As I reach the edge of the city I realize something surprising: I've never seen actual large-scale combat. The chaos of the battle I'm hurling myself and my friends into is beyond anything I think I ever imagined.
The city barrier, the aegis for which the city is named, is an instrument of divinity. It is a sacred magical relic and it radiates holy energy which is something I realize fully as I draw close to it. Beyond it lies a street leading into the city and it is there where law enforcement stands shoulder to shoulder with soldiers armed with both magic and mundane weapons. They clash against a horde out of nightmares.
Shambling corpses groan in pain and rush towards soldiers and police officers, neither of whom get paid enough to deal with this kind of necromantic bullshit. Most of the undead are zombies, and not particularly sturdy ones either as they fall with ease to bullets or blades. Those that fall are quickly replaced by still animate ones who surge over, or around, the fallen.
I rush past the barrier, hissing in pain as radiant magic touches my skin. It burns but I recover by casting a simple healing spell even as I release Andrew and Arsinoe from the telekinetic hold I put them under to swiftly move us over here. The two begin to act immediately, with Andrew rushing into the fray and Arsinoe shouting a spell that buffs our allies while I move to the forefront of the battle. I turn my eyestalks on the undead closest to me not being mauled by Andrew and fire five separate damaging eyerays at my foes. Beams streak through the air and completely end zombies about to crash into a group of soldiers, turning them into piles of dust unceremoniously and giving the warriors breathing room.
Some of the soldiers in front of Arsinoe glow as they are empowered by her magic and move with renewed energy. They crash into the oncoming mass of undead bodies and roar with fury and righteous protectiveness of their home, right as a huge skeleton appears in the distance, magically teleporting into the greater metropolitan area from somewhere far away. I gaze at the monster a few miles away from my current location. It is gigantic, more akin to a geographic feature than an undead.
"Grendel! Come out and face your doom!" The monster roars, its voice loud enough to cause the ground underneath my friends to quake. It stands something like thirty feet tall and turns to face the city. It… must be Beowulf, somehow mutated and turned into something altogether stranger than a mere skeleton.
"Aegisville, for the crime of harboring Grendel I sentence you to destruction." The skeleton intones before raising its hand and lifting it to the sky. Dark energy begins to gather around its bony digits for a second as I continue to use my eyestalks to fire at my foes. The energy the skeleton gathers begins to coalesce and become something new: a spear the color of a starless sky. Faster than I can blink the skeleton chucks the spear at the barrier, doing so with something approaching disgust. I note, with a bit of interest, that the spear is a spell as I feel knowledge of how to replicate it, but on a more personally fitting scale, entering my soul.
The spear streaks through the sky and distracts the warriors fighting to protect the city, but I fire out a range of eyerays and destroy various undead about to slay friendly warriors. The magical weapon crashes against the barrier and the sound of it striking the forcefield is supernaturally loud, though the barrier does tank the blow. The realization of the fact that the city is in real danger focuses me and I immediately lock in.
"Enough!" I roar when the sound of the barrier tanking the spear fades getting the attention of both allies and enemies. Several undead warriors look at me curiously, unable to attack me first thanks to my perks, and I flip the mental switch controlling my powers, specifically my cone ability, going from using nothing to firing an enervation cone. At the same time I shut my eyes and avoid looking at my friends and our allies. I check where my head is at using my eyestalks and when I open my central eye a powerful burst of destructive necromantic power explodes outward catching dozens of members of the shambling horde meant to tire some of the city's defenders.
In an instant the tide of the battle turns as entire groups of zombies and skeletons are bathed in my powerful cone-shaped strike and collapse. My destructive power is far from perfect but it's more than enough to easily tackle cannon fodder like this, decimating dozens of simple undead monsters.
"Go back behind the barrier. My friends will hold off the horde." I say, using magic to project my voice. Andrew and Arsinoe both turn and look at me like I'm insane and I laugh before I clarify something.
"You two too. I'm not talking about you." I explain, causing them to look at each other in confusion before they decide to trust me. I retrieve my grimoire and I summon my minions, ranging from essence monsters to bounty hunters, as well as the solitary beholder. My minions fill the area even as more undead monsters appear beside the gigantic Beowulf skeleton and begin to charge towards the city. The distant monster looks at the city and begins to gather energy again. I begin to fly towards where the monster's first attack struck even as my minions meet the undead horde in battle.
