during the previous battle drinking the enemies blood & getting stronger with each death. Eighth the Necropolis Necromancers were more trouble than they were worth on the battlefield, frequently killing my Lizard Men and Doom Wolves with their poison spells. Luckily, Lizard men and Doom Wolves are fairly replaceable. The Swamp pops out a couple thousand Lizards a day (12 hour re spawn). Based on what I've observed a fertilized Lizard Female can pop out 12 eggs in a clutch at a time. Unlike human females, reproduction is far less mentally and physically taxing on lizard females, they pop out their eggs and in half a day a young lizard hatches and the males are raised by the males and taught either the spear or javelin while females remain with their mothers for a couple of days before they reach adult hood. There are rare deviations of this behavior. In the wild, half of the clutch dies before maturation As for the Doom Wolves, the Doom Plains produce a thousand Doom Wolves every 4 hours, unfortunately, I currently can't resupply the Lizard Wolves with Doom Wolf mounts due to the growing numbers of troops stationed outside the capitol & eliminating the Doom Wolves as soon as they spawn. Once Ren is back I can have Angus sire a noble line of Doom Wolves with a resurrected Barta. The 'natural' method of population increase would take about 20 hours to produce an adult Doom Wolf but it'd probably result in smarter, better trained Doom Wolf mounts. Now that I've done some thinking and some plotting it's time to organize the troops. I started off with the simplest ... or so I mistakenly believe. I visited the underground harem & I find things have taken a turn for the weird. There are now 12 Dhampir Demon bunnies dominating their lesser brethren. I guess I should have expected that during all the distractions of late that supervision of their numbers & genealogy would slip. The fact that Dez wasn't around to keep them in line and prevent them from eating each other probably didn't help. They had bathed in the blood of their brethren and had awakened as dhampirs. I picked up the murderous little bastards & bind 8 of them to me with [Soul Contract]. I killed the other 4, while more dhampir bunnies might be useful, I don't want them upsetting the food chain right now. It looks like the rate for producing dhampir demon bunnies was absurdly low with only a dozen awakened out of thousands of bunnies. I should probably check on the Beast Forest, make sure that Dez's bastards aren't causing any mayhem. I now have 10 pets with Angus being the least immediately useful. There's something so weird about that. The new Demon Bunnies are around level 10 – 15, I Bestow upon them Mage as their main class & Warrior as their sub class & Name them. Next up were the Trolls, my first monstrous minions, that helped to start everything down this weird twisted path of mine towards being the Demon King. I had a theory as to why some of my Trolls became Oni & why others turned into Iron Trolls. I selected a hundred Trolls to experiment on. I used [Blood Filtration] to lower stats as necessary before using [Blood Pact] on the Trolls closest to the landmark level 100 where they'd evolve again. While humans had classes, Monsters had evolutions that doubled their stats, while humans had more options, monsters had better stats after evolving. Combining the two different types of benefits allowed the Monsters with Classes to become superior life forms. Blood Pact rose to level 3. [Blood Pact level 3: 8% of the 3 strongest stats can be transferred through blood, effects lasts 4 days, good chance a fraction of stats will remain after expiration.] Next up, the Lizards. I found Sisyphus and told him to bring all the Lizard Men from out of the Swamp and back here. I would need all the forces I could gather to succeed in my quest. Overpopulation was no longer a concern. Surviving the Kingdom & the Church was the new highest priority. Long term problems such as housing, agriculture & infrastructure would be dealt with later if we survived this madness I was plunging us head first into. I send Sissy off with a couple hundred Lizard Men. I used Bestowal on all the Lizard Mages to give them the Mage class, making them much more dangerous. Normally Lizard Mages can't be considered true mages as they are limited by their small mana pools into using their magic rarely & for the building of small stone walls. Now their potential was unlocked, with mana pools multiplied by ten, along with faster mana regeneration. If they worked hard & killed for me, they'd automatically gain Mana Shield, which would make them much more useful in a battlefield. I used [Blood Pact] on a hundred Lizard Mages to test out my theory & also to provide them with a boost to their stats. 11 am While I'd been busy, Hugo & Max had been organizing the other Necromancers in various activities, helping them pick a house, assigning them various tasks to better protect the town and so forth. I talked with Hugo who had assembled a list of the new Necromancer's names & most useful sub class. All of them were Necromancers first after all. Of the 50 new Necromancers, there were a variety of sub classes, there were 3 chefs, 7 enchanters, 3 blacksmiths, 2 merchants, 5 magic scholars, 2 jewelers, 4 priests of death, 3 builders, 3 martial artists (mostly of the staff fighting variety), 3 apothecaries, 4 archers, 4 swordsman, 3 tailors, 2 diplomats & 2 priests of shadow. All of them would be useful one way or another. There was a reason I wanted to use conversion on necromancers rather than on more of my monster minions. Necromancers were the best way of making use of the stats gained from the finite supply of blood. Every necromancer is an army onto him/herself (99% of Necromancers were males due to the drastic gender skew of those wanting to command the undead in a world where you actually had to smell your undead summons in action). A Necromancer starts off with a limit of 10 undead that they can bind to their souls, those with further specialization in summoning can double that limit. Necromancers who use soul slavery can monopolize the experience gained from their undead at the cost of increased mana costs of maintaining control of their undead. This usually means a Necromancer follows the standard Mage build of devoting 90% of their stats into pumping up their intelligence. This makes them very fragile before they gain Mana Shield at level 100. As a Dhampir, they'll gain stats quickly, if they drink from Trolls they gain vitality & strength, Doom Wolves & Lizard men would provide small boosts to nearly all their stats. With the higher durability of their bodies, they'll be able to focus even more on gaining more intelligence & gaining better undead without worrying too much about dying & losing out on experience. Necromancer min maxers make a choice, to either focus on a few strong undead summons, with high mana maintenance costs or have a lot of weak to mediocre