Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Chapter 127

*WHOOSH*

Azmoth immediately tore forward and slammed a foot down in the direction of the oncoming projectiles, not wasting any time and sending a shockwave of kinetic energy through the air. Stone shrapnel form the cave floor was thrown up, creating a temporary cloud of dust, and vast majority of the projectiles shattered or were thrown aside due to the shockwave.

But three made it through.

Mesha squealed in pain and hit the ground, a crossbow bolt protruding from her back while a second bolt clipped Snagger on the shoulder to make him grunt. Simultaneously the other rogue, Bort, took a similar bolt to the eye. The small ratman dropped to the ground instantaneously, his weapons clattering to the stone floor while he slapped face-down beside them hard and lifelessly.

“KILL THE BEASTS!!! KILL THEM ALL!!!” a deep, bellowing voice roared out, and in an instant a party of at least over thirty stout, bearded men came tearing through the tunnels leading further into the Underdark.

[Dwarf Warrior]

[Dwarf Warrior]

[Dwarf Warrior]

[Dwarf Sharpshooter]

The dwarves and ratmen alike were able to see in the deep tunnels of the planet just like Riven could, that much was made very clear by the way their coordinated movements and the lack of actual light. To a normal human, the only think they’d have seen would be Riven’s glowing red eyes or the flames beginning to billow around Azmoth’s fused black plate armor and the maul he carried.

The stout men bore heavy metal crossbows on their backs, large stone axes in their hands, some of them had thick round shields, and all of them had heavy stone plate mail armor that looked incredibly heavy to wear. The warriors were all rather thick, muscular, and about four to five feet tall apiece.

Azmoth responded with a roar and tore through the black depths to meet them head on, blowing up into an inferno and bringing his hellforged maul swinging overhead. The weapon glowed a bright orange intermixed with yellows and reds, the magma along its stone body coming to life, and with a thunderous stroke downwards Azmoth smashed the first two dwarves with overwhelming force.

The room reverberated under the impact, and an explosion of magma tore out from Azmoth’s position to shower more of the short stout men like the eruption of a volcano. Thick, molten, flaming metal splashed in a wave in front of the demon’s position and a number of the dwarves ahead of him screamed in shock. Simultaneously Azmoth’s armored, eel-like maws extended out from his back over his shoulders to breathe more flames onto the incoming enemies, baking many of them alive and stopping the brunt of their attack with an abrupt, stupefied halt.

Two blood lances whizzed past like streaks of crimson through the dark. The unfortunate dwarves in the front that met those blood lances were each sent backflipping when their heads and helmets exploded. More crimson mana began to stream out of the charred corpses on the ground like silky ribbons, flowing to collect into a red orb in front of Riven as a power reservoir, and Athela jumped up to the cave ceiling to begin making her way around for a flank.

Snagger rushed over to Mesha who was still writhing on the ground and clutching at the bolt in her back. The large ratman inspected her briefly, and then screamed in rage before he leaped towards one of the armored enemies that’d managed to make it around the demon’s flames.

Not wanting to hurt Snagger with friendly fire, Riven decided not to send in a barrage of exploding discs - but rather he began to collect more blood lances and started attaching wretched snares for the slingshot effect. Even more dwarves were rushing in anyways and most had put away their crossbows in favor of close combat weapons.

Axes slashed, cut and bounced off of Azmoth’s enormous body while the large demon snapped necks with his claws, crushed bodies with his maul, and ripped off plate mail to better expose his enemies while breathing fire and cackling all the while.

*CRASH*

Riven’s crackling beam of black lightning ripped across seven of the dwarves simultaneously, killing two outright just as an orb of purple energy rocketed out from Cheshish - the ratman caster, burying itself into the gut of one of the oncoming enemies and exploding in shrapnel made of stone and body parts.

Unfortunately two more dwarves dressed in brown robes had stayed in the backline and returned fire with spells of their own. From beneath Cheshish a large hand of stone ripped from the cave floor and grasped at the rat, squeezing at him and crushing him as he squealed until his body exploded from the force.

Riven had to dodge a similarly targeted spell, but he was far faster than Cheshish had been and knew Athela was already on the lookout for any potential backline casters or sharpshooters. The enemy mages would be dealt with soon enough, he trusted Athela’s judgement.

His body lit up with red electricity when yet another stone hand ripped out of the cave floor and he riftwalked past the enemy spell - landing right in the fray amidst Azmoth and Snagger with a tear in space to expel his body.

*WHAM*

Riven’s staff sent a shockwave of shadow magic as its spikes near the top blade collided with one of the dwarves from the side. The dwarf only had time to blink in shock at Riven’s abrupt appearance before his body was launched into the opposite cave wall, crashing to the ground in a limp heap atop his weapon.

The dwarves were still very surprised about the resistance, but they were trying to rally and redoubled their efforts while screaming out crazed war cries and banging their weapons on thick metal shields. “TOGETHER MEN!!! BRING THE DEMON DOWN!!!”

Snagger’s spiked gauntlets crashed into enemies one after the other with quick blurring motions, dancing back and forth between axe swings and taking an occasional clip here or there. Azmoth took most of the attention by taking on seven at once, tossing dwarves overhead and punting the smaller enemies across the cave while shrugging off most of the blows made against him.

A pang of hunger washed through Riven’s body.

