Chương 183: AF Chapter 182 – Advancing up the Beach

"All your Mass Death Wards are down, correct?" Kristie Rantha, Imperial Princess, Warlord, and general ass-kicker inquired of me.

"They left with the Mass Disks at dawn, yes." Recasting them would consume a lot of mana and take me out of most of the healing fights for a good chunk of time. With Mana Boosts at max, I could quickly restore my Mana Pool exactly once quickly, and otherwise was sucking in the stuff via Aurora Stance and Reserve Dumping at about one a second now. That was almost nine minutes to get mana back to full, and that didn't account for any Valenced Spell Slots I emptied.

Those Mass Death Wards were godsends for avoiding the guaranteed damage from Harms and Drains, and the primary tanks in particular loved them.

"Your emergency Boosts are back, right?"

"My personal Renewal is midnight, and they needed eight hours to purge clean on top of that. I haven't had to use them once the waves started tailing down." As in, there had actually been some downtime between waves for me to regain my mana. She nodded once.

"Set up the Mass Death Wards for the primary tanks again, draw on my Matrix for the Mass Meta. I'm going to be vanguarding the primary force and drawing as much fire as I can to open up the combats for each wave. The more magic I can get concentrated on me the better off for everyone, I think."

"We've got six waves before it starts tapering off severely again," the Mick said thoughtfully, eyeing the reports in the Markspace from the Moles, and pointed.

"Why don't ye move from that ideal sniping position of yours and sit atop the choke right there, waving yer Sword around an' being a nice big ideal target, aye?"

"That's actually not a bad idea, as they'll be clambering up to get at me and make decent targets for the Wolfpack." It had actually come as a surprise to those people working the flanks that they were getting more actual kills than the tanks were, although not more Karma. The flankers Kris had trained herself in the whole Flanking Mastery line were particularly lethal if they got around something…

and killing stuff faster meant their tank had to fight less, which meant they could fight longer and give the reserves longer to recover. I rolled my eyes for her.

"Sword babe wants to sword things," I refuted her explanation immediately. A Rantha eight-canines smile beamed at me.

"Well, of course! Quaver is being very patient playing defense, but a sword is only a shield when it has to be…"

"Pull off everyone but one team, an' get the rest t' resting an' eating. Pull an' focus the attention of the waves, an' last until they taper, then start rolling up the shoreline at speed an' folding up each wave as it comes," the Mick judged.

"Reports say there's still waves coming, even though we're the only ones doing any practical killing, so there's obviously a well, an' not just a reserve the Vortexes are drawin' on. It ain't gonna run out, so we have to advance regardless at some point."

"Six waves should be just long enough for the Protections to wear through," I agreed.

"Have the mages Buff up the tanks for the main teams and retire to regain the mana back for pure Healing. If we're going to be softening up the waves in between, then you'll be needing to charge out there and harass them. Drag me with you and recover after I pummel them down. If they are stupid enough to actually mob you I can really punish them if you think you can stay alive…"

"It's more about kiting them, getting them to expend mana, and soaking as much as I can before they reach me. Delaying them just means they run into another wave." Kris shook her head.

"Unless you can wipe a few hundred of the things quick, a loser's tactic."

"A world where you can't pop a Cleave Train through an armed enemy is a sad world," I nodded at her, and she pulled a properly aggrieved long face.

"I know, right? Mom and Dad would terrify whole armies by pulling one off!" she complained aggressively.

"A Cleave Train?" the Mick asked thoughtfully.

"Take Cleave, kill something, continue the blow." He nodded slowly, having done just that.

"Take the Mastery Chain up to Supreme Cleave, take a five-foot step between Cleaves, up to your base movement per round. Take Acrobatic Movement, make a ten-foot step when you normally take a five-foot step. Take all the Opportunity Attack Feats so that you generate attacks when people swing at you and miss, move through your threat zone, whatever is needed to generate extra Attacks you can then Cleave from.

"Then take Sidestep so you can turn those attacks into five-foot steps if you desire.

"Now, consider your opponents are all basic drudges." He opened his mouth, closed it, then started to picture that. Then he blinked, and his fingers started to move as he calculated, visualized, and slowly exhaled in shock.

"Valus take the slow t' charge," he muttered.

"My move is up over a hundred now…"

"With, what? Fifteen, twenty potential attacks of opportunity?" I hazarded. His dark eyes turned over to Kris, whose pale violet eyes were dancing at the thought.

"Four hundred feet per round, killing everything within reach, every six seconds…"

"It's absolute carnage if you can do it, and it doesn't stop. The Train just keeps on going…" I shook my head.

"But it only works against weaker foes. In this circumstance, creatures with less than a hundred Health, or thereabouts." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. He took a bit of a breath.

"That's indeed the weaker sorts," he agreed slowly, shaking his head.

"And if you can't Cleave, you just get a Hotfoot Dance, where things are generating Attacks of Opportunity, and you're moving from spot to spot trying to maximize the amount of AoO's you use up with Riposte and Opportunist and Thorned Stance and Sword beats Fist and the like," Kris grinned toothily." Avalanche Run, Hurricane's Wrath, Maelstrom Surge, Inferno Crawl, Devouring Night, A Thousand Lances … there's several variations on the technique using other starting points, but the principle is the same.

