Chapter 587: Venom Against the Hordes

Though Omilaena had fought during the main waves, that had been the most boring part of the battle for her, because the calculations were so simple. By far her most efficient method of killing monsters was exhaling clouds of poison, so that was what she had done, over and over, filling the eastern side of the Frontier with endless poison.

When monsters started to appear that could survive or resist her poison, it simply wasn't energy-efficient to come up with unique methods of killing them. Instead, she conserved her strength as the elites managed a retreat to the Frontier wall, which was where the next stand would take place.

Even though they had wiped out a large percentage of the monsters and thinned the hordes, simple mathematics meant that they had thinned themselves as well: the hundred or so elites were now spread out across leagues and leagues of circumference. That was where their other allies got to take a role, and where Omilaena could switch to a more interesting modality.

She stalked along the top of the wall, watching her Irunian experiments fight the hordes. This was the strongest phase of Deadwaste's defenses, because the monsters couldn't generally damage the wall, forcing them to climb up the side. That gave more than enough opportunity for the Irunians atop the walls to use various weapons to take them out, though they had a serious attrition problem. At this stage, while the monsters were still manageably weak, they primarily used rocks that had been carted to the top of the wall in preparation. With gravity, a generic soldier could launch lethal attacks with little effort.

Mostly lethal. Omilaena spotted a cluster of spider-like monsters that were making their way up the side, shrugging off the rocks, and so she leapt into action.

In a flash she raced to that section of the wall and vaulted over the heads of the Irunians, catching herself with one hand on the edge. From there, it was a simple matter to hurl a set of needles, each piercing directly through the head of one of the spiders. In seconds she had taken out the resistant monsters and pulled herself back up again.

The Irunians all gave her a saluting bow. That felt a bit weird, but they were cooperative subjects, so Omilaena returned a casual salute and moved on.

Most of the horde, the Irunians could handle on their own: monsters that did reach the top were immediately met by their steel, which was very dangerous thanks to her. Some of the monsters were more distorted and resisted other weapons, but Irunian steel, with its strong Essence properties, could still pierce them. The issue was preventing all their strongest from getting tied up.

Ahead, Omilaena saw that there was a section of the wall being overrun, the Irunians holding their own with their heavy armor, but failing to stop other monsters from pouring over. A sailing leap took Omilaena toward the brawl, which looked rather fun.

Still in mid-air, she hurled a needle through the head of a fast scythe-like monster. She landed atop a humanoid giant, stabbing needles directly into its eyes. Others targeted her, but she flipped off its back and let them strike each other. Her heel came down, piercing the head of a weaker monster, and she blew a cloud of poison over the side of the wall, holding off the others.

She'd taken out the majority of the tougher ones, but the Irunians were still battering away at a heavily armored monster. That one might actually resist her needles, so Omilaena jumped up to its head. When it opened its maw to bite her, she lashed out with her fingernails, stabbing into the vulnerable parts around the eyes and delivering enough poison to finish it off.

"More got past!" one of the Irunians gasped, pointing past the wall.

"I noticed." Omilaena absentmindedly threw a needle at another monster while examining the stream tumbling down the other side and moving into Irun. "They can survive a horde like that. All of you focus on keeping more from getting over."

"Yes ma'am!" More salutes, but they quickly got back to work.

That was actually the strategy, as Omilaena understood it - a clever way of working with limited resources. The elites thinned out the monster hordes, then made sure they didn't penetrate in large groups that could sweep away cities. In smaller concentrations, the monsters could be absorbed by all the cities, which were heavily defended for that very purpose.

The next section of wall actually looked to be in good shape, easily staying on top of the defenses, and Omilaena understood why: they had Tusquo with them. At range, he could swing his sword and unleash arcs of mana thanks to his Class, and when any monsters got close, his steel easily punched through their defenses.

When he saw her, though, he looked unsettled. She leapt over to figure out what was going on.

"There's a worse one out there," he said, kicking a monster corpse off his sword. "We need you on this."

"Hmm, that big armored one?" Omilaena shielded her eyes with her hand to get a better look. It looked kind of like a big spiky armadillo, so they probably called it a Dire Armadillo or something. "I can handle it."

"No, that one is just a city destroyer." Tusquo used his sword to point further north. "There's a nation destroyer out there, one that forced elites to retreat. Worse, it's headed for the damaged wall."

"On it." Omilaena left the Dire Armadillo to him and headed north, only hurling an occasional needle when the opportunity arose.

Interesting that one of the most dangerous monsters yet was moving directly toward the weakest point, where the Frontier wall had been repaired with inferior materials. As far as she knew, the incursion was a mindless event, but it did show... reactive tendencies, perhaps. If it could generate more monsters in response to a direct attack, it might also be able to target weak points, so Tusquo was right to send Omilaena to handle it.

