Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

There was a tall and domineering white-shelled version called an Olthoi Slasher, and a smaller, faster purple one, only human-sized, called an Olthoi Slayer. Both were equally tough, both equally armored, equally deadly, and equally happy to swarm us and take us down… and both were immune to Life Magic, namely the Imperils and Vulns that would really have softened them up for our attackers.

There was no Summoning magic anywhere in Power of Ten that came up with creatures this bloody tough and dangerous, and yet here they were, endlessly respawning from alcoves in the walls, prancing to the attack on insectile legs too powerful for their spindly nature, spitting acid, slashing and stabbing at us to force us out of this nest.

I softened up things for Kris to take advantage of, Quaver just cutting blurs of motion as she gutted the things right through their armor, the maxed-out Biting Strike and Crushing Blow Runes on Quaver exploding crits through the bugs which magnified the damage she was doing to unreasonable levels, and she still needed an average of six hits to kill one.

I also had to Heal her a bunch as those plunging pointy bits or cutting pincers got past her Shields and found meat instead of air, quickly outpacing her ability to Fast Heal even with full Soul Empowerment and a whole lot of Damage Reduction. The acid wasn’t anything much she had to worry about, and indeed she ended up pretty coated in the stuff more than once, ignoring it as her Tremblesense tracked and charted everything around her better and faster than her eyes, and she hewed into the bugs with energy and vigor.

Actually, six hits to kill one was damn impressive, according to the Mick, which we attributed to the crit multipliers on Kris’ massive basic damage from her Grandmastery. The ability to just bypass their armored shells with Brilliant was obviously huge, and her rapid understanding and utterly clear comprehension of all the vulnerable points of their bodies drove every swing.

The olthoi were quick, but they simply weren’t used to a Weapon that ignored their armor, their reflexes couldn’t keep up with Ways of Fire neutralizing Dex and Dodge bonuses, nor all the magical bonuses to hit heaped on the stack to thwart them, starting with Bane to Vermin, including Enmity to the Supernatural (they were effectively Magical Beasts, too), all the Blackfire and Soulfire bonuses, the fact Kris really was Just That Damn Good with a sword, and yeah, for all practical purposes, she was able to reap them.

“Back it up to the beginning! The respawns are due in thirty seconds!” I shouted at her, gliding backwards.

She growled and followed, skating backwards as fast as the olthoi could advance, the bugs jostling one another and stringing themselves out as they single-mindedly chased after us back towards the top of the nest. One by one, swirling combination attacks cut them down in deadly flurries of activity, and if these were helped along by crackling silver lightning powering a mono-target Haste spell, well, that was what it was.

“Drop that Brilliant and use something else on Quaver,” I told her coolly, and she glanced over at me just as she inserted the Blade up into the face of the last Slasher, its pedipalps ringing futilely on the Shields held up to take them.

“Reason?” she asked neutrally.

“You’re testing out these olthoi for people who don’t have nine or ten Slot Weapons. You’re comprehensively two tiers above them in terms of combat ability, at least. Fight them without being able to ignore the shells so you know what the average man fighting them is going to be faced with.”

She considered that, looked down at Quaver, the spirals of Lost Light weaving around it carrying the white-green hues of Vermin Banefire, but their own intrinsic power was useless against this ‘mundane’ foe. It was a shining bar of Golden Light right now, more energy than mass.

“Alrighty then,” she said after a moment, and Quaver hummed obediently as blue-black adamantine edged in Gold Soulfire reformed in her grip. “This is not going to be anywhere near as easy,” she informed me sourly.

“Yeah, that’s what the Mick is telling us, but Artificer Infusions don’t last forever, and nobody in their right mind makes Brilliant a permanent Enchantment,” I pointed out grimly, as that would involve using up four Slots for something that was not effective against anything in normal Armor.

You could do a lot of stuff with four Slots.

She snarled and her Arsenal effect swirled and replaced the Brilliant with Healing Edge, a good choice to replace it. It was a +III effect, meaning still rarefied, but broadly useful, and would minimize the amount of extra Healing I’d have to do while she worked things out.

The first fwazaps! rang out in the alcoves, resin-lotus doors unfolded, and new purple or white olthoi further down the ramp stepped forth to do battle.

Kris grit her teeth and readied Stand and Tall in her second pair of arms.

“And go down to one Shield. Not everybody has four arms.”

Kris paused, grumbled again, and then Tall lotused closed and was put back inside her Masspack as she went down to one hand on Quaver.

“Now let’s see how absolutely horrible this is,” I murmured to her as she took position in front. “The average paramount mage has about a fifty percent chance of landing spells on these things, doesn’t have a second spell they can shoot, and can’t add Isparian magic on top of their primary spell. They also don’t have a Get Out of Hell Free Dimension Door to whisk them away to safety at the drop of a hat, and no Olthoi Slayer or even a Bane yet. So, one tank of mana and then run for the hills, with Mana Boost on reserve for emergencies is SOP.”

“Ugh,” Kris grimaced, raising up Quaver atop Stand in classic Mitharn sword-and-board posture. “This is gonna suck. That’s 2300 Health, and you’re gimping me!”

“I’d say take the multipliers of your Critting Runes down at least two multipliers, too, but we’ll make do for now.”

---

“Waagh!’ We both went sprawling as the Dimdoor dropped us up outside the entry tunnel to the Hive Dungeon, located in the middle of a bunch of standing stones outside the town of Baishi.

