Wandering Warrior: Jury - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It didn’t take long for the ghouls to ready themselves.  They were smart enough to wait and cluster together to rush the gate until the last possible moment, only giving me a few seconds to react.  Unfortunately for them, a few seconds was all I needed.

The wood used to make the palisade was all fresh-cut timber from the forest.  Not only was it still green, but it seemed to rain at least once a day on this planet, making it even harder for wood to become properly seasoned.  There was a lot of moisture still in the logs that made up the gate.  So, I decided to use them to show the ghouls how devastating a guy with a basic understanding of physics could ruin their day.

I had a spell I used that could gradually increase the temperature of an object until I cut off the flow of energy.  It was how I melted the silver to make the bullets for my wrist gun.  I held out my right hand, palm facing downwards, and brought my ring finger down to my thumb, making sure to keep the other fingers perfectly straight, and said the activation word.  “Heat.”  Instead of a gradual influx of mana like normal, I pushed enough of the crackling energy that flowed through me into the spell that the strain on my body made me drop to one knee.

As the water inside the wood went from liquid to steam, the logs let out an ominous groan.  None of the ghouls paid it any attention, rushing forward in a tight cluster.  Air began to warp around the logs in a haze, the high temperatures causing even the rain that came close to the wooden barricade to boil off.  I knew the rapid expansion would be too much for the logs to handle, and they would soon explode.

With my left hand, I held up my palm vertically in front of me with my fingers spread wide, visualizing an invisible wall of hardened air that would help direct the blast outward.  I didn’t vocalize anything for the spell, not wanting to divide my mana too evenly.  The air shimmered in sympathy with the waves of heat coming off the logs, adding to the intensity of my first spell.

As the first ghouls reached the gate, I activated one of my seldom-used titles.  It had harsh restrictions, but I felt as though the moment called for it.

Title: Send Them into Orbit

-Explosions are often overkill.  That’s exactly what this situation needs.  More overkill!  Blast those enemies straight to the moon.

Skill Imparted: Any explosion caused by the title holder is 50% more powerful.  Secondary explosions will not carry this bonus.  Can only be used during the waning phase of the moon or moons, depending on the world.  Useable once per thirty day period.  Warning - Be wary of friendly fire, as explosions do not know friend from foe.

I had gained the title back on world nine, shortly after gaining my Mage class.  A spider, one big enough that you could put it in the ‘nuke it from space’ category, walked across my face while I was sleeping in the jungle.  I might have overreacted a bit, and the resulting title had been my reward.

The title was finicky enough that I honestly forgot about it most of the time.  I had a ridiculous amount of titles, after all, and the majority of them were completely useless in my day-to-day life.  Most seemed to be made to make fun of me, like the one called ‘Donkey Kick’ that I could use to kick a donkey incredibly hard, but only after it had kicked me first.  I had gotten it after a donkey had kicked me into a ditch while on an escort mission on world four.  All it did was poke fun at me in the moment, which fit the mold for most of my titles.  But, for once, this one could come in handy.

I felt the title’s effects settle over me, and the first of the ghouls crested the pointed spikes of the gate.  As it saw me, our eyes met, and it smiled a fang-filled grin meant to cause fear.  I smiled back, and shoved one last burst of mana into my Heat spell, pushing the wood of the gate over the brink.

The sound of the explosion was underwhelming, considering the size of the fireball and flaming spears of splintered wood that blasted into the group of undead like the world’s largest shotgun blast.  That isn’t saying it wasn’t loud, just that it wasn’t as loud as I thought it should have been.  There was no doubt about the effectiveness of the last-second plan.  It was even more destructive than I expected.  Considering what I was looking at, I double-checked to see if there was a freaking mushroom cloud forming above the hole where the gate used to be.

“Wow.”  I took a moment to catch my breath before getting to my feet.  Our palisade wall sagged inward along both sides for several yards, the ground holding the spikes wrenched upward in a rough-edged crater.  A shockwave had torn the earth apart for well over two hundred yards.  The destruction reached deep into the forest in a cone of wood shrapnel, flattened trees, and spots of burning brush where the superheated steam was hot enough to ignite the more flammable organic materials.  “I need to use that title more often.”

