Morgana’s corruption spell was rotting away the attackers and slowing their movements, while a sudden blizzard turned everything more than twenty metres away to a wall of white. That might be a lot for humans, but for the Hill Giants, who were all over five metres tall, it made actually fighting more than a little problematic.
They could only see what was happening to the fighters closest to them, and those further away were blurry, making it hard to pick out the targets.
Karl caught on quickly and equipped his furry white cloak, causing the outline of his form to appear blurry in the snow as he continued his assault.
The Special Forces team were already in white, but the change made Bob stand out even more in his silver and black attire.
Fireballs shot up from totems placed on the ground to the side of the group, where the Giants would have to expose their flanks or backs to get rid of them, and Remi slithered out to wait between Lotus and Dana while she fired her [Chain Lightning] and alternated locations for her Totems.
“Surge attack.” The Knights’ leader announced as they moved in unison to retreat within the team’s formation.
Karl wasn’t sure what that meant, but he brought up a lattice of [Earth Shield] as a dome over the Elites anyhow. A barrage of boulders slammed into the stone, which shimmered with magic as the Knights added their shields to the mix, and then the stone crumbled, allowing the boulders to bounce off the magical shields. Karl didn’t wait for the barrage to finish. He switched to his blade and moved back into the fray, slicing into the Giants as the Golems kept up their attack speed. They were so nimble that the Hill Giants hadn’t managed to actually kill them or even seriously injure them yet, despite trying to surround them.
The increase in combat power shouldn’t have been all that large, Karl thought, but Rae had gained a level, and that increased the bonus from the buffs she got from Karl. Those buffs passed along to the Golems, and it was definitely noticeable.
They also seemed to be a bit smarter than they were before, and their techniques were evolving. They were not just attacking, but they were also darting between legs, climbing up armour to jump between targets, and generally acting more like spiders. They were not just a menace, but a nuisance, frustrating the Hill Giants with their erratic movements and their tactics that seemed to have no rhyme or reason.
A spider’s primary goal was not to deal maximum damage at all times, as the Golems had been doing before. A spider’s primary goal was to not get squished while they were hunting.
A spider’s primary goal was not to deal maximum damage at all times, as the Golems had been doing before. A spider’s primary goal was to not get squished while they were hunting.
Don’t put your webs where they will get directly rained on, and don’t get squished on your way to the food. That was the spider way.
So, they crawled from target to another, stabbing, biting, and occasionally even killing.
Karl thought that the total damage they were doing wasn’t any lower, but the chaos that they caused among the Hill Giants was much higher now.
He couldn’t even blame them. A giant spider with razor blades for legs running under your groin or crawling up your back had to be nerve wracking.
“Isn’t he afraid of anything?” Karl heard one of the Knights asking as they rejoined the battle.
“Certainly not the Hill Giants, that is for certain.” Dana laughed.
The Knights laughed as they surged forward around Karl to engage the Hill Giants. Most of the Giants were already wounded and bleeding profusely from the [Lacerate] enhanced wounds inflicted by the Spider Golems.
Fighting against the unconventional tactics of the Elites was forcing the Hill Giants to get creative with their magic. Just like Karl had done on the pike line’s shields, they were reinforcing their armour with barriers. That forced everyone to aim for the joints, which couldn’t be armoured over with an inflexible layer of stone.
It was slowing the casualties, but the Hill Giants were slowing with pain and blood loss that was faster than they could heal.
Karl switched back to his maul. If they were going to put up barriers to frustrate the arrows, he would just have to use his handy dandy barrier removal tool.
A Giant went flying off into the blizzard as Karl’s hit struck the centre of a Giant’s chest, shattering the Commander Rank barrier and the armour plating behind it with a stacked [Chain Lightning] attack that spread through the remnants of the force.
The Blizzard tore at every barrier and bit of exposed flesh, slowing the Giants even as the Lightning burned through their nerves. The Hill Giants were losing the battle, and they hadn’t even realized yet that they were being corralled. The Spider Golems had moved to the back while the Knights went left, and Ophelia joined Bob on the right. None of them could see far enough to realize that they no longer had any way out, and their instructions to each other were directly contradictory, as every Giant was facing a different direction.
Dana and Morgana cut down the two in front of Karl, and when he advanced, he found himself in the middle of the Giants’ circle, with every back to him.
A maul strike to the back of a skull set him up to leap across to another unprotected head, then a third swing down onto a shoulder, causing a third Giant’s axe to fall to the ground and leaving it defenseless.
“Remi, you can end the snow storm, they’re all dead.” Karl announced once nothing was moving, and he could see all of his team’s melee fighters.
The blizzard faded, and they were treated to the spectacle of Rae in full anti-projectile mode, shooting down every boulder within a hundred metres of her position. Not even the anti-aircraft guns were that effective, and her small stones were hitting the larger stones hard enough to drop them to the ground short of the pike line, while the Ascended Rank boulders shattered outright.
She was standing on top of a plinth of stone, clear for everyone to see, and taunting the Hill Giants, whose ranged offensive had been completely nullified on this flank.
“Has she always been that dramatic?” One of the Knights asked.
Lotus giggled and Doug rolled his eyes. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait until she really gets rolling. Right now is like the preview to Rae being dramatic.”
Tessa nodded. “You weren’t here for the day that she strung up and crucified a Royal Rank Hill Giant to taunt the rest of the army into attacking, were you? That was dramatic.
Or the day that she sent the Spider Golems through the Ascended Rank Giants, maiming hundreds of them in fifteen minutes without killing anyone.”
The male Knight nodded. “Got it. Rae likes to make a statement. Are any of the others quite so fond of attention?”
Karl looked back at where Thor was getting his head ridge scratched by Tessa and Doug.
“Yes and no. Thor loves attention. All the attention, all the time. But not in a dramatic way, he’s just a people person.”
Lotus nodded in agreement. “A Lightning Cerro is a pack animal, and he doesn’t like being separated from his makeshift pack. Thor is definitely the cuddliest personality in the group.”