Chương 335: AF Chapter 334 – Moar and Moar Fighting

I'd only taken a step down the steep slope when Lord Mick coughed sharply. I looked at him, and he just had this expression on his face.

"Lass, meanin' no disrespect to the Tree, but I be not crawlin' up an' down rocks with me hands to get up an' down here," he said meaningfully. I looked down at the very steep trail, sixty degrees and more in places, and found myself grinning. Truly, he'd be better off Cloudstepping down, as I sort of was, as this steep of a trail was truly annoying. The Aun would be best off riding down after us on Disks.

The Aun murmured oaths as the top lip of the approach trail suddenly flattened and broadened out, flagstones forcing themselves out of the ground and forming a walkway, complete with handrails. Said handguards were also bracing the stone steps that folded themselves out of the mountain and remade the path before us. I even shifted it back and forth to keep it at forty-five degrees as I started down it, one hand on the guardrail.

"Ah!" I stopped them from following me, pointing at the hole that was flowing up out of the ground next to the stairs.

"You can take the long way down, or you can sit here, dab your feet in the pool over there," they all turned as a couple benches shoved themselves up out of the ground by the pool over there, "and when I Message you, take the fast and smooth way down." The Mick hopped up smoothly on one foot, then the other, pulling off his boots and socks alike. Wriggling his toes meaningfully, he headed over there to enjoy a cool and pleasant morning, and maybe even go for a swim.

The Aun looked between us, grinned, and hurried after the Mick with coughing laughs. I smiled as I headed down the stairs. It was not a short walk, I was making a reinforced set of stairs and an evacuation tube alongside it at the same time, and it was a lovely morning as the sun stole over the mountainside slowly, the panorama of the blue sky and the clouds impressive and touching.

It was a long way to climb, too, which meant I should put in some stopping points every hundred steps or so, patios and balconies where one could sit and enjoy the view, carved right out of the mountainside, maybe with a couple caves or alcoves where people might get out of the rain. And, hey, I could put in gazebos and stuff for style points, because why not? It didn't take any additional effort from me. I could even make them in the Aun style, even if they would be formed from stone.

I was going to freak them out and impress them when the tonks touched them and their magic said it was stone, although their fingers and eyes swore it was all wood to them… Humming happily and the magic of the Sublime Chord lighting up around me in acknowledgment of making a happy and creative moment out of a brutal and gory mission, I went down the new steps slowly, forming them up ahead of me as I planned them out in my head, taking my time and enjoying myself.

Not exactly the way I'd intended to spend my morning, but I did like making me good roads and drainage systems, and what was this but a higher-class version of the same thing?

The Mick came first, whooping loudly, his shouts echoing down the tube the whole way to the base of the mountain we were using. He came out into the clear area face-first, grinning like a fool and clearly enjoying himself. The Aun coming behind were also shouting and chanting and calling out, much less enthusiastic, but they still came sliding out on their backsides, clutching their bows and quivers in front of them as they slid out into the sunlight and came to a stop.

Still, they could not be seen to be discomfited by their experience, especially with the Mick standing there. They rolled quickly to their feet, only wobbling a little bit.

"That… is a very entertaining way to come down the mountain!" Aun Rualtus informed me, clearly not knowing whether to admonish me or enjoy himself at the strange ride he'd had.

"Got one more detail that occurred to me as I was coming down," the Mick informed me, looking over the cove where the Aun hunters and Aspirants were taking care of the respawns of the moarsmen handily. The four of us quickly took the nearest path out of the respawn area as the Wagon and its defenders also made a withdrawal from the Spawn Point-heavy area at the base of the mountain.

These moarsmen were going to be slaughtered a whole lot for fighting practice in the future, as we weren't going to Seal the spawn points here.

"And what might that be, Lord Mick?" I asked him calmly.

"Ye know the waterfall at the northern point there, aye? Had a spawn o' happy moarsmen below it, a bit tougher than most o' them?" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. I glanced that way.

"Yes?"

"There were a mosswart colony up above at the pond that waterfall be coming down from." I glanced at him in surprise.

"Seriously?" I glanced towards the sea.

"Obviously they didn't swim here. They somehow found a Portal here, way back?"

"Aye, an' belikes we should be checkin' t' see if they are still around. I didnae see any sign o' them from below, but they were pretty clever, staying up at the top o' the mountain there. Somehow or another, there were actually fish in the middle o' the deep pond that were up there, an' a lot of them, with a valley close by that they might have settled in at some point or another." He glanced in that direction, then pointed out the slopes that led the way up after a moment.

"Pretty steep, but they can be climbed without too much problem. But I be thinking the moarsmen be having no reason t' go up there, an' if they weren't expecting trouble, the mossies might actually have survived them." I threw the decision back at the two Aun with me.

