Healer Arc 2 -- Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Stepping up to the edge of the wall, Thaden strained to make out what was coming toward the city.  Once they were less than a mile away, he could finally make out the individual monsters that were running at full speed, strangely organized so that they were like an unstoppable wave that would hit the walls at the same time.  Unlike what he halfway expected, which was that they might be facing dozens or even hundreds of different monsters all pushed together in an amalgamation of death and destruction, there seemed to only be one kind of monster that was about to attack the city.

The smallest of the incoming monsters were out front ahead of the others, and they were approximately the size of extra-large dogs, such as a Great Dane or a Mastiff; each of them was about 3 feet tall at the shoulder, and seemed to be approximately three times that in length.  What made them different from a dog, however, was how wide they were; at 3 feet wide with thick, powerful legs churning against the dirt beneath them, leaving the farm fields an absolute mess, they looked like giant fleshy missiles with legs shooting across the ground.  As if to emphasize this comparison, their heads were conical-shaped and appeared to be made of some sort of hard bone, chitin, or possibly large scales, similar to the shiny, dark brown scales that covered their bodies.  They ran steadily despite their incredible speed, to the point where they looked like projectiles launched from something in the distance, and they would only stop when they slammed at full-speed into the walls surrounding Teglir.

While he was sure that the extremely sturdy walls would be able to withstand the impact of dozens of these monsters near the same place, he estimated that there were at least 10,000 of them in front of just his section alone that stretched about 100 feet in width, which meant that more than a few dozen would inevitably make it through to the walls.  Or at least in other sections – because Thaden wasn’t planning on letting that happen in his section if he could help it.

Behind what had to be hundreds of thousands of these monsters were larger versions of them, looking for all intents and purposes like living battering rams.  In fact, once they finally got close enough that he could identify them, their name somewhat lived up to that impression.

Charging Goram – Medial

Level 35

The Level 35 Charging Gorams were almost infinitely numerous, and while they were certainly dangerous, they had plenty of Adventurers and other Combat-Class individuals on the walls that they weren’t too much of a threat.  Their larger brethren, who appeared at least twice the size, like a small truck with a lengthy bed, were going to be a bit more of a problem.

Assault Goram – Medial

Level 60

As stated before, the Assault Goram were larger in size, but they were also stockier, had bulkier limbs, and appeared to have thicker scales covering their bodies as well as their heads, which they kept lowered down and toward the walls.  A Level 60 monster, by themselves or even in small groups, wasn’t that big of a deal, as they still had plenty of people on defense that could take care of them, but there wasn’t just a small group of them – there were tens of thousands of them that would arrive almost immediately after the initial wave of Charging Gorams. 

If that wasn’t enough to worry the Adventurers on the wall, there was another delineated wave after the Assault Gorams that weren’t close enough for him to see what they were, but if the Assault Gorams were the size of a small truck, then the next step up were the size of a double-decker bus.  There were thousands of them, as well, forming a wall that reminded him of some videos of tsunamis he’d seen back on Earth, the inevitable tidal wave seeking to swallow the entire city up with their might.  He couldn’t even imagine how much damage even one of those double-decker-bus-sized Gorams hitting the wall would do to the fortification, but it wouldn’t surprise him if it managed to bust a hole straight through it without stopping. 

Finally, as if directing the horde of Gorams from the back, came what was inevitably going to be the city’s downfall if they didn’t manage to stop them.  Gorams the size of 2 jumbo jets placed on top of each other, with the length of 4 jumbo jets placed in a line from nose to tail, towered over the hundreds of thousands of smaller monsters, bringing up the rear at a relatively slow pace compared to how fast the others were.  From the larger visible model, he could see that the head was indeed overlapping and stacked scales tightly bound together to create a stronger whole, and the clawed feet on its beefy legs appeared quite capable of tearing up the ground to propel itself forward with extra speed.

He had no idea of the Level of the two largest Gorams, as they weren’t close enough to see them accurately, but he imagined that the enormous one was at least Level 180, if not higher.  If that was just the one, then Thaden thought that the defenders on the wall could eventually take it down, but he counted at least a dozen of them spread out all along the line of monsters like generals directing their forces before they took their own part in the slaughter to come.

In short, it was a nightmare scenario for the people of Teglir.

