Chương 229: Chapter 5-227 – Bring on the Disrupting Fire!

The smallest and weakest creatures running through the Walls of Vivic Fire or being washed by those Rains of various Elements blew right out of existence, including most of the once-Humans. Everything else started to Burn as the vivus ignited on their Undead bodies, streaming white mists behind them as they ran, slowly and steadily crumbling.

Those fires increased in intensity as they were wounded again and again, seared by Holy Water Acid, pummeled by Blessed Stones, or impaled by gleaming Spikes, cut by crystalline blades of Ice or incense-streaming Wind Razors, or Holy Fires, Light, or Lightning danced over them and spread a misting conflagration.

King Magogo certainly noticed what they were doing to his army, but it didn't affect what he was doing, more Undead spewing forth in long surges of deadly magic, and the incoming Beast Wave of so many species grew bigger and bigger and bigger... Flocks of undead Birds, Bats, and Insects were spewed forth to slow them down, successfully forcing the Hunters to all slow down to Burn them out of the sky.

Briggs himself swooped down lower, quite happy to pit his own Armor and evasive ability against the Commander Beasts and pop them as he dropped Thunder/Crystal, and +II of Endure's Base Bonus for the +IV effect of Disruption and its double-damage to undead and possible instant kill power... said power raised significantly when plied on a Weapon instead of an Implement.

He ran right down into and with the Beast Wave, keeping pace without effort, just a mist-footed blur, while Endure cracked this way and that into Undead Skulls. Massive Undead Beasts were smashed into the air from blows that cracked as they broke the sound barrier, impacts blowing massive amounts of kinetic and arcane damage past shattered bone and into the skulls that sent the Undead bodies flying. Blasted skulls shattered or blew apart.

Huge bodies variously went flying and flipping end over end, or drove into the ground and tumbled wildly, bones shattering as ravaging vivus boiled through twice-slain carcasses. Smaller creatures were just obliterated and exploded in Disrupting bursts as they did so. If they were dead Humans riding Beasts, they also set the Beast they were mounted atop or any other Humans clutching their ride on fire as well, dooming them even if Briggs didn't finish them off.

Some of the Birds, Bees, Wasps, and Bats tried to chase after him, but he was much too quick to lock down with spells, not that he was afraid of their magic in the slightest. If they came swooping in to strike or clutch at him, that got them in range of Endure, and they massed far less than most of the landbound Beasts he was swatting around.

Broken corpses of Undead Fliers were blasted in any suitable direction, often sending others of their kind tumbling from the sky to the ground, where they ended up trampled remorselessly by the Beast Wave, lit on vivic fire, and broken and unable to keep up or fly any more, were left behind to Burn down to white ash.

The walls of Franceville were clearly visible now, and King Magogo was charging right for the most ostentatious display of power, a towering and burning Tree right before the main gates, festooned all over with scores of Burning Eternal Lights that could combine with crushing limb attacks to set the Undead on fire.

The sounds that arose from the Undead were ghastly, choking roars and bellows from lungs that weren't drawing breath, as much screams of pain and torment as angry defiance and readiness to kill and fight. The first spells began to rise and come racing out for the incoming Beast Wave.

The sheer mass of creatures made the earth pound, filled the air with thunder, and it was very easy to see that the wall ahead simply wasn't going to stop them when they came crashing into it with supernatural strength, stone-cleaving claws, that much mass, and point-blank blasts of magic. The boosted spells, laden with vivic fire from hundreds of temporary Implements, descended upon them and ignited more wounds upon the Beast Wave.

Wave after wave of Elemental attacks, just potent enough to do injury and add more wounds, ignite more vivus, slammed into them repeatedly, turning the advance waves of the Beast Wave into basically streams of white mist getting closer, closer... And then the first waves of the Beasts abruptly fell from sight. Briggs smirked as the massive Hallucinatory Terrain did its job. The moat was a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet deep.

Anything of Warrior status or above could simply have leapt right over it, if they knew it was there. They had not, it was wide enough to catch any creature with a stride. The startled Beasts found themselves coming down on ground that was not there and plunging into a chasm. A Chasm, with many Vines down there with long spikes and Vivic Eternal Lights Burning on them.

King Magogo reacted in time easily, barely exerting himself as he noticed the disruption, finally sensed the illusion, and cleared the moat with no effort. The crystalline, gold-edged thorns twenty feet long that erupted out the other side, not so much.

King Magogo was tough, but the thorns were angled perfectly to take advantage of his own momentum, and the Honey Badger King drove himself right onto them, plunging them deep into his body and ripping up the length of the massive tendrils of the Rose below which had extruded them as he was brought to a sudden halt. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Before King Magogo could erupt into a berserk frenzy and work himself free, the bombardment from the Burning Acacia tree and the Celestial Roses woven through it arrived, and he took them right to the face. Beasts cleared the moats, and Plants erupted in massive clusters of Nettles and Vines.

Walls of thorns and barriers of spikes rose to meet the Undead, even heaping up their bodies to form instant new walls as the Plants wrapped them up, holding tight even as the Undead Beasts clawed and bit at them, and helped them Burn ever faster.

