Mage Tank

Chapter 331: Parfum de Belette

Chapter 331: Parfum de Belette

Mage Tank

My cabin shuddered in time with a series of nearby booms, ejecting me from my sleepytime with such a jolt that I teleported out of bed rather than taking the time to stand. I took a two-second stroll through a Closet portal to let Grotto animate my armor and have it equip itself to me, then took care to open my door without accidentally breaking the knob. The place was thrown together from ordinary materials, so my careless grip strength had already cost me one door the night prior.

It was mid-morning, and the Littan camp was wide awake. I blinked away the last of my grogginess, having gotten only four or five out of my preferred eight hours of slumber. The camp was a flattened-out area cleared of vegetation, filled with basic shelters, and surrounded by a twelve-foot-tall palisade. A walkway lined the inner edge of the log wall from which a few Littans were firing off skills and projectiles at something on the other side. I watched an archer loose an arrow, and soon after, the ground trembled from another boom.

The camp itself looked fine, and I spotted Major Kai marching through the place, looking calm and collected as he shouted orders at the other Delvers. Some scrambled to hop or fly up onto the elevated walkway, while the rest settled into other tasks. I got a few notifications listing out any spells the Littans were throwing around that I hadn’t seen before, letting me know that several Littans were focusing on magical recon of the surrounding forest.

I kept an eye on Major Kai while I also peered through the palisade with my Sight. There looked to be a trickle of small creatures rushing towards the wall at high speeds, some of which would explode when struck by an attack. Over the next few minutes, I paid careful attention to the situation while staying out of the way. The Littan response was a well-oiled machin,e and the last thing I wanted was to become sand in their gears. Varrin walked over to stand watch beside me, also lacking a clear role in this confrontation.

So far, they’d handily dealt with the rushing creatures, although the number of enemies attacking at once was definitely increasing. After ten minutes of endless assault, a few of the Littan mages were falling back to take a break, their mana exhausted. Major Kai had some of those he’d held back earlier swap in. Soon after, the same thing started happening with some of the more martially inclined Delvers when they ran out of stamina.

I pointed to a group as they peeled off the wall, their breaths coming fast and heavy. “Does your Deep Breaths evo consider you to be in combat right now, Varrin?”

“It does not,” he replied, already striding over to their group. The evolution let him share half of his stamina regen with nearby allies so long as everyone was out of combat and resting. The big guy had a lot of stamina regen, meaning those Littans would be able to get back into the fight way faster.

My auras were on and giving various buffs, although their range was limited for ‘allies’. Only my party members got them, no matter their distance from me. As it was, I had a hundred feet or so around me where everyone got minor attack and defensive buffs, a health regen buff, blunt weapon piercing–of dubious utility to anyone else–Fear immunity, and a big boost to their spell defenses. The mystery creatures weren’t getting close enough to hit anybody, though, so none of it was doing much good.

After a few more minutes of constant barrage, Major Kai jogged over to me.

“King Xor’Drel,” he said. “The southernmost section of the palisade could use some relief if you are willing to give it.”

“Sure thing,” I said, turning and quickly making my way south to hop atop the walkway.

A frazzled-looking mage was manning an eighty-foot stretch of wall solo, their fur all standing on end, and I smelled ozone in the air. I got a few minor zaps when I hopped up next to him, all from ambient static. The man was looking a bit twitchy, although I wasn’t sure that wasn’t their default state.

The man’s eyes darted right, and their arm shot out, blasting out an arcing bolt of lightning at one of the creatures as it came charging from the treeline. I caught a glimpse of the beast before the mage’s spell turned it into a smoking husk and even got an Identify off.

Blade Weasel: Mustelid, Grade 4

The name did a good job of saying all that needed to be said. It was a weasel; one with a big-ass razor blade running along the length of its face. The blade’s tapered, piercing tip ended about six inches in front of the monster’s snout. That’s all I got during the split second before the thing got fried, followed by the lightning spell chaining to three more blade weasels out of sigh,t deeper in the woods. They squeaked when they died, which would have been kind of sad if the things had been cute at all.