The disciplined manner in which the monsters were arranged, along with the nature of the monsters themselves, led Thaden to believe that the System was through playing around.  The attack on Felith made it seem like that had been a knee-jerk reaction, as it had essentially sent in a hit-squad to destroy everything in the vicinity; the attack on Teglir, however, was a highly-coordinated assault with specific intent behind it, which was to break through the defenses of an entire city and obliterate every trace of whatever had drawn its attention.  The first could potentially be excused as some sort of random attack coming from the Adversary, but he couldn’t see anyone looking at the veritable army heading toward the walls and not immediately knowing that it was the Assimilation System that had arranged it, and not the Persistent Adversary.  Everyone knew that the Adversary was wild, uncontrolled, and chaotic in its approach to domination – and this display was far from that; it was entirely too organized to be the work of the evil entity that wanted nothing but the death and destruction of every living thing – or so he, and everyone else, had been told.

Seeing this, however, made him once again question everything he knew about the System and the Adversary.  It wasn’t something he could think about too much at the moment, however, as the battle for Teglir was just about to begin.

“Release!  If you’ve got the range, cast at will!  Thin their numbers!” Bat’la’hera shouted, cutting across the worried murmurs that had been building since their enemy and its numbers became more and more clear as they approached. 

When the front line of the wave of Charging Gorams were within approximately 1,000 feet of the walls, the first of the ranged attacks from the defenders were sent out, blanketing the sky with power-infused physical projectiles such as arrows and bolts launched from handheld bows and crossbows, as well as a plethora of magical spells that ran the gamut from fireballs, boulders, chunks of ice, condensed acid, swarms of sharp metal slivers, and even straight-up blobs of magical energy.  As they arced high into the air, crossing the distance to the first of the battering-ram-like monsters, they were joined by the firing of the permanent weapon emplacements along the Teglir city walls, which fired beams of concentrated, volatile, magical energy that looked like foot-wide bluish lasers crackling with arcing lightning. 

The physical projectiles streaked across the distance, raining down on the Gorams in a deluge of destruction.  Their impact effects had a mixture of deep penetration to explosive detonations, though their results were unfortunately quite varied.  Dozens of Gorams fell as the projectiles managed to penetrate through their tough exterior, hitting something vital or simply causing too much explosive damage for them to survive.  Unfortunately, the majority of those hit simply kept going, either with arrows or bolts sticking out of their scaly hides, or unharmed entirely as they were hit in their heads, where the majority of the projectiles bounced off the bullet-shaped and extremely durable exterior. 

The long-ranged spells that fell among them were much more effective, as dozens more Charging Gorams were practically obliterated by powerful elemental forces that rolled through them, hitting more than just one at a time.  Explosions along with shattering ice and stone accompanied the sound of sizzling from acidic blobs that spread through large impact sites, creating a cacophony of destructive noise that just barely drowned out the rhythmic pounding of hundreds of thousands of Goran feet coming closer to the city. 

But what did even more damage than any of the projectiles and spells were the laser-like weapon emplacements, which strafed across the initial waves in a continuous blast that lasted a full 5 seconds before it shut off, killing hundreds of the Gorams all by themselves.  When they stopped firing, he could practically feel the way the weapon emplacements pulled in the ambient Mana around them to help recharge their stored power, which unfortunately thinned the available ambient Mana for the rest of the defenders.  Well, for everyone but Thaden, who didn’t have to rely on the ambient Mana in order to keep him topped up because he was essentially made of Mana.  That cloth bag over his head that he Local Legion used proved that to be true, so he wasn’t bothered by it at all, while at the same time he heard some grumbling from the spellcasters around him.

“Control, you’re up!  Stop them from getting any closer!”

While the first defenders continued to sporadically fire out into the approaching waves of Charging Gorams, reducing their numbers even further, Thaden began to see the Control Classes all along the wall start to react once the first of the monsters reached approximately 500 feet from the city.  Translucent walls of force sprang up out of nowhere, thick foliage grew at an incredible pace, clouds of noxious-looking gases filled the air, illusionary magic created a wild landscape that was meant to confuse or redirect, and there were even a few areas along the entire line that seemed to slow down, as if the monsters were caught in a large gravity well or were simply slowed down from some sort of time-based spell.  Because it was adjacent to his own abilities as first a Novice Enthraller and later a Thrall Commander, he was also able to detect multiple instances of psychic-based attacks that made some of the Gorams falter and then take a tumble as their minds were temporarily controlled. 

Slamming into the obstacles in their way, some of the charging monsters were killed by the impact against magical force walls, which shattered the barriers while shattering their own bodies at the same time.  Others were slowed and injured from other obstacles they ran into and through, more than a few were pulled to a complete stop as vines or odd-looking tentacles from somewhere latched onto them, while more than a few were redirected into running full-tilt into their fellow monsters, sending them tumbling in a mess of broken limbs and cracked heads as they impacted against each other. 