undead to swamp an enemy with sheer numbers, bolstered by enemy debuffs & undead buffing. A lot of necromancers settle on a compromise between the two extremes, maintaining one Death Knight (level 50 & above) to provide tanking and support while using mediocre undead for distraction & accumulating lots of small amounts of damage. The Necromancers in Nightshade are a long term investment, with their undead summons slowly growing more powerful as they do. Eventually they'll be able to maintain 10-40 of the strongest undead (20 death knights with 20 Liches). The ones I plan on getting from Ratede will be a short term investment, using a different strategy, the NECRO SWAMP technique. Necromancers do best with numbers. A single inventory slot in spatial storage starts off with space for 10, which can be upgraded to hold a thousand. If you fill your inventory with thousands upon thousands of dead Goblins & Orcs & send waves and waves of them at an enemy you can wear them down, like water eroding stone. Time consuming method but it does work. Of course I'm not stupid enough to rely on the necromancers to simply 'human wave' the enemy into submission. I fully plan on making use of their vampiric properties to wage a guerrilla campaign against the kingdom in random places. Chip away their forces in Doom Plains to start off with and secure myself a steady supply of more Doom Wolf mounts and have them ready for my Death Knights... & theirs & also for more Lizard Raiders. The real strength of necromancers aren't strong undead, though there are some Necromancers with very powerful undead at their beck and call, eg Steve but mostly necromancers rely on their easily replaceable stocks of cheap undead. There's a reason that Steve chose to position his base near the level 30 Goblins & level 40 Orcs. They have fast re spawn rates and they could be harvested repeatedly and often to keep the Necromancers packed with undead to throw at enemies in endless waves. Each Necromancer can hold about 10000 corpses they can throw at an enemy. 10-40 at a time. I chat with Hugo who helps me activate 2 sub specialties for my necromancy, summoning & poison. The necromancy sub specialty reduces the cost of my summons & increases my summon limit while the Poison sub specialty increases the range & effect of my poison spells while reducing their mana costs. I have Hugo gather the new Necromancers at the 'City Hall' to undergo the Conversion. Once they gathered I started the process. I used [Blood Filtration] to reduce my stats to my base stats, drain one of the necromancers, bringing their blood content down to ten percent, sacrificed 20% of my blood to convert them into dhampirs. Then I just rinsed and repeated the process until they were all Dhampirs. After draining and converting all 50 of the Necromancers, I had incidentally gained a few more necromancy spells, [Soul Apprentice], [Soul Slavery] & [Necrosis]. [Soul Apprentice: Allow a creature bound to your soul to serve as your apprentice in a chosen class.] [Soul Slavery: Enslave a creature's very soul in order to make it serve you, be cautious that they do not rebel due to mistreatment.] [Necrosis: Induce death on a cellular level, causing limbs to rot off if left untreated.] I also gained a couple of random basic spells, such as [Ice Bolt] & [Shock]. [Ice Bolt: Create a bolt of ice to slow and wound an enemy, small chance of freezing.] [Shock: Gather the power of lightning in your hands & strike out, shocking your enemies.] (Despite the description, shock is a weak lightning spell, doing very little damage, with a slight chance to inflict a stun effect) I made use of the down time to convert some of my corpses into undead summons that I send off throughout Nightshade to do my bidding. Leveling up my [Zombie] [Raise Skeleton] [Death Knight] & [Lich] at the same time. Now that I could use [Soul Apprentice] I set my undead to work, to join the growing amount of undead around Nightshade. I had them all apprentice under me as Mages, learning a fraction of my spells and letting them assist in the towns defense by feeding their mana into the rune arrays on the walls. I recovered some of my stats by drinking from a selection of the strongest Trolls & Lizard Mages. 12 pm I returned to Ogre Forest to find a very large army of about forty thousand in a pitched battle with the Necromancers & their undead. The Necromancers were really struggling to hold them back by the looks of things. I used [Shadow Step] to land in the enemy's back line with their squishy classes, Archers, Mages & Priests & used [Poison Nova]. A wave of green gas spread out from me, taking a tenth of my mana in exchange for inflicting serious poison damage to everyone within 200 meters of me. Then I used [Shadow Step] again to dig further into their middle layer & used [Quicksand] followed by [Earthquake] on the largest area possible. Hundreds died and thousands were injured as earthquake fractured the ground violently, causing rocks to fly out everywhere. Then I cast [Cursed Land] using 20 Dark Power. Then I used [Pestilence] & called up my undead and pets and set them on a rampage... This is where my all powerful minions should curb stomp this ginormous army into pieces. Unfortunately that would be a delusional fantasy. My minions are strong but they're not that strong. I used their noble sacrifices to [Shadow Step] around the place casting [Pestilence] & [Poison Nova] randomly while I head in a certain direction. No it's not closer to Nightshade or the Vampire fortress. It's on a diagonal path between them. I'm chased by over a thousand armed people who are very cranky at me for some reason and I used [Fissure] & lo & behold there's a convenient tunnel to hop into. The mob of angry idiots follow me into an obvious trap. I killed some of them with [Wretched Tentacles] which works much better in the dark of a tunnel. The crazy ones slash at the blind and retching ones. While it's funny, it wont be effective for long as the Priests have already caught up. I lead them deeper into the dark earth, occasionally stopping to cast [Wretched Tentacles] or [Cursed Ground]. I'm quickly running low of Dark & Abyss power. I finally get to Ratede, where Keiran is waiting with a selection of Dhampir Guards & Doom Wolves. I jump onto the ceiling of my own tunnel, using [Transformation] to upgrade my claws into something to use to cling onto the ceiling long enough to cast [Fissure] along the ceiling. It triggers a localized cave in, temporarily burying the thousands of pursuing enemies, it's not enough to kill the 'tanks' but it's enough to seriously damage & in some cases kill the weaker squishier Mages, Archers & Priests. I leave Keiran to deal with that mess while I run towards the 'main' pathway back into the vampire's cave & into a raging battlefield. The necromancers have slowly been pushed back deeper into the natural tunnels where they have been making use of the narrower pathways to pick off smaller groups