They weren’t.

The next weasel the mage shot exploded, showering the ground for thirty feet all around in a light misting of gore. The pungent metallic smell of blood mingled with the ozone, creating an altogether unpleasant aroma. Plus, I could tell the weasels smelled like straight piss from where I was atop the wall, a smell made much worse when their nasty, matted fur was flash-fried by the mage.

I had no idea why that last one had exploded while the others had just gone crispy.

“Are you going to stand there or fucking help?” asked the mage, eyes still locked on the killing field. I ignored his tone and Shortcut out into the field, dropped an Elemental Barrier set to Cold, then Shortcut back. The weasels were moving fast enough that the mage’s harried attitude made sense, but not so fast that my barrier wouldn’t catch them. The next one that darted in was lashed by freezing, sparking winds, and their frozen, twitching body was sent tumbling back into the woods. It didn’t squeak, but it died. The next one exploded the moment it hit my AoE, and my spell spread the frozen debris of its death even farther than its corpse explosion would have done on its own.

I’d mana-shaped Elemental Barrier for size, but it could only cover a portion of the area that I and this rude lightning mage were responsible for. To our northeast was a Level 20 Gold standing in a wide field of hundreds of ghostly spears. Whenever he struck with the spear in his hand, he could also strike with any number of the ethereal weapons. He marked the outer edge of what we had to guard, and that guy didn’t seem like he was going anywhere anytime soon.

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To our west, the southern perimeter of the palisade abutted a root-covered cliff face at the base of the Caving Tree. I’d positioned my Barrier to overlap with that natural obstacle. The weasels were suicidal, but they weren’t completely dumb. After a few of them died to my lingering spell, the rest started going around it, but this funneled them through a space half the size of what we’d been dealing with before. The weasels were also second-guessing their current strategy of rushing to their deaths through the neighboring man’s spear garden and were routing around its edge as well. All of this combined led to a heavy stream of the weasels coming towards our section through a forty-foot corridor.

The lightning mage fired off a massive bolt, chaining to a dozen of the now tightly-packed weasels. He rubbed at one eye with the back of his hand and was finally willing to take a second to look my way. He froze, and his expression dropped.

“Yara’s tits,” he swore. “The way you stomped up behind me, I thought you were Guar. Sorry for being short with you, uh, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I searched my memory for a second. “Sergeant Alanor, right?” The man nodded. “How’s your mana?”

He fired another bolt, chaining to every weasel in the corridor. Three of them exploded, misting the air with blood and viscera. “I am down to a quarter.”

I pulled one of Nuralie’s mana potions from inventory and held it out to him. The man stared at it for half a beat before snatching it and tossing it back like he thought I might change my mind. He gave me a chagrined look after.

“Balls, that is some good regen,” he muttered once he’d looked at his screens. “Okay, with this–” He stopped to fire another bolt, frying and detonating more weasels. It looked like about 20% of them were the explosive kind, although I still couldn’t see any visual difference. “With this, I can toss a bolt every thirty seconds or so for the next hour.”

“You can avoid allies, right?”

Alanor scowled. “Of course.” He tugged at the front of his brigandine to straighten it, then pulled out a small pouch from his inventory. It was filled with a puffy grain that I recognized as the sweetened protein nuggets the empress favored. The mage shoveled a handful into his mouth, waved his crumb-covered hand to fire another bolt as he chewed, obliterating more weasels, then reached into the pouch to grab another wad of grains. “Nobody likes a lightning mage with shit targeting,” he mumbled through a mouthful of nugs.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s see how aggressive these things are. I’ll group them up on me, and we can stagger spells. Wait for me to cast first.” He nodded as he pulled out a flask and took a long drink.

I teleported out into the field amidst the scorched and chunky bodies, so thick that they were piled up in places. Their natural musk was foul, and it combined with the smell of scorched urine, feces, and hair to become an overwhelming stench. I suppressed a gag while I readied myself to receive the next group.

