It was a good day, and the shimagu made it better by staying put in their base throughout.
Ranthia’s people took to their new roles like they had been handpicked by Xaoc. She sometimes swore that they reveled in their new, more chaotic approach to battle. Their base, the Unbreakable Image, became even tougher and more deadly to their enemies as time passed. The pretty lines and rigidity of the Legions were wholly replaced with an adaptive flexibility that let them counter their opponent’s varied… tactics (for lack of a better word to explain the foolishness that the shimagu embraced).
Ranthia had—grudgingly and somewhat against her better judgement—granted sixteen of her people the rights to sneak out of the base individually or in small groups to scout or make strikes against the shimagu camp. They had no poison to use on the shimagu but acts of minor sabotage could be accomplished. And the group members were hoping to get [Assassin], [Saboteur], [Ranger], or [Spy] classes when their third classes unlocked, which meant they needed experience.
It was hard to let them out of her protective grasp, but Ranthia had to trust her people if any of them were going to survive. There were still no signs of Remus or any other member of the alliance—just enemies. At some point they had stopped holding out in hopes of a rescue, instead they were holding out to punish the shimagu. Every moment of survival was joyous spite.
The mystery metal turned out to be another magic metal—terrasium—which, as best as Ranthia understood the excited shieldwoman’s—Amphea’s—explanations, was just really heavy for its size. The [Smiths] were able to use it as the core for a massive shield for the woman—seriously, it was bigger than Shelly, and outweighed Ranthia’s old friend’s shield by a wide margin. With Amphea’s third class allowing her to manipulate its weight and amplify its resilience, the magic metal became yet another tool for their continued survival.
The troll twin didn’t show up with every attack. Sometimes he appeared two nights in a row, other times many days passed without any sign of him. Her sneaky sorts reported that he was either practicing back at the shimagu camp or in a verbal argument with ‘himself’ on the nights when the shimagu attacked without him—at least when they could find him. By day there was no trace of him in the shimagu camp. It was too dangerous to follow him directly—Ranthia refused to let her people throw their lives away trying—but he seemed to vanish well before dawn.
So much for the easy way out.
Ranthia was trying to play her own games to make her curse less blindingly obvious to anyone that paid even token attention. It grated in the extreme, but some battles she remained in her tent, even when her curse wasn’t active. She trusted her people, but doing nothing felt oh-so-wrong. Not that the base personnel that formed her inner circle (the Subcommander, their surviving [Analysts], Helvia, and a few others) were willing to let her field herself while she was truly blind—no matter how well her training with blind sparring was progressing.
Beneath the full moons, Ranthia and the troll were locked in battle once again. Ranthia found herself forced to shift, yet again, to avoid a thrust from the troll’s obnoxiously resilient bone weapon. Her own adamantium knives were slightly better formed and were similar in size to the cheap knives she’d used before the dwarf’s death, but the troll still had a clear advantage in reach. Still, it was better than trying to use a spear—it never had felt less unnatural in her hands and her Skills were more important than mere reach. She wasn’t stupid enough to try to break her Skills in the middle of a war to try to broaden them enough to encompass a weapon that she had more than just mixed feelings about.
Shifting took time though, and even those precious moments were getting increasingly perilous as the troll slowly learned how to not plainly telegraph every attack he made. It was a close call, but Ranthia’s dance kept her out of harm’s way just long enough.
Yet the instant she arrived in a different image, [Combat Awareness] was already screaming. The troll had, more than once throughout their clashes, gambled on which image she was shifting to. …And she’d foolishly relied on his usual tells for which he chose.
There was no way to cleanly evade the end of the weapon that was coming for her. Ranthia was already shifting again, but she had to arrest the weapon’s momentum if that was going to matter. If she lost her head, she was dead. Her bodies might be temporary, but she still had to live long enough to reach another!
Guided only in part by [Rhythmic Grace], Ranthia brought her knives into the weapon’s path as she tried to spin clear. There was far too much momentum behind the weapon for her strength and vitality to counter, but she didn’t need to block or deflect the strike—she needed to stall it for a single heartbeat.
