Chapter 99 (Patreon)

Chapter 99

Fay tried to intercept with a hissing lunge of her own, but she was in no way a melee fighter and was easily slammed aside with a shoulder charge that left her gasping.  The rogue vanished and reappeared two feet in front of her original position the same way the other rogues earlier that fight had sidestepped one of his snares.

He stumbled and lifted up an arm to block the incoming attack, unable to summon magic to aid him, and shouted a curse as the dagger intended for his throat impaled his left shoulder instead.

The two of them tumbled to the roof and struggled with one another, rolling off of the multi-story building and landing with a thud on the dirt far below.  She was surprisingly strong despite having a smaller body and being a woman.  In terms of strength and speed, she was even giving him a run for his money and he was dead certain that whatever level she was - it was far higher than the average of her group.

Riven headedbutted the orc girl and grappled with her.  She snarled, trying to knee him in the gut and trying to get him off of her with her free hand as his slightly superior strength and weight kept her pinned.  He was quickly reaffirming the idea that although his abilities concerning magic were incredible, his physical combat prowess was sub-par.

Fleshy strands shot out from his staff up above, connecting with Riven’s hand and whipped downwards to pierce the orc through her back.

She let out a pained gasp, but managed to yank out yet another dagger strapped along her thigh.  Not being able to bring it up further because of how she was pinned - she let out a yell and sunk it deep into the side of Riven’s right lung.  Ice began to spread through the lung immediately, causing his ability to breath to drastically lower to the point that he was almost suffocating.

“See you in hell, blood sucker!”  She coughed up blood and grimaced when he twisted the staff impaled in her back, and then grunted in pain when he defiantly slammed his head into her own again.

“SHREEEEE!!!!”

Athela’s screech was ear piercing and the arshakai vaulted forward, using some of her limbs to tear Riven away and using her other limbs to push off the rogue at the same time.

As Riven came to a stop from rolling and he continued to hyperventilate, feeling his lung fill up with blood, he watched the demoness and orc rogue face off while they went at it with everything they had.

The injured woman was definitely far more skilled than any of the other orcs he’d seen, aside from maybe that shaman still fighting Azmoth.  She was nimble, quick, and could reactivate movement abilities over and over again to great effect while also being quick with the numerous poisoned knives she had along her thighs and belt.

Athela was just as quick though, blurring forward and side to side to match the rogue just off her base agility even despite not having any movement abilities.

Athela did have that trait ‘Naturally Agile’ though, something the rogue probably lacked.

The demoness lunged forward, using her arachnid limbs and jabbing out with them in a way Riven had seen her do many times before.  It was as if she’d learned to turn her limbs into spears, pistoning them with lightning fast speed and using her sharp, poison coated tongue like a whip that flashed forward in strikes that a normal human wouldn’t have been able to follow but were still blocked or dodged by the rogue.

The demon ducked and raced up a wall to launch herself at the rogue as the woman lunged left to avoid a spearing attack.  The girl then counter attacked, flipping two knives on end and hurling them with tremendous speed at the spider - only to curse when Athela dodged them yet again.

Athela snarled, her claws extended and clacking together as she lifted her fingers and began firing needles of hardened blood from her spinnerets.  “I’M GOING TO STOMP YOU, LITTLE GIRL!  YOU’RE GOING TO CRY AND BEG FOR MEEEE!!!”

The needles caught the orc rogue off guard and many of them found their mark, puncturing the woman’s leather and skin as she screamed and held up her arms to cover her face.  She ducked behind a burning crate, throwing a smoke bomb as Athela rushed her - and then vanished in the cover while activating the stealth ability again.

“CURSES!” Athela screeched, landing on the rooftop of the nearby building and frantically looking around.  “YOU LITTLE BITCH!”

The glint of firelight from a throwing knife gave the rogue’s position away, and Athela immediately reacted.  She launched herself off the right side of the building with tremendous speed to avoid the blade and simultaneously attached herself to a nearby oak tree with her webbing, letting her body glide through the air before abruptly tightening and reeling herself backwards while rotating over the ground.

The maneuver acted like a slingshot, launching the spider back through the air directly at the stunned rogue like a missile.  Athela’s screech of victory intermixed with the woman’s screams as four spear-like spider legs impaled the rogue’s chest, skewering her heart and lungs just as Athela sank her tongue and then sharpening teeth into the woman's right breast.  Poison then began spreading into the rogue as a tidal wave of black and necrosing venom.

Panicking, the screaming woman fell over: landing in the grass and frantically struggling to get the demoness off.  But she needn’t have bothered as Athela had already dispensed fatal blows.

