Invasion Trial: The Jack Brothers

The Jack Brothers invade, defeat all of them.

They are in my core floor, but hey, it’s not all that bad. They are on the left side where at least some constructions happened thanks to {Stone Recreation and Manipulation} that I got from the scaled menace quest reward, it’s not a maze exactly but it is made with the intent to flank and separate enemies. I can actually feel my control evaporating near them, I don’t think I can control mana at all in their surroundings, probably some quest thing, makes sense since I also cannot see their levels?

I take a quick look at my forces, three skeleton soldiers with shields and spears, one thrower, two hammers, One Merlin and One Gorger. My opponents are… five beings, since they are in my dungeon I can see them clearly and {Analyze} them.

The first is [Jack o’ Lantern], huh I can’t seem to pull anything other than it’s name, anyway the floating monster has a large witch's hat, which is in fact an overgrown stem coming from a large pumpkin head, the head itself i the classic jack: Long eyes and a fanged smile with a inner light coming out of the pumpkin, its body is shrouded in a long black cape, with only a shadowy hand coming out of it, holding a simple looking steel lantern.

The second is [Jack o’ Frost]. I stare at o’ Frost and wonder if all the charm went to his hot pumpkin brother. Jack o’ Frost walks on the ground, not naked only for the weird ice covering part of its body which is shrunken and his extremities shriveled and rotten, the way that it moves is similar to that of a cursed doll come to life that is too scared to do big movements and tear itself apart, the creature does not have toes or fingers, in its place are completely necrofied blue and purple flesh, coated with ice. Its face is the absolute worst part: The eyes are glassy and completely dead on its sockets, unmoving and clearly staring at nothing at all, an actual death stare.

The eyes also do not have eyelids, along with the lips, nose, ears and hair of the dead blue face, in the place of its flesh counterparts are ice constructs that do a really poor job at hiding the wounds below them. The other weirdest part is the fact that the head is also covered by a thin layer of snow, trying to give it a pale face I imagine, and failing since parts of it are constantly falling.

The hair is almost well done, it seems to also be made of snow and ice, if not for the fact that it either does not move and it falls off you could have fooled someone, probably make them think it’s some kind of cursed helmet or something, because no one would look at this and think “oh yeah, definitely hair”.

The third is [Jack Ripper] The being walks on the ground too, but unlike its ill-favored frigid brother this one walks with a certain… What's the word? Confidence? Assurance? Something like that, it walks at a measured pace, almost seeming to float, Its body's covered in blood soaked bandages, literally dripping blood, A long glossy black overcoat on its shoulders draping down to its calves. On its hands it carries a long shiny knife and a hook.

The fourth is [Jack o’ Bones] Who is pretty simple, a actual normal walking skeleton, it has a red ridge helmet, one of those with the armor for the nose bridge and protects the sides of your face with cheek armor, the helmet has two long curved horns coming out of it, sweeping backwards. The skeleton also has two bright red gloves that go up to the elbow. All of its red equipment matches a deep pinpoint crimson glow in the depth of its otherwise pitch black eyes. I like this guy, I might be biased cause it’s a skeleton but, I do think it just a coolness to it, unlike jack this guy feels like he’s not trying too hard, also anyway can look good in black overcoat, but not many people can pull those bright red gloves with the horned helmet, really put those gloves on old Ripper and he will look like a completely buffon.

NOW at last! It’s…[Salty Jack] Who uhhh, again tries a little too hard but can kinda pull it off, with some work. He doesn't walk, but rather hovers in place, a weird white grainy cloud around his leather boots. Yes boots!, this salted mother fucker is actually wearing a full wardrobe! He has what appear to be dark gray silk pants, I cannot see his shirt because he has a long black pirate brocade coat on, with golden buttons and all of that, over his shoulders there is a second coat, this one however is a simple rich wine purple color with golden sleeves and a golden band at the end of the coat. On the top of his head he has a black pirate hat, it even has the crossbones and skull on it. Speaking of his head, let's move to his face.

His face needs some work. Salty Jack has the most impressive eyes of his merry band, his eyes are a completely unicolored and bright cyan blue, his face looks like a mummies though, its other most striking feature outside of its eyes is its beard. It's a salt beard, literally, this is not a salt and pepper kind of thing, I can literally see the grains of salt coming from the out of the nose of Jack and combining with his beard. The beard kind of ruins the effect of the eyes, the eyes are full of power and wonder, promising you long travels and mysteries uncovered, but together with the beard I feel like an actual bridge troll ate a bad mushroom and now knows secrets that they should not have known. This feels like a deal with the devil, and not even one of the good ones, just a very skeevy one and obviously—

I hear Merlin saying that he is in position, and soon get confirmation from the rest. Oh yeah right this was an invasion not some undead walkway.