The weapon met her knives and shoved past them, shattering her wrists in the process. It continued past her wrists and had barely kissed the side of her neck as she spun not-quite-clear. Fortunately, she was spared from having to assess the damage—[Reflections of Reality] finally concluded, and her perception suddenly flashed roughly sixteen paces further away to one of the images she had left on the periphery of her fight.
That was way too close!
It was somewhat ironic. She was finally free of having to channel, but as her level curve increased, the precious moments [Reflection of Reality] took to activate felt almost as long as the significantly greater channel time once had.
Ranthia ran for the troll and triggered [Adamant Force]—and [Adamantium Manipulation] for a bit of extra control—as she neared. Her knives leapt back to her hands just before their dance was rejoined. Gods and goddesses, she was already getting spoiled by being able to do that; how did she ever live without it?
Ranthia’s latest brush with death had come at a cost. Her War Ranger bracers—and the precious arcanite embedded beneath them—were mostly gone. She was so focused on that problem that she failed to notice that she’d lost her choker too until she went to do her customary adjustment of it before she slept.
The choker didn’t carry much arcanite, especially compared to the bracers, but it was another connection to her past. She had more than just mixed feelings about it—about Hexara—but it still hurt to have the war take something else that had meaning away from her.
By the time winter began to touch the land, Ranthia had made enough progress with [Adamantium Symbiosis] that she was ready to make a third and fourth knife. She was so pleased with herself that she’d done so before the obvious question came to mind: Why?
She had no need to carry as many knives as she could. Which meant that it was time to think more carefully about what she could use the adamantium for.
She had recently learned that she could better form the knives if she broke the adamantium down to a coarse dust—not unlike sand—and used it to shape the object she wished to form.
She’d used it to make a more precise engraving tool when she was forced to add a name to their watchtower. An eternal reminder that they were strong, but they weren’t safe. They were never safe.
Dark thoughts aside, Ranthia was somewhat pleased that she had finally learned to make tools and instruments that were no longer quite so crude. Larger objects were increasingly time consuming the larger they got, but she was confident(ish) that she could afford to make her knives a bit larger.
After a few experiments, Ranthia held an inexact replica of her old knives—her beloved partners that the Void had taken from her during her time at the Academy. She needed to experiment, but they would provide a wonderful base.
…And, as she mused on it further, she decided that, just perhaps, she no longer needed to keep sheaths on her belt anymore. If she could form her knives with only a few moments’ effort—for a relatively modest mana cost—it probably made more sense to keep them closer to hand.
As the shimagu hordes approached for their next battle—just as dawn kissed the sky—Ranthia stood ready to meet them. The Unbreakable Image’s standard was planted behind her. Her people waited massed on the walls—ready to leap over and join the melee when their enemies drew near.
Ranthia readied herself to dance, as her adamantium bracers broke down into adamantium sand that flowed into her palms, guided by [Adamantium Manipulation] and empowered by [Adamantium Forge]. Iteration number eight felt promising in her practice, but she was curious to learn how the curved blades felt in true combat.
Fortunately, the shimagu had volunteered a large number of ripe targets, just in time. Black Crow would reap a grand harvest.
The adamantium weighed far more than her precious original knives ever had, but Ranthia’s strength was an order of magnitude greater than it had been back then. The weight didn’t bother her, and she was already planning to add a touch more length to the blades once she had more adamantium bonded to her will.
Time continued to flitter by. The troll’s attacks were irregular enough that she turned 29 before the first night came that the troll attacked while she was blinded by White Dove’s damnable curse. The troll took from them without her there to challenge him. Ranthia hated it with every fiber of her being, but she stayed put, in large part because she knew she’d have to go through Helvia and several others that stood guard to get out there. Her people did what they could against him.
While their [Saboteurs] set the shimagu’s underdefended camp ablaze.
After that, Ranthia swore it felt like the troll avoided attacking on the moonless nights. Rationally, it was more likely a coincidence—he had never been remotely predictable—but she was grateful for every night of horror where he wasn’t there to make it worse.
Burning their enemy’s camp turned out to be the best thing they had ever done. The shimagu relocated their new camp further west—in an open stretch that was harder to approach undetected—but that allowed Ranthia’s base to pillage the fallen tower for everything that they could use. The shimagu were far enough away that her people could run back to base before any hostile response arrived!
