23 Ch. 19- Monster Break Pt. 2 Jareth Smash

For every summoner, there were at least 10 monsters if not more. They seemed like an endless wave of death and chaos. Bodies, blood, and limbs were flying everywhere, an endless grinding wheel of monstrous and human bodies clashing together Wass being formed during this especially difficult phase of the monster break.

The tier 3 monsters and stronger/bigger tier 2's were showing up en mass to face against the stronger and relatively fresh middle section summoners. The first group did their best and most managed to handle it with the occasional bit of help from the back, most didn't have specialized summons like aerial or ranged summons, so those that were being used during that portion of the battle were from the stronger reserve summoners.

We had managed to maintain the lines so far and were about 3 football fields away from the gate currently, this wouldn't last forever, but we would try and hold for ass long as possible. The problem with group fights like this is that it relies far more on teamwork and stamina than individual might.

The stronger summoners that would normally be able to mow through the current crowds were required to maintain the line and stick with the rest. Those that went too far ahead would be swallowed up by the horde of monsters and attacked from all sides until they died, I was not seeking death and so I decided that I would do my best to not go off seeking glory.

We were staggered and spread out as much as possible to allow for as many people as possible to fight off the monsters, there wasn't much room and what little there was, was littered with dead bodies. It had become a job for those in the back lines to prevent the bodies from piling up too much and tripping up the fighters at the front.

Walls were being made from bloodied corpses both monster and human alike. Some summoners with more supportive or industrious summons were be especially ingenious and were using their summon's abilities to bind or cement the bodies to make immovable walls of flesh. These makeshift barricades helped us to prevent monsters from leaking through in areas that couldn't fully be covered, and even served to allow for short breaks from exhausted fighters before once again entering the fray.

My team and I had just moved up to the front with the rest of the early reinforcement summoners and their summons. It was extremely difficult to move with the mass of exhausted summoners fleeing to the back lines for rest and safety, all the while the reinforcements were doing their best to push up as fast as possible in order to not lose any extra ground on the battlefield that had been so hard fought for. I had Jareth making way ahead of me pushing through the throng with barely contained fury and anticipation at the coming slaughter.

We were at the right section of the northern portion of the fighting force and what we were facing were mostly tier 3 forest monsters and especially strong tier 2's like; hobgoblins, goblin variants, imps, kobolds, terror birds, centaurs, satyrs, bladed mantis, dryads, earth and wood golems, a few wyrms towards the back end of this wave, feathered serpents, elementals, leopards, tigers, wolfs, and some undead like zombies, skeletons, and ghouls, amongst other things.

Point is that was just what I saw with a peripheral glance and there seemed to be no real pattern to any of it. They charged with suicidal intensity and would do anything to take down any summons or humans that they came across until they were put down.

The undead were especially hard, they were relentless and aside from destroying them completely or damaging the brain they would continue attacking. I even had a clattering skull attempt to take a bite out of my foot as I walked by, I put a quick stop to that one by crushing it underfoot with a satisfying and loud snap of cranial bones giving way.

Once we finally made it out to the frontlines of battle and had enough room to properly fight, I sent Brutus and Jareth out ahead of me to take on the rushing monsters. Jareth roared out in a warlike cry promising death and rushed out with both of his weapons in hand. Every step he took was met with a swing of one of his blunt instruments of death.

The weaker goblins and skeletons in front of him were crushed in a single swing, each impact led to gore exploding out in a splatter of gore and shattered bones. Soon enough, Jareth was covered in the blood of his enemies and stood around like a red-painted war god, nothing seemed to be able to stop him until he got locked in a battle with a bladed mantis.

They crossed weapons a few times, and put a stop to Jareth's momentum, which was probably for the better as he was getting a bit too far out into the crowd of monsters. His hide was the only thing saving him currently, as he was beset upon by a throng of gnomes with miniature weapons in hand, they made little scratches on his legs with their weapons but weren't much more than an annoyance.