Beowulf's monstrous form hurls another spear at the city's barrier as I switch my cone back to an anti-magic cone. The umbral spear speeds through the air and I turn my cone on it. The energy reaches the very edge of the cone's range and immediately fizzles out, dissipating in mid-air and even the scant few particles that reach the city's barrier disintegrate harmlessly, protecting the city. People in buildings just inside the barrier cheer as they watch it live to protect them just a little bit longer.
"Antimagic saves the day." I mutter, as the Beowulf skeleton looks at me furiously.
"You! Xen warned me about you." The skeleton roars, its voice rumbling out of it like an avalanche. It charges at me, moving frighteningly fast and causing the ground to rumble. I turn my attention on it and continue to fire off antimagic, expecting to free it from some sort of control or at least disorient it. I also don't expect it to be able to attack me directly due to it being an undead.
One of its bony hands forms a fist that streaks through the air so fast something like shockwaves form around it as I realize I made a mistake somewhere in my understanding of Beowulf's abilities. I have just enough time to turn off my ability to feel pain before the fist closes the distance between us. A creaking sound emanates from it that I realize is a triumphant laugh as its fist makes contact with me and sends me hurtling through the barrier.
I am not only punched out of the sky I am sent rocketing through the holy barrier. I feel something I've never felt before: the activation of a 1-up, specifically the 1-up I possess as a lich. The blow killed me, or it would have if not for my origin-based revival ability. I hit the street a second after being hit by the gigantic skeleton and my crash shatters the concrete beneath me causing me to form a small crater. Beowulf begins to gloat even as I begin to recover thanks to the dreadful power of a 1-up.
"I'm not undead. I'm… something else. Something abominable." The creature tells what it believes is a corpse. A real corpse, not something that'll get up and mess your day up if you get too close.
"And now to finally destroy this blasted city." Beowulf says, looking up at the barrier that still separates him from the city and from MUU. I feel my health steadily climbing and my body repairing itself right before I hear a strange sound; the distant, and quickly growing louder, sound of something like a missile streaking through the air. One of my eyestalks tilted towards Beowulf catches a glimpse of an object cutting across the sky between apartment buildings that proceeds to soar past the barrier and slam into Beowulf's ribs before immediately exploding, with the force of the explosion sending the monster shambling backwards. The monster emits a pained howl as it is knocked back.
"You. Evil. Murderous. Dickhead!" Roars a familiar voice slightly distorted by a loudspeaker. I get up and look back in the direction the rocket came from only to see Ava standing beside her father. Both of them carry joysticks and have determined looks on their faces, though tears streak down Ava's face. Behind them is a robot the size of an eighteen wheeler that is dominated by what seems to be a device carrying a payload of missiles. Ava begins to yell more, and even cuss at Beowulf but her father notices me moving out of the crater and gestures for her to look in my direction. She flashes me a stunned smile and I can almost see tears in her eyes.
"Lalo, you're alive! Uh… How?!" She asks, and I laugh and explain to her, lying, that the monster just didn't have the power needed to put me down. She grins savagely and turns back to face Beowulf before shouting taunts as she fires more missiles. Beowulf is nailed more and more, and as the missiles start to run low her father tosses her a different joystick and another robot enters my field of view with a similar payload.
"Xen! Ranthor! Help me!!" Beowulf screams as he is sent crashing to the ground by another wave of missiles. I begin to move towards the monster, staying low to the ground, and intending to help finish it off right before two balloon-shaped silhouettes materialize next to it. The abominable beholders let out cruel peals of laughter as they fully appear, while I cross the barrier again and summon more of my minions. I split my attention between the two beholders. Beowulf hears his allies cry out in shock when I close the distance and he moves at truly supernatural speeds to try and grab me only to be interrupted when a massive shape, though one smaller than his thirty-plus foot frame, rockets past the barrier and tackles his fist.
"Beowulf you call me a monster but look at what you've become." Grendel, now a hulking thirteen foot bipedal beast, snarls. He is shirtless and he has dark green skin and I can feel his fury.
"Grendel. Fine. I'll kill you first." Beowulf hisses and his skeletal eyes begin to fill with light the color of blood. A rocket slices through the air between the massive monster and the enormous skeleton and embeds itself in Beowulf's skeletal face, where a nose would be on someone else, for a tenth of a second before exploding.
"Hey! Don't forget about me!" Ava screams, causing Grendel to laugh uproariously as he leaps at the monster.
"Beowulf you bastard! In the midst of this drama I forgot about the biggest difference between us: I am not alone." The troll shouts, as the beholders and I exchange projectile attacks in the air above their fight.