of enemies. I rushed past them all, swiping with my sword to decapitate a few Priests along the way, all the while burning from the holy damage of [Sanctuary]. I ignored the battle and rushed home to see how many idiots followed the bread crumbs in the opposite direction. I burned through my stamina, maintaining my top speed. I got home in five minutes, just in time for more fighting. There's an army outside the walls & an army fighting inside. It's bloody chaos. All up there's at least 15000 enemies fighting against my troops. Some of them must have come from the Capitol while others must be from the army that attacked Vampire's Cave. Their levels range from 70 to 110. I target the ones outside with multiple [Earthquakes], I [Shadow Step] from area to area keeping an eye out with [God's Eye] & [Hawk's Eye] to make sure I'm spreading the damage around as much as possible. The ground is torn asunder, hundreds of enemies are killed, more are injured but more importantly, their formations are totally undermined. I make it my first mission to pick off enemy Mages & Priests, draining then killing them, helping to increase my intelligence stat again & increase my dark power. Meanwhile there are Lizard Men on the walls throwing Javelins, while Lizard Mages use Stone Spike to attack from afar. I have to be careful to avoid being hit by stray friendly fire. The Lizards aren't that experienced at resisting enemy sieges. Every time I kill someone I raise them as an undead, if they're a Holy Knight or Paladin, they get turned into a [Death Knight], if they're a Priest or a Mage they get turned into a [Lich]. If they're basic infantry, holding a sword, shield, or spear, they get turned into [Zombies]. As for Archers, they get turned into Skeleton archers with [Raise Skeleton]. None of them answer to me, they simply attack any living thing nearby. My undead summon slots are already filled up already. I used the last of my Terminus Power to boost [Pestilence] to it's max and [Shadow Step] back into the base using generic mana. Trolls, Lizard Men, Demon bunnies & Doom Wolves were fighting a small army of a few thousand in the city square. I had made the tunnel exit into the Arena for convenience sake. The Dhampir Necromancers are the ones having the most fun, using their Skeletons, Zombies or Death Knights to hold down enemy Mages and drinking their blood in order to summon or control more powerful undead. I waded into the battle in the heart of my town, targeting the Priests in order to gain more Dark Power from their blood & from Abyss who rewards for each of them killed. After ten minutes of bloody fighting, reinforcements from the walls come to help & we finished off the remaining enemies. We managed to capture a few hundred Holy knights alive, all of whom were drained of blood by the Dhampir Necromancers. I picked 10 of the strongest of them and used [Corruption] on them. I permanently sacrificed about 100 Dark power to do so but it added some Dark Knights to my side. Interestingly enough at level 100 of Death Priest, DP recovery increased to 4DP per hour, while Shadow Priest recovered at 2 DP per hour & the general non aligned DP recovered at 1 per hour. All the former Holy Knights holy spells were converted into dark spells. I had my new Dark Knights slaughter the Holy knights as a test of the effectiveness of [Corruption] & a test of their loyalty to me. Total execution. I offered some of the resulting corpses to the necromancers & kept some for myself. I had hoped they'd also be Dark Crusaders like Greg so they could use Divine Heal but alas they have been forsaken by their God of Light & Life. They're just Dark Knights, with only Dark spells at their disposal, serving no particular 'Evil' God as of yet. Oh well they'll be my personal retinue. Or maybe Ren's body guard. As long as they aren't exposed to [Purification] they should make for excellent bruisers. I'll have Greg keep an eye on them for disloyalty, just in case. Speaking of Greg, he's done a good job, I praised him and he blushes and tries to brush off the praise by saying it was nothing. I find it awfully cute. I'll have to make more time to tease him later. 2pm I took a break from the madness to work with Ethan on potions, sure it seems like a weird choice but I need to get alchemist from level 30 to 50 ASAP. Currently my levels are all over the place. level 108 warrior (Main class) level 100 Mage Level 100 Necromancer Level 100 Death Priest level 70 Shadow Priest level 30 Alchemist Level 1 Blacksmith He teaches me to make mana potions and I do that for a couple of hours which brings my alchemist level up to 40. I also buy several potions from him, 4 Slime potion & 4 Smoke Bombs. Slime Potions are high grade potions that binds a target in place for a period of time depending on the quality of potion & level of target & causes damage over time. It's expensive as the main ingredient is the magical core of a Slime which is then reactivated using advanced alchemist skills. The Slime Cores are purchased from either Olympia or one of it's neighboring kingdoms. Ethan laughs at my purchase of Smoke Bombs, which is considered a joke item on the same level as itching powder by most Champion Alchemists but I still want it just in case. "What can I say, I can't help myself sometimes, I'm a sucker for an amusing cliche & I love to make a dramatic exit." Ethan just shakes his head and me and "Yeah yeah, have fun, be careful with the slime potions, they're dangerous." "I know." Admittedly, I've been a somewhat lazy alchemist, focused mostly on making strength potion & sometimes a health potion but I'm well versed in the herb craft & theory of alchemy potions, just lacking practical experience. I just don't like using some of the more offensive uses of potions as it's like literally throwing money away. It's depressing. At this rate, my money situation will never improve. UGH. 4pm I could finally resurrect my undead & pets, giving up more experience to do so. After the battle had settled down and I had a moment, Sisyphus had given me more bad news, telling me that Lizard Town was destroyed by a couple hundred elite mages & warriors, level 100 to 120. He managed to bring less than a thousand Lizards home. I took myself on an excursion to the Swamp with my recently resurrected bunny bros. I used [Raise Earth] to make myself a pathway through the Swamp & towards the enemies camped out in Lizard Town. On the way there, Dez & his relatives rampage through the normal inhabitants of the Swamp, gaining stats and levels easily. This is mostly due to the greater ease I have in pinning down any enemies, with [Bind], [Quicksand] or [Shadow Tentacles], preventing them from any effective counter attacks & Dez's tanking. We kill 1 Hippopus, 2 Devil Snakes, 50 hostile Lizard Men. Dez gains [Eject] from the Devil Snake, allowing him to use it to eject the quills on his body to attack an enemy. It has a cool down of an hour, which is roughly the time it