The First Lich Lord - Chapter 176

It was remarkable how quickly we expanded and how quickly that all changed. Less than three weeks had passed since I took the first city. After Maltis fell, my domain exploded onto the plains, nothing slowing it. Freya was a blessing I hadn’t expected. She organized and sent out raiding parties to conquer and expand.

The rapid assault left the local forces on the back foot. We had ambushed and destroyed several different forces similar to that of General Sextus. After a point I didn’t need mindless undead any more, I needed more troops. We started loading up carts of corpses and sending them back to Maltis. I was certain Freya would have a way to help.

We were marching steadily towards the next major city. It was roughly the size of Maltis, but from the information I had gathered it looked like it might be an even easier target. It was built out in the plains and its defenses weren’t anything spectacular. Once we were through them, the city would fall quickly.

The main road we were following took us along a large lake. One of the mounted bone guard rode back in, acting as my scouts. As we advanced, the bone guard were steadily becoming more and more useful. They could now follow and execute more complex orders and tasks.

He was reporting to Abimelech who immediately came over to me. “There is a large force approaching from the southeast,” Abimelech said. That was the direction we were heading. “Raven is going to check it out, but the indication is that it is rather large.”

I nodded. The bone guard, while able to report back on seeing things, had no way to quantify numbers like how many were in the force. They had small, medium, large, and very large. “Let’s see what Raven says, if it’s more than we can handle, we can fall back in order to bait them into position we’ve prepared.”

Abimelech nodded and returned to where she rode at the front of my guard.

Raven was still gone when I saw another mounted bone guard approach Abimelech. “There is another force behind us,” she said.

“What? Did we somehow miss something? Max, check the map, did we bypass a fort or something? How big is this force, it can’t be that big.”

Abimelech stared back in the direction we’d come from. “The bone guard says it is small. Still, I sent Ehud back to check.”

“I don’t think we missed anything.” Maxwell pulled out his map. “Any chance it’s another group of reinforcements? It has been a while since one arrived.”

I rode over next to Snappy and hopped from Shadow onto the back of the giant snapping turtle to see the map up close. “I don’t think so, the bone guard might be dense, but they know when it’s our stuff.” I saw something marked on the map. “What is that?”

It was a little symbol of an archway with something in the middle. “That marks a shrine of creation. Those,” Maxwell tapped something else, “are altars of creation.”

When I looked closely, the same symbol in the middle of the first one became clear.

“You don’t think…” I trailed off, studying the map intently, but for a different reason. “Abi, warn Ehud it might be players.” She nodded and raced after the sneak.

“Max, find a place we can fortify,” I said. “We might be in a little bit of trouble.”

***

“We should’ve charged the players and overwhelmed them,” I grumbled, sketching out the ritual diagram in the compact dirt. Maxwell’s music thundered out over the battlefield. The song was another one from Godsmack, since the chorus seemed to be “I Stand Alone,” I assumed that was the name. I would have to ask about his song choice at some point.

Raven had reported back that the NPC army coming from the south was nearly 6,000 strong, and Ehud had returned confirming a player force of over 500, but only loosely organized. There had been a brief debate about whether or not we should rush north and catch the players off guard, both Maxwell and I were hesitant. Five hundred players, if appropriately leveled, would reap a terrible toll on my forces, and even if we killed them, all they would lose is some gear.

Instead, we had found a peninsula that stretched out into a lake. Redirecting my army, we had marched down it, leaving the hordes of the mindless undead clogging up the narrowest part of the neck. The end of the peninsula rose a small amount and widened out, there we had set up our defense.

Othniel organized the casters we had available. We focused on defenses, as we were outnumbered and outgunned, so it was more important to have a solid defensive magics set up. Fortunately, we had time to get things set up correctly. When the fighting started, Tola took half the necromancers and began focusing on enhancing the mindless undead.

The horde clogging the neck of the peninsula was massive, but they weren’t competent fighters, just cannon fodder. And with how clogged together they were, Tola was able to justify the use of smaller area of effect regeneration and buffing spells that were much more powerful.

The water on the narrow part of the peninsula was shallow for about ten meters out on either side. The horde had spread out into the water. I was fine with that, as it would prevent my enemies from trying to get anything by. Moving troops through water while fighting was always difficult.

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There was an explosion that drew my attention away from the ritual I was working on. The artillery brought by the NPCs was probably the single greatest threat. They lobbed large, enchanted magical projectiles. The boulders tossed by the catapults detonated, spraying out shrapnel that shredded the horde.

I had started working on the ritual as soon as we arrived. I had hoped to be done before the enemies arrived, but the NPCs arrived sooner than expected. The players should be showing up soon.

The defenses raised above my army by the clerics and necromancers under the direction of Othniel were under constant barrage. Waves of missiles from the ranged fighters hammered down while group-cast magical artillery spells were constantly exploding against the defenses. With the addition of the clerics, we had started making our barriers stop incoming arrows as well, clerics simply had more powerful defenses that could do that in a more mana efficient rate.