I remain locked in battle with the beholders for several minutes as Beowulf and Grendel duke it out below me. Clever use of anti-magic rays forces Ranthor; the solitary beholder, to stay away, while Xen has to try and stay out of the range of my anti-magic cone. Even though I'm outnumbered, my nasty array of abilities makes me an unpleasant foe, since if I catch one of these two slipping even once I can pretty decisively end the fight and turn my full fury on the last beholder. That, coupled with the fact that if Beowulf falls my allies can turn their full fury on the beholders means that is a fight for their very lives.
Another tense minute passes with the sounds of our rays and magical duel being occasionally interrupted by the sounds of enormous blows down below us. Ranthor suddenly roars in anger and begins to charge forward, trying what is essentially a hail-mary and is abruptly stopped when he lets out a fearful sound and dodges out of the way of a spear made of sand, a blazing ankh, and a bullet coated in dragon's fire. Arsinoe, Kleoshebet, and Rachel fly up and take up a position behind me. All three of them are using technology to fly rather than magic and all three are armed with weapons that are supernatural but not magical in nature: Arsinoe is holding a collection of small, blessed ankhs, Kleoshebet holds blessed sand, and Rachel is holding a gun. The power of friendship and sociality is what has carried the day so far. And now it seems like the power of friendship and Rachel's handmade gun will be what saves the city of Aegisville.
"Go after the undead one!" Kleoshebet commands, and though he can't see me I grin monstrously. Xen glares at me coldly as my eyestalks turn and focus entirely on him. I can hear the sound of eyerays streaking towards my friends before the tidal-wave-like sound of a gigantic sandstorm drowns it out. Big CGI fight, indeed.
Xen fires several rays at me, focusing his fury on me, but I cancel them out with my antimagic cone. He flies backwards, trying to stay away from me while peppering me with rays that I cancel out. Just like with Xanthogos; a death tyrant is just a rotten matchup against me.
"I'm coming for you Xen! And when you're done I'll go and help my friends." I proclaim, right as Xen's eyes go black. I feel a different kind of energy emerge from him and I turn all of my eyerays into anti-magic beams before firing them at the monster. He tanks them and grins monstrously back at me.
"Brat. Did you think you were the only one who could use science?" He asks, before beginning to glow a dark green color. I sense the energy coming off of him and I switch my rays, turning them into death rays. He tanks them again, and laughs arrogantly. The eyes at the end of his eyestalks explode and become black spears that speed across the sky between us. It seems he has sacrificed his ability to do magic, or most of it anyway, for one final, desperate strike. The spears are identical in color to Rachel's nails when she's in her more hungry mode. I dodge them and watch as they dance through the air and curve around in an effort to strike me, honing in on me with Omega Beam level precision and persistence.
Xen laughs darkly as I switch my beams to petrification and fire them at the spears. His laugh is cut short when a beam collides with a spear and turns it to stone, which completely fucks up Xen's ability to stay airborn. Other spears almost hit me but they get pulled back as Xen begins to freefall. I turn and fire a number of different beams through the air at Ranthor, one of which is an antimagic beam. It hits him in the central eye and my friends catch that, speeding towards him and firing their projectiles with deadly aim. The bullet that explodes out of Rachel's gun catches fire in the milliseconds before it hits the central eye of the beholder and kills him, causing his head to explode in a shower of smoking hot gore and viscera.
I transform back into my human form as I land next to Xen and pull out a spear I once blessed. The same spear used in battle against Xanthogos, the one that nailed an eyestalk of his mid-battle. Xen is about to say something but I leap forward and impale him with the spear, thrusting it deep into his central eye. I feel the spear pierce his eye and then his brain and I keep moving until it breaks through the other side.
My friends move to help Ava, her father, and Dean Grendel against the gigantic monster that is the last of the notable foes to threaten the city. I pull my spear out of Xen's head and I silently reanimate him. The monster's body is repaired and in moments it straightens up and lifts itself into the air.
"Hi there. You went to some cursed forest right?" I ask, ignoring the sounds of battle behind me. Xen nods and I lightly laugh.
"Did you research what was in it?" I ask, and again the undead, now doubly so, beholder nods. When I ask if the monster can heal my friend it shakes its head, before finally speaking.
"I can't. You… can," The monstrosity tells me. It is silent for a moment before it corrects itself. "We can. If she eats me, the curse will fade. Long ago I mastered the curses in that forest and neutralized them thanks to my undead anatomy. If she eats me she'll absorb my resilience and immunities." The beholder reveals, which surprises me.
