The sky flashed, drawing in the energy of the broken altar. In the tremble of the explosion and the furious roar from Nergal, I almost missed some words aimed at me:
“…Legate!”
Looking up, I saw Shazz floating above me. He looked in a bad way even for a corpse, but he’d survived. Mystery-level Oyama, if he’d stayed longer, would have finished the lich off with a snap of his fingers, but the master of martial arts was gone, and I couldn’t damage my ally.
I guessed what I had to answer:
“But there is no death in sendee to the Destroying Plague!”
“Is that it?” The lich pointed a crooked finger at the wTeckage of the altar.
“Yes. I don’t know how long for, but all the undying ones we killed will revive far away from here now.”
“That is well,” Shazz hissed. “I need time to restore my legion.”
“What about Deznafar?”
“He will be raised again. It will take time and much energy, but I managed to preserve him. I must retreat to the stronghold, Legate. What will you do?”
“I have a mission from the Nucleus to complete…” I answered mysteriously. “Tell me, Legate, why did you not raise any of the undying?”
“The Nucleus did not order me to. In any case, the undying that we encountered today are weak. Weaker than the weakest of the local fauna. I will take into consideration my mistakes. I will erect a Plague Ziggurat and create a legion of the desert monsters. The flesh of sentients is too fragile. But that is not news.”
Done talking, Shazz floated away toward the stronghold without a word. He was lurching a little, but I saw the thousands of fine streams of energy he was pulling from the corpses.
The preventers would recover and they too would consider the lessons of the first battle. Another hundred thousand players were on their way here too.
The Holy War had officially started.
Chapter 2: No Comment
I MET THE BOYS at the Stronghold of the Destroying Plague and took us all to the battlefield with Depths Teleportation. There we ran into a relatively small group, around forty marauders already digging through loot.
The sight made my eyes widen with greed. I had to fight myself not to rush over and try to take it off them. Infect, nearly crying, guitar and horn raised, was about to run out on his own to ‘get those bastards!’ and even summoned a couple of ogre gladiators. Thankfully, Bomber stopped the bard from revealing himself and making trouble.
The boys laid down on the peak of the dune and I went to deal with the group. They were careless, drunk on their good luck.
Crash, my mighty and terrible Diamond Worm, came as the ninja-looters’ first surprise. I hadn’t brought him to the battle with the preventers, although it was within the monster’s range. Next, Storm flew in. Her low-level lightning bolts were weak against top players for now, but the psychological effect exceeded all expectations: the looters stopped picking up loot and scattered in fear.
Crash, an organic all-consuming train, swallowed one player, drilled through another with his tail and crushed a third, all in mere seconds. The dragoness distracted others, emitting roars and terrifying strikes of forked lightning.
Thanks to my pets, I approached the looters unnoticed and started taking them down one after another with ordinary Hammerfists. I had to fire off a full-series Combo against one particularly hefty knight. His full-length shield flew back in his arms with such force that its edge cut through his unprotected neck right beneath his helmet. The knight’s breastplate stove in his chest, finishing him off.
Drawing the attention of the others, I fired my Sharkon’s Mane shield, then worked with my standard Unarmed Combat moves and Reflection. The looters were level three hundred on average, roughly around my level. They didn’t even make my Diamond Skin activate. The foity marauders could do nothing against me and my pets—my health wasn’t even dowm to half.
The looters were almost all confirmed gankers, because they had high penalties, which meant a high chance to lose equipment: not only what they’d taken, but their own too. Crawler had less of a handle on his greed than I did: the undead gnome wanted to take everything, not just the epics and legendaries. The boys didn’t skip anything while collecting the loot, even picking up the occasional green. They used the ’Take all from corpse’ feature.
The boys could handle this themselves. I left them under the protection of Crash and headed to Kinema. I jumped right to the ASS building, which Grokuszuid had given me permission to do last time we’d met.
The auctioneer personally escorted me to the transport guild. As it turned out, all the key buildings of the League of Goblins were joined together in a single portal network accessible only to the green-skinned, longeared little folk themselves.
Grokuszuid introduced me to a relative of his, Gruzelix, who turned out to be a big deal in the guild. An old, hunched goblin with powerful shoulders. He shook my hand, crushing it in a death-grip. Those claws could have torn through mechatank armor. And the faded scar across his face made it clear the old goblin hadn’t spent his whole life in an office.
“I know who you are, Scyth,” Gruzelix said, baring his fangs. “Impressive, what you did in the Lakharian Desert, impressive…”
I knew how the goblins knew so much: their second divine protector Bargrivyek gave his wards information. This was exactly how the League had risen so high; they always knew what to sell to whom, and where.
With Grokuszuid as my agent, I managed to sign a very advantageous contract. The transport guild promised to provide haulers with instantaneous (well, almost) travel to the desired destination as soon as I gave the order. For that purpose, they gave me a red token: Delivery!
Rare accessory.
Order hauler services right now! Use this accessory to make an order. The Goblin League: the customer isn’t always right, but