The spider-woman hybrid kicked back off her target, chittering angrily at the quickly dying orc while her necrotic venom spread through deep wounds - and leaving the rogue to shudder into death soon after that before rushing over to Riven.

“I’m fine.” Riven muttered, gasping slightly while pushing himself to a standing position.  His right lung was frozen solid, his frostbite debuffs were decreasing his regeneration, and the poison he’d been afflicted with stopped his use of mana completely.  He was not fine, but he wasn’t dead either.

Fay landed beside him, embarrassed and wincing with an obviously broken collar bone from when she’d been slammed into.  “Sorry, master.”

The succubus looked defeated and Riven spared her a glance now that most of the greenskins in their area of the village were dead.  He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.  “Hey, don’t sweat it.  You got two of those rogues before they even reached me, you’re just not a melee fighter.  And neither am I, as is very obvious.”

Fay let on a small, amused smile, and she nodded to readjust her posture.

Athela on the other hand was rather angry, and she jabbed a finger into Fay’s chest.  “First fight on the job, don’t fuck up again.  Keep him safe while he heals or I’ll find you in the nether realms.”

Fay blanched slightly, nodded, and Athela took off to chase down some orcs running into the woods about fifty yards away.

Trey continued to gasp, took the remnants of his utterly ruined cloak off and threw it to the ground, then gestured for Fay to take them up again a second later.  She nodded wordlessly and grabbed him before flapping her wings and launching them both upwards into the branches above, landing on a treehouse rooftop for a better viewpoint.

They both glanced back over to where Azmoth was still battling the another small group.  Over three dozen green corpses were strewn around Azmoth’s immediate vicinity, and the flaming demon had five more enemies still alive.  The shaman, who was utterly exhausted and sipping on a mana potion as he ran for his life through the wreckage of numerous buildings - was firing off more cannonballs of molten metal to keep Azmoth at bay and downing potions; likely to keep his mana up.  Meanwhile there was an orc cleric who was using some kind of slowing ability with white rings of light encircling Riven’s demon - what he could only assume to be a kind of holy-type spell or miracle.  Then there were three archers, all of which were furiously firing at Azmoth as they kept their distance and would occasionally score a hit inbetween the solid slabs of obsidian armor lacing the demon’s body.  Beyond that there were also a handful of goblins remaining - each of them throwing stones, debris or daggers at the monstrous demon while maintaining a healthy distance.

The melee combatants that’d come to fight were all dead, but Riven could see that even though Azmoth was doing his best - he was starting to wind down.  No longer was Azmoth able to breathe flames, and the regeneration properties could only do so much with so many open wounds and projectiles sticking out of his body.  He looked like a pincushion with bolts, hatches, daggers and burning arrows all lodged across the more fleshy areas of his muscles.

Then a man’s voice called out.  “FIRE!”

Both Fay and Riven turned, startled to see a group of the elves lined up with bows and arrows aimed in Azmoth’s direction.

Why were they aiming at Azmoth?

Were Riven and his minions really going to be attacked by these elves after all he’d done for them?  A sneer of contempt was written onto the middle-aged man’s handsome elvish features, and the bow in his hand was notched and pulled back just as he let out the order to the others.

He’d been betrayed again.  Just like Jalel back in Negrada, he’d tried to help someone and had received a dagger in the back for it.

The arrows, over two dozen of them and many of them empowered with yellow lightning, simultaneously fired towards Azmoth’s location like a cloud of speedy death.  They zipped over the bloodied, icy grounds and over the ruins of their abandoned homes, past the burning buildings and trees - right into their intended targets.

Riven’s eyes opened wide as the arrows didn’t hit Azmoth at all.  Instead, the arrows that hit true all landed to impale the orc archers, shaman, cleric - and the remaining goblins.  One of the archers and the cleric immediately dropped dead, being riddled with arrows as a second archer caught one in the knee and went down screaming and cursing.

“I’VE TAKEN AN ARROW TO THE KNEE!!!”

The shaman took one to the ankle, tripping him and causing him to misfire as the cleric’s slowing holy divinity became undone as well.  The immediate result was a quick death in the pounding form of azmoth’s clawed foot as it came crashing into the screaming shaman’s skull - splattering his brains along the ground while the demon beat his chest and roared to the starlit heavens triumphantly.

The last of the archers still able to flee immediately took off, vaulting over a nearby fence meant for livestock as another arrow nearly caught his shoulder before turning a corner and racing out of sight.

[You have gained 2 levels.  Congratulations!]