Congratulations!
You Have Earned A Title!
The Wrath Of The Heavens (Rare)!
Lightning comes to your ever easier with each passing day, forging your being into one of galvanizing force.
+5 WIL, INT, PER
Power surged into Loquis, flaring across his channels and core space like a black storm. It was all he could do to take a ragged breath, and look around him.
His squad was falling back, the tide of Scorpions still too much. Geir and Asaad and Pava were all breathing heavily beside him.
"Wewe move onto the next one," Loquis said, a bit tremulously. "Take on the two fighting the Blades."
"Do you have enough juice left?" Pava asked. Her own arm was trembling, the defined muscles twitching despite her white-knuckled grip on her sword.
"I'll...I'll be fine," Loquis said. Geir rumbled, but whether it was in disbelief or agreement, the Half-Orc couldn't tell. "We need to rally. We"
The earth bucked, rising beneath their feet and dropping so hard all of them were thrown. Loquis cried out, his back smashing into a rock as the groaning, shaking sands exploded into a frenzy of motion. The waters surged, and waves of dark, cool liquid hit them and hurled their prone bodies back into the treeline. Loquis gasped for breath amid the foam and spray, barely regaining his feet as something immense rose from the waters.
It was a Scorpion, three times as big as Geir. So big that it could not possibly be the same creature. He flared his Analyze, only able to catch its name.
Name: Manadrenched Scorpion
It's claws came down, like a falling mountainside, and the shoreline was obliterated. Legionnaires, Henaari, Giant, none of them were immune to the sheer force of its impact. Had Loquis not already been fetched up against a tree, he would have been tossed like a child's doll into the jungle, where even now the Cask Scorpions were skittering and attacking with abandon.
The Manadrenched Scorpion scuttled forward several steps, raising it's claws again. This time it aimed at the trees. At them. Loquis tried to cry out, but his breath wouldn't come. Lightning skittered from his channels, unformed and unfocused.
The claws came down.
And were seized by a burning, red-gold flame.
"Fiend," Loquis whispered, heart in his throat. "Oh thank the gods."
The flames spread, splashing down over the beach and sweeping into the trees. All around him, the mage saw hulking forms stopped in their tracks as fire ignited their chitin, while the Manadrenched monstrosity shook above.
"Fucking bugs!" the Autarch shouted, and the force of it was enough to shake the trees around them. "You want to crush something? I'll show you how!"
An impact sounded so loud that Loquis felt his Health drop, and the two-dozen stride scorpion lurched to the right. Lightning crackled around its too-large body, and the thing screamed.
Loquis stumbled into the jungle, quickly finding Pava and Asaad behind a grove of tangled trees. Together they ran to the nearest Scorpion, where Geir was already attack its paralyzed form. It was half-eaten by the Fiend's hungry flames, but died to a saber thrust between its mandibles and through its brain.
You Have Killed A Cask Scorpion!
XP Earned!
"To the next!" Loquis shouted, already running. The huge beast behind them screamed again and again, but the Fiend did not stop.
And neither did they.
Cardinal Flame is level 81!
Adamant Discord is level 80!
Rain of Cataclysm is level 51!
Corrosive Strike is level 64!
Wild Threnody is level 68!
Armored Skin is level 76!
Cloudstep is level 48!
"Goddamn, that was a workout."
Felix stood atop the now-still form of the Manadrenched Scorpion, nursing his shoulder as he kept Sovereign of Flesh on a low burn. He could feel the injury knitting itself back together and eating up his Essence stores as a result. He'd used his battleform during the fight, as with the Dustborn Wraiths, hoping to get it to Tier up but it hadn't been enough. "That last level before Tiering is always such a pain."
Chthonic Tribute!
The mass of monster beneath him sublimated into a dense, black cloud streaked with blue-green light and a deep, pulsing purple. He dropped through it, splashing right into the shallow water.
Oh right.
His Garment shifted into swim trunks, letting his naked calves soak in the wonderfully chilly waters. Felix scanned the beach as he walked and ate Essence. A few more of those giant scorpions were around, but they had been surrounded by his people, all of whom were hurling Skills at it from a distance. Two more monsters died as he observed. The squad had done a decent job with these monsters, though he didn't miss several bodies washed up against the trees. That stabbed at him more than a little, guilt and sorrow warring against the anger in him. Of them all, the guilt was almost as useless as the anger.
I was the one who sent them out like this, who brought them along, he chastised himself. The monsters killed them, but I'm the cause. I have to be better.
And, he admitted to himself. They need to get stronger. Or else they'll never survive this desert.
A giant spotted him as he came ashore, and it dropped to a knee before him. "Tu Ostakkur. My Lord."
Felix waved him back to his feet. "Where is your squad leader...Geir?"
Geir stood, all eleven feet of him, and looked proud that Felix knew his name. It didn't seem to occur to the giant that Felix might have just Analyzed him. "Osyk is there, leading the squad against the last insect. It is nearly dead, so he sent me here to see how we could aid you."
Obviously, Felix could feel the squad fighting not twenty yards into the dense jungle, though he couldn't see them by any standard definition of the word.
"Gather the dead. Teammate and monster alike. Do any of you have the Butchering Skill?" he asked.
"No, my Lord. But we all have the dressing-knife your Forgemaster made for us," Geir said, displaying a blade more like a machete on his hip. One of the simpler enchantments Rafny had taught Harn, the dressing-knives were inlaid with an array to stop monster corpses from decaying for a period of time.
"Good. Use it." Felix felt his ears perk up. In the distance, he could feel more things wakening. He could almost hear the volley of spells and Skills against them, and it wasn't more Scorpions. It was too far for that. "Return to the camp and report back to Harn or Reed. There's more out there."
Adamant Discord!
Felix burst up through the trees, his Body and Mind sore but pressing on anyway. He flared the Skill again, shifting directions so he was yanked along the top, inches from the canopy. The sound of battle grew louder.
He dove into the trees once more.