Eventually, Jareth became fed up with their interference in his fight and spun around with his iron mace in a counter-clockwise direction and smashed all of them into bits. With the annoyances taken care of, Jareth decided to end his brief fight and activated the gravity function of the Warhammer, it blew right through the guard of the mantis and completely decapitated the giant insect, leaving only a stump spewing a blue-green blood from its' severed arteries.

I was quick to command Jareth back a bit to make a stand along the line, albeit a bit farther than those beside me. He brought the mantis back with him and I was quick to store it before focusing once more on the battle.

Brutus wasn't idle either all this time, he was running around Jareth and taking out the vulnerable monsters attempting to attack him from the sides. He was quick to dart around while hiding in the shadows and chaos of the battlefield and ripping the monsters apart with his claws and teeth before they even knew what hit them.

Any stronger monsters like the pair of hobgoblins that spotted and faced Brutus were quickly dealt with after an illusion Wass created to occupy one while the grim dove into a random monster's shadow and came out from behind the hobgoblin and tore out its' neck before it even knew that its' opponent was attacking it after disappearing. It was left to bleed out and die with a look on utter confusion to be seen on its' face.

This had all taken place in the matter of a seconds and by the time that the illusion Wass smashed and seen through, Brutus was right by its side after taking care of the partner and pounced and took down the green-skinned monster. Brutus savagely tore into the disoriented monster and was efficient in killing it by repeating what it had done to the previous hobgoblin and ripping out the throat. I went near the battle site about 10 feet in front of me and stored those bodies ass well.

My summons were working as a perfect machine with Jareth tanking the monsters and grabbing their attention while tearing them down with vicious blows. All the while, Brutus snuck around and protected Jareth's sides by quickly dealing with them in efficient moves aimed at their weak points with swipes of his claws or bites from his jagged maw. Together they were ripping monsters apart with bodies piling up often.

Jareth was well within the throes of rage from the potion as he continued to take on any threats within reach, any time he was surrounded he would simply spin like a top with blunt weapons extended. Just like I had imagined when buying the special Warhammer, Jareth seemed to be handling it just fine and was unleashing twice the damage with it. Anything within the range of his weapons while spinning were either damaged and thrown back, or completely obliterated like something caught in a blender.

The weight and inertia of the weapons was doing all of the work for him, he simply held them firmly and extended them as much as possible. He limited doing this move to whenever he was surrounded, it took quite a bit of energy to do it and he was still unused to the dizzy feeling following it.

We weren't alone on the battlefield, as our neighbor to the right had summon of a giant wolf and a socket lizard which would paralyze anything within a certain radius and made for easy pickings with the wolf dealing the final blows. To our left was a death worm interestingly enough, and it seemed to be doing even more damage than Jareth with its' school bus sized body and the wicked circular mouth of razor blades that demolished anything under it.

The only downside was the faster monsters that were getting by it, but there were summoners behind us to sweep up anything we missed, their job was just as important as mine on the frontline as they prevented monsters from attacking our exhausted or injured when they have no defense of their own.

I was having a much easier time in the battle than my summons, and aside from the potential for death, screams of the injured and dying, the horrible smell and sight of bodies and entrails everywhere, it wasn't too bad picking up said bodies while warding off monsters.

Not many managed to get past my summons and the ones that did were only fast and were easily taken care of with a slice or two of my blade, only one especially fast monster made me use a skill to avoid death. I hardened myself right before the sharp claws of the panther pierced me, and instead only broke the outer-layer of skin. I cancelled the skill after the claws had passed and regained my speed just in time to block another blow and then retaliate by jamming the point into its' chest cavity and shearing its heart to kill it near instantly.

It was in all sense of the word a "paper-tiger" and could only deal damage, but not take it, which is made even more ironic because the monster was a feline. Dropping the body into my storage I went off closer to my summons as we pushed forwards a small bit, the cannon fodder had been used up at this point after about 40 minutes of fighting and now there were only monsters worth storing.

