Travis Gardin
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Chapter 15: P’Orcs
🕑 Added 2024-10-04 18:00:04 +0000 UTCThe gymnasium-sized room had a pyramid built into the far wall, with that all-seeing-eye carved into it. Sure, why not? Fucking Freemason conspiracy bullshit now. What are we fighting this time? Guys in robes with funny hats?
Ahhhhh, no. No, they're not guys in hats. They're giant pig-men. Dozens of them down below us, talking to each other in some kind of oinking language.
P’Orc, Initiate. Tier 3. The most common type of P’Orc, these guys pack a wallop in melee, using their ceremonial maces. They can absorb a crap load of punishment.
Possible loot: Magical mace. Bacon.
P'Orc Officiate. Tier 4. Their incense burners invigorate their allies while clouding your vision and making you trip balls if you breathe too much of it.
Possible loot: Incense burner, magic robes, pork rinds.
P'Orc Justice. Tier 5. A champion of the P'Orcs, whom other P'Orcs defer to. Their brass staves can do magic or just beat you down.
Possible loot: Magic staff, magic hat, pork jerky.
So, the Orcs we'd heard about are the pig-man type of orc, rather than the green skins. And they're wearing very fancy robes and fancy hats. Lots of gold and royal purple in there. These guys are all around 10 feet tall, except for the couple of Justices, who are both 12 feet tall. With the... 37 P'Orcs in this room, I'd say Madeline and I could probably survive a fight here, but I'd rather have everyone. I turn around to back out of the chamber when an iron gate slams down in the entrance tunnel. A magical shimmer glides across the bars.
“Shit,” Madeline and I both say at once, then in unison we turn around to face the gang of P'Orcs that are now shouting in our general direction.
Madeline pulls out her new greatsword and shield. She's so strong at this point that she can one-hand the massive blade.
I quickly say, “the incense is hallucinogenic, the staff guys are bosses with might and magic.” I switch on my comm and talk to the group. “37 enemies, we're behind a locked door, don't know if you'll be able to get to us before we finish the fight.”
I need to pull out all the stops on this one. I need to stop playing it safe, playing on the same scale as my allies. Atmos mind! I jump up on the balcony railing and immediately start changing my big spell. “Guard me for 10 seconds!” I yell at Madeline.
Tempest Buster Rifle
Exotic
Charge up and fire a powerful, large beam of Atmos energy, demolishing anything in its path.
Range: 500 ft
Cost: 50 Arcana Points
Proficiency: 2%
My hands twist in front of my body and come together as if holding an invisible basketball. A fucking mace flies at me and hits me in the head. It hurts but I'll be fine. Madeline strides up next to me and blocks another two thrown maces with her shield. A Justice fires an arc of emerald lightning at me and I can't dodge while I'm charging this spell. Madeline thrusts her sword straight into the lightning and it wraps around the sword and dances down her body, leaving a trail of blackened skin behind.
That's long enough. I shout for her to get back as my spell triggers. Motes of pink Atmos energy gather into the center of my hands, first dozens, then hundreds a second later. Another emerald bolt flies at me but it's too late for that. My spell suddenly fires a 10 foot wide beam that obliterates the bolt and a cluster of five pig men. Then, as the beam continues, I sweep it across the room in a Z pattern. As the neon pink beam of concentrated storm magic collides with the pigs, they're turned into paste as the force of beyond hurricane winds rips and shreds everything in its path. The beam shrinks as I reach the end of the room, and then peters out. I fall back and need a second to recover. Madeline leaps off the balcony to finish off the remaining half-dozen pigs.
A minute later she kills the last pig in the room and the gate behind me opens. Jose and Parker rush through, those being the first people Mercy had brought down the elevator shaft. They fan out past me and take in the gruesome carnage.
Parker, with her Boston southie accent asks, “what the fuck happened, bro? Smells like bacon.”
I'm sufficiently mentally recharged so I tell them. “Lots of pig men. I used a big laser spell. Madeline got the rest.”
