The Giants approached carefully, waiting for Karl to make a move. They knew that they couldn’t afford to be reckless against his speed, but this strange human also appeared to heal unnaturally quickly, despite being separated from his healers.
Karl was using [Rend] with [Nullify] to get past the defensive abilities of the Giants and force them to parry the skills, which kept them at a distance.
The fight speed had slowed to a crawl, and the whole battle was falling into a lull as the humans’ stamina ran low.
Thor’s efforts would have them recovered in no more than five minutes, but that was a long time in combat. The Giants backed off a little, and a horde of Ogres advanced. They were only Royal Rank, the leaders of their species. But fighting them would burn more energy, and the Giants didn’t care about expending them as cannon fodder.
They had put stronger barriers over the weaker species, but when [Nullify] hit them, the barriers put up no real resistance.
But, another wave stepped over the bodies of the fallen, then another, and another.
[We’re done at the back, you can retreat to our position, and we will prepare to attack again.] Thor informed Karl, who was alone with his bodyguards, fighting the seemingly endless tide of Ogres.
One full force backwards leap disengaged Karl from the attackers, and showed him that the Ogres were nearly depleted, and the remainder were being forced forward by the Giants, as they weren’t willingly fighting anymore.
The move put the battle in a tense standoff, with the two sides thirty metres apart and staring at each other, waiting for some sort of trigger to continue.
More groups of Giants were joining the survivors, but they wouldn’t make much difference in the short term. What they needed was someone who could challenge Karl one on one, and keep him from sweeping through their ranks.
“What’s the news?” Karl asked as he reached the others, while Tessa cast a small healing spell and a refreshing ability on him.
“We weren’t fast enough to respond. The Capital is under attack by the Giants’ allies. Right now, it’s Ogres and Goblins. We’ve got the Giant armies slowed down enough that they haven’t engaged yet.
But there should be more forces in the area, which may or may not have been engaged by the other strike teams and the border guard.
There is nothing on the radio at all. We think that they might have a spell that is blocking the signals. Even trying to communicate between groups we can see doesn’t work.” Niall explained.
“So, we finish up here and then hunt? Or do we return to the Capital to defend the city walls?” Karl asked.
The four Overlords looked at each other. Without orders, it was their call. Ahmad looked to the sky, as if for inspiration. “Well, we’re all on the stronger side of Overlord, so we’re needed in both spots. I don’t know which would be better, but now that I’ve recovered enough, I will mount a full assault against the remainder of the army. My skills, like yours, are not great against single targets, but highly effective against large groups, though the energy drain is incredibly high. I’m a Rank over the strongest of the remaining forces, so I should be able to wipe them out if I can last long enough, we just need to keep them from running away until I finish.
With your Thor here, I will recover quickly enough to be ready for the next battle, I hope. Then we can follow the scouting reports of Hawk to see if we’re still needed here.”
Karl nodded in agreement. “I will have Hawk and Remi assist you so that there are too many spells for the Giant Shamans to effectively dispel them all. It will save you some mana, and hopefully allow us to clear this group.”
Overlord Othello smirked. “You know, after this, they are going to make us suffer through another of those godawful award ceremonies.”
Niall winked at her. “That’s if they find out. We can just tell them that we were busy wiping out the Overlords and the smaller patrols all day, and pretend that this force never existed.”
The Overlords looked over at Karl’s group, assuming they would want the fame and glory of such a feat. After all, even with the presence of the Overlords, they were still outnumbered by more than a hundred to one. If it wasn’t for the completely broken skill that Karl had, which allowed his beasts to tear through the weaker portion of the army, they would have been almost immediately overrun.
The Overlords were still trying to work out what sort of skill that was, but Karl wasn’t saying anything.
[It’s a good thing that we have the vortexes to start the fight. It gets the skill all stacked up before we have to actually fight.] Hawk noted. freёwebnovel.com
[How is your range? You’re not going to get stones thrown at you when you try to attack, are you?]
Currently, Hawk was hiding among the thick clouds overhead, out of sight from the ground, even with his prodigious size.
[It will be fine. I know where they are relative to you, so I don’t even have to come down for this one.]
Right, he had Soul Sight now, so he didn’t need to rely on his impressive natural sight to find the enemy.
“Overlord Ahmad, whenever you are ready, my team will join you with the Hellstorm vortexes.” The Catman mage took a deep breath and began to focus. Spears of lightning formed overhead, dozens of them. Then hundreds. Then thousands.
The Giants were charging, but Hawk and Remi had started with the Vortexes, which were cloning with every strike, creating a wall of spinning fire for the Giants to run through in order to reach the humans.
Then the first volley of spears lashed out, taking down an entire row of Giants. Then another, and another, and another.
The Giant army was falling in waves as the vortexes chased them across the battlefield, and spears tore through their retreating bodies.
Then Hawk switched his vortexes to the far side, blocking the retreat as the last of Ahmad’s spears cleared the survivors.
[Cara forward, LOOT!] The badger shouted to herself, before racing off with Remi and the bodyguards to double tap anything that might have survived and clean out the bodies.
“What are they doing?” Tabitha asked, watching them moving silently across the battlefield.
“Checking the corpses. We don’t want them regrouping with the others and telling anyone what happened here.”
Rae was making Ahmad a hammock hanging off Thor’s side opposite Lotus, who was just beginning to wake up after over exerting herself with a Resurrection during the battle.
The mage was out cold, but with Thor’s barrier over him, he was in no real danger. His energy would recover, and a bit of food when he woke up would have him right as rain.
“Alright, what is the call?” Karl asked quietly.
“Let your beasts finish, then we will clear this area and head back for the city. They won’t have sent the majority of their troops on foot, this was probably intended to be a sneak attack, while the forces arriving by Portal would have been detected.” Niall instructed.
[Hawk, find us more targets. Let’s make it a full clear.]