Duck!

***

Eric dropped to the ground with a roll as a snarling orc berserker roared and tried to cleave Eric’s head off with a single sweep of his axe, only to find his coldly staring opponent flicking his blade so fast that beast had to squint his eyes to see anything other than the flash of mithril as he roared and swung once more, flashing a fierce tusked grin when his prey didn’t even bother to flinch.

Earning a confused frown when the orc’s axe failed to hit Eric at all.

Only the spray of blood caressed Eric’s skin, the wide-eyed shrieking orc only now catching on to his handless wrists spurting blood now matched by the gush from his mouth as a mithril blade slid between the Berserker’s ribs before tearing it free with a savage wrench and springing for the closest mount as the night rang with the cries of panic, fury, and confusion he left in his wake.

Eric couldn’t help but savor a heady sense of exhilaration, his plan working better than he could possibly have hoped.

The deployment of his hundred undead spearmen had worked absolutely perfectly, as confusion and frank disbelief froze the poorly disciplined troopers for long confused moments, unable to believe what was happening until the very moment his row of undead soldiers lowered their bayonets and lunged into their former allies in one smooth deadly motion.

Only then, when living orcs were screaming and collapsing did the confused, surprised foe take the conflict seriously, or even register a conflict at all in the overcast night where the handful of sputtering torches and lanterns did nothing but make Eric’s forces look even more otherworldly and intimidating than they otherwise would have.

At that point, the closest few hundred soldiers closed ranks, desperately trying to form some kind of cohesive formation, all their focus on the undead regiment, with no attention to their flanks. Which was when Eric’s tuskers had struck with devastating effect, beyond what even he could have hoped for, the air ringing with the resounding crash of multiton massive mutated undead boars charged into unsuspecting orcs at around a hundred miles per hour, before trampling, goring, and flipping as many of the survivors over their heads as they possibly could.

Eric’s own mount stayed just a few boar lengths back as Eric fulfilled his officorial duty of keeping an eye on the bigger picture, his Mark I Arcane Blaster at the ready, for all that he wanted to be in there cleaving and hacking and reveling in the sheer madness of battle. But a single mistake on his part, and it was all over. He repeated it to himself like a mantra, focusing all his attention on the battle itself as his necromantic orb filled with potency and he none took in none at all… and that was when he caught sight of the Classer about to blast open his league Tusker’s skull.

Before Eric’s superheated plasma shot, his 34th such kill since nightfall, ended that ill advised venture with a single shot.

Then Eric was actively jumping into the conflict… but only long enough to claim a modified bronze cannon, what he now recognized as prize artillery for anyone lacking his capabilities. Of course, his real reason had been to give the dumbstruck kid who was certainly no older than him a second chance he hadn’t dared to give the boy’s companions in the perilous moments before.

And much to Eric’s relief, more than he wanted to admit, the kid actually took his counsel and ran.

So long as he didn’t come back, Eric was happy to let him escape for a fresh start somewhere else, anywhere else… no matter how much of a savage asshole he might have been. Because Eric’s motto was simple. Orcs and Goblins he would kill for sheer pleasure. Those fuckers more than deserved it, with how viciously they were trying to fuck over his people. But humans, often as not broken former slaves desperate to be accepted by the powers that had enslaved them, Stockholm Syndrome to the ultimate degree, he’d kill only when necessary. Never hesitating to give them a second chance when it cost him nothing… but never hesitating to take them out when they endangered his life, or his objective, in any way.

The worried squeals of his mount brought him back into the moment, eagle eyes spotting the battlefield he was so eager to master, spotting their two vulnerabilities at once.

One was the commander and a handful of his toughest Berserkers, tearing through Eric’s legion that had done such a good job of demoralizing the non-classers, sucking up their musket fire while taking out scores of musketeers themselves. The other threat was the even larger contingent of Javelineers and Berserkers at the heart of the train with both a chieftain and a shaman using ritual magic to boost the soldiers as they quickly made their way to the melee, clearly wanting to put an end to the battle as quickly as possible.