Apparently, my system agreed with me.

Title Upgraded: Send Them into Orbit II

-Your penchant for overkill astounds!  If you keep this up, blowing your enemies into space might become an actual goal you can achieve!

Skill Imparted: Primary explosions are 50% → 55% more powerful.  Secondary explosions now carry a 5% chance to also carry the same bonus as the primary explosion.  This chance applies to each secondary explosion individually, not cumulatively.  Can now be used during the waning phase of the moon, as well as days of the full moon and new moon.  Useable twice per thirty day period.  Explosions are still dangerous to both friends and enemies.

Warning - Your continued destruction of the pristine sections of forest has changed your status from ‘gained their attention’ to ‘angered’ for one of the gods of this world!  They have dispatched Icons of Wrath for your immediate execution.  Leaving their area of influence as soon as possible is strongly advised.

Damn.  Well, that’s definitely not good.  The title upgrade was definitely a nice bonus–especially having the extra activation and days to use it–but having a local god after me was a checkmark in the bad column.  It wasn’t the first time it had happened to me, of course.  I’d done it a good six or seven times before, and each time it had meant fighting the avatar or champion of the local god or gods that didn’t like me.

When you go around flipping the power structure of entire continents, you tended to piss off everybody.  This was probably a speed record for me, though.  I usually didn’t have a local god or two trying to kill me until I had been on a planet for at least six months or so.  Given the clues in the messages, I’d have to say it was some kind of forest or nature god that was mad at me.  It was definitely time to spend some time behind the walls of a city, while the forest deity got distracted by squirrel politics or something and forgot about me in a couple of weeks.

“James!  They’re still coming!”  Cross was making his way down to join me closer to the gate, so he was in the perfect position to see the ghouls that had survived the gate explosion sneaking their way toward the gap in our defenses.

The others were still at the top, prepping our crossbows and covering Jess, who was waving her hands around and working on some kind of spell.  I was glad to see they were planning a proper division of forces and supporting fields of fire without me having to provide any input.  Our little team was developing nicely.

A loud crunch from a ghoul tossing aside some debris made me take a few shuffling steps over to where I could get a better view over the twisted remains of the walls.  I was surprised to see so much movement through the steam and smoke the rain hadn’t managed to knock down.

“How are these things still kicking?”  I pulled off my hat and wiped the sweat and rain off my forehead before settling it back on my head.  My body and soul ached from the strain of the past few minutes, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me.  Letting someone else handle the magic might be a good idea though.  “Doesn’t matter.  I’ll hold the gap, and you can provide support.  There shouldn’t be enough left to overwhelm me anymore.”

“Don’t speak too soon.”  Cross joined me on my boulder as we watched ten surviving ghouls struggle through the steaming mud and rain.  “You can’t take on all of them by yourself.  You’re good, but not that good.”

I gave him a grin for an answer.  I honestly didn’t know if I could take all ten ghouls by myself.  Probably not, especially in this environment.  It was too open, and they would be able to surround me before I could whittle down their numbers.  Friendly fire would become a problem then, and the others wouldn’t be able to help.  If our walls hadn’t been messed up so much, it might have been worth a shot.  After I had a few minutes to recharge some mana for healing, of course.

We both watched as the group of undead got close enough for us to make out details through the haze and fog.  The ghoul leading their survivors through the disaster zone was the same one I had shot, with the distinctive bone ridge spike on his head.  It walked with a noticeable limp, and I felt a little thrill of victory knowing that my corrosive crossbow bolts did hurt them.  They were just incredibly tough, and anything short of a kill shot wouldn’t put them down.  As they got close, it opened its maw of a mouth and hissed for a moment before speaking actual words.

“Hssssss…  Man-meat out of tricks.  We fight.  You die.  We eat.  Lady will give us more magic rocks.”  The ghoul’s voice seemed almost up-beat and excited, if a gravel pit that had the ability to speak could sound excited.