takes to regrow the Spiked Fur/Quills. Hugh also gains [Eject]. I Named my new bunnies after famous males who've scored with lots of women because it feels thematically appropriate. Hugh named after Hefner for obvious reasons, Danny after Danny D, Rocco (Siffredi), Ron (Jeremy), Peter (North & Rabbit), John (Holmes & the nickname/alias used for guys who have sex with whores). Randy & Roger were not named after anyone in particular, just for general sex terms. The confrontation with the 'elite' Mages & Warriors who destroyed Lizard Town begins with me using [Quicksand] on them, followed by the attacks of the bunnies. There's only about a hundred of them camped in what remains of Lizard Town. I summoned Angus to use [Alpha's Roar] to boost the attacks of the bunnies. Dez leads the charge with his duplicates tanking with the Bunny Mages pouncing on the enemy Mages, drinking their blood. Most of the enemies are rich enough to disappear after death unfortunately so they don't get to [Scavenge] much experience from the corpses. I mostly play support, healing the bunnies sometimes when their health dips too low & using [Bind] & [Quicksand] to stall the warriors. Sometimes I coat my sword with mana using [Aura Blade] and hack, slash or stab into an enemy, I kill a couple of paladins & Priests but it's not very interesting. They don't give much in the way of experience and the 'battles' aren't much to write home about. After the battle all 9 of my Demon bunnies are level 100. The average stats for the DDB Mage/Warriors is Strength: 460 Dexterity: 500 Agility: 500 Intelligence: 1500 Stamina: 460 Charisma: 160 Vitality: 860 The DDB noobs have roughly 43000 health & 15000 Mana. The new demon bunnies have completely different stat distribution to Dez, every level they gained, gave them 5 to intelligence & 1 to their other stats, with charisma being ignored. While Dez's base stats for Warrior Mage is Strength: 460 Dexterity: 760 Agility: 760 Intelligence: 460 Stamina: 460 Charisma: 160 Vitality: 1340 Dez's health pool is 134000, his mana pool is 2300. Their skills are similar but the effects are different. Using Noble Insight, their profile pages are differently formatted to mine. Active Skills Multiplication (gained at level 100) Passive Skills Scavenge - Gain 1% of a target's experience through the consumption of flesh.' (Level 1 skill) Natural Attributes Bone Spike (gained at level 10), Spiked Fur (gained at level 50). Acquired Skills (Boars) Charge - Additional damage is done to target the more momentum is built before impact (Deers) Pierce - Penetrative attacks inflict more damage & bleed more (Doom Wolf) Gigantism - triple size (Doom Wolf) Alpha's Roar - buff to 6 allies (Devil Snake) - Eject - violently ejects Spiked Fur into enemy targets Dhampir skills Vampirism Blood digestion Transformation level 2 teeth & claws None of the stats include the stats gained from blood drinking as they are not doubled during the level 10, 50 or 100 evolutions. Each of the demon bunnies are the size of an adult golden retriever, with a dense musculature and red fur that sticks like a porcupine's quills up when aggravated. There are some major differences between the two types of dhampir bunnies. Dez follows the more traditional demon bunny growth pattern with every level granting 1 Strength, 2 Dexterity, 2 Agility 1 Intelligence, 1 Stamina, 3 Vitality while the bunny mages are completely different. Theoretically Dez's stats should follow the Warrior Class path of Natives, where they gain 2 stats to all physical stats with the rare bonus point to charisma or intelligence for certain achievements. Perhaps it's different for dhampirs or monsters due to the pseudo warrior status of monsters. All in all a good leveling experience for my pets & I reclaimed the broken remains of Lizard Town. Not that I have the time or energy to restore the place with all the chaos. Luckily I hadn't wasted any money in upgrading it. 6pm We returned to Nightshade to find the place hard at work. There have been no new attacks as of yet, which means it's nearly time to pick a fight with Goliath. While we've been lucky so far & managed to whittle down the enemy forces, their total losses can't have exceeded more than 50000 out of over a million troops. My forces will require some time & some peace and quiet to gain enough troops to pose a real threat to the Kingdom & the world at large. I doubt I'd have the time to truly build up an empire with all this annoying chaos. I worked with Caleb to improve my construction skills, infusing Darkness into the very outer walls to add some much needed flavor to the town. My efforts to redecorate, grant me a new spell, [Dark Earth]. [Dark Earth: Infuse the very earth itself with dark power, altering it's color & density.] Stage 3 Dismissal 8pm I returned to the Vampire Caves to find them gone... The entirety of the Vampire's Cave has been collapsed in on itself. There's now over a hundred thousand troops fighting less than a thousand vampires. Lord Ratede, Keiran, Elandra are leading the outnumbered troops fighting the enemy to a standstill. Elandra in particular is bedecked with jewelry, she's wearing a gaudy looking necklace, with large unpolished gems around her neck, a diamond studded gauntlet on her hands & a tiara on her head. Despite how she's dressed in a mix of heavy armor & jewelry fit for a visit to royalty. She's coated in the blood of her enemies. Her style of combat is unique, a mix of targeted attacks & brute power with the elegance of a professional dancer. She wields two swords, weaving in and out of enemy formations, leaving behind a wake of decapitated & dismembered bodies behind her. She moves like flowing water, easily finding the weak points of their armors to maim & kill with a single graceful strike utilizing her superhuman strength. She stabs at the slits of visors & helms, she hammers the weak joints of armor with the pommel of her sword, she hacks through the necks of soldiers in her way and she dices right through Mages & Priests. Lord Ratede sends waves of earth into enemies, keeping the enemies from making use of their superior numbers to overwhelm them by constantly shifting the ground beneath their feet. Some of them simply sink a few centimeters into the ground, others disappear entirely from sight. Giant versions of Stone Golems perform crowd control, stopping the enemies from simply overwhelming them through sheer numerical superiority. Keiran fights strategically, using his net to restrict an enemy before going in for a kill. It's methodical & mechanical, no hint of concern or compassion as he systematically kills his enemies. Doom Wolves rush from place to place ripping out throats, killing and being killed in return. Blood builds up while bodies disappear, the corpses are raised as undead, only to fall just as quickly due to barrages of [Holy Light]. It's a charnel house of competing powers. While the vampires are whittling the enemies down slowly, there