Eric quickly backed his tusker up while mentally directing the other nineteen to continuously harry the increasingly scattered front troop lines, glad that increasingly sporadic musket fire was focused solely in striking his revenant infantry and the incredibly thick and resilient undead hides of his Tuskers, doing them absolutely no damage at all. They were so good at what amounted to taunting the enemy that not a single musket ball even so much as cracked against Eric’s helm as he gently sighted his target and squeezed the trigger of his weapon, the Chieftain actually managing to glance Eric’s way for a single chilling second. But he was unable to say anything as blood gushed from his mouth, a trembling finger managing only to point halfway to Eric’s location before the chieftain collapsed in a boneless heap.

“Chief Bigthink, chief Bigthink!” Screamed the largest of the remaining berserkers as the remaining half dozen slowed their pace, whatever enchantments their chieftain had used clearly coming to an abrupt end as several stumbled to their knees… before countless dozens of bayonettes plunged into their faces and throats as Eric added his own minion’s notes to the symphony of glorious death, the night flashing with brilliant plasma as 34 kills became 41, Eric daring to dream that he just might hit his goal of a hundred in record time, though his plan was to not waste a single shot after the disaster that had befallen his earlier Mark I.

“Aiming only for the true threats,” he thought, another silent mental command having all the tuskers twist around and race back the way they had come for a good four hundred yards.

All save Eric and the mount he had already leaped from, as hundreds of orcs, and most importantly, the near three dozen or so orc classers roaring and shaking their battleaxes high suddenly had a clear line of sight on Eric, or at least the mount standing protectively before him as one second became two, the surviving shaman no snarling Eric’s way, the air ringing with the beginnings of a chant Eric could feel pressing down on his soul, even from where he stood.

Eric couldn’t help but flash a big shit eating grin, even as he silently commanded his mount to move, letting nothing block line-of-sight between the two parties.

Eric knew he was taking a risk.

Though his maneuver was absolutely perfect at triangulating and eliminating any Gunner present, as Eric seriously doubted any enemy agent would be cloaking him in shadow for a forty or so mile journey, if just a single goblin assassin had hidden himself in the middle of this orc reinforcement contingent..

Eric wasted only a second on pointless reflection, having already put all his cards on the table as he beheld no less than fifty battle hardened orcs, most of them classers, glaring at him from three hundred yards, death just seconds away. Eric protected only by a thin, 5-foot wall of sharpened bone spikes and membrane between himself and his foes.

“You? A single roundear elf?” Hooted the shaman. “You seek to mock us. To humiliate us! Well, you’re far from the only necromancer who walks this Earth. But your walk is at an end! Javelineers, hold your pilum unless he flees away from his barrier! Berserkers, circle and flank him on both sides of his pathetic excuse for a bone-ward! If he does not surrender instantly and swear a blood-oath to teach me his arts, you will bring me his head!”

The shaman radiated a killing aura that was objectively terrifying, Eric thought, or would have been to him just months ago, with the malice in the creature’s gaze, and the power clearly radiating from his form.

Yet there was more than one path to power, and countering that power as well.

And as powerful as 40 charging berserkers and a dozen Javelineers forced to carefully measure their shots and hold on lobbing pilum lest he dare to flee, they were nothing compared to the prize he had hidden behind the thinnest of barriers.

Just as flimsy as the shaman had predicted, Eric’s bone wards obliterated almost instantly as the grapeshot released from not one or two, but a full double battery of 24-pounder long-guns tore right through parchment-thin rawhide and shin bone struts, ripping through everything they encountered for over half a mile beyond, the nighttime gloom growing absolutely impenetrable as the air around Eric’s location gushed with a flood of thick white smoke like a dragon’s breath, and 40 charging Berserkers, 12 Javelineers and the Shaman behind them, not to mention countless scores of musketeers, were transformed into shattered bone fragments and bloody paste in the blink of an eye.

A massive hole in the enemy’s front lines that Eric had all but carved through their quivering flesh, his cannon battery temporarily blocked from view by a nothing more than a forest of tusks and the thinnest of rawhide barriers. So all people would see is Eric’s predatory smile, a foolish youth who thought spikes alone would save him from a killing charge.

