Trial Of Monsters And Summons - Chapter 38 Dueling The Dead

After the breakfast chat, Alexis and I went off to the plane gate to go out and train our newest summons. We didn’t know much about their skill except the little we had seen while they were attacking us. Seeing their current abilities would help us decide their training path and how they would work in team fight situations.

Queenie and Saber obviously knew how to work together, but the situation would be different when we introduced other summons, so this was an important step for building a solid team. Currently, we were battering the beginning of the infamous desert heat while riding further into the desert to find some monsters worth fighting. It didn’t hurt that any monsters we end up defeating will help pad our wallets for our immediate needs and future guild expenses.

I was riding on Brutus as Jotun wouldn’t fare well in the heat, as an ice elemental monster, the heat would only serve to weaken him unnecessarily. It was important to conserve strength where you can, and having a weakened summon would only spell trouble in dangerous areas such as these.

Alexis, on the other hand, had summoned her drake Hemlock, who was having no trouble in these conditions. Despite both summons being dragon-kin, Hemlock didn’t have any obvious environmental weaknesses, but that also means she had no area that was advantageous for her. Alexis, who was kitted out in her armor, was nestled along the base of Hemlock’s neck and seemed to be having a fine time sitting on her much more spacious summon.

Despite the ever-present heat, the desert was beautiful in its own way, with the purple and orange hues of the last of the sunrise, and the rocky and sparse terrain making for a geologic puzzle too complicated to immediately take in. It was perfect for ambush predators with the many places to hide and all sorts of crevasses to hide away from the heat.

The cold-blooded reptile monsters would be out in droves as the sun’s rays allowed them to hunt to their full extent. When the sun set, there would be flying monsters and insects amongst various other monsters out in droves to hunt while the environment was cool and could retain as much moisture as possible.

Either way, it was a deadly and perilous environment that only the strongest would be able to survive, as we had learned the hard way last time we were here. Speaking of monsters, I was able to spot the outline of what looked like a pack of mummies or some type of humanoid undead in front of us.

“Do you see them Alex?” -Thomas

“Yep, we should be a bit more careful moving forward in case there are too many of them for us to deal with. Undead are all about attacking in droves, and the worst part about them is they never give up until they are fully destroyed.” -Alexis

“Let’s move on foot stealthily for now, and maybe bring out some more summons in case things go wrong.” -Thomas

Getting off our summons, we started moving ahead carefully while I brought out Jareth and Saber and Alexis summoned Musashi and Holly. Queenie relied on poison to fight, but the undead are immune, so she wouldn’t be much help. However, Violet still could do some serious physical damage even without her signature poison abilities.

With all 6 summons out and ready to fight we made our way up the dune hill and barely peeked over the top to spy on our potential enemies. What we saw were a scattered bunch of weaker undead including mummies and about 4 armed draugr, but what really made us a bit more cautious was a tier 4 Dullahan in full black plated armor resting on what looks to be the remains of a throne.

It made quite the imposing sight with it’s gleaming dark armor, decapitated head tucked in an elbow, and a massive broadsword stuck into the ground next to it. All the undead steered clear of the obvious ruler as if out of deference or fear of the monster, each was just roaming around as if searching for something.

Seeing what we were up against made us cautious, but also excited at the thought of a good fight rather than the normal sweeping through weak enemies. We would need a game plan if we were going to fight them, and while we should be cautious, there was no real reason for alarm with as strong as our summons are.

“Alex, you got any ideas?” -Thomas

“Sure, why don’t I send Musashi to fight the dullahan alongside Jareth, while the rest of us mow down the weaker monsters and keep them away from their leader.” -Alexis

“Sure, why not? Let’s get going then.” -Thomas

With a determined expression on our face and the swords in our hands, we quickly marched down the dune alongside our summons to wipe out the horde of undead. They were likely some civilization that was wiped out and then brought back as undead, but that no longer mattered as they were no longer people.

It wasn’t long before the golden dune was stained maroon as the decrepit fluids remaining in the monsters were spread out from wounds they had sustained courtesy of us. Even Alexis and I were able to take down some of the weaker mummies despite them being tier 3 monsters.

Undead usually excelled in endurance, strength, and taking damage, but speed combined with fire or a correctly placed weapon could take them down easily enough. We were able to avoid any attacks they made and struck them down with our swords aimed at their limbs to slowly whittle them down.