“You feel like telling me more about this lady you mentioned?”  I knew there were some witches further north that were causing problems, but the ghoul made it seem like there was a singular person he was talking about, not a coven.  “Like, maybe a name?”

It was never that easy.  All I got in reply was a snarl, and the leading ghoul charged.  Cross and I leapt forward to meet them, both of us leaving one another some room to maneuver.  I was a bit stronger, so my jump put me closer to the undead.  As I unclipped my mace from my belt and activated my shield bracelet with a flicker of mana, two crossbow bolts slammed into the ghouls on the edges of their line.  It forced them to tighten up their group, giving them less room to swing their meaty bone-covered fists at me.

The leader ghoul fell back at the last moment, letting two of the biggest remaining bone knights take his place at the front.  Lucky me, I guess.  I used my forward momentum to help me swing my mace upward like it was a golf club, and the ghoul on the right was a golf ball sitting on a tee.  The bladed head of my mace caught the undead creature full-force in the solar plexus, shattering his bone armor and sending the oversized bone knight flipping back into the monsters behind.  I didn’t kill the robust creature, but it definitely wasn’t getting up right away.

Cross caught up to me, wielding the spear I had let him use until he could find a replacement.  The paper-thin blade darted at the weak points in the ghouls bone armor, piercing ankles and knees with the precision of an expert.  He managed to tie up three of the smaller undead in the blink of an eye, their movements getting slower and slower as the damage built up against them.

I ducked as another volley of crossbow bolts flashed overhead.  Leedy and Murphy were still targeting the ghouls trying to work their way around to our sides, cracking bone armor with the heavy impacts.  It didn’t stop them, but it certainly slowed them down.

The ghoul I hadn’t smashed threw a haymaker of a punch at my face, and by reflex I tried to knock its fist up and away with my forearm, trusting my shield bracelet to handle the attack.  That was a mistake.  Even with both the bracelet active and my Vigor stat sitting somewhere in the sixties, the spikes on its knuckles tore through the shield like tissue paper and ripped into my arm.  A shock of cold sunk all the way through my bone, stealing my breath in surprise.  The pain tried to rob me of my concentration, and I silently berated myself for thinking I could fight ten of these things by myself.  These ghouls were on magic steroids.

Some kind of power or ability made their armor much more dangerous to the living than any regular bone spikes should be capable of.  My guess would be the dark core it carried inside its chest was better than the ones I had seen before.  The ache from the cold magic it carried that flashed into my arm when it connected numbed the wound and made using my hand sluggish, but I held my mace in my right hand anyway.  My natural healing fought against it, keeping it from spreading further as I could feel the wound slowly–and painfully–trying to close.

While fighting against the shock of the ghoul’s new ability, it managed to knee me in the ribs on the same side.  The crunch of bone sent another wave of pain through me, but this time there was no debilitating cold to go with it.  I definitely wasn’t doing as well as I should have been, but these were the survivors.  The best of the ghoul forces.  There were a bunch more left to kill, and this one had already torn up my arm and cracked my ribs.

Still, I guess it was better than getting punched in the head.  As the ghoul wound up for a second haymaker, I torqued my shoulder muscles hard and brought the head of my mace across and downward onto its undefended hip and pelvis, crushing the whole monster onto its knees.  It wasn’t the only thing here that packed a wallop.  I kicked away the disabled monster and looked up for the one with the spike on its head.  Instead, I faced a fresh group of bone knights.

It was no surprise to me that the ghoul leader still held back.  There was more animal cunning in its rotting brain than any of the others, and it wanted us as worn down as possible before it risked its own life.  I wanted to include him in the festivities sooner–leaving people out of parties is impolite, after all–but the remaining ghouls tried to dogpile me.

There was no way for Cross to help me, since he wasn’t done finishing off the three he was still picking apart.  I danced back from the ones trying to surround me, my mace flicking out and making them pay for their eagerness when they got too close.

