The area spells were working their magic on the zombies, and every wave that replaced one that had been destroyed was in a bit worse shape. Then, for a few glorious moments, there were no more zombies on the front line, only wounded ones shambling through the blizzard.
“Catch your breath and prepare for the next wave. After this, it will be a steady wave of wounded zombies, but the storms will help keep the battle from attracting more of the creatures.” Prince Corbin shouted to his Sect members.
Karl’s team, mostly the summoned creatures, could take care of the influx for a few minutes. With the area damage and the slow movement of the zombies, they were arriving already heavily damaged. Plus, with the initial wave dead, they were losing their guidance, and they weren’t charging straight ahead anymore. They were lingering in the storm, and many of the weak ones were dying without ever making it to the front.
That was making it easier to deal with, and Hawk’s reporting said that the worst of the influx was already here. They had drawn the majority of the spawned area to them already, as the Spellblade Sect had been close to the centre of the anomaly, and there just weren’t many left to arrive.
Karl wasn’t going to pass along that news yet. The others might get their hopes up, and Hawk’s search range was much more limited in the middle of the night than it was in the daytime. If he could bring Rae up with him, he would be able to see much further. That seemed like a good idea to Hawk. If he could work on a skill like Brutality, to increase his size, but by a lot more, he could carry someone with him to do the actual work of scouting.
Maybe he could do it with a skill that he already knew? If his Flaming Body didn’t set everyone on fire when they sat on him, it would be able to do the job of making him big, but it couldn’t emulate his wings well enough, so he still wouldn’t be able to fly with them.
That meant that he actually needed to get big in order to fly with a passenger, and that would be much more difficult.
[I’m going to hunt the ones that haven’t made it to the storms yet.] He announced, turning away from the battle.
[Alright, have fun. If you find a way to make yourself big enough to give rides, we will work out a method to teach you.] Karl agreed.
[Or maybe we can do it backwards? If we could make Rae into a tiny bloodbath spider, she could ride on Thor at the size he is now.]
Rae laughed at the thought. If she was the size of a common house spider, she could get under armour and clothing to just carve her enemies apart. Or circle their neck with Royal Rank silk and give it a tug to decapitate them.
The possibilities were endless.
Karl lazily fired arrows into the few zombies that were still making it to the front of the swarm. Then he created a new [Hellstorm] to make a loop around the ridge line. The bodies had started to pile up, and with Hawk off hunting, they needed some fire to destroy the corpses. Frying their brains with lightning killed them, and decapitating them effectively immobilized them, but only fire got rid of the bodies entirely.
“That spell is just nasty. Where did you learn something like that?” The Spellblade on Karl’s right asked as their eyes met.
Karl was turning to guide the vortex in a circle, not trusting a route that he couldn’t see, but he had to move somewhat slowly, so the smaller secondary vortexes had time to kill the other zombies in the area and burn those corpses.
“It’s an evolved version of the water spell [Cyclone]. I picked up the knowledge quite recently, and I’m still working on mastering it, but it’s a pretty brutal spell.”
The Spellblade frowned. “Not from a monster in this region, I hope? I would hate to see that spell could do to a group of Spellblades while the large vortex was set on top of the group leader.”
Karl nodded. “The real drawback is the energy cost. By the time that I’ve got it all the way around the camp, I’ll be nearly drained just keeping [Hellstorm] and one [Blizzard] active.”
The young man laughed and gestured at himself as Karl continued to turn. “I doubt that many of us could do more than that. Multiple spells are hard on anyone but a strong Commander or a Royal.”
As Karl turned, he saw one of the Spellblades, a small girl who looked like she might not even be ten years old yet, but an Ascended Rank Mage, was giving him a curious look. Not like a curious child, but more like she knew who he was and wanted answers to something.
Karl set the thought aside for a moment and finished the loop with [Hellstorm] so he could return to only one active spell and his sporadic targeting of the stronger zombies.
With the extra time between targets, the Commander on Karl’s left also began to chat.
“You must be that Beast Master that everyone at home has been talking about. I can’t think of anyone else who has a team like yours, but I don’t recall there being Naga and Lamia among your bonded monsters. Are they new?” He asked.
Karl shook his head as he sighted another arrow. “No, the Lamia pair is summoned. The Naga Queen evolved from the Spirit Snake you were likely expecting to be with me, and the Naga Warriors come with her.”
All three Naga Warriors were out around the perimeter, using [Tsunami] to crush the zombies, while the Lamia happily sliced the zombies heads off with [Rend].
The Spellblade nodded. “Prince Corbin told us all about his battle alongside you, as a motivational tale of what could happen if we worked hard and had a bit of luck with encounters.
Now, I wouldn’t say that we’re having great luck so far, but we’re having encounters.”
His joke brought laughter from their side of the line. They had certainly had an encounter. They had just arrived in this nation, at a spot that had been determined to be too low on the priority scale for anyone to come see who had arrived by portal from the Wilds.
The Clan had done a two-step transfer, moving into the region controlled by wild beasts first, then here. That way, there was a chance it could have been hunters harvesting resources and specialty meat, or even a border patrol team who had detected something out of the ordinary.
There was a lot of that going around. Enough that they could make up all sorts of stories about their travels if someone did come to check.
It was the opposite of what the Divine Beasts had done by sending Karl to the coast, where there was simply nobody monitoring for portals, as it was too far from the major population centres to be worth the effort in extending the detection spells.