Blunt or repeated damage to the brain would be needed to fully vanquish these relentless corpses, and the easiest way to do that was to incapacitate them by removing or disabling their limbs before finally killing them. It took a little while to do it, but they had no defense and had the same weaknesses as regular humans only without the sensation of pain or limitations on strength.

While us summoners were taking down the occasional monster that made their way through the barricade of battle to us, our summons were quickly and efficiently bringing these cannon fodder down in droves.

Brutus was mauling any limbs he could find and tearing them off with a few shakes of his head before moving onto the next victim. Holly was distracting any groupings of undead to limit the number of enemies each summon was facing, and doing some damage herself by shooting off her knife-life feathers into the faces of the mummies. A few of her shots even proved fatal with a lucky strike to a weaker part of their skull, like the eyes or temples.

Saber was acting like a scythe cutting wheat as he showed off his full combat abilities. His low stature gave him the perfect opportunity to cut off legs at the knee with his sword claw while bashing in the head of said mangled monsters with his heavy shield or even spearing them through the head with well-aimed blows from his stinger.

Last but not least of the summons fighting the mob of monsters was Violet who was ripping apart bodies with her front claws or knocking down/bashing in heads with whips of her strong and barbed tail. She didn’t even have to move as some of the mummies and the 4 draugr made their way over to her despite not being able to even break through her resilient scales.

It was apparent that these monsters lacked any real intelligence and operated off of base instinct, which worked perfectly for us as we worked together to demolish the much larger horde of undead. Had they been stronger and more intelligent undead as numerous as these were, we likely wouldn’t have rushed in so eagerly to our death, as even the weakest of monsters in large numbers could take down a dragon.

The only battle continuing to go on was the dullahan versus Musashi and Jareth who were on the other side of the sandy basin with no other enemies in sight. I had instructed Jareth to play a support role and let Musashi battle the monster, he had been stalled in growth for a while and this would be the perfect opportunity for him to evolve.

Musashi had the superior speed, but the dullahan was stronger and equally as intelligent, this was no ordinary monster. Any monster on the 4th tier, no matter how low on that scale, was to be treated cautiously as they had all proved to be skilled at fighting and survival to have made it to that stage. This could be seen in the drawn-out fight where neither opponent had any real advantage over the other, each excelled in their own way and had led to each attack being countered or avoided.

Musashi used his speed to his advantage and would strike out with his sword limbs aiming for joints in the dullahan’s armor. Not just the armor, but the skill of the undead swordsman prevented these strikes from doing any serious damage as most were parried or knocked off point. The large green mantis had to move often to prevent the deadly broadsword from striking him, one hit would be enough to incapacitate the insect and leave him for easy pickings from the boss monster. Luckily Jareth was on the side and ready to step in at any moment, the dullahan seemed a bit confused that an enemy wasn’t attacking him along with the mantis he was currently facing, but it seemed happy to leave Jareth alone as long as he did the same.

About 2 minutes later the horde had been culled and only a few stragglers were left to be taken out at the summons’ leisure, it wasn’t an intense battle as there seemed to be little actual danger as long as we remained careful. But the major fight between Musashi and the dullahan hadn’t progressed much except for Musashi getting sluggish and bearing a few wounds from being a little to slow to completely dodge some attacks. If it wasn’t for his tough carapace, the strikes would have been enough to cleave through his limbs.

Seeing that the battle would be lost if action wasn’t taken, Alexis shouted out to Musashi, “Attack the head, if it can’t see it can’t fight!”

Heeding her advice, the battle-worn mantis began rapidly thrusting and striking at the head with both arms, not caring for even his own safety as he attempted to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat. After a few seconds of extremely fast attacks, one sword limb made it past the dullahan’s sword and dislodged the head from its’ roosting place within the crook of its left elbow.

It didn’t take much longer to take down the flailing monster with a few well-timed strikes at the now blind and deaf monster. The arms were the first to be struck down and disabled, and without letting up on the intensity of the fight, Musashi began wailing on the monster’s now unarmored head. Eventually, he managed to bore through the skull with repeated and precise strikes on the same spot until whatever was animating the tier 4 monster ceased with its’ brain now scrambled.

With the monster now defeated, Musashi collapsed in exhaustion with the knowledge he had defeated a great foe through his own effort. Taking his example, the rest of us caught up and then collapsed to the ground for some well-deserved rest.