Jess finally showed herself, turning the ground under our feet into a muddy soup.  The heavy ghouls sank in to the mud past their knees, while Cross and I only ended up a little past our ankles.  Both Cross and I jumped high and back, giving her the chance to turn the ground into solid stone, sealing the ghouls in place.

Since they’d certainly smash their way free quickly, the two of us capitalized on the moment.  Both of us went all out, our movements a blur.  My mace crushed the skulls of two ghouls before they put up any kind of defense to stop me, and Cross finished off the three he had been wearing down.  The rest of them managed to break free of the stone around their legs, and regrouped just inside the crater where our gate used to be.

Now, the only ghouls left were the two big ones I had badly wounded, two speedy-looking ones that had a few crossbow bolts sticking out of their cracked armor, and the leader.  We squared off against each other, gauging our odds of success.

Cross had taken a few wounds during his fight, and he was bleeding a red and black sludge from a cut on his ribs and another from his leg.  It was concerning to see the lich’s corruption had tainted his blood so thickly, but there was nothing I could do about it right now.

I had the torn-up forearm leaking blood, and I was breathing heavier than normal, straining against the tightness from my cracked ribs.  Most of my fatigue came from the strain of my earlier spell-casting, and now it was catching up with me.  The strain on my body and soul after such a long day had me closer to my limits than I had been since the fight with the lich.  Despite that, I was silently pushing myself to heal my injuries, but the cold taint in my forearm fought against me.  It was a steady drain that wasn’t letting my mana levels recover, and our enemies weren’t going to be kind enough to wait a few minutes.

The ghoul leader motioned the four others toward Cross, while giving me a snaggle-toothed grin.  “You eat tainted one.  I eat this one.”

“I can assure you, I’m more than a mouthful, bub.”  I tried taking a deep breath, but my ribs stopped me.  “You can ask your mom all about it if you want.”  Everyone stared at me in confusion.  Even Cross.  I guess ‘your mom’ jokes didn’t always translate well on this world.  “Whatever.  I’m funny.  You can ask your mom about that too.”

Understanding that I was at least poking fun at them, the ghouls snarled in anger before charging.  Another pair of crossbow bolts cracked into the speedy ones going for Cross, and he steadily backed away from the four monsters trying to kill him.  That was all the attention I had to spare for his fight, because my own fight went wild with a quickness.

The leader of the ghouls held its position for a reason.  The ground cracked beneath its feet as the bone knight surged forward, black and green energy crackling like lightning along its joints.  I barely managed to knock away the sweeping kick it aimed at my midsection, my left arm buckling under the pressure as I took two quick steps backward.  It was much heavier than it looked, the bone armor covering it denser than steel.

As we parted, the ghoul only managed a few more steps before it tumbled to the ground in a thunder of splayed limbs and spraying mud.  The earlier soft tissue damage from my acid crossbow bolt must have burned through something important in its hip, affecting its mobility.

I’m not one to pass up such a kind gift when someone offers one to me, so I darted forward with my mace held high over my head, ready to end the ghoul before it could get back on its feet.  Trying to end our fight quickly, I aimed at its head.  That’s how I found out the bone spike that made it stand out from the others was more than just a decoration.

Somehow, as my blessed starmetal mace was about to crush the vulnerable ghoul’s skull, it twisted its head and neck so my weapon was deflected up and along the bone and shunted off to the side.  I struck the wet ground next to the bone knight hard enough that it buried the mace halfway up the handle in the mud.  It was immediately stuck, and I was forced to let it go as I rolled away from a spike-covered elbow aimed at my midsection.  The ghoul was back on his feet in the blink of an eye, and he made sure to put himself between me and my mace.

“Damn!”  I cursed both myself, and my bad luck.  A rumble of thunder seemed to agree with my outburst.  My ninjatō sword hissed against its sheath as I drew it out slowly.  “I guess today just isn’t my day.  Want to call it for now and try this again tomorrow, preferably when I’ve had some time to recharge my mana a little more?”

