“What can I do?” Ella asked, looking over the charging monsters, her fingers touching the handle of her weapon.

“For now, relax. You’ll be up when they start climbing the wall. When that happens, I want you to stay close and watch my back. I might need the extra security.”

“What wall?”

It took about seven seconds for the knick-knacks to free the nearby trees from their roots, liberating the logs from their leaves as they carried them to their intended destination.

Hold.

Trait doctoring.

33/54 Bent remaining

Calvin made a two foot wide, five foot deep section of the ridge have the viscosity of water moments before the knick-knacks slammed the freshly cut logs deep in the liquid earth and stone.

Calvin dismissed the spell, and the logs were suddenly surrounded by hardpacked earth and stone, creating an ugly but functional wall roughly ten feet above them.

“Ten second wall,” Calvin muttered, glancing up at the rough hewn wood. “Gotta be some kind of a record.”

He pointed. “That wall.”

Ella snorted and climbed up on top of the rough hewn wood, watching the creature’s approach

“What can I do?” Learner asked.

“Do you have any compunctions about killing monsters?”

“Not really, my brain is most strongly empathetic with other humans.”

“Then your job is to kill and study a few of them, See if you can figure out how they tick. Strengths, weaknesses, that sort of thing. Pay close attention to large differences in tolerances between them and us. Do they find anything poisonous, and if so, do humans find it poisonous too? Do they need to breathe? That sort of thing.”

“Understood.” Learner gave him a perky Gadveran salute before her body shifted into the shape of one of the charging giants. A moment later, light seemed to warp around her until she vanished from sight.

Still got sixty seconds left. I need to take care of those brain crabs.

Maybe I can create an army of knick-knacks to make crossbows and have Kurawe shoot them…No, crossbows with greenwood won’t work…I could make the bows myself, and just have the arrows be real…

You know what, this is all too complicated, all I really need is kinetic force and shrapnel. Kurawe, you’re my catapult.

It would be an honor.

Calvinian summoning.

Chimera

Calvinian summoning

Chimera

Calvinian summoning.

Chimera

30/54 Bent remaining

Calvin made three Kurawe by subbing his body parts via chimera. Each one was over forty tons in weight, their enormous feet sinking into the mossy forest floor.

“Start throwing trees.” Calvin said aloud. He directed his attention to the knick-knacks.

“Dig. Get me some stone, lead and iron if possible.” Calvin didn’t think they’d get anything but rock, but it never hurt to ask.

The knick knacks began cutting through the forest floor while Calvin climbed up to the top of Fort Calvin.

Ah, I remember the last time we fought off an attack by One. What were you, fifteen?”

“Sixteen.” Calvin muttered, looking over the tide of snarling bodies charging up the hill. And much less dangerous.

“Start throwing trees.” Calvin said.

The giants hauled back and tossed the trees high above the walls, arcing down toward the army in front of them.

Gradual Multi-Shaping.

Calvin created a pattern of points creating miniscule amounts of exploding dynamite in the sky above the range of the brain crabs. When the trees passed beneath one of these points, Calvin turned the flow from almost nothing to several hundred pounds of dynamite.

Crack!

The trees were torn to shreds by the explosions, raining shards of flaming wood on the army below them. It did some damage, but their morale didn’t falter a bit.

Because they’re all the same person.

Yep, hive minds is where it’s at. Elliot said in a self-satisfied voice.

“Shaddap.”

Still got twenty seconds before they start climbing the wall, I-

A knick-knack tugged his sleeve and pointed to where they were in the process of excavating dozens of boulders of various sizes.

Elliot, can you design a Kurawe that can throw fist-sized rocks at supersonic speeds?

You ask this like I hadn’t already done it.

A Vizualize popped up in front of him, it looked mostly human, but the arms and legs were decidedly not. They were almost insectile, with carapace covering the surface, but they were shaped like something halfway between a pincer and a human hand, with a little bit of flex in the digits themselves.

The real trick here was the extremities. For a normal human, they’d get some serious damage to the nerves above-

Yeah, shut up, I’m busy.

Calivinian Summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant

29/54 Bent remaining.

Calivinian Summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant

28/54 Bent remaining.

Calivinian Summoning

Chimera

Atom Ant

27/54 Bent remaining.

Rude.

Each sniper was about two hundred pounds, had Kurawe’s face, but their eyes were grotesque, half again larger than a normal human’s eye, their heads slightly lumpy where their brains bulged in their skull.

I messed with the brain a little. They’re spear chucking idiot savants. Trust me, It’ll come in handy.

Since Calvin used Atom Ant, there was only two thousand pounds available, so he made ten snipers with each cast, totaling thirty of them.

The Kurawe-puppeted creatures hopped up on the top of the wall, and faced the approaching army, only a handful of seconds away.

“Your goal is to hit the brain crabs,” Calvin said. “Neutralize them, and I’ll pick up the slack.”

The snipers nodded in unison moments before knick knacks began feeding them hastily cut chunks of stone about the size of a man’s heart.

The first sniper’s feet deployed massive claws that sunk deep into the wooden wall, using the log beneath him for extra stability.

The creature’s arm wound back, then flickered.

BOOM!

There was a muffled report as the wall shuddered. Calvin glanced over and spotted one of the anti-magic crabs exploding in an eruption of gore.

“Widen that spot out,” Calvin said, indicating the area around the dead crab.

B-B-B-B-B-BOOM!