are simply too many of them combining their collective strengths into opposing them. It's only a matter of the time before they run out of mana or stamina and are swamped by their lesser opponents. They are constantly being bombarded by spells, arrows & close range attacks. I [Shadow Step] over to Ratede to help. "What's going on here?" "YOU DID THIS! You brought disaster on my home and family." LR rants before he tried to stab me with his sword... I shadow stepped behind a Priest and drank his blood, then snapped his neck, gaining a few points of dark power, simultaneously avoiding an infuriated LR and getting a slight boost to my growing power supply. Lord Ratede stabs his sword through the Priest's body, barely grazing me as I dodge and [Shadow Step] backwards. Lord Ratede chased me, apparently unconcerned with the army around us, simply smashing in the faces of anyone who got in his way. As a level 200 Vampire Mage he couldn't be stopped by a single warrior at level 100 or a hundred... A hundred thousand could easily pin him down though. I just run away, there were already enough people trying to kill me, I didn't have the time to deal with Lord Ratede & his foul mood right then. Guess it was about time to add some more enemies to the growing list. Muahaha. I'll lure these idiots away and I'll try to talk to LR later when he's less psychotic. I run to Beast Forest & I called forth my new and improved bunny squad to wreak havoc. I used the communication option granted by [Soul Contract] to impart my will. They go forth and use [Multiplication] with the order to kill their male brethren & mate with the females and kill anything & anyone that gets in their way. The bunny mages can use [Multiplication] a maximum of 75 times... Dez can use it 11 times. Not accounting for intelligence stats gained from blood consumption. Each time they can produce a duplicate, that duplicate can also use multiplication. It's entirely broken. A bunny Mage, can produce 1 duplicate after the first use of [Multiplication], with both of them using multiplication, they can turn into 4, then 8, then 16 and so on... The bunny mages gain level 4 in Multiplication after a few minutes. What's more broken is that the [Multiplication] used by Duplicates is counted towards the Original Demon Bunny's skill experience. Multiplication level 4 allows each new Duplicate to be maintained for a total of 40 seconds. Dez only manages to get his Multiplication to level 3 with his duplicates lasting 30 seconds. The soldiers posted within the Beast Forest don't stand a chance against my fluffy horde. Neither do the Demon Deer or Monstrous Boars. The originals take a minute to eat a couple of Monstrous Boars each to feed their hunger for meat. Their thirst for blood is satiated by the human soldiers. Their carnal urges are shortly satisfied by demon bunny does. I used [Mass Offering] to offer the resulting dead to Terminus, in exchange for some more Terminus power, upping the total numbers of deaths by 6000 or so. Inexplicably the death toll is over 300000 so far. Only 634348 deaths to go. Going to be a rough night. An army shows up from the south, from Erand, from the East from what remains of the Vampire Caves, from the West out of Death Forest, where skeletons are abandoned and goblins spawn. Presumably the Mages in the watchtowers at Erand noticed the wave of demon bunnies slaughtering everything in their path before disappearing and called in the military to investigate/retaliate. I recalled the bunnies into my soul summon inventory & rushed over to Doom Plains, taking the only path free of advancing enemies, the north, traveling on the Runed Road to the Capitol. The Runed Road cuts through the Beast Forest & into the Doom Plains ensuring a somewhat protected path for merchants between Erand & the Capitol. Time to collect some Doom Wolves & some scalps from Doom Plains... A couple of armies were waiting for me there and 3 armies were right behind me advancing from the south, south east & south west. It's like they really want me to die. I logged out with a chuckle at their expense. A few seconds later I logged back in and I'm in Nightshade again. I rushed to Vampire Cave to find out what's going on. The army had retreated, presumably due to the threat posed by an army of level 100 demon bunnies showing up near Erand or simply because the cost of continuing the fight against the vampires was too high. Who knows. The only people left behind are Keiran and a handful of Dhampir Guards along with their loyal Doom Wolf companions. Keiran arranges for a meeting with Lord Ratede. Ratede is more calm now and explains that when I lured the first wave of attackers in, they were detained and drained & ultimately sacrificed to Sharn. Then more and more waves of humans came, becoming harder and harder to stop without suffering more and more casualties. Not surprising really, Champions would be relentless in their invasions, there's no real penalty to dying for them, other than being unable to log in for 8 hours real time. The majority of Ratede was evacuated temporarily to the Vampire Capitol while the fighters stayed behind to buy them time. I convinced Ratede that I have the perfect plan that will completely derail any attempts to attack the vampire city in the near future. He's not convinced until I give him the details of my latest diabolical plan. He just gives me a long look and finally said "I don't know whether I'm more impressed or horrified by your plan." I shrugged. "Can I have my vampire necromancers now?" "You're more than welcome to. That Steve is possibly more dubious than you are." "Aww you're so sweet." I collected Steve and his gang. I'm not surprised that Steve abandoned Necropolis in order to gain more personal power. He seems entirely the type, a true amoral social climber. I'm sadly familiar with the type after spending time at a prestigious boarding school, well before getting busted being gang banged in the dorms by a selection of well hung students and staff which got me expelled. I explained the plan to Steve and co, well the part that they needed to know about. "My plan is fairly simple. We'll be attacking the Giant Killer Fort, near the border of Kratos & Olympia, luring a small army of Krato's troops towards Olympia, where we will use our undead to pin down their border patrols & drain them of stats. This should hopefully incite a conflict between the two nations, which should give the army something else to focus on other than fighting either vampires or necromancers. " "It's worth a try, at this rate, we'll be worn down after a few days." Steve said, unexcited by the plan but unable to think of anything better. I messaged Tom who's stationed at the Giant Killer Fort & let him know we're on the way. I lead the way winding through the armies in Beast Forest, Death Forest & past the Orc settlement, past the Giants. On the way I occasionally used [Shadow Step] to close in on an isolated Priest to drain