Because the one thing his foes had clearly not expected while beholding a necromancer smiling at them from behind a barrier of flesh and bone, was for the necromancer in question to have somehow lugged 24 metric tons worth of heavy artillery as part of a hit and run ambush.

A battery of 24-pounders mounted in a carriage bulwark of extremely thick, essence reinforced bone and rawhide from one of the handful of spirit boar he had used for resources. A bulwark faced with the essence-infused crimson scales of a giant spirit crock, naturally resistant to heat and flame in all its forms, its half-dome shape proving extremely resilient at absorbing the kick of a cannons spraying literal buckets of iron grapeshot and leaden death into the air.

It was a slaughter beyond the most graphic scenes of carnage he had once gazed at so avidly on the silver screen, a lifetime ago. Though Eric was more than a bit surprised to find that a sparse handful of classers had actually survived the storm of grapeshot fired from cannons he probably should have aimed at a 5 degree angle, screaming as they held absolutely shredded legs spurting blood, as did a few dozen musketeers. Though the latter, having no class at all, quickly succumbed to the wonder and horror that was their final death, along with countless scores of others that had been utterly obliterated, imperfect firing angle or no.

You have successfully eliminated 1 Human Classer & 53 Orc Classers via revenants, blasters, and cannon fire!

You have successfully eliminated 267 orc musketeers via revenants & cannon fire! (Revenant kill potency stored in orb. Personal experience is 20% of standard.)

Eric frowned at this notice. He was facing multiple high level opponents. Opponents worth a fine sum of potency. Experience pools he was giving up with electromana weapons, artillery, and the vagaries of a tusker’s ideal battle.

Experience he would claim as his own.

Eric’s face was a stony mask as he approached an obvious Classer hissing as he held the spurting stump of his legs. Wide frightened eyes pleaded with Eric’s his own as he beheld the perfectly groomed features of a man who could have played the lead role in a WWII German fighter pilot reenactment. “No, please! Please don’t kill me. There has to be another way. There has to be!”

Eric gazed with some bemusement at the modified carbine the man was holding. One that shot bullets, not arcane charges, and Eric couldn’t help but think that someone had managed to infuse quite a bit of Post Apocalyptic Wonderland vibes into his build. Eric sighed, ignoring the screams and curses of the surrounding experience point pools for just a few perilous moments, risking more than he knew he should on a man who would no doubt be taking the raider path, no matter what Eric did.

He crouched down to lock gazes with the man as a pair of massive tuskers quietly flanked him, glaring at the crippled foes all around as the other 18 Tuskers and his surviving infantry revenants continued tearing into the flanks of his screaming foes further down the line, making sure that Eric was the last thing on anyone’s mind, the pitch black night now stinking of saltpeter, sulfur, and a slaughterhouse’s worth of death and offal.

“Let’s just say there is a way out of this?” Eric said, pretending he didn’t see hands that would have been beyond Scribe & Tales cardsharp fast… if Eric had been anything like the mortal boy of just half a year before.

“Let’s just say there was a way where you could live peacefully and adventure your heart out, daring delves all but guaranteed to offer rich hauls after every dive, adventuring and living a life of gamer glory in what will soon be a paradise territory? Complete with picturesque European towns filled restaurants, high end shopping, boutiques selling any and every kind of weapon and arcane tool you could imagine, and life that’s almost as sweet as it was before the world basically came to an end. An adventurer’s paradise of a territory containing all the convenience of the post-apocalyptic big city, and a lush green community, all in one perfect package.” Eric’s grin widened. “And all you have to do to get a taste of that lifestyle, to wake up in a beautiful full-sized bed with a stable job and an exciting life, is not actually think you have a chance with that pistol your pointing at my chest?”

Wide, panicked eyes turned to a cold-calculating grin. “You wouldn’t believe how many girls I’ve mind-fucked with those crocodile tears. Got my latest bitch to drop all charges. I was walking off scott-free with a fuck you to her father when the world had to fuckin’ end.” He snorted. “Oh well. At least I’ll get a shit ton of gold when I show my boss your head!”

You have spotted hold-out black powder pistol!