Like clockwork, every time one of the snipers threw a rock, one of the brain crabs exploded, in a widening circle outward from the first shot.

That’s probably wide enough.

Multi- shaping.

26/54 Bent remaining.

Calvin targeted the center of the Crab-free zone about two thousand feet away, then dropped several tons of explosives and large blades made of Abyssal Steel.

The explosion and subsequent shrapnel knocked down the army flat like wheat in a windstorm, bringing a grin to Calvin’s face.

Um, have you ever –

An invisible wave swept over Calvin and his wall, throwing Calvin off the wall and snapping several of the logs like kindling, while simply ripping others out at the base. It felt like a giant had punched Calvin’s whole body, sending him flailing through a nearby tree.

Yeah, forty tons of dynamite is nothing to scoff at.

Calvin crawled out of the rubble, covered in dirt and tree sap, coughing as he dusted himself off.

“That was brilliant,” Ella muttered, wiping the dust off her shiny red skin, climbing to her feet from the Ella-shaped hole in the nearby forest.

“Imagine how they feel,” Calvin said, shaking off the momentary grogginess before he rushed back to his devastated wall, climbing to the top of it.

What he saw brought the smile back to his face.

Tens of thousands of the monsters had been shredded beyond repair, while others were shakily picking themselves up.

The very far edges of One’s army were relatively unhurt, but the main press of their advance had been blunted.

“Clear the edges,” Calvin said, pointing along the sides.

One had presumably learned his lesson, as he was getting a bit more cautious now. The brain crabs began hiding behind bigger, stronger creatures, making it more difficult to be sure they’d all been removed from an area.

The steady report of the snipers throwing their chunks of stone was music to Calvin’s ears.

“Back up,” Ella said, grabbing Calvin by the collar and yanking him away.

A metal…something, streaked through the air above them and tore through the log Calvin had been standing on, sending up an explosion of shrapnel before it detonated, wiping out a good thirty feet of the wall and flinging the two of them away.

“Do walls even have meaning anymore?” Calvin demanded, yanking the chunk of shredded wood out of his leg, followed by the piece of steel messing with his rotator cuff.

Walls didn’t last long after explosives hit the scene. Especially if you include drone strikes.

The Abyss is a drone strike? Calvin thought.

B-B-B-BOOM!

Near invisible streaks of something black fell from the sky, detonating Calvin’s wood wall and turning it into so much mulch in a matter of seconds. the Snipers were mostly okay due to their strength-to-size ratio, and only a few of the kncik-knacks were damaged because they were metal.

The giant Kurawe tree lobbers, though. Those took a beating, collapsing to the ground and crushing several dozen more knick-knacks before dissipating into thick green smoke.

That. That’s a drone strike. You need a better air force.

Calvin’s beli Ma aura reclaimed one of the three Bent spent on the giants, pulling the green smoke into his veins as Calvin looked up.

27/54 Bent remaining.

“I can’t see them.”

Yeah, that’s the point. They’re miles high and tiny. It probably took the extra time to get them in position.

Kind of insulting to have a similar technique used against myself, Calvin thought, holding his hands up.

You didn’t invent hitting the other guy from further away than he can retaliate. That honor belongs to the first monkey to pick up and throw a rock.

Trait doctoring.

Strength, Viscosity.

25/54 Bent remaining.

Calvin gave the air above them the strength and viscosity of Abyssal Steel, using the stuff packed into his Grimoire as the parent.

That should give us some cover.

BOOM!

A muted explosion sounded above them as the explosives impacted against the shield, followed by another four, before they suddenly stopped.

A new flying unit burst out of the black forest in front of them, smaller and faster than the previous creatures.

They moved in a malevolent cloud, arcing above their heads and latching onto the dome of hardened air.

Are they eating it or something? Calvin thought. He wasn’t going to let One do whatever he wanted.

Calvin summoned a thin layer of superheated tungsten above the fliers, sandwiching the creatures between hardened air and vaporizing heat.

24/54 Bent remaining

In under a second, the sparrow-sized creatures were nothing but ash, and Calvin’s dome had a silvery-grey coating on top of it.

How’s that, you little bastards?

The building sized crabs that had originally been created to capture him in Mujenan reared their heads above the featureless black forest.

Calvin focused his mage hands in front of himself, readying himself to divert the beams.

Instead of aiming at him, the creatures aimed at the dome above him.

Shit, they were marking it! Drop the spell!

Then we get hit with ‘drone strikes’ again! At least this way they actually have to spend energy to dispel it.

The giant creatures rocked backwards as they unleashed crackling beams of dark purple energy that impacted against Calvin’s dome in the sky.

Calvin felt an unnatural surge of Warp before the world went white.

Imagine if someone took your spine, stretched it tight across a guitar, then played a violent tune with casual disregard for the instrument.

Calvin’s entire body went rigid, and he began toppling over, unable to think or move.

Through the assault of pure sensation, Calvin pressure on his neck and movement in his inner ear.

“Freakin’ wizards,” Ella grunted, yanking him away from the wall by the collar and covering his body with her own as One’s heavy artillery shifted focus to him.

The creature’s magic seemed to ripple against Ella’s skin with little to no effect as Calvin twitched uncontrollably, struggling to breathe. He didn’t need to breathe, but it was a good benchmark for when he had regained full control of his body.

What the Abyss was that? Calvin thought, his thoughts slowly cutting through a murky fog as the sensations faded.

You didn’t think he wouldn’t have any new tricks, did you?