him of blood & snap his neck & store his corpse in my inventory. Whenever there's a smallish group of patrolling soldiers I have the Vampire Necromancers take a bite out of them to boost their stats & skills. By the time we get to the Giant Killer Fort, an army of twenty thousand is waiting for us & thousands more are trailing behind us. Steve & co launch a wave of undead at the fort troops as a distraction before rushing past them, slaughtering their way through the Manticores, leading them into a group of over a thousand level 100 – 150 Olympia Troops. I cast [Pestilence] with all the dark power I have before using [Poison Nova] before logging out. It wouldn't have done anything to the Vampire Necromancers but it should have killed quite a few of the Kratos & Olympia troops. I logged back in and I'm back in Nightshade. I checked in with Steve to see what he chose to do. As expected he chose to steam roll over the numerically weaker Olympia Troops & get deeper into enemy territory before logging back out & appearing in his home town of Necropolis, stronger from all the blood drinking along with his friends. As a Champion, we can't be confined for more than ten minutes and as long as we're not experiencing damage for a minute (eg a combat situation), we can log out basically any time. Not surprising, while he's a higher level than me and a more experienced Necromancer, I still have higher stats & can make use of [Shadow Step] to easily avoid conflict & confinement while he's eager to gain more stats regardless of the consequences. I just have to hope that the ruse works. 10pm I returned to Beast Forest and set the bunnies loose again. They easily slaughter the demon deer, the monstrous boars, the 3000 or so troops stationed in the Beast Forest & they fuck their way through the female bunny population. I recalled them and use my undead servants to collect the dead animals. They can be used as food for my troops. It'll be a few more hours before any dhampir demon bunnies make themselves known, in the mean time I'll deprive Erand of one of it's food sources & up the death toll a little more. I collected the corpses of the dead troops and head into Death Forest. I quickly lose the scouts that had been following me. While some of the troops are still patrolling, mostly the Paladins and some Priests, the rest are getting some shut eye after a hard day of siege warfare. I used [God's Eye] to look into tents & [Shadow Step] into tents to spread [Pestilence] before Shadow Stepping out to the next tent. The fun thing about Pestilence is that the higher the level, the deadlier the disease becomes, the faster the transmission & the more likely it'll evolve or mutate as it jumps from host to host. I head over to the Orc Settlements where another army is stationed. Necropolis is now beset on 3 sides by armies. The only side that is clear is the side that's facing the sea. Another use of [God's Eye] show that the Kratos Olympia dispute has become more messy as there's a large force of 50000 Troops on the Olympia side. The Giant Killer Fort can only garrison a hundred thousand soldiers at maximum capacity. I rushed past the Orc settlement which has been emptied of any Orcs & I launched multiple fireballs at the Orc houses made of sticks and dried grass & they burst alight beautifully. It brings the camp to life. Soldiers stumble out of their tents confused & angry. I summon my undead only & have them kill those still sleeping. It's a massacre. I raise the dead and leave them as wild undead who kill more half conscious soldiers. When an enemy archer spots me & shoots at me with an arrow, I simply run into the Olympian army killing a few dozen as I go, which I raise as Death Knights. The two armies collide, in the dark and as they killed each other due to misinformation & fear, I raised their dead, who kill anyone who's nearby. The battle rages on & both sides receive reinforcements. I send a message to Steve He chooses to send his army of Necromancers and their undead into the bloody melee. He leads the charge personally with his Banshee, Death Knight & Lich and 50 or so other undead. The other 11 Vampire Necromancers all have substantially powerful undead summons to throw at the military might of the two kingdoms. I'm not surprised that Steve chose to attack since this would be an excellent time for the Necromancers to collect stronger undead & gain levels while both sides are focused on killing each other. I cast [Cursed Ground] to boost their undead even further countering the deleterious effects of Sanctuary. Poison & undead are the main weapons of the necromancers which is annoyingly countered by the effects of [Sanctuary]. While the three sides are busy killing each other mindlessly, I'm selectively draining & killing Priests & Mages then storing their corpses into my spatial inventory. I used [Darkness Manipulation] to form spears of darkness to pierce the throats of Archers. After the tenth such kill, I gained [Dark Spear]. [Dark Spear: The darkness is fashioned into a spear which pierces an enemy before returning to the night]. Every death brings me closer to level 100 as a Shadow Priest. I hit level 100 for Shadow Priest after killing several hundred squishy Mages, Priests, Archers around the edges of the giant knock down battle. After each death I collect the body. I gained a new ability at level 100, [Shadow Soldier]. [Shadow Soldier: A soldier formed out of the very shadows themselves, while they're weak to conventional & holy attacks, they can strike from the shadows to kill swiftly & silently.] More and more soldiers poured from every direction, the battle lines blurring dangerously. The Necromancers are the most organized force as they came out in one large group with their undead minions & have been steadily gaining strength through all the deaths. The other two sides are getting reinforcements from various locations & have to fight past each other & the undead to group up with their own comrades. The dead and dying are piling up as is the amount of undead on the battlefield. I [Shadow Step] into the middle of chaos & used an ungodly 20000 mana to use [Earthquake], the power seeps beneath my feet deep beneath the surface before spreading out through over a square kilometer, violently erupting upwards and outwards with large rocks flying out everywhere, killing some people, injuring others, with some people falling into the earth never to be seen again and generally causing mayhem to the battlegrounds. From the only unaffected section of land, the width of a manhole cover I cast [Cursed Grounds] onto the battlefield. Then I released the contents of my spatial inventory, releasing thousands of corpses, human and Trolls & Lizards, mostly human around me, piling the dead around me where they tumbled out in various conditions onto the cracked battlefield. It seems crazy to my audience, just dropping piles of carcasses/corpses on the ground in the middle of the battlefield when it's