We must have collectively killed at least 350 monsters during this time, and I had filled up about 10 cubic meters of space already with lower tier 3 monsters, but now I could make some real money with these stronger monsters.

I regretted my eagerness when a freezing wyrm that had been hidden in the back of the second wave came forward to fight us. Jareth and Brutus grouped up more in preparation to face the wingless dragon-kin, it had icy-blue scales and white plates on the underside of its' body. The head had little sharpness to its' features, but still retained a fairly lizard-like overall appearance, and there was the beginning of a horn on the forehead of it.

Overall it looked like a horse-sized blue lizard, but its' breath puffed out in white snow of frozen droplets of moisture, half of the moisture in the air around it was blood that had been sprayed into the atmosphere or evaporated from the blood pools soaking into the soil. The snow-mist breath was pink from the white of snow and red of blood and looked rather ominous. I warned Jareth to be weary of its breathe that could shoot out large chunks of ice, it wasn't up to par with the breathe of a frost drake that could send out a wave of frost that could turn opponents into icicles, but it could still do some damage.

Jareth charged ahead when the wyrm stepped up to fight, the already close distance closed even more as Jareth went in with his hammer reared to attack. The wyrm met the weapon with one of its' frost-tinted claws, but was met unexpectedly with an extremely heavy impact from the previously unassuming weapon. The gravity hammer had broken the paw and claws used to bat at the weapon, and and now it was hanging from the front left leg in a hurt stance.

It was now compensating for the damaged limb that severely limited its' mobility by driving Jareth away from it with a chunk of ice expelled with blinding speed toward the metallic hobgoblin at point-blank range. There was no time for Jareth to dodge and was forced to bear the brunt of the bowling ball-sized block of dense ice, the armor I had put on him was annihilated as a result of the ice shot from the angered overgrown lizard. Jareth was shot back from the blow and had a hard time getting up from the ground, and was now shirtless with a giant purple indentation where the projectile hit. The armor did its' job however, and instead of deeply damaging some bones and internal organs, there was only a large bruised area around the breastbone and two cracked ribs.

Each fighter was damaged and Jareth was moving noticeably slower from that attack, the potion was helping him block out the pain and had reduced the damage some to prevent the attack from becoming lethal. The wyrm still had a ranged move, but it seems that it takes a bit of time to gather enough ice to shoot out, and so Jareth was safe to approach for now.

Brutus was as always waiting undetected for an opportune moment like what happened with the death worm that he defeated and then evolved into a grim which ironically happens to be associated with death. From the pattern I had noticed, my summons seem to take on some traits or skills from the monster whose core they devour to finally evolve as long as it suits them in some way. I was working with this theory and figured I probably lucked out on finding a suitable evolution monster to battle and then devour, although they each took some time to find, with many other battles having occurred before meeting them.

Anyway, Brutus was in wait and sneaking up to the side of the wyrm as Jareth attempted to clash once again with it. Jareth once again threw everything into the gravity hammer and the wyrm was smart but unfortunate enough to be forced to sacrifice its' already injured paw to deflect the blow, since using another limb would result in being immobile and easy prey. It wailed in pain from the unfortunate attack, and while distracted, Brutus rushed in under the monster and used his teeth to ravage the weak leathery underside of the land-bound dragon-kin.

This further incensed the wyrm and it seemed to have the perfect counter measure to prevent anymore damage from being done to it, it simply allowed itself to fall down and let gravity and the heavy weight of the dense lizard body to immobilize Brutus under it. This move saved it from further damage to it's' underside, but that victory Was short-lived as Jareth rushed in once again with the hammer and bashed it on the side of the head that was brought down to shoulder height after falling down on Brutus.

