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CH 48.5 - Interlude 4
🕑 Added 2023-11-13 01:14:45 +0000 UTC[A/N, 1/10/24: I usually don’t like to do A/Ns and usually put up a second announcement, but I want to be sure most read this. There was a death in my family in early October, and in the frenzy afterward, I didn’t have time to process my grief or the reality of what the loss meant to me. I didn’t have that opportunity until Christmas when I was finally back home and left to my own devices. I had thought Haze's Chapter, CH 54.5, written with my real grief, would give me some catharsis. That it would help me heal. In honesty, it didn’t. I included some poetry I had written in the wake of the loss as prose in that piece. So it became something incredibly personal to me. Thus, it became more and more difficult to release, and the longer I took to write it out, the worse I felt. Anyway, in the past couple of days, I’ve been in a much better place and was able to finish CH54.5. When you read it, you’ll understand why it was so difficult. And if you relate to some of the pain in that chapter, I’m so unbelievably sorry. And I hope you are able to use that as a way to process that as well. Happy reading, friends.]
Interlude 4
Blights and What to Do About Them
Break of Autumn, Week 1, Day 6
Oberon Rellar led his knights out to the north of Ugar on a simple eradication quest. At the behest of his ward, he was to ‘Just come back safe.’ It was a warming sentiment that he was determined to keep –but his ward wasn’t just Lady Nora. No, Oberon considered all of his squad his wards.
He was too strong to lose them to a bramble –even one with an estimated Tier 3 monster. That was why Oberon was here. Should any of his knights need it, he could overwhelm beasts until mid-Tier 4. He, himself, had a Tier 3 Rare Class he received at his latest tier up. There was no match between him and a mere monster.
As they tracked the bramble through the dense forest, Oberon thought of what Philip, the Village Head, had said.
‘We don’t know what’s truly out there. We just know our walls can’t take it much longer.’
Oberon was prepared for the worst. A legion of blights would be just that. Much like the goblins of the Callistan Empire, blights congregated in large numbers to form hordes. Anything more than 250 and the knights would be outmatched. They wouldn’t win without losses. Losses that their ward had told them not to have. Oberon swore at his stupidity. He should have advised Lady Nora to send a messenger to Wig and ask the next contingent to deal with it. But who knew when that would be. It could be days –or it could be upwards of a month, depending on where the nearest patrol was.
It was as Oberon thought that a roar resounded throughout the forest. Siobhan, their scout, had sent a warning flare as the roar shook the trees. It was red, which meant she clocked at least 100 blights before she was forced to engage.
Oberon sent the formation through their badges, along with a warning: Proceed with caution. Unknown upper threshold. Minimum 100 assailants.
They were four bodies short, with Arella, George, and George’s squires back with Lady Nora. That meant the squad would be separated. Two groups of three would approach from the sides, Oberon would approach from the front, and Siobhan would take the back and grab any monster that was smart enough to flee.
As he closed his eyes, Oberon focused his mana and activated one of his best Skills.
[Barrier of Time]
Around the forest, a shimmering film coated the trees, setting the stage for the battle. Should any of the blights attempt to cross before the expiration of Oberon’s Skill, any who approached would be torn by the Tydes of Fate and reversed to when they approached the barrier. It was an entrapment Skill that Oberon had earned on one of his earliest excursions. Oberon had been willing to sacrifice himself to allow several dozen citizens to escape the monster horde. As a reward for his valiance, the previous Count Dawn had gifted him with a Skill book that outlined how to get [Barrier of Time]. The rest had been up to Oberon.
Now, Oberon took in the situation. The main force of the blights were less than four clicks ahead. He could get there and engage in less than sixty seconds. But he needed to wait until the other teams were in position. One of the perks of leveling [Barrier of Time] was that he got a vague awareness of all hostiles and allies within the barrier. There were more blights than Siobhan had counted, nearly double in fact, but not enough to be a legion, so Oberon waited. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, Siobhan was the last one to get into position at the forty-five-second mark. As she went to the far edge of [Barrier of Time], Oberon felt her settle in the upper branches of a tree.
It was time.
With a hand over his badge, he sent one final message.
‘By the Right of Dawn, the Dusk is engaged. For the protection of all, we shall CHARGE!’
Oberon fueled several enhancement Skills.
Then, he was but a blur in the forest.
Fifteen seconds, one click was gone. He could see the main force of the blights.
Thirty seconds, he was speeding up, and three clicks were gone. Oberon was nearly there, nearly on top of a Weeping Blight.
