'(WTF) Was That?!'

Nobody but me seemed to be surprised or excited about the one-minute timer that suddenly appeared in the air hanging over our camp. This was my first time personally experiencing the retaliation aspect of the territory raid while everyone else on my team almost seemed bored with it. They were really killing my vibe right now.

While the others all seemingly lazily made their way out from the command tent to surround the camp with clusters of familiars and mounts, I was already outside facing our lane where a large body of clustered trolls were running through the fake lane coming toward us.

Looking to my left and right where Hermes and Cweeper were mounted on his personal armored tree dragon and my old infected scorpion, I feel myself feeling pretty confident even though the entire front of the camp had been left to me.

We could have formed a defensive line in front of the lane, but this would have placed a heavy strain on people and familiars who were used to back row duties. Oleander, Agnes, and Ivana were either naturally capable or had become capable fighters thanks to my forcing their stat growths through crafting and actual abilities from being placed on various front lines during our time playing together.

However, none of them had ever gone toe-to-toe with with a troll by themselves, let alone against dozens even with their familiars.

Even I did not like going toe-to-toe with these overreaching bastards without using overwhelming skills and magic ever since the time I got gored in the spinal cord with a punch. That shit hurt and even with my pain resistances and the general fifty-percent default-slash-maximum pain receptor setting it was enough to make me think twice about taking my time.

Gathering around the camp with our heaviest hitters centered on either side of my point position was the most effective for drawing out the ranged capabilities of the humanoid familiars kept toward the back with spare mounts in the front for damage eaters. With Stonewall to my right and Go on the left, followed by Papi and Skooma respectively, I had little worries about the general amount of trolls to get passed us and at the venomous back row.

My only worry was taking the brunt of the aggro while our tanks and damage dealers kept the excess numbers in check. Of course I could have simply waved a hand at one of my familiars and everything would have been settled, but where was the fun in that? Honestly, if I did not have a longest first life ranking on top of a late start to think about I would go solo.

When the trolls finally left the obscurity of the lane viewed from outside to reveal orderly ranks of twenty trolls in a line, I set to work excreting virulent souls from my hands while shooting out thick silken cords soaking the poison. The silks streamers could only reach out about thirty yards from my position and the lane's starting point was only a hundred yards away, but the trolls were keeping uniform ranks equipped with large icy shields and bones weapons as row upon row of twenty trolls slowly marched out.

I had plenty of time to cover most of the ground ahead of our camp in All-Tox which would slow and weaken the trolls as they approached. Since the introduction of the poison was through contact and maybe some breathing despite the frigid temperatures, the effect would only be the halved virulent aspect of the poison. However, a loss of movement speed at all would only help us as they ticked away two hundred and fifty health points.

No sooner had the front three rows of shield bearers left the lane when our back row archers began launching the first volley of normal poisoned and spell-enhanced poison arrows into the trolls. Even with the shields that covered a large area of their bodies raised up to defend against the twenty or so arrows in the first volley, several arrows still found their marks in the newly arrived and undefended rows of trolls behind the front three.

The poison then spread like a virus from the front middle row of trolls toward the front and toward the back, causing gaps to form around the properly poisoned trolls as differing degrees of slowing debuff set in. Dozens of health bars losing differing amounts of health appeared in the air right over each trolls head as the volleys of arrows continued firing up and over to rain down on them roughly every two seconds. Ivana, as an actual archer class, and players in general with bows could leverage our stats and natural abilities against the combat system and could fire much faster than that.

Sadly, the familiars with only basic Bow Hunting for archery skills were a little more restricted. Two or so seconds between volleys of arrows was already amazing and had taken quite a bit of work to achieve and since the pain goal was to simply disperse poison more than attack damage we maintained the pace of our familiars.

Once the front of fifteen lines of trolls made it to frosted poison cordycep silk, though, everyone began switching weapons or just outright shooting freely in preparation for the melee. Luckily, after the time it took to cross one hundred yards while continuously ticking damage as arrows constantly rained down, many of the trolls were at roughly sixty percent of their health and continuously ticking points every couple of seconds.

Now that the enemy was within reach of my general skills without excessively pouring my mana out, I started excessively pouring my mana out by cycling through my slashing skills at the same time as perpetually channeling out my basic spells like Firebolt, St. Elmo's Fire, and Quick Quake. More than just my own flames were soon lighting up the world for those trolls.

A variety of different personal and basic magic and skills and combinations flew out from around the edges of our camp, landing all about the shielded front lines with explosive force that either sent mostly dead trolls flying or directly tore them to pieces between crossfire. In the first cycle of everybody's attacks the trolls were actually pushed around like little kids being bullied, falling over each other after being thrown about by a ceaseless barrage of overwhelming attacks.

