Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 29: More than Expected

The ground rumbled as the enormous magma golems raced away from the gate. Hobgoblins, each one with skin that looked like the bark on a well-cooked brisket, jogged alongside the huge creatures as they responded to Sadie’s oddly put provocation. Clearly, she was unused to hurling insults, which Elijah found simultaneously adorable and hilarious. Regardless, he couldn’t afford to focus on her. Instead, he had his own task demanding his attention.

So, once he saw that the hobgoblins had vacated the area, he skittered up the side of one of the guard towers flanking the gate. As he did, he kept One with Nature trained on everything in range. He knew there were four figures inside the tower – char goblin mages, if he wasn’t mistaken – which meant that he would have his work cut out for him. The creatures were not physically gifted, but the sheer firepower they could bring to bear was as impressive as it was intimidating.

It made Elijah wonder if they should find a true Sorcerer to fill out their group. After all, if there was one weakness of the party, it was that they lacked the pure damage dealing capability of a dedicated mage. Sure, they weren’t versatile, but what they lacked in adaptability, they more than made up for in magical potency. It was definitely something to consider, though that line of thought wouldn’t help much with the current predicament. So, Elijah pushed it aside and focused on his job.

Once he reached the gap between the wall and the roof – which was called the embrasure, if he remembered correctly – he slipped through. Because the opening was less than a foot tall, he was forced to flatten his body, not unlike a lizard. Thankfully, there were no enchantments to strip him of Guise of the Unseen, so he didn’t raise the alarm. More importantly, it gave him a perfect opportunity to position himself for an attack.

However, he held back, knowing that the plan called for him to wait until Dat struck first. The Witch Hunter was no weakling, and his class featured quite a few assassin-like characteristics. But he stood a much higher chance of detection by alert enemies. So, Elijah waited for a full ten seconds until, at last, a clamor erupted from the guard tower on the other side of the gate.

It was almost forty feet away, but when Dat struck, he did so with no small degree of bombast. An explosion of ethera raced out in a shockwave that the four goblin mages that were Elijah’s target couldn’t fail to notice. Immediately, they reacted, gathering ethera to lend their aid to the hobgoblin mages in the other tower.

They never even knew Elijah was there.

Not until he attacked the first, using his full suite of abilities to inflict as much damage as possible before springing at the next in line. Even as the first fell before the might of Elijah’s potent Envenom, he attacked the second, biting it three times before it could even react. But by the time it attempted to fend him off, he was onto the next. However, that was when the advantage of surprise ran out, and Elijah was treated to a hastily cast Fireball to the face.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time he’d been hit by such a spell, and even if it charred his scales, the effect of Ward of the Seasons – along with his Constitution – protected him from what should have been a lethal effect. It did nothing for the pain, though, and he let out a hiss of agony as he shunted those feelings into a separate facet where he immediately quarantined them.

The real issue was that the fireball carried with it significant momentum, and when it exploded in his face, it knocked him off course. So, it took the full weight of his Dexterity attribute to turn that careening fall into a controlled barrel roll. He quickly found his feet, then leaped toward the wall before springing in the opposite direction. Another fireball – from the fourth Mage – hit the spot he’d just vacated, and this one managed to melt a layer of the durable black stone.

Elijah felt more ethera gather, and he immediately changed course. It was just in time, too, because another Fireball slammed into the floor, missing his tail by only an inch. Then, he jerked to the side once again before leaping at the third Mage. His teeth quickly found the creature’s throat, but even as Envenom raced through his fangs, a corona of fire erupted around the hobgoblin, searing its way through him.

He tried to jump away, but his muscles spasmed under the effects of so much damage, turning the leap into more of a flop followed by a desperate roll. With the benefit of his Jade Mind, it only took Elijah a moment to recognize what had happened. All Sorcerers had access to a personal shield. Often, it was their first and last line of defense. However, once one took a class and gained some levels, they usually had the opportunity to evolve the spell into something more focused. In this case, it seemed that the Mages – which were likely some sort of fire-based magic casting class – had turned the shield spell into one with a damage reflection characteristic.

The only question was whether or not the damage was static or if it was based on the strength of the incoming attack that would be reflected.

