Chapter 123: The Raid Pt3

Ducking low into a sidestep to evade one large bloody fist covered in broken spikes, I whip my left arm up and slash the forearm blade of my armor across the inside of the troll's forearm.

There were already several gnarly gashes covering this Troll Chief's carpal muscles while I sought out the placements of their radial artery- if they even had such an aspect in their anatomy. For all I knew, trolls and most monsters had arteries under the muscles instead of under the skin. However, this troll had a steady tick of around six percent per second ever since I had started this training.

Punching straight out with my right hand, I punch the right forearm blade into the troll's gut and lean to the right to tear the few inches of blade ahead of my fist out through the side of their body. Following through the momentum of the tear as the blade easily slips out from between two lower ribs, I turn my body around to face the second chief of the nineteenth outpost who was staggering up behind me.

When I saw that there were two trolls this time I was thrilled from the brief fear and ensuing excitement of taking my time. Now, both trolls were below forty and heavily wounded on either their arms or legs with only a few body strikes apiece.

Crossing my arms by crossing the blades together I lower my body and turn slightly while taking the impact of this chief's unarmed punch to bodily parry the blow by taking it at an angle. Even though my health only went down by about two percent from the relative success of my attempt, I was still thrown several feet back grinding through the icy rock ground from planting my feet.

Throwing myself forward as soon as I came to a stop, I meet the troll whose shredded legs could only barely control its weight as the fell to their hands and knees. I decided to put them out of their misery by ramming the bladed knee of my leggings up under the giant chin of the chief.

My knee blade itself was an almost awkward eleven inches in length and actually started and from the top of my shin to help protect my knee, but nine inches alone was enough to reach up into the brain of the troll and make its health bar simply disappear from sight.

Despite this small success, I found myself caught with my blade stuck in the troll's giant head while the other's giant foot cast a shadow over my head. Stuck in place, I could only meet force with force by using a plain Force Strike to enhance my punch. The blade of my right forearm once again bit into the chief's body through its heel as my fist met the arch of its foot.

The energy release of Force Strike shattered the bones of the troll's foot into multiple compound fractures that ruptured out of the top of its foot with a large blossom of red fluids, tissues, and bits of soaked bone. The troll itself was thrown backward flat on its back and rendered in critical condition. I did not even look at them, now, but pointed a finger and released a thin and needling bolt of lightning into their chest.

Looking back at my team and their supporters to see less than a hundred trolls left surrounding their tight diamond formation, I decide to wait and heal once again while consuming the two dead chiefs. Using the two chiefs to assume my hulk form once again after having released it for my short and impromptu play date, I stretch and yawn while waiting for the others to finish up.

Two hundred and ninety trolls had come out from this second to last outpost and they had not been kind after I singled out their leaders at the rear. Every body in the formation had a health bar that was either at or nearing fifty percent except for Cweeper and Hermes. Mostly because they were outside of the encirclement and running laps across the backs of the trolls, but their speed alone made them untouchable to these mobs.

The ranged and support familiars within the formation were faring the best but even the ice birds were tiredly perched about the mounts while only providing ice armor and shields to the others. Since I had taken my time with the chiefs this fight had been going on for almost two minutes and everybody was muddling through defensively while pushing out skills or magic every now and then.

Still, it only took half a minute of the two minutes we had left until the next reinforcements for the fight to finish. Mulling it over carefully while considering the skill times of both parties involved as well as their numbers and types, I decide to let everyone take a break until the next wave of reinforcements. Luckily, everyone had been alternating between food and potion type healing items to prevent overdosing on items.

Since the players from Mistress' team were advanced classes from the starting classes of most of my team, their greater skills had higher cools despite their greater numbers. As well, I could see a clear difference in the effects and timing of their basic skills that my party was forced to excel at. By the time reinforcements came, they would be swiftly dispatched without a mini boss chief.

Less than three minutes later I was leading the group across the twentieth line into the final field in a newly enlarged hulk form sized to match the troll chiefs themselves. This form was had a 'naked' cost of fifteen hundred mana which was just barely out of reach right now, making it impossible to achieve without using a few dozen bodies.

Thankfully, there was plenty of mass among the reinforcements and would be more to come.

Unlike the previous outposts who sent out their troops in a rush of barbarians, three companies of one hundred trolls lead by a chief apiece made their way out from around and through the twentieth outpost. Each rank and file troll soldier was suited up in heavy ice and bone plated armor and wielding one large variety of weapons along with a large ice and bone shield. I now knew where the retaliatory siege trolls came from but was disappointed at the lack of mini-bosses previously.

Following at the back of this small army was one giant troll that was even taller than the chiefs in a massive dress of stone and bone covered in icy blades and spikes. In its hands were a pair of naked black crystalline poles as long as my real body was tall. Even from across the current distance I could appraise the name and level of 'Troll Commander LV80'.