Anyway, I give a quick look around the very near future battlefield, the left part of my dungeon has grown quite a bit, with my constant expansion and the miners it quickly became a special maze. There are solid rock walls, much thinner bone walls, and more recently mostly automated bone walls, it should be able to divide the enemy if I play my card right. Above the mini maze there are small walkways, they are only big enough for floating skulls to pass, these floating skulls can activate certain traps and walls. Some of them can activate on their own. The room with the black diamond and the smelter has actually been moved, with another skill from that cornucopia called the scaled menace quest, {Move Room}, pretty simple though it has some limits, like the fact that the room literally moves was in slides around, so I needed to clear way to it.

So really this place is perfect for a fight, there’s nothing really worth around it anymore.

The Jack group keeps walking, and floating together. I do not want to fight them all at once, for all I know they have some kind of Jackhood synergy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a Jack cult of some kind.

Soon they near a good point, the bone door slides down and reveals Merlin, the jack group immediately turns to him, before they can do anything though they notice the necrotic writing he made.

{Writing of the Dead}

Able to read and comprehend most written languages, the user's writing automatically becomes a language that the reader can understand.

Merlin then follows my plan and insults one of the jacks. I left who to insult to his own discretion. I stare at the writing.

“Pumpkin Face” It reads.

I imagine that was Merlin trying to insult pumpkin jack. The writing changes.

“Pumpkin Jack”. It seems I am right. I feel I may have overestimated Merlin a bit, it’s not like he’s really that old, most human children around his age are barely able to keep themselves awake for more than a few minutes, much less throw rage inducing.

Not that I blame him, Jack o’ Lantern is probably one of the worst to insult, unlike its brother Ripper, who the more I look into the more it seems he's a leper mummy that stole a vampire’s out of fashion coat. Or that poor bastard Jack o’ Frost, who probably has an frozen brain, since it seems to actually think that no one notices that its an undead constantly rotting off, seriously I think it would probably look better if it started walking on all fours and barking pretending to be a dog or something, at least it could could have a long ice snout to hide that hideous face and—Oh! Hey. I see both Ripper and Frost run to Merlin who is bolting away, while the other Jacks are laughing.

Ah I see it, a little smudged long line of black mana, it seems Merlin was listening and passing along my unbiased critiques. The two jacks run after Merlin, who leads them further inside. They are actually really mad! Frosty the most! Seems I have hit a frozen nerve on it, they don’t even notice the bone doors closing behind them. Without me needing to tell them everybody else follows the plan.

Another bone wall opens up, with the thick skull thrower, who immediately spikes Salt beard in the back of the head. As all of them turn surprised the floor underneath them sinks diagonally, creating a ramp downwards, the little Jacks float down, before Bones jack can slide down completely, since he doesn't have levitation Jack o’ Lantern reveals a second shadowy limb from its cloak and grabs him, o’ Lantern spews a gout of flame that propels both of them backwards leaving only old Salt on the ramp, who is soon attacked by a long prehensile tongue.

Yet before the tongue can touch him, one of the crossbones on his hat shines, and he miraculously dodges the tongue. Well, let's see him dodge the next tongues coming.

Thrower spikes another skull, actually three in quick succession, one hits Pumpkin Jack, the other is actually caught by o’ Bones and thrown into the tongue coming at it. And lastly Salty Jack becomes an actual cloud of salt and dodges towards the direction of the other jacks.

The tongues follow him, right as they are about to hit Jack o’ Lantern’s mouth spits a large plume of fire, Jack o’ Bones jumps back with incredible speed followed by a cloud of salt, another skull tries to tag both of them, but again o’ Bones simply catches it without even looking and throws it right back, in fact he caught and threw back both the skull aimed at him and the other aimed at the floating salt apparition that is Salty Jack.

The tongues all envelope the solidary Jack o’ Lantern and pull him deeper into the hidden pit, to an underground tunnel. Wow, they really just let o’ Lantern get dragged down like that, even after it tried to help o’ Bones, truly a jack eat jack world out here.

The floor soon reasserts itself, the two Jack betrayers stare back prepared for the flying projectile skulls only to find a wall in its place. Thrower is actually just behind the wall, waiting to see what these two dumd jacks are going to do.