Kris had a dozen bleeding wounds even the constant stabbing with Quaver hadn’t quite been able to keep up with. Whatever the changes in armor were out there, they plainly were vastly inferior to the protective stuff that warriors and mages had enjoyed here before the Fall.

The Mick was laughing at us in Markspace, but it was a bit hollow. He’d happily recounted tales of being absolutely swarmed and surrounded by these olthoi, even jumping into the middle of them willingly, and their best attacks had basically bounced off his buffed-up Armor, the tiny impact damages just healed away with little problem as long as his endurance held out.

Without that max-buffed Armor and the combination of bounce and damage reduction it gave, fighting was a very different thing. Even with her Damage Reduction of base 16/Holy Silver, the olthoi had been chewing into Kris and letting her know that she wasn’t all that impressive.

There was also the fact that a normal fighter wasn’t immune to the acid, and once she had to figure dodging or minimizing those little vomited globules into account, the complexity of the fighting had reached a whole other tier.

Which all meant she was now slashed, stabbed, pierced, and cut rather badly, very annoyed, and just sitting there on her backside as her Fast Healing pulled her back together at basically a point of Health per second.

She was down into her 30’s when I yanked us out of there, and that was with Quaver’s Healing Edge dropping an additional 1-8 into her with every successful attack. Sure, she had another hundred of Soak there as cushion in case of emergency, but the fact remained that she hadn’t been able to keep up, and that was with me helping with both Buffs and some slamming magic to accelerate the kills.

No Rending/Cleaving magic and no active Slayer effects meant I was restricted to Crit Runes for extra damage, just like she was, and without layered overloaded spells, simply didn’t have a rapid impact on anything.

Plus, you know, failing half the time against their Spell Resistance/Magic Defense sucked really bad.

I got pretty good at finishing things she started pounding down, timing my blasts as I analyzed her attack routines and my Assays followed the dropping Health of whatever she was trying to concentrate on. Things had gotten much nastier when she had to use Stand to block one olthoi, and then parry attacks with Quaver even while plunging her Sword into the creatures.

“Briggs would probably do okay in his full armor,” she finally admitted, looking up at the sky. “At the least, they’d be trying to get through DR 30-some instead of a mere 16. But that hive could boil out and probably take out most of our army,” she admitted uneasily.

DR 16/- was a big man taking up a sledgehammer, hauling it back, and slamming it into something with full power... only to see it bounce. The olthoi had been chewing through it without too much problem. Pincer attacks in the 4-24+10 range, at least...

“Yeah.” I was down to dregs of Mana, although I had plenty of Valences in reserve, not about to risk all of them in this fight, especially if there was a surprise waiting for us outside. “Kinda lets you know just how nasty the paramounts were back before the Fall… or at least how powerful the magic then was, right?”

“That’s true.” Her eyes were sparking with real desire now. “Now they went and done it, though. They’re forcing me to slap on some armor for myself!”

She’d lose her Wisdom bonus to her dodging AC, but would have more Armor and Damage Reduction to replace it… if not all that much more.

“And you can’t tell me you didn’t start on your Olthoi Slayer Masteries with all the kills in there.” Because I sure had.

“You actually killed fifty of them?” Kris was a little surprised.

“I Cast spells on over fifty of them, who also happened to die.” Getting the kill wasn’t completely necessary, even for Achievement Feats, if you were in Fellowship, which we totally were. “That eventual +5 bonus to punching Spell Res will be extremely useful.”

“And no doubt all the paramounts are kicking themselves for not taking it back when they were grinding olthoi all night and all day.” She’d certainly done it for grievvers back on Ithaenc. “This is really, REALLY a good place to work up to for your killing,” she finally admitted, lips turning up in a broad smile. “We never even made it off the second level and down to the third!”

“Yeah, well, another point. Given the nature of the olthoi as a whole, do you really believe that after the fall the Matron of the Hive is weaker than the olthoi we just killed?”

She contemplated that for about a half-second. “Oh, Mithar, I hope not. It would be much more fun if she’s not.” Four sets of canines gleamed in anticipation.

Which was just about right for a Rantha Hag, I had to admit. “So, I’m guessing that the other three Matron Hives, which also follow ascending levels of difficulty, once again are going to be devoted to that cause as training Dungeons?”

“If this is what we’re looking at in the Olthoi North… yeah, they’ll definitely be needed. There’s a whole generation which has had no exposure to the bugs, and those bugs are no joke.”

“As no doubts hundreds of random Portal victims found out over the years…”

Her face hardened. “Yeah,” she admitted. “The bugs deserve everything we are going to do to them…”

Although it wasn’t even a matter of deserve. They were being true to their nature, and to survive, we’d also have to be true to their nature, and annihilate them.

“The other Matron Hive Dungeons are in Nanto, Uziz, and Khayyaban, of all places.” All scattered settlements, kind of backwoods related to the main cities, almost as if someone had placed the Dungeons there so as to drive some traffic to them. Nah, not possible, right?

Nanto was already in our control, the Hive Dungeon a hole in the ground long walled off and ignored by the wild tribes who’d taken over the lands between Mayoi and Hebian-To. It was also supposedly the mildest of the four Olthoi Matron Dungeons.

“We’re going to have to put a training garrison in Nanto immediately,” Kris stated, and I concurred.

Get them Slayer Masteries started quick and early, before we had to fight the real things.