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But Elijah wasn’t in a position to test things out – which became obvious when one of the Mages ran toward an opening in the floor, clearly intending to escape. Without time to measure his attacks, Elijah leaped back into action. This time, though, as he darted across the floor, he initiated a transformation into his guardian form. After all, if he couldn’t avoid damage, he would simply have to endure, and nothing was better for that task than the form of the lamellar ape.

His body lengthened, and his limbs thickened. After a second, the transformation had reached the halfway point, but Elijah couldn’t delay any longer. The hobgoblin had reached the ladder, and it would only be a moment before it disappeared to the level below. Elijah refused to allow that, so even before his transition completed, he threw himself into another attack.

Latching onto the only thing he could reach, he wrapped his claws around the hobgoblin’s head like he was palming a basketball. Then, he lifted. The creature fought back, tossing another Fireball that hit Elijah’s chest. However, even with his transformation only partially completed, he had enough durability to endure the attack. A few scales were scorched, but that wasn’t much more than an annoyance.

Then, finally, the transformation completed, and Elijah let out a roar of anger as he rammed his other hand into the monster’s chest. As expected, the attack elicited a response, and dense flames licked out and slammed into Elijah’s stomach. They scorched through his scales and ripped through his midsection, doing far more extensive damage than a mundane flame could have managed. Yet, the Shape of the Guardian was tailor made to endure far more punishment than the hobgoblin Mage could muster, and the agony of the reciprocal attack only pushed Elijah’s rage to new heights. He used that as fuel as he wrapped his hand around the comparatively small hobgoblin’s waist.

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The creature struggled in his vice-like grip, but it might as well have been fighting against a force of nature for all the good it did. Elijah lifted the creature in one hand, then slammed it down with as much force as he could bring to bear. Bones cracked beneath the blow, and blood spurted from the hobgoblin’s every orifice.

But even denser flames erupted from the Mage, wrapping around Elijah and burning him to a crisp. He ignored it, slamming the creature into the floor again. And again after that. Another Fireball hit Elijah in the back, reminding him that the final Mage was still alive, but he felt no urgency in dealing with it. After all, with Elijah standing over the exit, it couldn’t escape.

So he took the necessary time to finish the creature off, then turned his attention to the final remaining Mage. The hobgoblin threw a barrage off Fireballs in his direction, and when they hit, they did so with predictable damage. Yet, Elijah’s form was durable enough to withstand the assault. His charge was inevitable. Unstoppable. And effective.

He crushed the final creature in his claws, then finally shifted his eyes to the other tower. Dat’s fight was still ongoing, so Elijah wasted no more time before initiating another transformation, this time back into his Shape of Venom. Once he’d taken on the form of the blight dragon, he slipped through the window, then leaped free. He hit the ground at a run, then threw himself at the other tower. A second later, he was skittering up the tower, cloaked in Guise of the Unseen. When he reached the top, he peeked inside to see that Dat had already taken care of two Mages. However, he was struggling with the final pair, who’d taken on a defensive posture.

Elijah knew exactly what to do in that situation, and he slid through the window, climbed to the ceiling, then positioned himself above the creature. Once he was satisfied with his approach, he dropped down upon one of the hobgoblins. Predictably, when he bit into the monster, he received quite a backlash. But it wasn’t nearly as potent as expected. Certainly, the flames licking his scales were powerful, but he’d been banking on the nature of his damage-over-time abilities to protect him from the worst of the reciprocal damage.

The idea wasn’t complex. Their shield spell reflected damage back on any attacker, and it scaled based on the power leveraged against them. However, the spell only took immediate damage into account. So, while he’d been subjected to extremely potent flames when attacking in the form of a lamellar ape, he only had to deal with the reflection of his bite when in the Shape of Venom.

And as the name implied, the blight dragon’s true power came from the potency of its venom, which because of its nature, wasn’t part of the calculation regarding the reflected damage.

So, he didn’t run the risk of burning himself to a crisp when he only had to take the proportional damage of a simple bite.

Still, it wasn’t exactly pleasant, given the form’s lack of durability. But that was the price he needed to pay to even the odds for Dat. Even as he leaped away, racing up the wall and onto the ceiling, the hobgoblin mage stumbled. That gave the Witch Hunter an opening to dash toward the other remaining Mage. His shortswords flashed, cutting into the creature with ruthless precision. Fire licked out, but to Elijah’s surprise, it was blocked by what looked like a ghost.