She had to get there first, though. Amid all her priorities, Omilaena still didn't have a proper flight skill, which was mildly annoying at times like these. Normally she could be carried by Kai, or tease Zin Nim into doing it, but now she had to use a flying sword or something. Part of her hoped that her Physique would give her natural flight, like some elemental users or angel-class monks, but it probably wasn't good to count on that.

After a sprint that left her a little short of breath, Omilaena spotted it... and understood the problem.

The monster was enormous, the size of a three story building, yet oddly squat and round. Its front end was almost entirely taken up by a circular mouth, filled with rings of rotating teeth. Despite being sluggish, its size meant it moved at decent speed and some monsters in its way tumbled into the mouth, getting turned into bloody slurry.

Worse, there were Irunians throwing elemental or mana techniques at it, and they were accomplishing nothing. The mouth seemed nearly invulnerable, and they were smart enough to focus on the squat leathery body around it, but most attacks snuffed out. Only Irunian arrows stuck and drew some blood, and they were tiny pinpricks on the massive beast.

This really was a country-destroyer, the sort of monster that the elites usually had to team up together to beat. It might actually be a threat to Omilaena, so she stopped playing around.

First, as she leapt toward the damaged wall, she hurled a set of poisoned needles into the flesh above the mouth. She'd aimed for the beady row of eyes, but the beast shifted too much. Her needles penetrated, and she knew that she'd properly phased the poison, but would that be enough?

Apparently not. The enormous monster trundled on, getting closer to the wall.

Time to slow it down, then. Omilaena took a moment to summon her full strength, letting poison and ice run down her arms separately. First, she summoned the best qi she could and then hurled a spike of ice that pierced directly through the monster's flipper-like foot.

It pierced and her ice qi immediately burst out, freezing the monster's leg and slowing its advance. Omilaena then focused on her other arm, finishing an extremely potent paralytic. She could hurl phased poison easily now, but that was just the bar: a monster like this needed the strongest poison she could manage.

Even though it didn't take long, in that time the monster managed to break free of her ice and limped forward on the damaged flipper. It wasn't slowed down as much as she liked, and it was getting uncomfortably close. The Irunians nearby were retreating and she didn't blame them.

As soon as her poison needle was fully concentrated - the steel a bright purple - Omilaena spun around and hurled it with her full might.

She targeted the throbbing muscle at the center of all the rings of teeth, and thankfully her poison pierced the monster's defenses. Its entire body trembled as her chakra had an impact... but it wasn't enough. The monster still lurched forward.

It wasn't immune to poison, she was fairly sure, it was just too large for even her best poisons to kill it quickly. Omilaena cursed under her breath as she prepared another pair of attacks. First she made another ice spike, taking out another flipper and slowing the monster down a little more. But it was close enough now that she didn't have time for another, and she guessed those teeth would chew right through.

In her other hand, she'd prepared a new trick: a bottle of hyper-concentrated poison gas, which had a few mana boosts taken from Juray. Omilaena hurled it into the beast's central maw and saw the cloud explode, definitely saturating the beast's flesh with a lot more poison.

For a moment she thought it was enough: the monster slowed and sagged, its body-width mouth actually closing a little. But then its eyes gleamed and, draining its stamina, the beast charged directly toward the wall.

Well, time to do something stupid.

Omilaena leapt off the wall, directly into the path of the monster's charge. It ignored her arrival, intending to trample her so that its rings of teeth could hit the stone itself. That allowed Omilaena duck in low, set her feet, phase her power, and then swing both fists upward in the strongest blow she could manage.

The impact flattened her to the ground and knocked the wind from her lungs. From that position, though she was a bit dazed, Omilaena had an excellent view of the monster being knocked skyward, its bulk sailing over the wall.

"Good," Omilaena muttered to herself as she pushed back up to her feet. It was counter-intuitive, but the wall's defenses were more important than one monster getting over it. And maybe having bought more time, the poisons could finally take it down.

When she got back to the wall, Omilaena saw she had no such luck. The monster had to thrash its flippers and a spiked tail to get back to its feet so that absurdly large mouth could be used against anything. Some of the Irunians were hurling attacks at it, mostly ineffectually, and it still wasn't dying from her poison yet. The paralytic might have slowed it, but brute force had been more effective.

Worse, once it got up, the monster seemed to shift uncertainly. Torn between attacking the people on the wall or moving in to eat defenseless people, she guessed. If it had been completely focused on returning to the damaged wall, it might have been able to destroy it, but the creature didn't seem quite that smart.

Annoyed by the thing's endurance, Omilaena waited and summoned more poison until it started to move toward the wall from the opposite side. Maybe a more concentrated dose right at the source would be enough to take it out.

She leapt off the wall, intending to land on the thing's eyes and drive her poison needle directly into them. But while she was in mid-air, the monster stopped ignoring her, moving with phase-dangerous speed to tilt back and open that maw toward her.

Omilaena helplessly plunged in and the teeth closed around her from all sides.