The copse dwellers jumped at the nearby humans and the few who couldn’t get a shield up in time were disemboweled by devilish legs and eaten alive before their partners could even lift a finger to help. The wolves that were focused on the guests quickly turned their attention to the new intruders, with wolven war cries they leapt into action and brutally pushed them back with fearsome blows, but a few of the cursed creatures managed to get some strikes through the wolves gambersen and plated mail. The wolves were unperturbed though and continued to push them back before more could come me through the rifts. Many had clawed gauntlets but there were many other weapons among them as well, swords, maces, and daggers, each weapon was enchanted to enhance the flow of magic which helped the wolves pierce through the corpse dwellers powerful natural magic armor and hindered their powerful regeneration abilities.

Though corpse dwellers appear anywhere with a high body count and places with turbulent negative emotions, they actually are not natural creatures, they are in-fact a curse. It was placed when the great litch fell in battle with the Nuckelavee during the beginnings of the killing fields, with the final bits of his soul he was able to curse every battleground to bare his children of misery and death. With the end of the killing fields, his curse lives on, but to a lesser extent due to the sheer amount of death required for their mostly spontaneous generation. So realistically you will only see there mega hives in some areas of the killing fields, but that doesn’t mean they still can’t spread. That litch was a sadistic bastard and made it so his children could still spread through the gathering of bodies and the absorption of magic.

I now had a really good idea on where these rifts lead, *sigh* it looks like someone is screwing around with something that very much shouldn’t be messed with. I don’t see how people keep seeing these battlegrounds as a good place to gather power, after all the very aura of it can easily drive people to insanity. I was again back in a bad mood so I decided to cheer myself up, I rose from my seat and pounced at the nearest corpse dweller. Near instantaneously I appeared beside it and ripped two of its eight legs off before savagely plunging them through its nonexistent eyes. Before it could even register the attack I grabbed its snout and started using it as a club to smash its siblings. The sound of their panicked clicking and thunderous impacts filled the room as I slowly turned them into bloody spots on the floor, they soon realized it was a losing battle and tried to escape back into the rifts but it was too late, with a wave of my hand the rifts imploded in on themselves and released a savage shockwave that tore apart the room and reduced the front corpse dwellers into nothing but a bloody mist. My weapon was also soon reduced to nothing but ahead even after the repeated smashing, even infusing it with magic couldn’t keep it intact for long so I decided to use my favorite weapon, my hands, which I converted back to their clawed form. One jumped at me and tried to attack with the gaping maw running vertically on its underbelly, to which I responded by grabbing each side and tore it apart causing it to release a painful shriek. I threw its mangled remains at its friend that was coming to help it, causing them both to be reduced into a mass of flesh and bone.

I retrieved a herbal mix and threw it at the largest group I could see, as it sailed towards them it erupted into flames which descended onto them. They let out painful screams as the blood-red fire absorbed their precious magic supply and quickly burned through the thick magical armor. When the flame reached their carapace it melted it like it was made of wax and quickly revealed the flesh beneath, they screamed and screeched as the flames caused unimaginable pain as it melted off their legs and flesh. Soon they were rendered into nothing more than squirming balls of flesh.

My smile returned at the sight of the carnage and I laughed at their futile attempts to survive. I turned to the ones beside me and sent out my magic to envelop them, they rose against their will and I slowly started applying pressure. They kicked and squirmed at first but their legs were quickly forced to their sides, and as the pressure increased and so did their cries of pain. A cracking started to emanate out as their carapace started to fail, I raised my hand up and started creating a squeezing motion for theatrics. As my hand slowly closed their defenses started to fail and with one final human-like scream they imploded in on themselves. Not wanting to waste the material in front of me I started to shape the four balls into barbed javelins of carapace and bone. With a small wave, they flew at lightning speed and pierced Buckferd onto the stage. He tried to move but the barbs did not allow it, he will be fiercely punished for bringing the corpse dwellers out of the fields.

I turned back to the remaining creatures and launched myself at them while chuckling and whistling a small tune. With glee, I ripped them limb from limb and used their body parts to maim their comrades. They stopped trying to attack me and put all their effort into fleeing but I wouldn’t let them. I raised my hand and a wall of pitch-black flames erupted in front of them, two couldn’t stop in time and barreled right into it causing their bodies to twist and break, bones erupted out of their carapace, and tendrils of flesh tried to escape their bodies, as the flames altered them. Soon an entirely different being erupted out of the mass of flesh.