“Hungry now.  No waiting.”  The ghoul’s wicked smile showed how confident it was feeling, despite the earlier tumble.  It held up both fists, and smashed them together.  Despite them being coated in bone, it still sounded like two plates of steel ringing against one another.  “Lady send us to find you.  Now, I eat you, and Lady make me most strong and fast bone ghoul ever.”

“Wait.  If she only sent you out to find us, are you sure she wanted you to eat us?”  I was only mildly curious about the answer.  What I really needed was the ghoul to keep talking.  Every second we weren’t fighting was a second I gained ground on the cold in my arm.  I almost had it beat, and once I did, my natural regeneration would let me roast this guy.  “What if she wanted you to find us because she wants to talk to us?”

Confused at the new idea, the ghoul froze for a good three seconds.  That’s a long time to stay completely still, and both Leedy and Murphy were happy to have such a helpful target.  Two crossbow bolts bounced off of the monster’s chest, his armor too thick for them to penetrate.  The kinetic force still transferred, and it knocked the ghoul back half a step.

Once again, I closed the distance between us, this time aiming for the tiny gaps in its armor.  My sword ate every kind of magic it came in contact with, which made it a potent weapon against magical creatures, mages, and basically anything controlled or animated by mana.  It was not, however, some fantastic longsword, greatsword, or claymore, that can hack off limbs with a single mighty blow.  That meant I was forced to try and kill this thing by chipping away at it bit by bit, without letting it hit me.

So, that’s exactly what I did.  It wouldn’t have been possible if Leedy and Murphy hadn’t helped me by plinking away at the ghoul leader, causing the occasional distraction.  There was also the fact that it didn’t have a fully functioning hip, so I kept forcing the ghoul to follow me in a big circle, dancing in and out of its reach as I gave it the death by a thousand cuts.  Each time the ninjatō found a gap in its armor, it stole a bit of the black and green lightning mana that made the undead so powerful.

I lost track of time, slipping into the dance of blades taught to me by the elves on world eight.  Dodging the attacks of the ghoul became a natural part of the dance, the two of us falling into a pattern I could follow with my instincts alone.  It was as pure a representation of battle that I had ever experienced, the two of us precariously balanced.  I slowly started gaining an edge as my sword stole more and more power, and both the ghoul and I could sense the fight was coming to an end.  I was going to win.

While I never matched the grace and speed of the elves when I had been at level fifty-five, now I couldn’t help but wonder what the blademasters would say if they could see me after breaking past the limits of level one hundred.  Probably some snide comments about my footwork, immediately followed by a lot of sniffing and sour looks as if there was something that smelled bad in their immediate vicinity.  Elves could be jerks like that.  At least they made delicious cookies.

The flow of our fight slowed, and I capitalized on a brief lull to recover my mace.  After regaining the armor-crushing weapon, I swapped my sword to my left hand–which had healed enough to use again–and held the mace in my right.  It allowed me to smash the armor protecting the ghoul’s joints, slowing it down even faster.  Eventually, the bone knight dropped to its knees, drained and defeated.

As I sheathed my sword and finished healing with a burst of recovered mana, my ribs and arm finally made whole again.  I walked up to the ghoul, pushing enough mana into the starmetal mace to be able to power a Smite spell.  The bone knight watched me come closer, leaking undead fluids from nearly every inch of its body.

“Is there any chance you feel like talking about that ‘Lady’ person you mentioned earlier?”  While I knew the odds weren’t great, I couldn’t help but try.  “I’m willing to listen if you are.”

“Closer.”  It rasped at me, leaning forward in the mud.  I carefully approached, fully aware it could still take a swipe at me.  When I stopped a few feet away, it motioned with a curled finger.  “Come. Closseerrr…”

“Yeah.  I’ve seen this movie.  It never ends well for the good guy.  No thanks.”  I started backing away, and I felt the mana start to swell in the ghoul’s chest.  “Ah, shit.  You’re about to blow yourself up, aren’t you?”

The ghoul started to chuckle, and I turned to run.

I only made it a few steps before an explosion of death and malignant mana detonated behind me.