well known that even a level 150 Necromancer Summoner can only bind 40 undead to them. That is true, but they don't know one very important thing. I'm bloody nuts. I spam [Zombie] [Lich] & [Death Knight] at will on the corpses, unconcerned about the little fact that none of them answer to me. With the cracked battlefield, mobility is fucked for most of the well armored folks & I've been picking off the highly mobile, unarmored types for a while now and collecting their corpses for this very occasion. The Wild undead attacked the troops of Kratos, Necropolis & Olympia with teeth, claws, poison & death magic. No one is safe. Not even me. I'm being attacked by everyone & everything. It's exciting & chaotic. With nothing but enemies around, I don't have to hold back any more.. I used the remaining Terminus power & Dark Power along with an absurd amount of mana to empower my [Poison Nova] unleashing a wave of toxic gas throughout the battlefield. The effects of the gas is immediate and horrendous, those exposed have their flesh rot & they fall to the ground dead. Even the Necromancers who have a resistance against poison & curse magic suffer the effects of such an overpowered spell. Those that manage to survive the initial wave of gas (those on the edge of the spell's effect range) are infected with the enhanced version of Pestilence, causing their bodies to stumble & their minds to succumb to dizziness & a potent malaise. They've become carriers for a virulent disease, which spreads with ease through the air & into and through the fatigued soldiers. The undead who've lost their undead masters rampage through the confused & weakened human survivors. They kill more soldiers, & even more necromancers, freeing more 'enslaved undead' causing more deaths perpetuating a truly amusing and vicious cycle of liberation and murder. I used [Aura Body] & [Mana Shield] to block the worst of the damage from the living & the undead & [Shadow Step] my way to Necropolis. Steve and his remaining gang of 9 Vampire Necromancers chase after me using their recently enhanced speed but they still lag behind me. I easily bypassed the walls & security of Necropolis. I make use of the relative peace & quiet to recover my health & mana while appreciating the view. Necropolis is a very nice looking city, made of a mixture of stone, glass & metal buildings. The benefits of being so close to the iron mines of Death Forest. It's all so neat and quiet, like a very large tomb. A minute later they catch up to me. "This is all your fault, you planned to betray us all along." Steve said angrily. "Not really, I'm just doing whatever it takes to get what I want." "You won't get away with this." "Seriously. That is such a cheesy one liner. I've got a better one, unleash the BUNNY RABBITS." I unleashed my somewhat secret weapon upon the clueless vampire Necromancers. I summon all 9 of my Demon bunnies, who used [Multiplication] repeatedly, filling the area with their duplicates who then produce more duplicates. Until there are thousands upon thousands of level 100 dhampir demon bunnies. While the Dhampir Demon Bunny Mages may not be as physically durable as Dez, they can use [Multiplication] a lot more due to their high mana pool & Mage stat distribution growth. What happens next is a wave of hungry dhampir demon bunnies descending upon the Vampire Necromancers who summon their own minions to protect themselves from this unexpected development. The undead are tackled aside by waves of Duplicates using [Gigantism] along with [Charge] to make a path to the Vampire Necromancers. While the Vampire Necromancers have gained a lot of raw stats from drinking blood, it's only been a single night and they haven't learned how to fully utilize their new stats. After all it took me more than a month to get my act together. The Necromancers tried to use their Death Knights & Liches to save them but it's totally futile, there are simply too many demon bunny Duplicates attacking them. They died under the fluffy horde. I recorded the entire debacle for my future entertainment. I recalled the bunnies into my soul inventory, so they wouldn't get in the way, shame they don't have hands to help with the next part of this. Since Necropolis is essentially empty of people thanks to the massive battle outside, I took some time looting the place. I raid their armory for the best weapons, I raid the Alchemist store for potions & ingredients. I raid their catacombs for their higher level undead. I raid their treasury for mana stones & gold & jewels. My inventory fills too quickly and I'm forced to make use of the corpses of my frenemies to raise a small army of [Death Knights]. None of the corpses of the Vampire Champions disappeared. I guess what Ren told me about Vampire/Dhampir Champions was true. Sucks to be them. I wonder what happened to their accounts. Admittedly I did have to annul the contracts I had with the undead I had in Nightshade but I'm sure my minions can deal with ten Wild Undead. These are much better undead anyway and it's considered normal to trade up. I would use them to serve as pack mules to carry all the plunder back home. Off in the distance I can hear the faint sound of people fighting & dying. I ignore it as irrelevant. I went through the Catacombs located beneath the surface of Necropolis with my Undead Vampire Necromancer Death Knights, using them to clear out the weaker undead and offering deals to the strongest & smartest undead. The higher level undeads are called revenants & they have sentience equivalent to humans. They are all too happy to strike back at those that originally killed them and forced their bodies into endless death matches for their amusement. The dead hold such grudges against the living. I used [Tunneling] to start a tunnel towards Nightshade. I gave them orders to take their loot and dig their way to Nightshade following the general direction of the tunnel. I returned to the battlefield to find the King of Kratos along with his elite forces come to save the remnants of the Kratos forces from everyone & everything trying to kill them. There's mass chaos & death... I stayed off at the very edges of the battle which has taken an unexpected turn. I hadn't expected the Golden/Diamond King & the Elites of Kratos to show up for this battle. Alistair the King, Anthony the Bishop of the Helios Church & Bennett the head of the local Mage Guild. They're accompanied by their level 150 -170 subordinates. All up there's only 40 of them but they tear through opponents like a hot knife through butter but much messier & violent. Alistair displays his abilities as a level 200 Warrior, using [Golden Body] in an effort to protect his troops by slaughtering those who try and kill them with his sword. [Golden Body: The body of a Warrior stepping onto the path of divinity, neither poison, mortal weapons or age can break them easily.] It's a permanent passive, which increases the effects of physical stats to an absurd