*SNAP*

“BY GROM’S BEARD WILL THIS CREATURE NOT JUST DIE ALREADY!?”

“AZMOTH DOES NOT FEAR DWARFLINGS!!! AZMOTH WISHES TO PLAY!!!”

*CRACK*

*THUD*

It was like watching kittens trying to kill a fully fledged adult rhinoceros due to the size difference, and Azmoth had come into a habit of batting them across the cave as hard as he could with his maul or tail; seeing them crunch or splat against the stone cave while he let out comical demonic grunts of amusement. The warriors were just too weak to bring him down, their weapons only scratching his obsidian plates.

*RIP-RIP-RIP-RIP-RIP*

Stones of all shapes and sizes rapidly tore out of the ceiling overhead, centered on Azmoth’s position, and after they started to glow with an unnatural brown light - they rocketed downwards with the fury of a torpedo. Azmoth only had a brief moment to look up, but then slammed one hand down onto the ground in an explosion of flame.

Abruptly a dome barrier of infernal mana bloomed out around the demon, evaporating two nearby enemies with a pulse of hellfire far stronger than his normal fire breath, and the very ground beneath Azmoth’s feet began to melt. The temperature was so extreme in fact that Riven’s eyes hurt just from looking that way, but it only lasted for a few seconds.

The incoming enemy spell ripped downwards and collided with the flaming barrier, the mana-infused stones disintegrating upon contact and turning into ash that floated away with the dull current of wind. Azmoth looked up from where he now knelt in a pool of lava, grinning at the awestruck mage in the background past the stunned warriors nearby - just as the mage’s head was severed from his body in a lightning-fast strike from behind via one of Athela’s blades. Chaos erupted in the backlines a second later, and Azmoth began to cackle when the flaming dome dissipated.

There was no doubt in Riven’s mind. Even since he’d acquired Azmoth as a familiar, the hellscape brutalisk had increased his defensive prowess and ability to take hits drastically. He’d been a tank since stepping out of the nether realms on that very first day back in the dungeon Negrada, but now that stat points and evaluations had been stacked so much over the course of leveling up... it was just unfair. It made Riven curious: Just what level WERE these dwarves at?

He needed to get an identifier in the party.

Riven teleported left, his body vanishing through another rift. He exploded into the air again, his body materializing right behind another of the dwarves who thought they’d take care of Mesha and Snagger in the backline.

“Not today, motherfucker!”

*CRUNCH*

Riven’s staff extended its blade like a whip, and it lit up with crimson light when the weapon ability ‘scorpion’s sting’ activated. The blade shifted and blasted through the air like a ribbon of death, cleaving through the necks of the two enemies in less than a second before rapidly snapping back onto the head of the staff with a thunk.

He slowly turned, staring down two more warriors who warily eyed him amidst the sprawled out corpses of their allies.

Riven’s aura exploded upon their attempt at assassination of his newfound rat-oriented friends. The energy his aura released was a violent mixture of raw anger and visible crimson power that caused the cave to start freezing around him. Stone protrusions started accumulating frost, the air around him started to simmer, and his red eyes grew even brighter to spider-web across his faces in lines of power.

Hunger raced through him yet again.

The power spiked and the cave shook when he fed even more of his mana into the aura. His cloak billowed out around him in the storm he’d created, and the dwarf assassins quickly stepped back with wide eyes. Stone shrapnel ripped off the walls and joined the rippling waves of mana, and the vampire lifted one hand - palm up and body engulfed with roaring energy - to beckon them with his fingers.

“Come.”

The smaller, thicker, armored men took one look at each other in stunned silence. Then their grimacing faces became stoney, they gave each other a nod, and they charged.

It was brave, Riven had to give them that, but it was also very stupid. As soon as they hit the cyclone his aura produced, their bodies began to rip apart like paper through a shredder. Riven just watched silently and unmoving as the two warriors tried to push through. Watched as one of them had the flesh stripped off his face and the stone plates carved off his body before he was torn asunder completely. Watched as the other dwarf managed to barely make it through the torrent of wailing crimson winds, only to take a single step beyond it and fall over dead - bleeding out on the ground with his body ravaged.

Well that’d been easy enough. Test run complete.

The remaining dwarves who’d been fighting Azmoth began to retreat with fearful shouts of despair, sprinting back towards the tunnel where Athela was finishing off another four mages that’d come at the dead end of the enemy column - piles of debris and stone littering the ground around her while her most recent target lay bleeding out on the floor and impaled by one of her arachnid legs. She saw them coming and quickly began spinning a web to slow them down - dashing back into the tunnels where she knew they’d go and blurring up-down, side-to-side, with dozens of threads attaching from wall to wall or floor to ceiling every few seconds.

Azmoth tossed his latest victim’s ripped corpse to the floor and let out a roar reminiscent of a T-Rex off those Jurassic Park movies Riven had seen growing up. The monstrous demon lunged ahead to chase them down with his tail sweeping out behind him, being far slower than Athela but about as fast as the dwarves were. With Athela slowing them down, tangling them up in her crimson webs and Riven firing off blasts of black lightning and blood lances over Azmoth’s shoulders across the downwards slope - the dwarves quickly succumbed one after another. This lasted only half a minute, with the dwarf warriors pleading, begging for mercy and screaming curses at them until the final one died under Azmoth’s clawed foot.

Riven didn’t waste any time, and he quickly stripped his mask to begin feeding on the dead.