Arcane Apocalypse [LitRPG]

Mia watched Aiden's face relax after a few seconds, his agonised visage washed away by relief. He tried to stand, but the mage, who had dripped the potion into his mouth, kept him seated with a firm hand on the man's shoulder.

"You did enough for now, Aiden," the man whispered to the pyromaniac, probably not intending for the others to hear. Unfortunately for him, he was probably still unfamiliar with the auditory sensitivity of elves and beastkin. "Let the others pull their weight for a bit while you rest your energy channels. The pink girl said you would harm your magic permanently if you push through this."

"Fine," Aiden huffed, sending a mild glare Mia's way before settling down on the ground like a petulant child, pouting and crossing his arms.

Mia put him out of her mind, her job done with the knowledge that such a potent mage wouldn't cripple himself permanently before the major battles of the Raid.

"Rex, your squad will meet them head-on as they arrive," Brent ordered, watching the monster's approach with a white-knuckled grip on the hilt of his sword. "Seb, you cover them. If that lightning cloak paralyses anyone who attacks them, it'll be your team's job to keep them from finishing off Rex's electrocuted team. Lina, keep a big blast of wind in reserve to send them reeling if Seb's team needs an opening to get the big lug's back to safety."

The monsters were fewer now. Their once unblemished iron armour, gleaming a dark metallic grey in the dim light,t was now dented and scorched, covered in soot and blood. The previously orderly platoon of knightly monsters was now more a mob than a military formation as they scrambled over the burned, ravaged corpses of their kin, hatred burning in their beady eyes as they glared at the group of invaders.

The outriders circling them were gone; only a few riderless wolves remained, circling the invaders as their riders had been receiving special attention from the mages and especially Lina, who seemed to delight in throwing them off their mounts and leaving them struggling to stand. The air of mockery and smugness the Rift-borne creatures had around them initially had changed and twisted into one of rage and hate, driving them on into a mad charge as they came at the front line, uncaring of their own safety, tactics, or even life in favour of making their enemies suffer.

Rex eagerly complied with the Raid-leader's command, a vicious grin on his reptilian snout as he readied himself. His brazen, unspoken challenge made him the primary target of the mad monsters' ire, and the first few to reach him just charged at him thoughtlessly. They likely thought their cloak of lightning would protect them, or didn't think at all.

Rex's massive fist smashed into the chest of the first armoured Wolfling. The smaller creature, barely waist-height for the Lizardman didn't even have time to blink as his armour and chest caved in around the fist. It died standing, then its corpse was sent flying back into the mob of its kin, knocking over a few following close behind.

"That TINGLES!" Rex laughed madly, his roaring laughter reverberating in the forest as he punched, kicked and clawed through the monsters. Mia noticed what he meant. Lightning arced and jumped from the monsters over to the Lizardman, dancing over his scales in a vain attempt at harming him, but it didn't seem to bother the walking bulldozer of a man at all. "Come on, boys! Can't let the pansy mages have all the fun!"

His fellow vanguards followed close behind, following a step or two behind their leader and brawling it out with any of the small monsters that slipped by him. Mia just watched, slightly awed at the sheer carnage and savagery with which the beastkin slaughtered the monsters.

Seb followed behind them and had to help out some of the beastkin. Not all of them were as resistant to the lightning as their leaders, it seemed, their muscles locking up and spasming out of control sometimes.

Seb and his two teammates easily slid into those fights, blades and daggers slipping through gaps in the monsters' armour as they tried to finish off the paralysed beastkin.

Mia focused her attention and spells on the circling Iron Wolves, switching back to Arcane Blasts as she tried to kill them. Unfortunately, the same cloak of lightning protected the two, and the shockwaves of her prematurely detonated spells that broke the bones of the Wolflings proved insufficient to truly harm the oversized mutts.

Lori, the Earth Elementalist, assisted her with those nasty earthen spikes of hers, but even those barely penetrated the thick hides of the beasts. Slowly, they were wearing them down, though. None of the Wolves dared engage the group directly, staying back instead and waiting for … something.