I take a quick look and see that the other part of the plan worked, while running away the five soldiers were able to surprise attack Ripper while o’ Frost kept chasing Merlin, separating the two. I tell Merlin where to go, and direct Thrower to a spot where it will have a good view to snipe the icy rage zombie.

The moment between the two Jack betrayers is lost, Salty Jack starts looking around, and I see his head stop at particularly interesting angles. He suddenly bolts towards one of the bone doors, transforming again into a mist of salt, the mist then goes down, it stops and accumulates on the bottom, it then goes to the side and upwards again not being able to pass through. The cloud transforms back into Salty Jack. I see o’ Bones staring a hole into his pirated hat’s head, I think the Salty Jack can also feel it too because he refuses to turn around. Heh I guess he didn’t expect my doors to be so tight! Too bad for him I come from a world where transforming yourself into a mist or powder material to get through security was a tried and true method, meaning literally everybody and their grandmothers created ways to mitigate or stop that.

Mine are just very precise doors, with no easy to access gaps, still it seems it was enough, thankfully he is not Acidic Jack, and his transformations seem to have a timer, otherwise he could probably just use friction to bear a small hole in the door.

I see that Thrower and Merlin have finally crossed paths, figuratively of course, Throw is actually quite away. But he immediately hurls a skull at Jack o’ Frost and hits it straight in the head, which does almost nothing. Okay this guy might be a little stronger than expected.

Merlin’s form is shrouded in darkness as he uses his {Black Shroud}, empowering his casting, he then throws a full power double {Death Ray}... Again it does almost nothing, damn.

I sense a change and look over to Gorger, who’s fight up until now has been pretty standard, the pyromaniac pumpkin threw fire at it and Gorger ate it. Yet it seems Jack o’ Lantern has had enough. He spews his fire from his mouth into the little later it carries, the fire takes a new glow, and the fire gains a white etherealness to it, before shooting out into Gorger, who once again eats it, but this time cannot as easily absorb it, as it starts to ravaged his mouths and insides.

I see Merlin and Thrower attacking the Frost skull, causing so little damage that in seconds the being is restored fully and unblemished.

My skeleton soldiers seem to be holding out fine, the shields are in fron, with my thorn soldier creating a layer of spider on all shields, while behind her the two hammers stand ready to strike. And yet I also see it is a delicate balance.

I finally see… the two Jack idiots, the Jack o’ Bones deattaches the horns on his helmet and I see them growing back fast enough to follow with an naked eye. He takes both horns and throws it at the door, right at the top in between the bone wall and stone frame.

The Jack o’ Bones throws more of them, and then points at them, both it and Salty Jack then simply put their hands one it and start pulling it down… Are these two idiots trying to open the door like this? Are they seriously dumb? The throwing horns snap, breaking apart and making both of them fall to the ground. Both get up and see the holes that are left in the stone, leaving a tiny opening in between the stone and the bone, one even an octopus might struggle to pass through.

The Jacks share a look. Salty Jack transforms into salt flows up and becomes a small whirlwind of salt, passing through the tiny opening.

I see him rushing, directly to where Jack Ripper is fighting. Fuck. I also see that damn Jack o’ bones staring at the door, seemingly waiting for it to open. Did it honestly expect that Salty was going to help it? It starts banging on the door with both its hands. Yep, it seems so. I can barely believe there are undead so… innocent, yeah let’s go with that.

I tell Merlin and the thick thrower to move, and lure the Jack o’ Frost into another trap.

I tell the soldier group about the Salted skeleton coming their way. The two hammers turn and wait for it, Merlin is getting closer to the trap. I tell Thrower to run to the shields.

Salty Jack appears, he reforms and salt explodes out of his beard quickly taking the shape of more salt made pirates. The hammers immediately land blows right into their granular rib cages, immediately breaking them apart, the salt pile moves and stirs it seems they will take a few seconds to reform, the hammers advance on it.

The floor turns into a sea of shadows, with a single red tendril going straight for Salty Jack. I follow it and see that it is Ripper shadow, the tendril connects and they swap places.

I see the Merlin’s trap go off, the ground and the ceiling both open downwards creating a perfect ramp, rolling rocks speed downwards in the direction of the frost skull, just as I think this little problem will be packaged in a dark hole for later, ice sprouts out into a pillar shape around the skeleton, anchoring it to the floor.