Celestial Ice and Fire, blessed by Ice and Fire Phoenix Emperors, descended upon the piling-up Beasts, golden-crystal thorns winding through the Plants and helping heal them while spitting out blasts of Fire and Ice that fed the flames, none harming the natural beings as they hurried the destruction of the Undead Beasts.

The smashing charge against the broad face of the walls was basically broken and hung up on the moat claiming the unwary, or the ramp of Beasts piling up and Burning as they were wrapped up by roots and vines and formed a wall of vivic flame that those behind had to ascend to get past. King Magogo emitted a huge coughing roar, the Earth splitting around him and yanking away the thorns of the Celestial Roses spitting him, the fur stripped from his head and shoulders as he tore free of impalement.

A moment later, the roots of the Burning Acacia King ahead of him erupted out of the ground in entangling lines from all directions, and the tendrils of the Roses joined them serpent-quick, all the while flung clusters of burning Seeds and bombardments of Imperial-quality Fire and Ice did not stop coming down on him. King Magogo sprayed vomited Undead all over the area in front of him, including what looked like an entire army of twitching Spitting Dragon Ants.

Dark Magic swirled in the air as he tore at the roots with claws made to tunnel through stone, ripping and tearing and pulling free despite the Acacia Tree's size and strength, while ignoring the shredding of the Roses coiled about him and slashing through his fur. The spell bombardments from the humans above changed to the Ants, who swarmed for the Tree and the walls in their multitudes.

They were rapidly set on fire even as they covered the Acacia, swarming and biting, trying to distract it and the Roses, the latter of which writhed across the trunk and limbs of the tree, impaling and popping Ants by the thousands in whipping motions, leaving the massive limbs of the Tree free to continue hurling explosive blasts at King Magogo.

Briggs felt the air churn and dimensions breach, even as King Magogo continued spraying thousands of unharmed Undead out in front of him, his corrupted Domain holding steady against the denying effect of the City Ward. The churned and shattered ground boiled, and then exploded in countless sprays of dirt and soil as a whole army of Undead was pulled from the Netherworld and up into the world of the living in one momentous display of boundless Mana and feral desire. Two things happened as that did.

There was a pulse from the city's walls, a Null backed by a Galaxy of Stars expanding out and reinforcing reality to a massive level. It drove back King Magogo's dark Domain instantly, spilling morning light suddenly across the entire battlefield, and at the same time drove every Summoned Creature present back where it had come from.

Right on the heels of that came a pulsing wall of Light Magic attuned precisely to damage those incoming Undead at precisely the wrong moments, just as they were shoved back through the same planar breaches through which they'd come, breaches now far too small to admit them. That was fine, the Light was there to put the square peg in the four-sizes-too-small round socket for them.

Briggs didn't even get to identify all of the Undead present, although he did see a towering Ruler rise up, with a bone spear in skeletal hand and a tribal totem mask for a head, just in time for the wall of Light to smash into it and send it back whence it came. The hole behind it crunched it down, flattened it as the Light poured through and around it, compressing it with deafening cracks of bone as it was driven back, back, and the holes became tighter, tighter...

The vivic eruptions blew in all directions, further tearing apart the ground and sending Undead Beasts Burning and tumbling in all directions. The reinforced reality snapped closed under the saturation, and the incoming army was directly annihilated with a last protesting spurt of vivic judgement. King Magogo tore free of the King Acacia's roots, shredding them all in so doing, a whirlwind ball of killing frenzy.

The Roses' thorns unwound from him, slicing deep into him and leaving his fur hanging off gashes a yard and more deep into his body, flesh and bone clearly exposed, his insides visibly on fire and ablaze, and yet the Honey Badger King moved as vigorously as ever. Briggs was moving through the press of Beasts, ignoring the bombardments from the city's mages.

Undead Beasts and Humans were occasionally making it up onto the walls, only to find the very well-equipped Contracted Beasts of the City's Summoners waiting for them, and the vanished Summoned Beasts slowly popping back in as the Interdiction that had extended so abruptly faded just as quickly. All of the Undead attackers were Burning, and doomed.

The city's Mages and Archmages concentrated on containment and defense, letting the Beasts either take out those who made it to the top or continue wounding them until they Burned down, as well as neutralizing as many magical attacks as they could. The Undead Hunters coolly blasted down any Undead that were active threats with coordinated displays of Light, Fire, and Lightning Magic, as well as devastating inundations of Acidic Holy Water.

The crystal tips of their Staff-Maces gleamed constantly as lesser Undead blew apart around them, and the greater ones were blasted and set to Burning ever-faster if they didn't die. Magic swirled in the air with transcendent power. The nameless Song that was cutting through all the sounds of conflict and struggle, of crashing bodies and erupting spells, built to a crescendo, and the sky opened up. A rain of Holy Water.

It was a straight-up deluge, a lake's-worth of water coming down and flat-out immersing everything in gently-Burning golden water. It was thick enough to make it hard to breathe, impossible to see, and the Undead might as well have been submerged in a bath of the stuff.

Their bodies sloughed away, dissolving into white ash instead of sludge as the vivus continued to Burn without fail, everything in the sky forced to the ground, everything on the ground screaming and howling and falling apart with devastating speed, everyone else only able to stand there with their heads down so they would not be drowned by the golden deluge.