The dragon had a serious dent on the side of the head and even had a pulped eye from the force of the blow. This signaled the end of the dragon as it was dazed from the 1-ton blow and was open to more attacks to it. Being unable to move and already injured the head was smashed continually until it was no longer moving and remained on the ground with no further twitching. Monsters had gone to other parts of the battlefield to avoid being mixed up in the crossfire of the epic fight, so I was free to go up to the wannabe-dragon and was about to store the body before thinking for a moment.

The wyrm had plenty of potential as a summon and was able to fight off my summons for about five minutes before succumbing to the the both of them, it would make an excellent companion and it was rare to come across any of these types of monsters. Since it was still in a rather basic evolutionary stage, I would be able to grow the summon and receive more benefits for evolutions, it was more work, but would result in a stronger team in the end.

There were many of the experienced summoners who had been doing this since the beginning, and they all had full teams of summons, the only thing limiting them is trying to advance them all, and only being able to summon out so many at a time. By choosing summons with great potential they are paving the way for them to grow stronger when others would stagnate after using up the evolutionary potential of their summons and being stuck with mediocre advanced summons.

This was a long ways away, but it wouldn't hurt to have a dragon based monster on my team to cover up some weaknesses in my formation, now I would have a ranged attacking monster that may even be able to fly later.

With that having been decided I cut into the breast area of the monster and where a heart would be is the core. Pulling it out, I see the white-blue hue of the cold to the touch crystal, I place the core on the body in order to bond with it.

Before I do, I send Jareth and Brutus to ward off any monsters while I complete the bond and am vulnerable. With distractions and danger taken care of, I cut the tip of my finder and bleed a few drops onto the core, which begins to glow with a blinding light. As this change occurs, I begin to feel a foreign energy attempting to merge with me, and I do nothing to stop it. After about a minute of solidifying the summoning bond, it is finally complete and I feel a connection to my previous scaly foe.

It seems proud but loyal to me after showing my might and defeating it, and I couldn't be happier with my decision. Not only do I have an additional summon to fight with during this battle after a little bit of recovery, but I also got a rare opportunity to bond with a strong dragon-kin. The wyrm, which I decided to name Jotun due to his ice aspect, revives just like other summons do without the negative of losing any gained experience while trying to evolve, but he will need another 5 minutes to fully recover and solidify before summoning. This is perfect as it is getting close to the end of the hour that Jareth has in his rage potion before becoming fairly weakened from over-exertion.

I call Jareth over and rubbed about an eighth of the healing salve over his chest and saw immediate results with the purple bruise lightening in hue and reducing at a rate visible to the eye. The remaining bits on my hand I rubbed over the faint scratch I had gotten earlier from the panther. Brutus was fine if not a little tired from all of the activity, we were all used to exercise and exerting ourselves for long periods of time, but this was near constant fighting and even we were feeling the exhaustion begin to set in.

My neighbors seemed to be no better off as the death worm was just lazily rolling around to crush those near it, and was more of an obstacle than a fighter. My other neighbor's giant wolf was covered in wounds and was heaving for breathe with its tongue out desperately panting for air. The socket lizard was out of electricity and barely had any electricity branching around it. Both of the summoners saw the state of their summons and switched them out for new summons, or ran to the back of the line to recover in relative safety.

The hardest part was coming soon, and the real dangers would be coming, the third wave was when most of the casualties occurred, and even those not fighting wouldn't be safe. There was a decent amount of time left till then, and so I paced my team by heading back a bit and letting others cover for me while having Jareth rest when he could and take care of the occasional stray monster.

We only needed about 5 minutes of this before being able to head back to the frontlines. Brutus was run ragged and finally became too tired to fight anything off, I unsummoned him to allow his muscles to recover for later on in the second half of the 2nd wave. Deciding that Jotun had had enough time to solidify, I summoned him out to fight alongside Jareth for the last 5 minutes or so that he could fight before the potion wore off.