The hammers are suddenly advancing on Ripper as Salty summons his crew and surrounds the shields.

The shields get back to back and start attacking, yet their piercing attacks are not hurting the salt beings enough for them to , thankfully they cannot break through the defense.

Ripper on the other hand slashes out, his shadow melding with his hands and creating large dark crimson blades. The hammers are put on the defensive, each hit is fast enough that they can barely defend, yet any one of those could be fatal for them.

I tell all of them to be ready.

Thrower speeds in, behind the Salty Jack, he is carrying several leather strips holding skulls and a single strip of spherical objects.

{Skull Cracker}, {Ricochet Skull}, the leather strip is thrown against the wall. The room is filled with hundreds of ricocheting bone shards jumping all over and hurting everyone, the shards stick into the armor of my skeletons and burst the salt summons. Thrower himself is protected by his armor and chameleon skin.

Ripper’s blades burst into bright red daggers, spikes and swords impaling one of the hammers through while the other becomes a red shield around its body. Thrower pitches one of the spherical objects at Ripper, the little sea urchin shell hits the shield and explodes into pure dark miasma, the shards creating depressions on the red dome shield and taking some of its color off.

Old Salty does not react fast enough. The shields use their own skills. {Rapid Repositioning}, {Pivot Repositioning}, {Shield Advance}, {Enhance Shields}. They whip out using one of the shielders as a pivot almost gliding through the floor they spin towards Salty. The spikes in their shields increase in length. {Thorn Pierce}, Salty is pierced straight through, it doesn’t do too much damage, yet that is not the goal yet. I see the second crossbone on his hat go off, right as another skill is used, {Entangle}.

Salty is somehow able to escape the shield that he is impaled through and yet four pale white vines surround him and twist around him, each coming from a shield. I see them using their enchantments with another skill, all four together.

{Shield Bash}

The shields crash against each other{Lock Shields}, Jack becomes a salt fountain just as Thrower jumps into the air, as he throws his own head towards the Salt monster he calms his mind and concentrates. He sees his target, the inside of the shields, the hollow in between all of them, full of bone thorns. He concentrates and feels as it happens, as his skill changes.

{Skull Cracker} to {Bone Cracker}

He activates his other skills, {Ricochet Skull}, only on his jaw and teeth, {Rebound Skull}.

He passes through the salt ghost, the white roots not letting the disperse away, only disperse back inside. He activates {Bone Cracker} on the thorns and his jaw and teeth. the hollow in the middle of the shields becomes a bone shard storm, he feels as the clothes of the are ripped apart. He hits the ground and {Rebound Skull} activates, he controls it and his skull goes straight up. to the ceiling, {Rebound Skull}, his head smashes straight down again, now the bone thorns have regrown, he smashes them again and another miniaturized bone storm is created.

Ripper, seeing his opportunity now that he is not under fire, attacks the hammer, trying to pierce them with its blade.

{Endure}

The hammer takes the attack, and fires back his own attack. {Rock Breaker}, their hammer falls down right on Ripper’s head, who didn’t expect his opponent to actually survive, much less take so little damage. The soldier uses another skill, {Scrapper's Resolve}.

They lift their hammer again, {Staggering Strikes} {Rock Breaker} falls once more hitting the Ripper straight into its head. He lifts the hammer again, this time the Ribber is prepared, or it thinks so.{Quick Strike} the hammer falls again.

The hammer uses {Quick Recovery} and once again his hammer falls faster than before. Close, they can feel the cracking of the skull.

Thrower can feel the bones of the Salty Jack, the salt skeleton cannot transform into a salty mist anymore, not for more than an eyeblink, its bones are being ravaged and destroyed.

Ripper gets up faster and stabs forward with his right hand blade as the weapon goes through the hammer feels something change within themselves.

Squire and Cult Initiate to Zealot

Gained {Undying Legion}.

The hammer to his left rises up, hammer going up, {Quick Recovery} the Ripper tries to pull its arm, but the bone has closed around the hand, just half a second, just enough for the time for {Hammer Fall}.

The revived hammer slam his weapon down right into the reaper’s head. And is soon followed by another one, the skull of Jack Ripper cracks and shatters apart.

They hear a howl, and turn to see the Salty Jack dying, becoming nothing but a pile of white dust on the ground. They see the shields of the soldiers, and the head of Thrower, they look like they have been through a storm, full of scratches and even holes.