"You're the ones with experience dealing with the mosswarts, elders. We'll leave the handling of them to you." The two Aun looked at one another. The island was mostly being ceded to them, after all, another safe colony for their people.

"We will see if they must be slain or may be tolerated as neighbors. The swamp-dwellers are often highly erratic in how they treat others, and if they are not so mindlessly violent as so many of them are, there may be some room for discourse," Aun Genkutua said carefully.

"We killed every mosswart in the Vesayans," the Mick said grimly.

"Ye don't have to sugarcoat what ye might be doing, hunters. The Isparians are at least as guilty as ye o' the same, an' we don't have near the history with 'em that the Aun do." The two Aun bowed their long heads slightly.

Coming from the same world originally as the mosswarts, as well as the banderlings and drudges, there were naturally complex relationships between all four of the races, with the tumeroks holding the nominally top spot as the most intelligent and tribal, the banderlings being the toughest and most savage individually, and the mosswarts and drudges occupying lower tiers.

Since coming here, however, all of us had seen exceptionally powerful members of all those races, which had been exceptionally rare at best on their homeworlds. Even the drudges, little more than scavengers on their own world, had hundreds, if not thousands, of extremely powerful warriors and spellcasters in the Direlands, likely raised up by the virindi as servants, while the banderlings had often become simple brute labor or warriors under the watch of the virindi, shades, or even undead.

Thus, dealings with the mosswarts might not go here as they would have back on their homeworld, where they would automatically be warred upon and either chased away or killed. Since there was nowhere to go here, disagreements were going to mean death!

"We shall investigate later," Aun Rualtua promised solemnly.

"For now, these undead must be dealt with." That was complete truth.

It would be wrong to say that the undead did not know we were coming, as they most definitely did. The inlet and its shallow waters that led up to the Temple of Xi Ru were crawling with hundreds of moarsmen, clearly the main source of the reinforcing moarsmen we'd been fighting yesterday.

The dour black uniforms of the Falatacot men and the bright red of the priestesses were also completely visible among them, and dozens of tall and well-equipped sclavi, some real, some not, were scattered around the place, too, all armed with bows. But it wasn't a military position. There were no walls or fortifications, and if the temple itself was made of stone and offered multiple sniping points, it was not a balustrade or possessed of parapets or merlons or arrow slits or any serious defenses.

It was an open air temple made to enjoy the elements and the fall of the ornate waterfall coming down from the Deru Tree above, a waterfall that none of the undead were stationed too near, despite a Dark presence weighing in upon the temple that definitely did not feel natural to it. They hadn't sent any scouts to speak of around to the north, and still had no idea we'd cleaned off the living moarsmen there.

That wasn't to say they weren't alert for and waiting for opportunistic intruders, as Isparians were known to be mindlessly violent and relentless once they wanted something, but they were more digging in with their force of moarsmen and spells, scattered about the place and waiting for a real fight. They probably weren't worried about dying, none of them having seen the vivic flames that made sure their servants hadn't come back. They also probably had means of Recalling out of there swiftly if required.

Well, that just wasn't going to work for them or for us. I don't think they realized what the Interdiction was when it went off, sweeping out and sealing off the dimensions, and any quick escape via magic. I wasn't going to give them any chance at all to escape and let their associates know to come and fight for this place.

Being out of contact for long periods of time was something that happened to undead all the time, and coming to investigate what might have happened here was not the same thing as coming to the aid of an ally. If said allies went mysteriously missing instead of asking for help, well, that was something completely different now, wasn't it? Importantly, my Shardrays could reach all the way up to the Temple itself there seeking out my undead targets.

If I had to aim a full volley at each pair or so of them to wipe them away, then that was exactly what I was going to do. It also had the nice effect of promptly sending the moarsmen and sclavi around them out of command when they died violently. The Wagon came trucking around the edge of the cove, with the Aspirants running alongside for a moment, then holding back as I literally Shaped up a small fort and wall for them to take cover behind and draw in the ground attackers.

The Aun piled out to concentrate arrow fire on the moarsmen, pulling them in, especially after I mowed down the undead giving them orders. Vivified undead couldn't stop them and pull them back, and the moarsmen came raging in to die. The sclavi were slightly more problematic, as they had both spells and bows to trade with us, but only the former was a danger to the Shielded Aspirants.

I cleaned off any Undead as I could, and Chained through the moarsmen clambering over one another trying to get up the short walls to reach our defenders, who happily split their exposed skulls over and over in their mindless savagery, while the Autobowers and archers headshot the many Burning moarsmen all lit up from Chained Darts and Shards.