"Oh. Huh. Wait, seriously?" I ask, actually surprised by this. The monster doesn't laugh but it does nod. I ask it to tell me the truth, issuing an order. The monster reasserts its past assertion, and I realize it's really telling me the whole truth. It explains that it is older than me, which is keeping in line with my nature as a not-drop-in this jump, and that it lived in the forest a long time ago before it dreamed itself into undeath. It says that after that the forest was corrupted but also filled with opportunities for it to grow in power, which it took advantage of before eventually gaining a constitution that could shrug off curses and somehow transformed the downsides of curses into advantages and boons.
Behind me Beowulf lets out a final scream, a single monstrous wail of pain and defeat, as a missile streaks into its skull, slipping into its empty eye socket and then explodes inside of the foe's skull. The explosion shatters the monster's head and the headless skeleton falls to its knees and then collapses entirely. Beowulf is no more. I turn and look at the small legion of heroes; Dean Grendel, Rachel, Kleoshebet, Arsinoe, and in the distance Andrew, Ava, and Ava's dad. They all study the skeletal remains of our foe before turning to face me. I wave them over and when they approach I deanimate Xen causing the corpse to suddenly fall to the floor.
"Hey Rachel. You want to get better?" I ask, causing her to study me. She asks me what I mean and I tell her that she can get better, she can overcome the downsides of her curse, if she eats Xen. When she flashes me a look like I'm insane I close my eyes and ask that she, "Just this once" trusts me. She laughs but does what I ask and we all get to watch this small human woman devour an undead corpse bigger than her. When she's done I ask her how she's feeling.
"I… I don't feel hungry anymore." She says, her eyes glowing a strange, otherworldly shade of green. She falls to her knees and I watch her touch her stomach, foul green blood staining her lips and dribbling down her face. I know the look in her eyes: it's the one of someone searching for something bad, expecting something foul, waiting for some other shoe to drop. She's still for a few seconds before she begins to weep.
"It's gone. I think it's actually gone." She whispers, before shutting her eyes. I touch her shoulder and she puts her hand on mine. It takes a while before she gets up. When she does most of us retire, but not me, and not Arsinoe.
With knowledge of one final drawback approaching I spend the remainder of my time in this jump snagging foes and corpses, adding them to my stockpile of minions which I get to do uninterrupted by anybody because I use "Just this once" on the Dean after asking him if I can head up the efforts to clean up the remains of the battlefield. Arsinoe is with me for a while, but as the final minutes draw near I ask her to go back to the hotel and get some breakfast for us. She doesn't see me begin to cry, ugly tears streaking down my face as I walk towards the machines left behind by Ava and her father and animate them with a touch, adding them to my grimoire even as I countdown the seconds left in the jump.
Memories fill my mind as I silently bid farewell to Arsinoe, Rachel, Ava, Andrew, the Dean, Kleoshebet, and everyone else I've befriended this past decade. Part of the sorrow of being a jumper assails my state of mind and makes me feel sad even as a part of me wonders what comes next. In the last minute I have left in this jump I wonder if I'll ever find a way back here, back to my friends, to Ankoros.
When the jump ends my grimoire is nice and fat, filled with curious things including the reanimated corpses of all of the beholders, even Xen which I did by scooping up some of his blood and reanimating him with it, and Beowulf's monstrous form. Time freezes but I don't. A single bounty hunter appears between the city and I, and I instantly kill him with a glare and an application of my "Death Beam" eyeray. Beholders are fantastic against cannon fodder since we can kill them from over a hundred feet away with a mean look. His corpse vanishes and is replaced by another bounty hunter. I repeat this process. And then I settle into a pattern. A bounty hunter appears, I look at them, they die, they disappear and then another bounty hunter appears.
Hours of relative time pass as I defeat bounty hunter after bounty hunter. Eventually I defeat the last of the bounty hunters. It only takes me seconds to kill them, thanks to my ability to just glare at a bounty hunter and watch them drop dead. As this happens I feel my rays getting stronger at a much faster rate than they did before, since I have the ability to grow stronger by killing things and I have been doing nothing but killing stuff for a while now.
When I run out of bounty hunters to kill they are replaced by zombies. The zombies fall just as readily as the bounty hunters did, and they are replaced by skeletons. After the skeletons, a group of undead that only totals about a dozen and a half because I only fought them today, I face off against the beholders, and each time I do I summon beholders of my own and just rush them. Sadly this doesn't net me another set of handy corpses, because the bodies of my foes vanish the instant they are slain, and I have to resummon my minions every time a fight ends because the drawback says the fights are 1 v 1, but that turns out to mean I have to resummon my minions instead of it meaning that minions aren't allowed.