It happened so quickly that he never would have caught it without his recent increases in cultivation. One of the advantages of advancing his Mind was quicker processing speed, and that worked hand-in-hand with reaching the Iron stage of Body cultivation. At times, it felt a lot like the Haste effect associated with his Sash of the Whirlwind, though it was different enough that he could differentiate between the two.

Regardless, the ghost faded beneath the onslaught of flames so quickly that Elijah immediately began questioning his own senses.

Whatever the case, Dat wasted no time before finishing the now-unprotected Mage, then turned his attention toward the one Elijah had attacked. He needn’t have worried, because the hobgoblin had already fallen to its side, where it had begun to convulse uncontrollably. A few seconds later, Elijah experienced a wave of experience that announced that the creature was dead.

The entire assault – from the moment Elijah had entered the first tower until the last Mage was dead – had only taken thirty seconds or so. Even then, he couldn’t help but worry about the others. Ten hobgoblin fighters and a couple of magma golems made for a large enough force to overwhelm Sadie and the others. Even with Kurik’s traps to slow them down.

So, Elijah and Dat had no time to waste. With that in mind, they quickly descended from the tower and ran down the road, hoping to hit the others from behind. When the ongoing battle lines came into sight, they both slipped into their versions of stealth before falling upon the enemy’s back with ruthless efficiency.

The hobgoblins made for easy targets. They were strong and fast, but without the protection of personal shields like the Mages, they were ill-equipped to deal with the swift and deadly attacks Elijah and Dat could bring to bear. After only a few seconds, Elijah had bitten all ten of them, with the first victim of his attack having already fallen before the combined effects of the Predator Strike-enhanced Envenom and Venom Strike. The others stumbled under the unbuffed version of Envenom, but it would take a while for the potent affliction to tear through their stout Constitutions. Still, it provided enough of a distraction to turn the tide of battle.

Soon after, the last hobgoblin fighter fell before Sadie’s Blade of the Avenger, leaving only the magma golems that had been temporarily neutralized by one of Kurik’s traps.

That wouldn’t have been possible if they’d been organic creatures, but one of his abilities worked extremely well against things like golems. He couldn’t kill them alone, but he was more than capable of keeping them immobilized for a few minutes. That, as much as anything else, had made dealing with the magma golems possible. Without the dwarven Sapper’s efforts, things would have gotten very dicey extremely quickly.

In any case, once they were isolated, Sadie took the lead, keeping the golems’ attention while Ron repaired any damage they inflicted. Without her focus on the Constitution attribute, her personal shield, or Ward of the Seasons, she would have quickly been melted by the streams of molten rock spewed by the golems. Even with all of those advantages, it took Ron’s focused attention to keep her from succumbing to so much damage.

But they managed it, giving everyone else the freedom to pelt the creatures with their most potent attacks without fear of reprisal. In that way, Elijah was more than a little grateful that the golems were not thinking creatures. Otherwise, the ensuing battle would have been much less controlled. As it stood, it took about half an hour for the group to whittle the things down. It would have been much easier if Dat could have simply used the previous methods to disable them, but each time he tried, the things erupted into a corona of fire that made that kind of tactic impossible.

Curiously, the golems didn’t die like normal creatures. Elijah wasn’t sure how it all worked, but when they took damage, they used the magma within to repair any wounds. However, that came with repercussions – chiefly, that they began to overheat. So, when they finally reached the point of no return, they didn’t just flop over like a normal creature. Instead, they exploded.

“It’s about to blow!” Elijah shouted.

Everyone scattered. Elijah and Dat retreated the way they’d approached, which took them closer to the towers. Meanwhile, Sadie, Ron, and Kurik went in the opposite direction. They only got about thirty yards away before the thing erupted like a miniature volcano. Thankfully, that caused a chain reaction as the other one took significant damage from its companion’s explosion, and it fell only a few seconds later.

Finally, the battle was finished.

Elijah took a deep breath, his lungs burning from the sheer heat of the atmosphere before he said, “If getting into the challenge is this hard, think about what it’s going to take to come out on top.”

“Yeah, bro. That’s what I’m worried about, too.”