I hailed them, hovered before the trogg leader. Movarak turned to me.
“Chosen one of the Sleepers? Has something happened?”
“Changes to the plan.” I waited for Dekotra and Ranakotz to come up, spoke to them all. “I can redirect the wounds of sentients in my group to myself.” As priests of the Sleeping Gods, you possess the greatest strength, and that means you’ll be able to deal more damage to enemies when you’re invulnerable. I need you to agree to join my group.”
Still not understanding how NPCs saw the interface, I invited the priests of the Sleeping Gods into my raid group. A few seconds later, their portraits were added to the raid.
“One of you must go ahead and let the enemies attack you,” I said. “This is really important! Then the Sleeping Gods will quadruple my power.”
“I will do this in the name of the Inexorable One and the Sleeping Gods,” Ranakotz roared.
Kicking up sand and clanking his armor, the half-ore ran down the slope of the dune to meet the Commonwealth army.
Gritting my teeth, I still sent the Montosaurus, Storm and Sharkon after him in guard mode, just in case. The moment the half-ore took damage, my battle pets would punish the attackers harshly, allowing him to retreat to his own.
Taking off again, I saw Yemi and his healers moving toward the temple: shamans, priests, druids. Crawler, Bomber and Infect galloped along a little further away on their mechostriches. Gyula was up on a horse, and Irita was on her huge translucent wolf. The guardians, Flaygray, Nega, Ripta and Anf, ran behind them, keeping pace. Patrick flew above them all his gryphon bought in Nivelle.
Once I reached the Broken Axe ores, I repeated what I d said to the troggs and cultists, invited clan chief Sarronos and his priest Kromterokk into my group, then shot off like a bullet to the temple. Everyone I’d called was already gathered there.
Wasting no time, I invited everyone to the raid and spoke fast.
“Alright, my raid group is for those with the highest endurance. That’s guards and priests. I have the ability to take all the damage done to the raid. So I need all your healers, Yemi. Use whoever you need to fill the ranks to a hundred, but make them the strongest. While I’m alive, the raid will be invulnerable. Got the idea?”
Everyone nodded, but Yemi frowned.
“What about damage? Sure, we’ll thin out their ranks, but…”
“Leave that to me, mage. The more damage the raid takes, the better. I have to go. Healers, stay with me. The rest—gather more people and…”
I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my thigh. My health bar didn’t move thanks to Equanimity activating. Ranakotz’s portrait blinked red—it seemed the half-ore had taken an arrow to the leg. Sleeping Justice reacted right away: I got a fourfold increase to my stats and vindication, and my health, not counting the points gained by Path of Sacrifice, exceeded thirty million. The trumpet roar of the ancient reptile sounded off in the distance, alongside peals of thunder from my dragon.
“I don’t really know what’s going on, boss…” Nega drawled, but I raised a hand, interrupting the succubus…
And so as not to waste the resource coming in from Aid of the Sleepers, I fired off Sleeping Vindication. Strange. The bar didn’t restore. Had nobodv died?
“As I was saying, boss,” the succubus continued undeterred. “I don’t really know what’s going on, but I get that we’re invulnerable while you’re alive. Let’s get to work, boys!”
The priests of the Sleeping Gods and the guardians ran out of the temple to return to their previous positions. I carried Infect onto the roof, then returned to find Yoruba’s healers with Keron leading them, a thickset troll shaman who looked a lot like Ranakotz. Drums beat and horns sounded in the distance. I heard shouts in some unfamiliar language, repeating over and over, as if there was a football match on in some distant stadium and the crowd was chanting.
“Lok’Tar ogar! Lok’Tar ogar! Lok’Tar ogar!”
“Those are the ores of the Broken Axe,” one of the healers explained.
“What does it mean, what they’re chanting?”
‘Victory or death!”
I sat down in the center of the temple, closed my eyes, concentrated. There was at least five hundred yards between me and the positions occupied by the defenders. The closer the enemy came, the harder Vindication would hit…
“Holy shit, Keron!” one of the healers broke the silence. “Scyth has over three hundred million health! Have you ever seen anything like it? We got our work cut out for us!”
“Shut your mouth,” Keron said without rancor. “Just get ready to work like never before. If Scyth goes down, we all go down…”
Lowering his voice, he started explaining the healing rotation to his team, telling them who would heal me and when so as to conserve the group’s mana. Keron was an expressive man, and ‘dickhead’ was probably the least offensive word he used to address his clanmates. Aggressive guitar riffs drowned out the healer’s voice; our enemies approached, and Infect strummed out his attacking repertoire.
The battle for Tiamat’s temple had begun.
Almost at the same time, the portraits of all the raid group members started desperately flashing red. The damage redirected to me, but I had no fear for myself. Casting a glance at my pet icons and seeing they were all yellow, I called them back. They’d quickly recover out of combat.
Over the next twelve seconds, I released three full Sleeping Vindication explosions in a row—the resource recovered almost instantly. But then a bug came up that I doubted the developers could have foreseen: the damage against me started to