The hammers collapse, their energy too low to properly sustain their bodies. I tell the shields to go help Merlin, I see the Thorn soldier grab the Rippers cloak and tell Thrower to go help Gorger,they quickly leave and go their ways.

I send a few drone skulls with dark quartz and have them drop the crystals inside of holes of the hammers. They should live, The necrotic energy here is so high allied undead energy can barely leave their corpse. For undead enemies it’s the opposite, the energy is so thick that as soon as their shells are destroyed their energy is immediately obliterated.

Soon Thrower gets to Gorger, who is in a stalemate with the pyromaniac.

Yes, with his lamp flame Jack o’ Lantern can indeed hurt Gorger, sadly for it, there is a slight problem, and it’s that it can only use the lamp for shorts bursts, bursts which Gorger can indeed survive.

Now what can Gorger do exactly? Well initially not much. Each time he uses his tongues the Jack o’ Lantern uses very brief bursts of the lamp flame to hurt the tongues, which when destroyed need mana to be recreated, mana that Gorgers is using to regenerate so he won’t die.

Of course Gorger is not completely toothless against Jack, his acid does seem to threaten it, I say seems to because it’s too slow and has not hit the Jack o’ Lantern even once. Now Gorger uses a new strategy, eating rocks and vomiting them with acid. Again it has yet to hit, that should change now.

Thrower grabs most of his strips of skulls, and again does his room clearing combo, bone shards flow everywhere. Jack o’ Lantern seems surprised for a second, flames explode all around it, Gorger vomits a stone at it, hitting dead center on the flaming pumpkin. Thrower doesn't miss this change. A skull flies up, hits the ceiling and rebounds down, smacking the Jack down into the ground. Thrower rebounds upwards and falls again, this time creating a crater in its pumpkin head and killing it.

He simply bounces back to his body and asks where the Jack o’ Bones is, I tell them where to go. And tell Bob to go help Merlin, this frost skull is seriously strong.

Jack o’ Bones is…. just walking around actually, I am purposefully closing and opening doors in certain areas to guide it to walk in mostly circles. Thrower doesn’t seem to really quite care about fairness, it comes from behind the Jack o’ Bones and immediately throws a single skull with one arm, the other one with a strip of five skulls ready to be thrown, they only have three more of these. counting this one in their hands.

The Jack o’ turns back and grabs the skull, which then explodes in shards of bones, which are followed by five skulls to his chest, Thrower keeps charging to Jack o’, now with two strips in one hand and the last one in another, Thrower simply leaps forward and smashes the skulls, making the all explode and ricochet around both of them are showered by the shards. The being is destroyed.

Cult Initiate to Detritus Plunderers Cult

Detritus Plunderers Cult

Cult that focuses on destruction as a form of creation

Gained

{Detritus Storm}

Creates a storm of detritus.

{Vandal Shot}

Your projectiles are better at breaking objects.

I take a look at the Jack o’ Frost battle and tell Thrower to simply pick up something from the bodies.

Watching the battle of Jack o’ Frost, I see the shielders pierce, or rather try to pierce the dense magical ice around the skeleton. They are making small cracks on it, They use {Mass Disengage} and open way to Merlin, who strides in hitting the ice monster with all it can, Jack o’ Frost relaliates by creating spiked ice fists and hitting back, Merlin is clearly better at this though. Soon the mana around the skull builds up and a large pointed pillar of ice is raised from the ground, just as Merlin backs off. His beams sadly cannot easily pierce the strong ice, so doing the famous fist casting is the only option. Well that and…

Gorger spews acidic green goop all over the Jack o’ Frost, I had to tell it very clearly not to try and eat it. Jack o’ Frost is very clearly mad at… well everything, existence in general I imagine, it does make me wonder if these beings are being created, like I create mine, or if they are being teleported here.

Thrower arrives, with the Jack o’ Lantern lamp and a single skull, He shoves the lantern into an eye socket. The Jack o’ Frost runs to them creating blades on its arms. Thrower simply lobs the skull towards a wall, Jack o’ Frost follows it with his head, the skull hits a wall, bounces and changes direction, hitting its face before bouncing back to the wall, and finally arriving at Merlin’s hands.

Merlin grabs the lantern. I can almost feel the rage simmering within him, he has been playing cat and mouse with the frost skull this entire time. Merlin grabs the lantern, points it at Jack. He pushes all of his mana into it, creating a wave of fire which engulfs the Skull completely.

A weight settles on everybody as Jack o’ Frost dies and I can feel the mana around them rising.