It was a welcome series of good news, though they remained stranded. Perilous scouting, made only slightly safer thanks to System-enhanced stealth, proved that there were other shimagu camps in nearly every direction—there was no practical escape. They had discussed it numerous times though, and there was a real option in abandoning their base and striking northeast as hard and fast as they could. With sufficient momentum, there was a chance that they could pierce through the shimagu camp there and keep moving before their enemies could muster a full response and come at them from all sides.
The only problem with their plan was that they weren’t sure what was further out. No one could safely scout far enough (or, rather, long enough; mana gated their range) to learn. Would they simply run into a larger shimagu presence? Was the alliance still out there? The uncertainty made the plan impossible to implement.
Well, it was far from the only problem. Their food harvest and preparation periods gated their mobility and carrying sufficient water was probably outright impossible with so many containers degraded or consumed for precious materials over the years. The logistics could be somewhat handwaved by relying on everyone’s vitality, but…
Ironically, the largest issue on that front was the loss of the map that Ranthia had once derided. The rocky wasteland could be perilous to cross in places due to canyons or sprawling mesas far larger than any Ranthia had paid much attention to—without a map to plan their route against, there was a great risk of getting trapped, especially if they moved as a single force as swiftly as they could manage. Advanced scouts only helped if they weren’t already moving into a dead end further out.
Unfortunately, they were committed to defending their Unbreakable Image.
“Yeah, that has to be a trap.” The Subcommander decided.
It wasn’t a moonless night, but it sure felt like it with the thick clouds covering the sky. The latest attack on their base came in the form of a single low-level ogre, a level 128 with [Laborer – Wood] for both classes (bizarrely, despite his levels, there were no class up lights around him). Even their [Healer] could easily handle such a weak opponent. The ogre’s crude wooden pick hammer was probably unable to even damage their walls, especially as they’d been further reinforced by her mud [Mages]’ third classes and the stones they’d liberated from the fallen tower.
“Eh, I’m curious to see what this is about. I’ll take the bait.” Ranthia replied, as her bracers rapidly dissolved and started to form her knives.
Once her blades were in hand, one-by-one ten mirror images appeared, scattered around the ogre—though none of them were very close to the strange shimagu. She handed off nine of them to [Submind] then hopped down and approached the ogre. Once she got in range, she opened her mouth to speak, but the ogre roared and charged at her.
An instant later she removed his head with a single flowing movement. She didn’t even need to use [Void Edge] with that much difference in their respective levels.
[*ding!* You have slain an ogre [Caretaker] (Wood, level 128), [Dino Fan] (Wood, level 128)//shimagu [Dinosaur Enthusiast] (Ooze, level 316), [Friend to Fangs] (Wood, level 303)!]
“Well, that was anticlimactic.” Ranthia muttered.
She looked around, then turned back toward her base. Nothing. Had one of the shimagu gone rogue? She hadn’t truly hoped for a peace envoy, but gods and goddesses it would have been welcome. Yet he attacked immediately, without a chance of victory.
It was weird—even by shimagu standards—but clearly the situation was handled.
And then [Combat Awareness] pinged for her attention—though strangely it provided far less information than usual, merely that there was ‘danger’. But [Vision of the Void] saw nothing, so Ranthia hesitated to act.
Which was always the wrong move.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Claws suddenly pierced through her back and erupted from her chest in a spray of blood, leather, metal, and shards of arcanite. Ranthia felt her heart and lungs shred. It wasn’t the first time. She didn’t panic, she simply began the process to shift to a different image while she slashed one of her knives, empowered by [Void Edge] across her chest to shear the claws off in the moment before she shifted to a different mirror image.
It was not a promising sign that she still saw nothing, even as she took deep, grateful breaths with her new lungs. Some of the arcanite and serrated metal in her armor poked uncomfortably into her skin, thanks to being misshapen by the punctures.
A glance at what she had severed confirmed her theory—the claws were definitely from a therizinosaurus, but it was outright nonsensical that she was somehow failing to spot a dinosaur many times her own size. There was no sound either. The most likely explanation that she could come up with on the spot was that there was a new stealth-focused shimagu twin that used claws from dinosaurs as a weapon.
But sometimes, life was just plain improbable.