We charged in almost recklessly and began to take monsters out left and right, I had Jotun hold off on using his breath due to the relatively large recovery time just in case he ran into a situation that required its' use. Bodies began to stack up and I was filling my storage more and more with these larger tier 3 corpses. Battles began to take longer as stronger and stronger opponents appeared, fights would take 3 minutes for what used to take about 30 seconds at most.

All good things must come to an end, and the time for the potion finally ran out. Jareth had noticeably weakened and was hunched over in exhaustion, his skin had also paled a few shades from the weakening after-effects of the potion. Seeing him like this, it seems I had underestimated the side-effects of the potion and should have saved it for the last half of my two hour wave at least. It's too late for regrets, and as a plus I have another strong tier 3 summon to cover for him.

I recalled Jareth as having him around now was a liability, and stayed well within the center of the frontline so that we had allies surrounding us when fighting monsters. I wouldn't trust sending a lone summon out at the very end of the frontlines for anything to attack him, not to mention the seemingly endless tide of summons would tire him down until he was taken down. With no other summons to rely on for effective backup, I kept him close to me and allowed him to fight as many as possible within a safe margin.

At this time, my storage had been filled till there was only about 15 cubic meters left with bigger monsters beginning to take up more space within. Quite a few valuable monsters had been killed and acquired, not to mention the amount of merit points given out for each monster defeated. My count was reaching close to a thousand at this point, although most were lower tier monsters.

I had Emett on standby to help with any imminent dangers, but so far nothing had occurred that warranted bringing him out. He would be mostly ineffective against these stronger tier monsters fighting during the 2nd wave, at best he would be a shield against an attack, but I would prefer not to be in that position anyway.

With Jotun fighting in the now middle section of the upfront fighting summoners all was going well and we were maintaining the line so far, 30 minutes passed like this and Brutus was finally rested enough to fight again, so I brought him out as well.

We went up front once again and my newly acquainted summons began to team up and take down any monsters in their path until they met a tier 4 orc that had riddled its' way up the battlefield. It had a vicious looking dirty grey metal axe and raggedy leather clothing. His most eye-catching features had to be bright green skin marred by tan scars and blood, and his prominent tusks jutting out from the lower section of his mouth.

He looked like a weathered warrior and bellowed loudly before charging at Jotun. Not wanting my wyrm to get caught in a battle of strength against an opponent with a blade, I had him shift to the side and blast out an ice ball right at it to stop him from gaining any momentum. The ball hit directly and even though the opponent was a tier 4 monster, it was on the lower end and it was apparent to me that it was definitely feeling that hit, he is about at the level of Jareth while on a rage potion.

As the orc remained in place, Brutus and Jotun pincer attacked the hulking green figure. Brutus jumped on top of and brought him down to the ground, while Jotun moved up and used his sharp claws resembling icicles to maul the downed humanoid until the rib cage was easily visible and the beast stopped moving.

Orcs were a monster that exceeded in combat and intelligence, but when Jotun disrupted and injured him before even getting to charge at them properly, it was thrown off balance and any strength advantage was negated when he fell on the ground. With that battle taken care of and no serious injuries on my summons due to the element of surprise, we continued to battle until about 10 minutes were left in the second wave.

At that point, the remaining monsters kicked it up and the weaker of the tier 4's began to mix in regularly. This wasn't too much of a problem as summoners began to work together to bring them down with the average strength of the summons out at this point at mid tier 3 at least. We took down a few, before I heard a scream not too far away from me.

This wasn't unusual to hear as many had already died during this venture, but what really caught my attention was how close to me it was and the bright red hair of the person yelling out, it seemed familiar for some reason. Seeing that my summons were done with their most recent opponent, I decided to rush over and help her.

Running over, I saw what caused her to scream for help, it was two large grayish-green ogres that had settled on attacking her. A bladed mantis Was locked in close combat with one and seemed to be on the loosing end as the blades weren't sharp or long enough to inflict any real damage, the blubber of the whale-on-legs was protecting it from most damage from any blades.