I was suddenly grateful beyond belief that I had grown my hulk form from the reinforcements after the arrival of a second chief at the previous outpost. This commander stood at least twelve feet tall and was almost literally twice the size of a normal troll all the way around. Its arms alone were longer than a normal troll's body!

"Cweeper, Hermes, take the left and right chiefs," I call out quickly from my lead position of the filled V formation my groups were moving in before picking up my own pace a bit to make space.

I actually considered using my greatest trump card but the wildcard itself was reliable by its serendipitous nature. Instead, I could only switch to popping some basic steroids by channeling electric mana into my own body to begin arcing and sparking worse than a black-and-white Tesla coil scene. On top of this, I simply ate two full-regen potions of either type.

The chiefs leading the ranks immediately broke into a run as they witnessed my Self-Enchantment, signaling the hundreds of trolls behind them to follow suit. The commander at the back, though, remained calm and composed instead of giving in to its berserker style. They simply lengthened their stride a bit while barely noticeably adjusting their grip on their poles.

Happily obliging the chiefs by zipping forward to meet them ahead of their troops, I cheat at the last second before the chief's come together and use Flash Step. Despite the near-teleportation speed of this skill, I still only moved forward in a straight line. So, a split second later, I appeared only thirty yards ahead of my previous position with one of the chief's newly cold bodies spasming wildly while impaled on my arcing arm.

Having appeared in the rear ranks of the center company, the trolls around me became focal points for the arcing taking place about my body with their icy armors. Even then, left in the wake of my almost unstoppable momentum were a few dozen crushed trolls as well as a spreading wave of spreading staggering from all the displaced bodies. A single 360 Geist later, I was calmly walking forward at the same pace as the commander.

When the commander continued to maintain its pace with less that thirty meters of distance left between us, I whipped around to punish its pride by channeling five hundred mana points worth of Mana Slash into my right fingers.

A set of five razor thin crescents of myriad energies and light spread out and rushed forth from a simple sweep of my arm, reaching out almost all of the way to my own party as it passed through the unprepared ranks of trolls behind me. A single wave was enough to half-life a troll without landing critically the first time I had tried it out. Five compound slashes were enough to divide hundreds of trolls into no less than six pieces.

Only two already wounded chiefs and the commander remained as I turned my back on the explosion of soot and gore that filled the field behind me. The Troll Commander finally gave in to its nature and through its head back in a crazed pose of raised weapons and bent legs while loosening a hollow wail of a roar into the air. I responded in kind by opening up my face and neck in dozens of splints to loose and electrified shriek of matching volume.

If anybody could handle the volume alone well enough to focus on a single voice, they would have heard that I had screamed 'yeah' like like an old school rocker.

From each 'mouth' poured forth most of my regenerated mana in the form of dozens of energy arcs that channeled together into a concentrated beam of lightning. This impromptu attack not only used up so much mana but also electric mana itself that it canceled out my Self-Enchantment as it seemed to tear a hole through space itself as everything in my field of view but the massive bolt of lightning simply went dark.

When my vision cleared from my own blinding attack it was to find that everything between the commander and I was either smoking, steaming, or glowing from the passage of such concentrated heat and energy. The commander himself was standing twenty yards away crushed against one of the outpost structures with his poles crossed ahead of his body as if he had actually managed to block such an attack.

Holy hell was he strong! Either that or those black crystalline poles of his were made of something incredible because he had only been dropped to eighty percent of its health from the compounding damages. The armor, of course, probably played a part in protecting it from being crushed in general against the large solid rock.

True to its berserker state, as soon as the attack ended the troll was running forward with loud and ragged breaths that clouded the air around its head. They ate up the distance in only two breaths, raising both poles higher as they came within reach.

Even with the continuous regeneration effects, I did not have enough mana for any fancy tricks and could only lash out with a hundred points worth of Force Strike that met the pair of hammering poles through my fist. The already damaged poles loudly crackled like stressed safety-glass but even louder than this was the fragmenting porcelain sound that came from my fist that soaked up the damage that took thirty percent from my own health. They only dropped from eighty to sixty as well as a few feet out of reach while I was thrown back several yards.

My HP was fast to fill back up under the compounding or stacked effects of various buffs but the troll also ticked up three percent every five seconds as they simply stood there and glared hatefully across the new distance. Even though I was the better healer, there was a clear difference in our physical power alone as seen by the shattered glass looking pieces of fingers and hand remaining attached to my wrist.

Under the super-sized face mask of my ancient electrum plated helmet I found myself smiling a little. There was a heavy hammering in my chest as my enormous corrupted heart began sucking and spitting crystallized fluids at twice the previous rate. My vision even naturally focus in a little with increased clarity.

Something finally managed to spike my adrenaline again.