Negotiations

As loud as the roaring of a warband of Orcs turned out to be, John somehow found himself able to handle it. It was easy to move past... at least easier than the deafening howls of a dragon. The giant wooden table that Elisrya had passed out on visibly shook as the ground around John rumbled with the dancing of two armies. The little bits of light that were still in the tent flickered when the earth shook and John was left shrouded in darkness long enough for him to correct his clothing and put his armor back on with his equipment page. His hands brushed over Elisrya’s armor long enough to store the silvery set into his inventory… and then the screaming started.

Almost every voice he heard came from an Orc. The guttural rumbling heard in every scream all but confirmed that it was his warriors being hurt. When the occasional shriek was heard over the sudden clashing of metal and roaring, John assumed that a **** had been attacked or killed as well. He heard three of those kinds of screams before he even made it to the tent’s entrance flap and stepped out into the glowing purple atmosphere that surrounded Duskacre. Flecks of dirt and rocks spattered against his chest and the side of his face when he finally found fresh air, and the Gamer flinched at the sudden impact as the sound of the ground exploding finally caught up to him.

“ALPHAAA!” he could hear Mub shouting out for him somewhere in the distance… but hard, flashing amethyst rock barred his path. Again, the earth shook as the closest beacon swung towards him, sweeping face after face of the Hallowed out of its way like Dornwich didn’t even care about their own soldiers anymore. The ground exploded beside him a second time, throwing John off his feet as if someone had just fired off old war artillery into the middle of the tribe’s camp, and Mub’s voice disappeared. A painful, sharp ringing noise filled John’s ears as soon as he hit the ground, and the Gamer gasped as his arm was crushed against his side when he fell on it. The ground exploded again, but there were no sounds of cannons firing or whistling noises as ammunition flew through the air.

-40 HP

As soon as John stopped rolling across the floor, he opened his eyes to find another Orc lying on the ground beside him, a man with a broken tusk and a dagger sticking out from one of his half-open eyes. John scrambled away without even waiting to catch his breath, and one of the zombies hacked and slashed into the Orc’s already dead and unmoving body… but the zombies didn’t keep doing that for long. After only a moment of watching the vicious attack go on, John got up to try and destroy the zombies desecrating the corpses of one of his soldiers… and then the Orc got up as well. It blinked around the sharp dagger point sticking out from the front of its skull and then switched between smiling and frowning at John when the muscles in the Orc’s face were slowly reanimated with magic. It growled at him… and then made a coughing noise somewhat akin to laughing… and then let out a low, mournful wail as it fell forward and clawed at John.

-12 HP

The dead Orc latched onto his leg as it got close, digging in with claws and teeth… but it didn’t slash at him in the same way that the dead did to the other people there. It held on to him when he tried to dodge it… only to find himself with his back already pressed to one of the beacons that had fallen in combat. It tried to hold him still instead of kill… like it was trying to take him alive. He kicked and punched at the Orc’s body… but there were more on him before he could kill the thing and slip away. The dead **** him to the ground and struggled to pin his legs beneath a pile of bodies while John brought every ounce of strength that he had been building up since he first got his powers. The ringing in his ears faded as his Infused Strike exploded into the faces of the Hallowed again and again, and the sound of his booming attacks slowly faded into his hearing once more… and so did the screaming.

Bit by bit, John lost control of his arms and legs as the dead continued to pile on top of him. His mana was steadily reduced to nothing when the dead never stopped coming and John was **** to try and fight back with just his fists… though that fight didn’t go on for very long. Once the Hallowed had one of his arms locked down, the other was gone in seconds. He yanked and rolled, trying to rip himself free, but it was like fighting a hydra. Everytime he killed one zombie there were two more already there to take its place. They gagged and started to drag him away, leaving him able to do nothing but watch as the dead slowly devoured the rest of his army into their own ranks.

His soldiers fought and ran around the camp until the only ones left were the ones who refused to scream… including Urga as she stood guard at the entrance to his tent, trying to stop the dead who were surrounding her from getting inside to the little Gnome, Dofi. He saw and heard Mub shouting out his name as the Orc charged through ranks of dead, bashing in each enemy with any weapon that he could get his hands on until they broke in his grasp. John watched as Mub ripped through most of the enemies between him and Urga… and then froze when he watched as his **** was struck in the temple. The blow to the side of Urga’s head immediately made the Orcess crumple and John’s heart freeze up in his chest. The zombie standing over her raised its arm up like it meant to cut into her like the other Hallowed soldiers did to the Orcs who were already dead before Mub broke through the line separating him and Urga. He got close enough to hit the zombie who was attacking John’s ****… and then John watched as one of the Beacon’s of Ruin stepped behind and impaled the Alpha on its jagged rocky arm.

A spear of purple crystal stuck out from Mub’s shoulder just before he could hit the zombie attacking John’s ****, and Mub froze in his tracks. From how far away John was from the two of them, he could just barely make out the scowl on Mub’s face as he turned to growl at the Elemental that had wounded him… and then John watched as his whole form became a green blur of motion when the Elemental used its spear-like arm to hoist Mub off the ground and then fling his body out into the hoards of dead that hadn’t yet made it into the camp.

The zombie, a blonde Elven corpse with only one arm, that was attacking Urga swung down at its prey as John watched, crouching lower and lower with each strike until the Hallowed soldier was out of sight. The dead swarmed in on his tent… and John went limp in the grasp of the zombies that were abducting him. His body relaxed and drooped low, low enough for the blade that swung over his head to immediately sink deep into the neck of the first corpse who had clutched at his leg. Iron blades flashed above him as John continued staring over in the direction of his abode as the dead trampled it down enough for the tent to collapse, and then he remembered that Dofi was also still over there.

A flurry of red hair flicked through his vision as the sword swinging above him cut into zombie after zombie, and John blinked as a handful of Orcs appeared besides Tyrea to try and pull John free. Mub’s redheaded **** girl barely even looked at him as she gripped the rusty blade she had found with both hands until her knuckles turned snow-white and swung it as hard as she could at the next monster to approach.

“GET UP!” he heard someone scream at him, and assumed that it was Tyrea’s voice nearly drowned out under all the nearby stomping and growling. Two blades clashed and sang, their metal ringing for only a second as Tyrea **** the body of an Orc twice her size off herself and over to the side far enough for another Orc to strike it down with a heavy blow from above. An invisible hand yanked John to his feet again by the scruff of his neck so he could get a breath of fresh air, and the Gamer froze again. Without even thinking about it, he nearly screamed when he found himself standing high enough to watch as both Dullong and Lagash also disappeared beneath the waves of monster that had been trying to overwhelm them. It wasn’t a hard act to suppress, it just nearly slipped out of him so quickly that the instinct to keep silent had to be just as quick.

Gamer’s Mind didn’t activate to help keep him calm. He didn’t know if his abilities were failing to keep up or if the moment just wasn’t strong enough for the ability to activate on its own, but he did recognize that the calming effect of it had never came. Thankfully though, he didn’t need Gamer’s Mind for once. He handled the urge to shriek just fine on his own, and when Tyrea yanked on his arm to get John moving again, he found himself already kicking up dirt while his mind finished catching up. He darted through the nearest opening between waves of undead towards a small group of survivors, and a chill shot straight down his spine as the screaming of slaves and Orcs began to fade to an end.

There weren’t enough people left to yell.