I had no idea where this many weasels were coming from–aside from the Forest, generally–but their onslaught seemed endless. A quick scan with Soul-Sight revealed hordes of the creatures farther out, rushing in behind their kin to jump directly into the Littan meat grinder. They streamed in from as far as I could ‘see’.

I stood in the middle of the lane we’d engineered, hoping the blade weasels were eager to finally skewer and eviscerate somebody. That way, they’d converge on me, and I wouldn’t need to waste resources on Gravity Anchor or something else to grab their attention. Their grade was low, but in high enough numbers, they’d still be a threat to the softer targets amongst the Littans. As for me, I wasn’t worried.

The horde immediately locked onto me, and twenty of the three-foot monsters rushed in. They launched from the ground, soaring through the air at more than a hundred miles per hour, angled to pierce me with the tips of their face blades. I divided Gracorvus in two, and as the weasels collided with it in rapid succession, I quickly made a dozen small adjustments to both shields to intercept and deflect the entire horde. I was completely unscathed.

As the first group recovered, each of its members turned and skittered toward me. Some swung their heads in sweeping arcs to try to slash at my legs, while others hopped up, trying to latch onto my chest or back. I focused only on blocking, able to keep that horde at bay, but a second wave was only a few seconds behind them. Once forty of the weasels were all trying to massacre me, I couldn’t catch every single one of them on my shield. I was hoping they’d hit one another with their wild swings, but they flowed across each other like a liquid mass, never once giving an ally so much as a scratch.

As a few bypassed my shield to strike at my armored body, I still wasn’t losing any Shielding. As fun as it was to dance around with Gracorvus, showing off all my shield jujitsu, once the next group arrived, Gracorvus became ornamental. I was missing a ton of attacks and still taking zero damage. I stopped blocking altogether and weathered the attacks directly, my body being nudged from side to side under the constant force of their hits. The creatures were light, but I was practically buried in their flailing bodies.

Being an invincible man inside a stinky mound of weasels stopped being fun before it ever started, so after about three seconds, I snapped my fingers and cast Explosion! The spell detonated at my feet, which had the secondary effect of detonating all of the secret exploding weasels.

Given there were about sixty of them, and one in five would explode, I took twelve exploding weasels right to the face. I’d assumed that, being as low-grade as they were, the weasels couldn’t possibly pack much damage behind that move.

Unfortunately, I’d made a grievous error. The hubris of my cold battlefield calculus cost me dearly, and I realized my grave mistake as the combined force of a dozen weasel explosions hit me.

No, I didn’t take any damage. I wasn’t physically harmed. If only I’d been so lucky.

Instead, I was covered in a thick paste of putrid weasel stank.

All of the explosions tore through the sixty weasels, painting me from head to toe in weasel guts and leaving me standing in a soupy, blood-red fog.

I failed my gag check. The only reason I didn’t hurl into my helmet was that I hadn’t had breakfast, and I was pretty sure my inhuman physiology didn’t contain a stomach unless I’d eaten something recently. As I stood in the fetid gloom, searching for ways to disable my sense of smell, the next mass of weasels came upon me. I stood and took their attacks, the feeble creatures incapable of harming me, contemplating all the mistakes that had led me here.

Then I felt my hair rise as static crackled through the air.

“Oh shit,” I turned to raise my hand. “Wait!”

But I was too late. Right on cue, exactly as we’d discussed, Alanor fired his chain lightning attack, exploding more weasels and covering me with a new layer. This time, it all possessed a complex scorched-and-blackened bouquet, uplifting the scent to new heights of hrrrk.

I hadn’t even had time to properly wallow in my misfortune when we all got a message through the psychic comms that only made things worse.

“Tavio: Attention, company. Prepare to give your full attention to Staff Sergeant Baltae.”

“Baltae: Avoid the blood of the creatures attacking you! All perimeter three encampments are being assaulted by a large horde of small, mobile creatures. There are several different species involved, but regardless of which type is attacking your camp, you must avoid getting its blood on you. Further details to follow.”

I snapped to explode another wave of weasels and looked down at my hopelessly gore-caked armor.

“Fucking hells.”