Whatever it was, they didn't get the opportunity as suddenly a group of vanguards split off from the main force, led by the towering Lion-kin Konstantin. His team was not made up of only melee fighters built like Soviet-era refrigerators like Rex's, but was more balanced, made up of Konstantin as the vanguard, the healer boy, an agile melee fighter and a pair of mages.

One of the mages did … something. The spell circle blinking into existence above his palm had a shimmering prismatic colour, with deep violet being the primary colour. While Mia couldn't tell what element that was, the effects of the spell were obvious.

The wolf they were charging froze like a statue. It was moving again after only a second, shaking its head wildly and growling, but that was long enough. Konstantin was upon him, and the massive axe he wielded was already mid-motion, slamming down from above in a titanic overhead strike that split the monster's head in twain.

"Good," Konstantin grunted, already swinging about, his slitted feline eyes searching for the next prey. He picked a limping Wolf, one Mia guessed one of her Blasts had injured the leg of. "That one. How many more of those do you have in you, Samantha?"

The mage who'd cast the strange spell — Samantha — looked slightly winded, and Mia took the tide of the battle, turning against the monsters to examine her. She was maybe thirty, quite pretty and clearly of Asian ancestry with lidded eyes and darker skin than she was used to in Austria. Her dark black hair had a single lock that was different gradients of purple, lighter and lighter towards the tip.

Her eyes were most interesting. They were vivid purple and reptilian, slitted like a snake's and without the white sclera a human's eyes would have. Then she opened her mouth, a forked, serpentine tongue slipping out of her mouth to taste the air before answering. "Four. Five of the others are a bit weaker than this one was."

She had a strange lisp, her 'S' sounds coming out more like hisses, but she was clearly trying to suppress the strange accent.

"Good," Konstantin grunted with evident glee. He raised his trunk-like hand with the massive battle-axe still held in it and used the weapon to point at the largest remaining Iron Wolf. "Stun that beast for me, then rest and conserve your mana. We will handle the rest of them without your support. Cast your magic at my command."

Samantha just nodded, falling into step behind the rest of her squad as Konstantin led the way with a savage grin splitting his bestial maw.

Mia kept them in her peripheral vision, but focused more on the main force duking it out with the armoured Wolflings. She couldn't really do much to help them, though it didn't seem like they needed it, as Rex and his squad seemed to press forward like an unstoppable force. They were the tip of the spear, with the others close behind and focusing on the disorganised and maddened monsters.

The scent of blood and death hung heavily in the air, matched by savage roars and screeches of pain, followed by the unmistakable sound of flesh tearing beneath sharp steel.

It was a slaughter, war, though Mia didn't delude herself into thinking this was anything like true war. She didn't feel like her life was under threat, and neither did she lose anyone; none of her allies were killed at all, either. And the enemies, she didn't feel a shred of guilt or pity over their fates, for they were monsters and death was all they deserved.

Still, she couldn't help but imagine. What if those corpses were of humans? What if that one Wolfling corpse torn apart at the waist was just … a human? What if the wolfling whose neck she had snapped was a beastkin? How would she feel then? Would she have hesitated if the beastkin had rushed her the same way the mad beasts had, with murder and hate in their eyes?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Horrible, dark emotions roiled in her gut. She probably would have hesitated, she told herself, but she knew she would have cast the spell, nonetheless. Mia valued her own life quite highly, and keeping it going was her top priority in life.

Still, the fact that these were just disgusting little monsters washed away any of the guilt she would have felt at bringing about such a slaughter.

Disgusting little monsters, is it now? Mia mused to herself with a wry smile. She wasn't even sure anymore whether that came from her Fae blood or from her own experiences. The suffering, pain and death she had seen in the monsters' wake as she helped the soldiers push the front lines towards the south more than made them deserving of the title, and of an agonising death.

A sickening crunch of bones cracking and getting mulched far too close for comfort snapped Mia's attention back to the present. Her gaze snapped to the left and down, finding Carmilla's metal-heeled boots ankle deep in the skull of a Wolfling.