Drop an enemy, move, drop an enemy, move again, always staying in range of something you can drop, and the drop allowing you to flow through to your next target without stopping, riding a wave of slaughter to greater and greater heights." I eyed some of Aelryinth's memories of Dragon Warriors using the techniques, particularly his wife… and Sama Rantha.

"If you can get Sharding to dovetail with Penetrating Shot … well, suddenly your reach is potentially up to fifty paces in all directions, too…" Both of them looked at me, then at one another.

"Someone actually did something like that?" the Mick asked softly.

"What were she, a god?" I inclined my head at Kris.

"Sama Rantha of Terra-Luna. I told you of the Dead Marches there that one time, right?" They both nodded, staring at me.

"Well, the first time she pulled off a Butterfly Run she flat freaked-out everyone. She was full-out running through a March of hundreds of millions of undead, and everything for thirty paces around her was just dying. They only got to swing at her because she was letting them do so, just to generate more attacks and allow her to keep going. It was pretty radical.

"There were plenty of people who could try to chain together Maelstroms and Avalanche Runs and Storms of Steel, but nobody had ever seen anything like that. She just mowed down an entire wall of the enemy and blazed a path right through the heart of them that they couldn't stop, which she could maneuver in any direction she needed to. The more of them there were, the more effective it was."

"Huh. That must feel like being a god o' war, or something," the Mick hazarded, trying to picture that more clearly, and only having Kris' inferior example to draw on… which was terrifying enough to most of the Melees here, who really, really wanted to be able to do that, too.

"Yes, just like slaughtering waves of enemies with magic is. Similar mindset, different tools is all… and it's much harder for us to do, given what we are. Magic is best at army destruction. High-end melee tends to be better at killing prepared individuals who can shut down magic," Kris said. I ceded the point.

"Truth."

"I need to get there!" the Mick declared, his dark eyes flashing.

"Time and Karma, Lord Mick. Time and Karma…"

Shortly afterwards... As the Shaded creatures went wild trying to catch or cast at the elusive woman in front of them, I picked out my own targets and let fly, while the line of warriors waiting flat on their faces behind us watched the wild salvos of spells going off at their Warlord.

"Tremble, oh oHHHH, Oh, Tremble, Tremble… I came to prance, you came to dance, both to pay a butcher's toll, Burning for slaughter, white on the water, as the tide continues to roll. This shore your score, your death its breath, the waves of misty foam, Come to your due, faded Shaded, the sands your final home. TREMBLE, WE COME!" Princess Kristie was having none of the shit of the Shaded, drawing out their formation as their Casters paused to let spells fly, while others ran after her as rapidly as they could.

Perhaps they were surprised when they could not catch her, perhaps they didn't have enough experience, and it didn't matter either way. The spells were ignored, and Quaver's swirls of Lost Light were dealing with the archers trying to take potshots at her with dismissive ease, especially with the fact her lightfoot was so erratic that ninety percent of the shots didn't get within ten feet of her as she raced about. Marguls roared, whined, scrabbled, and died.

They were my primary targets, as we didn't want to deal with them in an open field.

"Tremble, oh oHHHH, Oh, Tremble, Tremble… The Eye of Heaven is upon you! Judged you are, and found wanting! The Lost Light has returned, come to end your vaunting Lives all false, given and taken by an uncaring Elder thing, Send you off, a demon's fate ending where'er the Rantha sing! TREMBLE, WE COME!" The zefirs had the same problem here that they had at the Choke proper, but this time it was from Kris, not from me.

Her Null Interdiction included a Stillflight effect, and the hostile little murder sprites with the bodies of shadow and eyes of blood hit it and dropped to the ground with startled meeps of shock that they couldn't actually fly.

They were rambunctious and constant Casters if they had targets, however, and the incensed little bloodletters launched spell after spell at Kris as she dodged around, while my Shardrays strobed and the burning slaughter drakes of shadow screamed as they ate my Chained Split Shardrays again, and again, and again! The first margul popped under the assault of the Chains, rapidly followed by others as the Seeking Meta on the spell sought them out.

When I ran out of extra targets, the extra Chains bled over into the Shadow Zefirs, as the tiny bastards were a pain to snipe and I didn't want them getting closer to our melees. I was coasting backwards as I chain-Cast, watched dozens of enemy spells per cycle vanish into Kris' Null, maybe one in forty managing to actually punch her defenses…

and that spell was promptly Spellcut into random glitters of magic or sent bouncing back at their Casters, leaving only those Shaded trying to melee with her any chance at really harming her.

Those unlucky sorts were soon in range of the archers, both living and undead, who rose up off the ground they'd been laying flat on now that the Summons were utterly fixated on their Warlord, and started to unload into the throngs of creatures chasing after her as she zigged back and forth, making sure to chop into half a dozen targets with every change of direction as they swiped at her. Gorgeous waves and swirls of Lost Light ripped through the Shaded with howls of pain and annoyance at the force of the hits.