A therizinosaurus emerged from the darkness around her—the effect was uncanny with [Vision of the Void], it looked like the dinosaur’s head and torso sprouted from the ground like a plant—and swiped at her. Ranthia had enough warning to dance clear that time, but she could only stare as the beast melted away. [Divine-Touched Identify] gave her nothing. [Vision of the Void] saw nothing. These were bad signs.
The fact that the dinosaur had twice managed to attack the real her, without attacking any of her images, was an even worse sign.
Ranthia replaced the wounded mirror image, revoked [Submind]’s access to them, and began to dance. Then, much as she had so long ago when she trained [Combat Awareness] with Rigira at the Ranger Academy, Ranthia closed her eyes and blinded herself. It was time to trust in her training she had undergone at Hunting’s behest and her more recent training ever since White Dove had cursed her. Her eyes plainly were of little to no use.
Her stationary images weren’t targets, especially not while she whirled and pranced about—which was fine, she wanted them for spares if she screwed up. The next strike came quickly. She readily evaded that one, the angles were unfavorable to her opponent—but her knife only kissed air as she tried to counterattack.
Ranthia didn’t stop. She continued her dance. Her opponent was tricky in a way she would have never expected, but it’d played its hand and failed to bring her down. That was its final mistake. It was just a matter of time.
Another claw came. A shallow thrust from the shadows.
The thrust was shallow enough that she had to dance in, even as she deflected the claws with the flat of her knife. Her other blade was already crumbling back into dust to return to its bracer form, even as her hand darted forward. She grabbed the dinosaur’s limb by its wrist—no she had no idea if that was the right word for it on a therizinosaurus—and pulled with every fiber of her strength while she tried to turn. The beast was presumably stronger, but she somehow doubted that it could use its full power while it was in the shadows.
After several moments of effort, the dinosaur’s head emerged from the shadows. The instant she felt confident in the timing, she released her grip on the dinosaur’s limb and rolled, knife held ready. The beast tried to flee back into the shadows, but she was faster—[Void Edge] allowed her knife to tear through the creature’s throat—[Echoes of Devastation] made it a messy decapitation.
[You have slain a dinosaur [Therizinosaurus] (Dark, level 573)!]
She danced a while longer, but no more threats made themselves known. More surprisingly, there was no shimagu kill notification and [Vision of the Void] wasn’t able to find any shimagu parasites in the corpse—which popped into full view as soon as the beast was dead—either.
“Anyone see anything?” Ranthia called up to the wall.
A chorus of no’s—and other flavors of negative confirmations—followed.
Ranthia mused on the whole situation while she waited a bit longer. Her best theory was that the ogre she killed had been the beast’s caretaker and the troll sent the caretaker to die, in hopes that the caster monster would manage to take some of her people out in retribution (her worst theory wasn’t worth repeating, she somehow doubted that the shimagu had a [Priest] to the deity in charge of the Dark element).
Either way, what a waste.
Still, it had served as a valuable lesson that [Vision of the Void] wasn’t infallible. The caster dinosaur had a technique that she couldn’t see through. It plainly wasn’t traditional stealth, like what her people had; the beast had outright melted into the shadows. It was impressive, as far as stealth techniques went—perfect for an apex ambush predator.
Ranthia finally shrugged, placed an image on the wall—next to the Subcommander—and shifted to it, before she dismissed her other images.
“Get the retrieval teams to drag the dino carcass in and check the ogre for anything useful. See if they can find any of the arcanite I lost, I swear I saw some in the air.” Ranthia ordered.
[*ding!* [Sexy] has reached level 238!]
Where in Xaoc’s glorious name had that come from?! [Sexy] hadn’t leveled since she reached the base years ago. Her confusion swiftly brought to mind another surprise level from the Skill. The damned Skill had an exhibitionistic streak, as she’d learned in the aftermath of the kraken fight…
Ranthia looked down, and sure enough the holes torn in her armor from the claws left one of her nipples mostly visible.
Which made her pay more attention to the man in front of her. An instant later, she was giving the Subcommander a very displeased glare over his open gawking while she crossed her arms over her chest.
The man didn’t even have the dignity to look embarrassed. No, the look on his face was much, much worse. Ranthia sent a mirror image directly in front of her own tent and shifted straight to it without another word and dismissed the body he had ogled.