Mia's nose wrinkled as she saw brain-stuff cover the leather boots, and then she almost gagged at the wet squelching sound as the vampire stepped out of the pulped monster head.

"It was alive," Camie said a bit defensively. "I saw it preparing to move and claw your face off."

"Well, thanks for saving me," Mia said, breathing through her mouth shallowly and avoiding looking at the disgusting scenery around her in favour of the canopy above. "It was still extremely disgusting."

"That's death for you," Camie said with a nonchalant shrug. "I'll … be cleaner with the next one?"

"Thanks," Mia said, putting on a wan smile. It was still disgusting, and the crack followed by the squelching sound still rang in her ears, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand in revulsion.

However, she also felt disappointed in herself that she had gotten so distracted inside the Rift that she had allowed a monster to get so close to her. Focusing on her Spirit Sense and peering through the thick miasma, she spotted four more presences emanating from wolflings that looked more dead than some of the real corpses around them.

It was quite stunning how the one closest to her didn't so much as twitch as it slowly bled out through a cut-off arm and a deep wound on the stomach. Another of the survivors had its jaw torn right off and its legs crushed. A third had a thick spike of earth pinning it to a tree. None of them moved; they didn't even breathe.

They also didn't have the lightning cloak that had protected them against her spells before. So it was with a wicked grin that Mia swapped her active spell circle over to piercing Bolt, then walked over to the nearest live Wolfling like she was ignorant of its prepared ambush.

She sent a look to Carmilla just as the redhead was about to warn her, causing the vampire to snap her lips shut and blink in confusion. It took her a moment to realise Mia knew the monster was alive and was walking towards it despite that. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she looked ready to object, but held her tongue, instead aiming her eyes at the monster like she wanted to blow a hole through its head with her gaze.

Mia ignored her for now, curious just what exactly the little monsters were planning. Covered as she was in two layers of Wards and bolstered by her superhuman reaction time and agility, she knew the ambush wouldn't work against her. Just in case, she also held an Arcane Shield at the ready in her left hand, a single thought away from casting.

The Wolfling didn't stir until she was so close she could have kicked it; only then did it act. Magic gathered in its body, and Mia readied her Shield, interposing her palm between her body and the monster.

The moment she felt the magic condense and activate in the monster, she finally released her pre-cast Arcane Shield and took a quick step back.

Mia wasn't sure what she was expecting, but for the magic to gather all the metallic fur on the monster into spikes, basically flaying the creature, was not it. The monster screamed, and then the spikes exploded outwards like the shrapnel of some grotesque grenade.

Mia felt her Shield crack as it warded off the majority of the spikes, then felt her Wards flare too, warding off the few stray spikes that would have lodged into her legs left unprotected by the Shield.

The monster died, its presence having shrunk to a minuscule wisp while Mia was distracted by the spikes trying to turn her into a pincushion. What little remained of its life disappeared in a final, strangled wheeze.

"It used its life force to cast that spell," Carmilla said gravely. "No … it was not a spell, but some enchantment on its body? Does that make sense? I don't think it was even aware of it, or conscious enough to trigger it."

"That's worrying," Mia said. "You said lifeforce is even more potent than mana?"

"Yes," Camie confirmed, and answered the question Mia was going to ask next preemptively. "It barely had any lifeforce since it was on death's door and was a short-lived monster besides. If a human cast a similar spell with three decades' worth of lifespan fuelling it, the magic would have been twice or maybe three times as powerful. Now, consider how powerful it could be when an elf sacrifices centuries of its lifespan to empower a proper spell aimed to make the most of that sacrifice."

Mia shuddered at the thought. That was one way to push above your weight class, and it came at the cost of the most precious resource one had: time.

"Why … you use lifeforce too, and it, sorry in advance, but it was never that powerful?" Mia asked awkwardly. "And isn't the Kithat Brent uses lifeforce too?"