You allow your foe to fire his shot, and thus seal his own fate!

Heart-Seeker shot pierces your reinforced lizard scale hauberk!

Mithril mail reduces Heart-Seeker shot to Medium Wound!

32 Physical Resistance negates all remaining damage.

“Shit! I have three chained class perks, asshole! You’re cheating! You should be… no! Wait! I was just kidding! I—“

Strength Check: Critical Success! (You are pissed!)

You have successfully torn out the throat of: Wounded Classer!

You have successfully ripped the head off of: Mangled Classer!

You earn 100% Baseline Experience for a hands-on demonstration of ideal class synergisms!

Eric shook his head, smirking at the head in his hands, still blinking wide terrified eyes forced to linger extra agonizing seconds as so much stored potency was burned to oblivion in a furious struggle to endure for just… one… more… blink.

“Shoulda taken the deal, asshole. But shit, maybe it was worth the risk for you. Guns and blasters don’t work in Delves, so your overspecialized build’s only good for as long as Earth is in play.” Eric chuckled softly. “But you say I can keep your modified carbine and holdout pistol? Prizes of war and all that? And what’s this… another 250 rounds of AP ammo? Fuck yes. I don’t mind if I do.”

Eric couldn’t help but fee a fierce sense of elation as he claimed his prizes, feeling no guilt at all about letting a pair of tuskers cover his flanks as he ruthlessly butchered dozens of grievously injured Berserkers, Terran Classers, and orc musketeers laid low by crippling grapeshot, far more than he had originally thought as the shrapnel bounced along the ground, taking out so many limbs.

Unlike before, he was now completely ignoring the desperate pleas of both squealing orcs and terrified-looking humans, humbled by the bullet that really could have, should have, put down his arrogant ass, had he not managed to pick up a set of Epic Tier mithril cultivation armor before beginning his mad push to cleanse this world of every last orc that he could.

He had offered mercy multiple times in the past, and today had almost paid the ultimate price.

It was a risk he refused to take again. Not until both Elonia, Rica, and her baby girl were safe. Then and only then, would Eric risk playing the noble fool once more.

For the remainder of this little war of his, he would play the ruthless killer. A role that fit him far better than any other his mother had ever made him play.

“Mercy! Please! I can help you! I just need—“

You have critically decapitated your foe! (Level 26 Human Berserker.)

Ruthless!

100% Bonus Experience Earned!

Eric cut off so many desperate pleas that day as his naked blade drank deep of the lifeblood of his foes. Killing so many in the absolute darkness after ruthlessly eliminating all the lantern holders and torch bearers as his flanking tuskers distracted the majority of his enemy’s forces that he could now viscerally feel the surges of potency shivering through his soul, just a heartbeat before a shrieking danger sense warned him to DUCK!

Just in time to avoid the shell that had nearly blasted completely through his back from the snarling gunner who had just blown through two ranks of cloaking orc musketeers, which of course did nothing to hinder the passage of a solid cannon ball. A shot that actually managed to rip clean through one of his protective tusker’s legs.

A cannon ball that would have torn right through Eric, should have torn right through him, his mithril mail perhaps making the wound so much worse as his whole body would be jerked and squeezed and sent flying, as opposed to a clean hole he might laughably have been able to stabilize, had his senses not come to brilliant, inhuman life in the crucible of battle. Had he not leaped and dodged as fast as thought, his heart racing with a panicked staccato beat as he raced away in a darting zig-zag pattern, reflexes quicker than they ever had been before.

Quickness is now 158. (8 of 18 Point spent.)

Perception has been boosted to 100 in the crucible of combat! Now you can think and react in the heat of battle at a speed that’s clearly superhuman! (2 full level-ups fully invested)

Synergistic Perk detected. Your Tier 1 Danger Sense has Evolved to Tier 2! Now you can sense death a split second before you otherwise would!

Synergistic Perk detected. Your Tier 1 Inanimate Structural Integrity Sense is now Tier 2! Sense when buildings might collapse or bombs (and cannon) might blow up in your face with even greater ease than you otherwise would!

Primal Adventurer is now Level 24!