Men could be so damned exhausting.
Ranthia was dressed in a stained, aging tunic while she waited for whatever arcanite could be recovered to be delivered. There was no sense in sewing another leather patch over the lining before she received the stones, even if being out of her armor made her anxious. Being stuck in the middle of a war for years was outright awful when it came to paranoia. Everything felt far more threatening the instant her usual sense of comfort or security was compromised in the slightest. It was a sense of vulnerability that practically had her jumping at every sound.
It was hard not to snap at the man when Janius finally showed up at her tent. The wait had felt excruciating.
“Four stones could be recovered, but it looked like at least one more got pulverized too fine to get out of the dirt. …One of the others found this though.” The man offered her the four stones, then, much more reluctantly, offered her something else with his other hand.
Her Ranger badge. It wasn’t the first time that she’d lost it in battle, only for it to be found by the retrieval squads and returned to her. It wasn’t even the first time that she’d lost it and only noticed its absence after it was returned. …It was the first time that her badge had been delivered split into two pieces.
The damned therizinosaurus’ claws must have been touched with Darkness as well. When it skewered her chest, one of the claws pierced through the badge and sundered it.
Yet another beloved item had been stolen from her by the godsdamned war.
The shimagu attacks had amplified in intensity in recent months—they were sometimes being attacked twice a day, but Ranthia’s 30th birthday was surprisingly quiet. She led morning group prayers to Xaoc, joined by many of her off-duty legionaries. After breakfast she danced for a while, accompanied by a few of her people that did their best to sing different tunes—none of them were [Bards], but that was half the fun. One of the [Archers] had managed to bag a wild hare, an elusive animal in these parts, the night before and saved it for her as a surprise. Which meant that she got to make rabbit—well, hare—stew. It wasn’t quite the same as what she had loved in Remus, but it was very thoughtful and highly appreciated. Dinner was promptly followed by a small skirmish with trained dinosaurs that didn’t take long or take any of her people away from her. After that, it was time for her evening prayer. All in all, it was one of her better days in the war.
The elderly [Healer] had been bedridden for days. He spoke to people that weren’t there and ignored those that were present on his ‘good’ days, and weakly moaned total nonsense on his bad ones. And yet, late one evening as he steadily declined, the man asked one of the legionaries that was stuck tending to him if he could speak to Ranthia. Ranthia was more than a bit surprised to receive word of that, after yet another skirmish concluded, but she decided to pay him a visit.
His tent was spacious, but it reeked. The man already smelled like something that had died.
“Oh, good, you came. I was wrong about you and your kind, you know. You were the best we could have had. You saved so many. Good work. Wanted to let you know.”
The old man’s eyes remained fixed on the top of his tent—he never even looked at Ranthia as he spoke. His voice was wheezy and wet, weak to the point that she would have struggled to hear him if not for her vitality. She was left uncertain whether or not the words were meant for her, but the man closed his eyes and started to snore before she tried to ask.
Ranthia left the tent unsettled both by the mystery of his words and the fact that she could have sworn that she saw a flash of white feathers in the corner of her eyes on the way out of the tent.
She wasn’t surprised to learn that he passed the next morning. Another name for their monument.
And, after a bit of time spent in reflection, she chose to accept the words as if they were meant as an apology to her and every other woman that the man had slighted. It didn’t make up for a lifetime of vile sexism, but she appreciated it, nonetheless.
The enemy ramping up their attacks was one thing, but when Ranthia was roused from her slumber by the fourth attack called by their horns on the same day, she was about ready to ask Xaoc to smite every last shimagu and scour them all off the face of Pallos. She still wouldn’t—and was blatantly ignoring the fact that she’d made numerous similar prayers during those darker days—but gods and goddesses, she was tired of this.
She still launched herself out of her tent and ran for the walls. A shift would have been faster, but she was far from being at her best. Too little sleep was worse than no sleep, somehow.
The Subcommander wasn’t there (yet), but Ranthia took in the scene alongside the defenders assigned to the wall. As far as attacks went, it was… surprisingly odd. They almost never saw blended forces of shimagu attack, but it was plainly a line of medium dinosaurs leading, followed by the blend of ogres and humans that were the shimagu that the troll inherited from the prior forces.