The time spent preparing defenses was also partially because of the growing number of eldritch cannons and the juggernauts. The ten eldritch cannons were coordinated to fire along with the casters by E’lon. The coordinated blast would shatter barriers, punching a hole through the defenses in a small area.

They could not fire as often, but when they opened a hole in the defenses, flights of arrows often found their way through. E’lon almost always managed to bring down some target that stood out. Either Vhytlos or Agreldo, sometimes both, shot balls of crackling eldritch power into the ranks of the enemy.

The juggernauts were stationed behind the front lines of bone guard which were busy digging a bulwark across the peninsula behind the horde of the mindless undead. An explosion rocked the ground and one of the ritual lines I had been carving with Mercy was distorted. I swore, smoothing the area back out, tamping it down, and redrawing.

Looking towards the force in the fading light of the day, more projectiles were heading towards us. Whoever was in command over there had decided focusing his artillery on the horde of regenerating mindless zombies was a waste. They began focusing on the organized forces at the end of the peninsula. From the length of their arcs, I guess we were near the end of their maximum range without them pushing artillery onto the peninsula and clogging it up further.

Othniel, eldritch magic not well suited for traditional magical defenses, was using bolts of fast-moving eldritch power to try and breakup incoming spells. It was quite effective actually. In fact, when the two of us realized that was the best way to use eldritch magic in a defensive setting, we had theorized this ritual. It had been something I’d been working on designing with the help of both Othniel and Shamgar as we rode.

Shamgar, the runic tank, had been more helpful than even Othniel. As he had grown and continued to fight and study, his knowledge of runes had expanded rapidly. He didn’t know how to build rituals, but his help in orienting and using the correct runes was notable.

All of the Dread Thirteen had grown with me, as soon as I leveled up, they followed. Unfortunately, this was not true for the entire army. Many of the undead from Kellnock advanced as well, but only some of the bone guard did, and obviously none of the mindless dead.

I did take the time to make sure I increased the power of all of the flesh golems and eldritch cannons. In the dungeon, I hadn’t upgraded my eldritch cannon as I went, the resources just weren’t worth it, here on the battlefield, I saw things a little differently.

Ritual finished, I activated it, and eldritch power filled the twisting runic lines. I had a mana regeneration potion out and was already drinking it—this would take every drop of power I had.

There were three layers in total. The central one filled first. It lifted off the ground, my eldritch power solidifying into a semisolid state. It took a lot of power to accomplish that, and that power had to come from me. I needed absolute control to accomplish that semisolid state. One by one the other two layers of the ritual filled and lifted.

All three circles remained perpendicular to the ground. I was out of mana. Expending that much at once made me wince, the mana depletion headache not pleasant. At least the regeneration potion was already restoring my mana pool at the maximum rate, it was a very high-quality regeneration potion.

With a mental order, I commanded the twenty-five elemental zombies that had been standing by to funnel power into the ritual. Power flooded out of the elemental zombies and into a point on the ground underneath the ritual where it shot up in a beam into the central ritual. The ritual began to move. The center part remained flat and perpendicular to the ground, though it did spin in place. It was the most complex part, the targeting system.

The outer parts began to spin as well, but they began to weave around the central circle of runes. They never quite intersected with the beam of power pouring into it.

Again, the ground shook as another barrage of heavy magical attacks hammered into our barriers. They couldn’t take much more, and theoretically they wouldn’t have to. I hated that this was the first time I was actually trying to implement such a complex ritual, field testing as a trial run was not a great idea. The outer rituals began to move fast enough they blurred and left behind afterimages, forming a sphere.

A beam no thicker than a pencil shot out into the growing twilight. I followed it and though it ended a moment later, it had struck an incoming ball of white light. A moment later, another being struck it and the incoming attack spell collapsed on itself and exploded.

Before long, constant beams of power shot out from the ritual, knocking down incoming magical attacks, artillery projectiles, and to my surprise and frustration, arrows. That was going to burn through a lot of power, but I didn’t have time to figure out how to fix that part, even if it were possible for me to work on an active ritual.

The elemental zombies were pouring quite a bit of power into it, too much, actually. The focus point could only take so much, and the excess power was bleeding off and filling the area.

I ordered half of them to stop. The eldritch power wasn’t a threat to me, but it could cause issues if it began to destroy other things. With the beams of power cut off, less power overflowed. One at a time, I ordered elemental zombies to stop until there was only eight powering it.

I thought about dispatching the elemental zombies to help the casters, but that was a stupid idea. I divided them into three groups, including the ones currently powering the spell. They were all evenly spaced around the ritual and the order was simple.

When one group depleted half of their energy reserves, they would stop and another group would take over. I hoped that would give them enough time to rebuild power to keep the ritual running indefinitely. Well, until the ritual became unstable. Using semisolid magic was great, but it wasn’t a permanent effect.

I surveyed what I could see of the battlefield. The players still hadn’t arrived. That confused me. They shouldn’t have been very far behind the NPC army.

I was about to say something when I noticed something along the shores, there was a patch of ice. Except it wasn’t winter, and even if it was, I questioned if this waterway would ever freeze. It took a moment for my brain to catch up, and I realized where the players had gone.