Madeline climbs the stairs to my left and says, “we've got six stone doors, plus the pyramid which has definitely got some secret to it.”
Mercy has flown down Quins and Henry. I think Cappy actually just jumped down. Soon we're joined by the whole team.
We scour the temple room and get some magical items from the pigs. Robes, maces, hats, a staff. Most of it goes into inventories, except for the staff.
Staff Of Emerald Bolts. Changes all your electrical spells into Emerald electrical spells. Emerald electricity ignores armor and does extra damage to living things.
Rutger gets the staff and now with the cloak they look like a proper wizard. A goth wizard wearing a military helmet, but a wizard all the same.
The rest of the magic items the pigs dropped all had minor stat bonuses, but with the attached requirement of “must not be wearing armor,” which most of us weren't stupid enough to do. I wasn't wearing armor because I had techniques to support that style, but everyone else at least had a Kevlar vest on.
I check my radar and do a couple of Pings to see the enemies past the six doors around the room. Behind each door are clusters of tightly packed foes, as if waiting to be released upon unsuspecting adventurers. I relate the intel and we decide to form a line in front of door #1 and have Madeline open it. Cue our overwhelming force, then rinse and repeat for the other rooms. Nothing to worry about.
Madeline steps into the small alcove the door was in as we wait in a firing line. She steps right in front of the stone door and we all hear a click! Shit. The sound of stone scraping against stone grinds out as all six doors start to slide open at once.
“Balls!” I helpfully shout. Then the doors are open just enough for the first P'Orcs to come at us. They're not any different from the others, but each door has 47 P'Orcs behind it. Forty Seven.
“Up the stairs, use the choke point!” I shout, this time being actually helpful. There are two curving staircases up to the overhanging balcony, and we start heading up the one on the west side of the room. I cast Typhoon Punch ten times and I've suddenly got five storm energy arms on each side of me, like I'm some Hindu deity. The first P'Orcs come under fire as we retreat up the stairs. I fly straight up to the balcony and grab Cappy as I go. I drop her off on the balcony ledge and she gets it right away. From 40 feet up her new ability is going to amplify her shots at least three fold. She starts to rain down bullets from her FN P90 SMG, and pork shoulders and heads burst into red blood.
The others come up the stairs while alternating between moving forward and turning back to shoot. They get up the stairs and we regroup up top.
Henry does a chant, “De-fense! De-fense! De-fense!” and his aura surrounds the whole platform. I can feel my Toughness tick up.
“21%? Not bad!” Quins says. “That brings me from 20 to 24, thanks, mate!”
“Not done yet!” Henry says over the din of firearms. “Focus, focus, focus!” I know when you repeat chants they get stronger, so I think he's giving us his best stuff. This time I feel my senses sharpen even more. I can see every pig clearly, hear every round fired individually. I can tell the team is suddenly hitting with more precision.
Mercy flies overhead and unloads a few hundred rounds from her minigun into the pigs. The squeals from the monsters are hideous and loud. “Jun! Let's go!” The tip of her staff ignites with a green laser spear head, and she dives into the fray below. Madeline leaps off the balcony, following her. Damn, these girls are crazy.
I fly over the crowd of a few hundred pigs and get to their rear, landing just at the foot of the pyramid. Then I use my ten storm fists to start wailing on them. With the rapid fire speed of a machine gun, I start beating the pig men, their faces breaking, their maces useless against my storm energy limbs, their incense blasted away by Storm Shot bullets. Each pig is getting a dozen punches, each second I'm taking out another enemy, each enemy being bashed against the next one, giving it just long enough for it to see me coming.
I thought Atmos was the weakest of my new elements, lacking the ability to make weapons. I was wrong. This is what I was missing about Atmos energy. The unrelenting, unstoppable storm.
As I fire a barrage of punches I shout the only thing appropriate.
“Ora! Ora! Ora!”