level. The exact details as to the numbers involved are mostly rumors as the level 200 rankers are tight lipped about it. The Golden King or the Diamond King as he is commonly known as is considered the mid game content for those wanting to live out childish fantasies of ruling a kingdom. He looks 30, but he's probably 3 times that age. As of yet he's been undefeated by Champion challengers. From what I've heard about him, he has like all the classes. He has a Warrior build, with Warrior Class as his main, specializing in the Sword, and he's a Grand master Swordsman. His sub classes include Mage, Magic Scholar, Blacksmith, Enchanter, Archer, Diplomat & Merchant. He also has the Job of Soldier, Miner & Farmer. He's a true Renaissance man. I feel no need to challenge him directly. Even the Olympians retreat when faced with the King of Kratos. The remaining Necromancers and their summons are killed by the combined forces of the King, his personal knights, the elites of the Mage Guild & the Church. While Alistair reaps lives with his sword as do his personal retinue of knights, the others act with more stylish devastation. Anthony the 60 year old looking Bishop (at least twice that age) is dressed in a white and gold Clerics outfit, simple cloth on the outside, with a layer of golden alloyed armor underneath. He's gone with the pure Priest build, Priest as his Main, followed by Mage, Magical Scholar & finally Warrior for that extra health boost. He's an impressive old codger & dangerous to boot. A level 200 Native is miles apart from even a level 199 Native. Level 200 is the second major landmark level & has impressive bonuses & skills. His Paladins & Priests flank him as they simply walk forth through the undead, surrounded by golden light which obliterates the undead. My guess is Anthony's using [Avatar] the level 200 Priest ability in order to so easily kill the undead. [Avatar: When a Priest has shown true devotion to their path, they can call on their God to grant them a fraction of their Godly power, to display their Dominion on the mortal plane.] From what I've heard it's very powerful & uses up a lot of mana, life force & divine power. Everywhere Anthony goes, the wounded are healed and even the Kratos dead are resurrected... It's so OP. He quickly runs out of juice though and he has to be carried off by a Templar. The other priests go about using [Divine Heal] on the wounded with the remaining Templars using [Blessed] Swords to slice apart the undead. As for Bennett, he's a 70 year old dude in a white Mage's robe with silver trim, equipped with a fancy staff topped by a Lightning Mage Stone. His 9 Elite Mages spread out through the battlefield and used various high level magics to kill the necromancers & any stubborn Olympian soldiers who haven't gotten the message that they're boned so far from home. Bennett uses the level 200 Mage ability [Multi cast] to use [Fly] to float up in the air while surrounded by a [Mana Shield] casting [Chain Lightning] to electrocute enemy soldiers dozens at a time. His Elites simply used low level spells with high proficiency and spammed those spells making use of their large mana pools to pummel their enemies into red paste. A level 170 Spatial Mage cast [Implosion] which caused a hundred Necromancers & their undead summons to be drawn backwards & crumple into lights... [Hurricane Blades] tore through Necromancers, severing arms & legs with the upgraded high velocity version of wind blades. Rains of [Ice Bolts] caused a sea of pinkish ice to form from all the frozen blood that resulted. It was a total blood bath. I watched with grim fascination with [Hawk Eye] as those high powered juggernauts tore through their enemies. The death toll finally reached the required amount & I used [Mass Offering] along with [Entreaty] to finalize the quest, dedicating the dead to Terminus. The battlefield is bathed in absolute darkness for a long moment and when it disappears a couple of seconds later all the corpses have disappeared. With all the enemies killed or sent on their ways, attention turns to the lone Champion, sitting on the walls of Necropolis radiating unprecedented levels of Dark Power. Bennett flies towards me and I finally get a chance to use the items purchased from Ethan on someone adequately dangerous. When Bennett is only meters away from me, I throw out the smoke bombs in rapid succession, after pulling thier fuses to activate them (somewhat like grenades) followed shortly by slime potions directly at him and his Mana Shield. The smoke bombs fill the air with black gas & Bennett stops, his vision obscured. Mana Shield is powerful but it has quite a few weaknesses, one being that it does not block out gas for obvious reasons (the Mage would suffocate) another is that it absorbs damage & deflects certain physical attacks (eg spears, arrows) but it doesn't actively deflects things (example a rock falling directly above it). The black gas blocks his sight of the slime potions activating, releasing 4 alchemically boosted Slimes. Slimes are unusual monsters in that they spawn at level 1 but can be incredibly dangerous in certain situations. The 4 Slimes use their inherent ability [Absorb] on each other merging into it's evolved form as a level 20 Lesser Slime which then uses [Replicate] to split into two copies & uses [Absorb] on the Mana Shield it's on. Slimes can [Absorb] all sorts of things, their favorite meal of course is pure mana as it helps them grow faster. They're also happy to eat anything organic, they do less well with inorganics like swords & armors. My Alchemist level hits level 62 for using the Slime Potion against a level 200 opponent. I made use of the distraction to use [Shadow Soldier] as a decoy as I used [God's Eye] to find a good spot in the Catacombs & [Shadow Step] there as a wave of notifications hit me. I finally got new notifications in response to my [Mass Offering] & [Entreaty]. Skim reading through the notifications, I was utterly shocked & appalled by what I saw. I dropped to my knees, "Oh shit, what have I done?" I quickly shook off the useless guilt & logged out in order to save Ren from my stupidity & himself... //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Author's Note My final run through of this chapter took like 8 hours :-S I think I'm dead now, pray for my heathen soul or not... I don't know. I think I've lost the plot. I blame Derek, he keeps going off script :-( This chapter has somehow ended up on a cliff, after a lot of deaths, the moral event horizon has probably been passed and Derek will get more than he bargained for. Hoping to post the next chapter in a couple of days. It'll be a short twisted one. Like me. I think I'm officially out of words now. I'm still not totally happy with this chapter but 'perfect is the enemy of good'. Something Something explosion. Obligatory note: If you feel like it you can donate to Nifty through http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html