Forty-two seconds, Oberon’s greatsword was plunged into the heart of the Weeping Blight before it could even get off a Skill.
Oberon could feel the battle madness seeping in. He swung his sword and shield, slamming and ducking and swiping. To the far sides of him, blights charged into the fray.
Suddenly, twenty blights of all sizes were swinging and snarling, and in a flurry of roots, he twisted his body in unnatural shapes to escape the worst of the blows. That didn’t stop his armor from accumulating scrapes and dents from the onslaught. But still, Oberon pushed. He swung his sword and felled two smaller blights that couldn’t have been more than Saplings.
His mind ran a mile a minute as he swung his shield and slammed it through the neck of a Vine Blight. The monster reeled back, but it was not dead yet. It shot off several vines, wrapping one of Oberon’s wrists in a chokehold. Oberon ripped his arm back, costing him another dent in his bracers. Then he fueled another Skill.
[Endless Strike]
His sword emanated a gold glow, and he dug his heel into the ground, turning in a circle as he launched his sword like a boomerang. The greatsword penetrated through a Thistle Blight’s head, then began weaving through the fray. It went in through the neck of a Vine Blight and out the abdomen of a Twig Blight, the sword circling its owner. Meanwhile, Oberon used his great shield to push the fray back into Siobhan’s range.
A smile filled Oberon’s face as an arrow flew into the eye of one of the blights. It was a chilling thing, a harsh thing on a man who hardly smiled at all.
For every blight Oberon and Siobhan took out, two more filled its place. In his mind’s eye, he knew the situation was similar for the other teams. And Siobhan was being split between all three and picking off fleeing monsters. With his greatsword back in his hand, Oberon returned to his hack-and-slash attacks. It was a wild melee fueled by adrenaline and duty.
It was exactly why Oberon led the charge himself. The other teams were making progress –he could feel it. Two hundred hostiles felled by a quarter. Time passed. It was going to be a slog to eradicate this bramble. He held off his best Skills for last-ditch resorts, but that didn’t mean he didn’t fire off cheaper ones.
More [Endless Strikes] and [Shield Acceleration] hit the blights.
It was over an hour of fighting later that the boss of this legion raised its roots. Siobhan jumped down from her perch as the tree she had made home began shifting and crumbling. Out of the trunk came a massive thirty-foot-high blight.
Firing off an [Inspect] left Oberon gritting his teeth. It was a [Redwood Blight, Tier 4, Level 2]. It was within his capabilities, but that didn’t mean it would be pleasant. Oberan refreshed his enhancement Skills and finished off the closest blight with a well-timed strike before disengaging and sending a targeted message through his badge.
‘Neil, to me.’
In a flash, the [Sworn Sword of Lightning] was there, leaving singed leaves in his wake.
Neil nodded to Oberon, and together, they approached –Neil with his longsword sparking with electricity and Oberon with his sword and shield still radiating gold.
Behind them, the world was chaos. But here, there were just the three of them. The Redwood Blight looked at them with a spark of intelligence –evaluating them. Oberon didn’t give it time to make a decision. Oberon held up his sword, preparing to throw it at the blight. As he braced himself for the blowback, he launched his greatsword and activated yet another Skill.
[Sword Recursion]
As the greatsword hit the blight’s abdomen, suddenly, it ceased to exist and was being launched from Oberon’s hand once again. With every use of the Skill, Oberon felt the strain ripping through him. But it was working. He was chipping away at the protective bark of the overleveled tree blight.
Then, Oberon watched Neil slide between the monster’s legs, carving off chunks of wood as he went. But it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t fast enough. The blight was headed for the scout, Siobhan. Her bow was still angled away –she was getting ready to pull when–
Oberon was there, using his greatsword to hold back the oversized blight. Oberon slammed his sword against the root-like arms that had been aiming for Siobhan, and he channeled his Skill.
[Tank for the Ages]
Time froze, and Oberon could feel his stamina draining from him. He pushed his shield arm forward and slammed into the blight. Where his shield hit, the blight turned to dust. Time that Oberon had built up was now bouncing back on the blight, aging it into oblivion.
That was when time snapped forward, and Oberon swung his greatsword and launched it into the blight’s neck –severing its head from its body and sending the monster peeling through the air. It hit a tree trunk with a thud and fell lifeless.
The strain hit him all over again, and Oberon felt a trickle of liquid hit his upper lip. Oberon looked around, wiping the blood from his nose, taking stock of the situation.
The other blights were well in hand. Oberon could rest.
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