The final foe I have to face in "Boss Rush", the drawback affecting me, is Beowulf himself. This time I summon my own Beowulf and watch an amusing… undead kaiju battle for a few minutes before I replicate Beowulf's umbral spear spell and end the clone of the first creature to ever kill me. A headshot that collides with the evil, second Beowulf brings this jump to an end.
The deanimated skeleton turns into dust as it falls backwards and I watch my surroundings go all kaleidoscopic again. I sit down as my surroundings blur and I open my grimoire. A small part of me wonders if this time I'll encounter whatever creative force is behind me being on a jumpchain. My surroundings remain kaleidoscopic for a few moments before my other senses are instantly supercharged. In the span of a heartbeat my senses go from being a fair deal beyond peak human, thanks to essences and "Hunter", to being well and truly otherworldly, especially my sense of smell which fills my awareness with scents I recognize but can't name. Even my sight is enhanced, with new alien colors entering my field of view as I watch my grimoire's contents grow and expand again.
I expand in size, becoming taller, as new words appear at the bottom of the page that denotes my build. "Jump #3: Adult Essence Jump/Generic Bard' are the words neatly typed at the top of the page. Just below it is a handwritten note.
"Congratulations on finishing a second jump! You've now been a jumper for over half as long as you were alive before your chain. And to celebrate that you now have a new alt-form. Your first living alt-form! It's one you've wanted! P.S.: Being alive is not always fun." The note reveals, causing me to blink and reread it. I instantly comprehend the little hint in the note and I begin to smile, even as my teeth begin to change, growing sharper and wilder.
My surroundings begin to solidify and normalize and the first thing I see is that I'm behind prison bars. I look around, half expecting to actually only be in front of prison bars but I realize that I'm in a cramped room and I am, indeed, in a prison cell.
I momentarily wonder what's with this Elder Scrolls ass opening to a jump, before I focus on what matters. Smells I suddenly recognize fill my nostrils, as knowledge seeps into my conscious brain. New words appear beneath the handwritten note, ones that sure look typed, denoting my actual build. I feel a cursory tinge of pain and look down at my neck to see a thick line of blood seeping down it. I instinctively turn off my ability to feel pain, as I note something important that allows me to breathe a sigh of relief: the essence of the hentai orc comes with a built-in healing factor.
The thick stream of blood escaping my body begins to pool underneath me and stain the plain rags that wherever I am has dressed prisoners in and I touch the floor beneath me and clean it with a spell. The blood trickling down my neck begins to slow as my built-in healing factor takes effect. As I take in the immediate relief I feel at coming to the Adult Essence jump early I also wonder, far more seriously now, if I was… killed in my pre-chain life and that's why I was immediately sent to the Troyverse as an undead creature, and had to go through two jumps as an undead being before gaining a living alt-form. It takes me a second to clear my mind of those thoughts and focus on my book.
I look at the grimoire in front of me and smile as I note two things that matter: this build includes the "Multi Essence" perk, and I have the full Ultimate Chad essence, origin and all, though I don't have every item in the origin. That's not all that matters, but having a full slate of Hentai Orc and Ultimate Chad perks, as well as both essences… It's the sort of thing I'd joke about in my pre-chain life as a necessary precursor for really getting the most out of early/low-power Troyverse jumps. I also attained the harem companion option, something that I knew I'd need if I wanted to leave the Zaar jump with everyone I want to take with me, which is a gigantic relief even if I'm still not in the Zaar jump or even in a Troyverse world.
Countless scents fill the prison and I close my eyes so that I can more properly sort through them. My monstrous senses allow me to note the presence of both men and women in the prison, and perks activate in the back of my mind that allow me to hear and actually understand everything going on around me. I listen to different voices and track assorted conversations as I mentally process the build I saw I now have, and quietly thank whoever does my builds for not taking away my items or my powers via drawbacks. After a few moments someone begins to walk in my direction with intent, even as I hear the tiny sounds of spider feet crawling towards me.
I relax as I feel the strange wound I had somehow sustained completely fade, and I tap the rags I've been draped in and clean them with another simple spell, magically getting rid of the blood on me. When someone enters my field of view they see a handsome, tall, muscular orc, and not the wounded, bloody mess I was minutes ago. There's not even any blood on the floor to get mad at me about!