"The downside of Blood magic is just that, it is still powerful, but … not making the sacrifice yourself lessens the effect," Camie said. "Magic is weird like that, and it is the same with Ki. You are not making a sacrifice when spending something you can get back with a good night's sleep. Also, I think it also had to do with potency, the lifeforce being used by someone whose spirit resonates with it and a dozen other factors you would need an academic specialising in it to explain properly. My bloodline memories are … more practical in nature."

"Gotcha," Mia hummed thoughtfully, then shook her head to stop herself from losing focus again. "Let's finish off the survivors. From a distance this time."

"Okay," Camie said with a relieved sigh. "I was starting to think you lost your survival instincts."

"Curiosity just dims them a little," Mia said with a sheepish smile, flicking off a piercing Bolt to burrow through the skull of a downed monster. "Though I doubt they were too well honed to begin with, seeing as I … well, fell for a big bad vampiress."

The redhead blushed, averting her gaze, and Mia couldn't help but giggle at the reaction. Was this the first time she admitted she fell for her aloud?

That's … damn. Mia wanted to travel a few seconds back in time and whack her past self upside the head. Confessions like that should be romantic, built up and stuff, but just … blurted out because you forgot you never admitted your feelings aloud.

Mia cleared her throat in embarrassment and strutted away, hand raised at the next lingering monster presence. "Anyway! We have monsters to kill!"

"Right!" Carmilla said, her voice barely more than a high-pitched squeak as she latched onto the change of topic.

The fight died down in just another minute, and it took another five for Mia and Carmilla to make sure all the monsters waiting to die in an explosion of spikes perished without harming anyone.

After that, the Raid party cautiously advanced, weapons and spells held at the ready as they moved in a loose formation.

Finally, they laid eyes on the settlement of their monstrous foes. It was nestled in a wide gulley, small hamlets and burrows opening up beneath the unearthed roots of the majestic silver trees and surrounded on all sides by walls built of the branches of the very same trees.

In the very centre of the camp stood the dark effigy, a towering totem made of scrap metal. At its foot stood a malformed creature, a withered monster standing on two legs and clutching a gnarled ivory staff.

The creature ever so vaguely resembled the Wolflings, though it was three times their height and had long, withered limbs as thin as sticks.

It turned from bowing before the effigy, its hunched form straightening as its horrifying visage glared at the invaders. Its head was bare of skin and flesh, leaving only the canine skull with a sickly crimson glow in its eye sockets.

The skeletal creature wore a patchwork suit of rotting animal hides and what appeared to be human skin, peeling away in places to reveal the ivory bones beneath.

"A Wendigo," Nikki muttered in horrified wonder.

Then the creature screeched, the noise driving nails into Mia's skull as she bent over and clutched her ears. The whole world seemed to tremble and break around her, leaving her floating in a void where only she and the horrid noise existed.

Her mana surged in response, flowing into her channels like a tidal wave of indignation and fury as it clashed with the cold dread that had been invading Mia's body.

The noise dimmed, and Mia could finally think again. Her head was still pounding, and dread crawled at the back of her skull; she was coherent enough to realise some malicious magic was invading her body and mind. That was all she needed to know to bolster her mana with the power of her Will, driving the storm of furious mana in her veins into an unstoppable frenzy.

The dark dread, that sick energy in her channels, clashed with her imperious Arcane mana and got torn to shreds. Her mana didn't stop; it didn't slow; it poured and poured until it chased out the invading power from every last pore of her skin. Only then did it calm and slowly start retreating back into her Core under her careful guidance.

Mia collapsed in relief at that very moment, taking in a deep gasp of fresh air as finally she saw the world snap back into place around her.

That was also the moment she realised she was not the only one struck by the horrible dark magic, but she was the first to break out of it. All around her, her comrades kneeled with their heads cradled in their hands, others lay on the ground, curled up in tiny balls, while some of the beastkin fought with enemies she couldn't see with a maddened frenzy that cared not for their disabled comrades on the ground.

Then she heard a cackle, a malicious noise of glee and mockery. She heard metal screech on metal and saw the first Wolfling's head poke out above the settlement's walls before it scrambled over it and threw itself off, only to land on all fours and charge towards the Raid party spread out across the ground.