“Relay a message to the Subcommander or whichever [Analyst] gets here first: If anyone doesn’t feel up to the battle, do not field them! We’re running on fumes, but I refuse to let exhaustion get anyone killed.” Ranthia ordered the nearest [Archer] then, after he nodded, she leapt over the wall.
[Combat Awareness] warned her before she saw them. Dark reddish stones—jagged, rather than smoothed by wind and water like those she usually saw in the area—arced through the air straight for her. It was a ludicrous attack; [Rhythmic Grace] could dodge them all night with her stats. She was nearing 50,000 speed; no mundanely thrown rock stood a chance of hitting her. Strength could only accelerate things so far, especially when they came in arcs after bleeding much of their initial momentum.
Naturally, the attacks weren’t meant to kill her, they were probably just her hateful opponent’s idea of a greeting. Ranthia caught sight of the troll just before the dinosaurs reached her—even as the troll’s next stone killed two of his own beasts. Not that he stopped throwing stones that ogres near him struggled to carry as he approached.
Ranthia danced toward the troll, her adamantium blades ended threats as she went. Her own people were mustering and were more than capable of handling level 300-ish dinosaurs, but she wanted to reap a toll in blood from the shimagu.
She was in a bit of a foul mood, admittedly.
The troll tossed aside the stone in his hands—probably killing the ogre that actually tried to catch it—and snatched his usual weapon from another shimagu thrall, even as his forces attempted to scatter away from the fight that was about to begin.
Few made it in time.
It had become somewhat strange to battle the troll. His combat style was starting to solidify, and yet Ranthia was trying to hold back against a superior foe. The curved blades of her finalized knife design let her redirect even strikes made with his overwhelming force without injuring herself, so long as she moved with the force—but she didn’t do it more than twice. She had learned the troll’s new tells for his attacks, yet she tried to ensure she narrowly dodged or took minor injuries as they fought.
With every battle they had joined, the troll had grown deadlier. But she had as well, and she was trying to save her narrow opportunities for the day she could end him once and for all.
Conceptually, her only hope was to wait for the day she could strike his neck from both directions and pray that [Void Edge] and [Echoes of Devastation]—as empowered by her ever-escalating stats—would somehow be sufficient. There was a real risk that the troll could survive, but if she killed the parasite her opponent might end up off-balance. Of course, the largest issue was the fact that the troll’s neck was, in effect, heavily fortified. The bulk of the armor’s resilience was focused there, and the troll was bulky and smart enough that opportunities to strike his neck were more than just rare.
But plainly their battles were going to continue until one of them was dead, and Ranthia was more than a bit stubborn about not being the one to go.
Ranthia had to bury the concern that he was going to decide that he had extracted all the use he could out of her sooner or later. The Unbreakable Image was strong, but if the troll ever actually went all out, she wasn’t sure if all of their lives would be enough to stop him. He still held back, even as he tried to test himself at her level.
They fought their duel at a far grander speed and intensity than they had during their first clashes. Ranthia grew stronger, even as her opponent steadily grew more skilled. It allowed them to fight at higher and higher levels. Impacts of adamantium on bone—or damnably resilient stone and vine—echoed across the battlefield. Rocks shattered beneath their feet as their frenzied dance continued.
The strength behind the troll was incredible. No matter how Ranthia—too gradually—closed the gap between their levels, his power remained overwhelming. His Void ate at her flesh even when she dodged his weapon. His strikes erased wide swaths of terrain or shimagu that were foolish—or desperate—enough to end up within range of his wide area of attack.
She had to pray that the troll wasn’t holding back much anymore. He still seemed to avoid sending attacks at her head, but that was—as best as she could tell—the only proof that he still was content to use her for his own purposes. …And gods and goddesses, she hoped that she wasn’t just deluding herself about what his stats were truly capable of.
Xaoc willing, she needed to find her opportunity to kill the troll and his parasitic partner before that changed. If he truly wanted her dead, she wasn’t sure if the few tricks she was hiding would be enough to win.