The combination of death from above and the different effects of the Control Classes was incredibly effective.  Looking up and down the wall, Thaden could see very few of the initial wave of Charging Gorams had made it through the gauntlet of spells and projectiles coming from the defenders, and only one made it close enough to the walls that it was in danger of colliding with the red stone barrier before it was killed by a Netherine Adventurer who jumped down from the wall with an enormous greatsword held in their hands, which sliced entirely through the Goram lengthwise, when he landed on top of it; the Adventurer hit the ground with a dexterous-looking roll, before jumping back onto the top of the wall a second later.  Thaden couldn’t help but observe that it made a huge difference to siege warfare when the defenders had the stats to jump up and down from the walls.

Unfortunately, the success of the first 20 seconds or so of the battle didn’t last.  The press of monsters among the far line of defenses was just too great, the number of targets just too many, for them to keep it up perpetually.  Despite the weapon emplacements recharging within 30 seconds, which helped to eliminate even more of the Charging Gorams before they could get close, the monsters began to break through the barrage of spells and projectiles by 1s and 2s.  Before too long, groups of 5 or 6 managed to get through relatively unscathed along parts of the wall, running full-tilt at the defenses; none managed to get through Thaden’s section as of yet, as they had the benefit of having the Local Legion in their Raid Party, along with Thaden’s contribution of extra stat points for them all, which helped to make a huge difference.

Down the wall, more and more of the Fighters and Scouts were getting involved, either jumping down or using some sort of ability to teleport to the incoming monsters, before killing them fairly easily and returning to the safety atop the stone barrier.  So far, as far as he could tell, none of the Gorams had actually impacted the wall – but it was only a matter of time.

Eventually, even his section of the wall’s greater long-range defenses gave out, and the first of the Goram made it through.  Thaden held his hand up, stopping the Legion Mage who was about to order that it be killed.  “I’ll take this one.  Let it get closer.”

“Don’t kill it!  Thaden is taking control!” she shouted instead, and everyone watched what happened next – even if it wasn’t that impressive yet.

Once it was within range, which required it to be within 180 feet as he used the wide-range effect of Major Enthrall to focus on all hostile targets, Thaden felt his Enthrall spell take effect and he ordered the Charging Goram to slow down to a stop, before turning it around so that it faced the other direction.  At the moment, he didn’t have any other spells running, because he wanted to keep his Mana pool open, and his stats and chance of success for his Enthrall spell against these particular monsters was high enough that there was basically no chance that he’d fail. 

Instead, he cast something he hadn’t used yet, a spell that came from his Novice Enthraller Class.

Major Enthrallment Infection (Single Cast): Infect a single Enthralled target with the ability to periodically spread your Enthrallment to other eligible targets within range; can only Enthrall targets up to 6 Levels higher than caster; each additional Enthrallment requires additional channeled Mana to maintain control.

Infected Enthrallment Success Rate: (25% per 1 Personality and 1 Mentality)/target Level

Infected Enthrallment Range: 30 feet

Infected Enthrallment Activation Rate: Every 5 seconds

Additional Mana Cost Per Infected Enthrallment: 3 Mana per second added to current channeled Enthrall spell

Spell Range: 90 feet

Spell Duration: 10 minutes

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Spell Mana Cost: 400 Mana

Essentially, Major Enthrallment Infection acted as a mobile enthrallment device that would capture and hold every monster it came into its range with under his Enthrall spell without him having to do it himself.  It added another 3 Mana per second to his Major Enthrall spell he had already active, but that was basically nothing at this point; even 100 minions would barely put a dent in his available Mana. 

After the spell was active, he also cast Major Healing Assistant and Celestial Regeneration on his new Charging Goram minion, and then ordered his controlled monster to wait on the edge of his range for more monsters to make it through.  He didn’t have too long to wait, as another Goram made it through the destructive maelstrom of spells holding the line, and Thaden held his hand up for his Raid Party to continue waiting.  His Major Enthrallment Infection worked perfectly, spreading his Enthrall spell to the new arrival, and soon enough it joined his other minion in a growing wall of defenders – especially once he began to cast Celestial External Stimulation on the two of them, which had a chance to increase their Physicality and Celerity based on his Fortuity.  And since his Fortuity was already fairly high, and it increased by 300% while in combat, it was sure to trigger at least once while he channeled it.

Now all he had to do was sit back and let the monsters fall into his web of control.