Even as things were, Ranthia’s ability to focus on the wider field of battle was crippled every time she fought the troll. The slightest mistake could prove fatal, and her opponent fought from a realm that remained just beyond her reach. The troll could look about while they fought—he never gave her enough of an opening to do more than inflict a wound he swiftly healed with his distractions—but a moment of reduced focus could spell disaster for her. At least the troll had proven that he would disengage from her to kill any other shimagu that tried to capitalize on her narrowed focus. The hordes only had to experience that lesson twice—proving that even the shimagu could learn.
Ranthia’s shift concluded after yet another injury—godsdamnit, she had to fight better than that—but just before she could lunge back into the battle, she was stopped by a desperate shout from her own people.
“Stop them!”
Ranthia danced back as she tried to take in as much of the battlefield as she could before the troll reached her again—her images never fooled him, unfortunately. A group of three ogres were tightly clustered and two of her people were chasing them. One was a [Mage], but he was visibly hesitating to unleash the Skill that had gathered around his hand.
Also, Amphea was rapidly closing in on her position.
The shieldwoman interjected herself between Ranthia and the troll and smashed the base of her shield into the ground. Spiky rocks sprang up as the stone was reshaped to try to ward the troll off.
“Go, they have Dominus!” Amphea shouted, even as the troll carved through the stone spikes.
There was no time to hesitate. Ranthia chose to trust the woman. Amphea’s terrasium shield wasn’t able to shrug off Void energy quite like Ranthia’s own adamantium, but she had the highest vitality in the Unbreakable Image and some of the best armor Skills. Xaoc willing, it was enough to keep her alive, even against the troll.
Ranthia couldn’t let herself regret her decision, she instead focused on what she could do and threw an image as close as she could to the trio of ogres before she shifted. Dominus was an ass, but he was one of her people—she wasn’t about to let the shimagu take him. No matter how many tasteless jokes he made.
The [Warrior] was slumped between the ogres, but if [Divine-Touched Identify] returned information on him, he was still alive. It wasn’t the first time that the shimagu had tried to seize one of their injured—more morbidly, there was a real risk that some of the deceased who were taken by the shimagu had still been alive—but Ranthia wasn’t going to tolerate a single one that she could stop.
Ranthia threw both knives at the ogres on the sides, aiming for the back of their throats. [Adamantium Manipulation] and [Adamant Force] corrected her aim and ensured the force of her throw didn’t diminish, while [Sustained Chaos] empowered her throw and bestowed her other Skills’ deadly touches to the blades.
Her knives tore right through the ogres like Ranthia had unleashed artillery strikes. Their levels—their vitality—were far too low to withstand the attacks.
[*ding!* You have slain an ogre [Irrigating] (Water, level 198), [Stuff Hauler] (Earth, level 251)//shimagu [Always There] (Ooze, level 322), [Opportunist] (Dark, level 320)!]
[*ding!* You have slain an ogre [Overwhelmed Father] (Light, level 256), [Storymaker] (Sound, level 77)//shimagu [Prideful Voice] (Ooze, level 319), [Huckster] (Sound, level 216)!]
The last ogre stumbled as her dead fellows crashed into her. But she didn’t lose her grip on Dominus. She was stupid enough to turn and look to see what had happened though.
The delay let Ranthia catch up. Ranthia launched herself at the ogre, before her opponent even truly understood what was about to happen. Ranthia’s knee smashed into the ogress’ jaw with enough force to shatter it, even as [Adamantium Manipulation] finally brought her knives back to her hands.
A sweep of her blade—empowered by [Void Edge] without [Echoes of Devastation]—tore out the ogre’s throat.
[*ding!* You have slain an ogre [History Speaker] (Sand, level 260), [Recordkeeper] (Earth, level 201)!]
Ranthia released the knife in her right hand, even as she reached into the mangled ruins of the ogre’s throat. Her fist closed around the slimy thing she found within and she tore the parasite out of its freed host.
“
[*ding!* You have slain a shimagu [Always Whispering] (Ooze, level 280), [Bootlicker] (Poison, level 266)!]
Several shimagu that witnessed her act of brutality began to flee, even before the troll roared out his order to withdraw. Even better, Amphea was still on her feet too! But Ranthia had to focus on helping Dominus’ team get him back to base. Another life saved from the worst of all possible fates.
Gods willing, she hoped to continue to do so. For all of her people.
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Nozomi Matsuoka.
Sarah "Neila" Elkins.