However, most of the others only had a few personal skills that came with minuscule or no cooldown at all while all of my skills were considered personal skills. In less than ten seconds, the trolls were no longer being pushed back because the others either had no more ranged skills to use or had run out of mana.

Half of the three hundred trolls were scattered about the charred and gory grounds outside of our camp, but there was still well over a hundred who had escaped the brunt of our damage dealing simply by being further away.

The poison being thrown out like candy, though, was still in full effect on all of the trolls. Even though I was the only one left able to continuously send out at least two skills or spells per second, it would take the poisoned trolls a while to reach melee range with the uniformity enforced by their AI.

Regardless of them reaching camp any time soon, my attacks were still strong enough that every second or third slash or combo skill tore chunks out of the trolls' ranks. Until, of course, I ran out of mana. I had about two hundred more mana than I did health but even then I had spent it all up in about fifteen seconds by extending the range of my skills.

When I was finally out of attacks and blearily gasping for breath while struggling to retain coherency with the loss of focus caused by heavy mana drainage, the others also held back their attacks while letting the trolls push forward. There were now much less than a hundred trolls remaining and I doubted anybody felt any pressure from this small number.

I honestly had half a mind to just send Stonewall out to use his new shield and its specialized shockwave ability to stun and send flying the trolls until they were forced back into the raid lane.

On the other hand, I had come back to the game to find that I was one of the lower levels in the party and I was not happy with this. I was pretty sure that I had already gained a level from the siege and knew of two from the earlier raid attempt, but the others were also raking in enormous amounts of experience and had been for 'days'. Even Go who had always been a lower level than me was at level seventy-five before the siege.

So, bearing in mind the losses I had accrued from actually sleeping for once, I rushed out from the camp cluster formation just to let the others know I was moving in before blurring forward with Quick Step. The trolls who had been pushed around and bullied this entire time now found that something they could reach had suddenly appeared within reach. I alone held the attention of much more than fifty trolls as I came out of my blurred transition within the new front lines.

"Geist!" I call out while using 360 Edge, filling my surrounding with whistling swift phantom blades after Hauntings slashes around and across over a dozen bodies within reach. Those same bodies were knocked off their feet from 360 Edge alone but the Geists that ripped through them and moved on to nearby allies sent them flying through the air while reaping the last of their health.

Since I could only use the mana I could recover despite numerous buffs while in combat, the only skills I could rely on at the moment were 360 Edge and Geist when available because of their nearly nonexistent costs. Luckily, the trolls were all poisoned and losing so much health that even my basic attacks were able to claim a life per strike thanks to the overwhelming Imperial Order.

For the first time in a while my arms were actually growing heavy and tired, bringing to mind an odd sense of pride rather than a fear of being overwhelmed. I was, for the first time in I did not care to count how long, fighting to the actual extent of my abilities. I did not even feel this way while soloing two hundred trolls since I had cheated and used Mana Slash at the start.

Losing myself just in the feel of swinging my sword, I stopped using skills and instead began pushing my body, using far reaching lunges and back steps to close or create distance while savagely throwing myself into every stroke of my giant sword. Briefly, for but a moment, I actually lost track of myself as I felt my body breezing around and through the disorganized trolls while hewing into their bodies and parting their heads from their shoulders.

Finally, as I came back to myself while simply plunging my sword straight through a troll's body, I found that there were only a couple of trolls left to fight. So, I simply left my sword in the troll's solar plexus and struck out with an empty backhand wave. Spirit Wave filled with two hundred mana rushed forth in the form of a massive wall of ethereally blurring energy. Six of the seven trolls were immediately swept up and sent flying over a dozen yards away while I turned to face the only troll still on its feet.

The troll only had about thirty percent of its health remaining so I did not feel like my intention would be very rewarding. On the other hand, I REALLY wanted to know what it would feel like. So, I closed the distance between us with Quick Step and punched forth with Force Strike.

With the assistance of the electrum blade channeling and augmenting Force Strike, my punch seemed to land on paper that suddenly burst on contact as my fist and the few inches of accompanying blade simply tore straight through the troll's chest.

Blood and bits of gore sprayed out of the troll's back as the excess energy from Force Strike was released, exploding open the troll's back with a hole that was more than twice the size of my fist. The troll itself died instantly and slumped down onto my shoulder, forcing my first and forearm to push out of its back. "Assimilate."

[Assimilating: Frozen Timber Troll]

[Acquired: Troll's Physique]

[Acquired Reproduction Skill: Troll Spines]

Tiredly shrugging the dead troll off of my, I look around to find that the few remaining trolls were stuck on the ground in critical conditions without the ability to get back up. That slightly twisted sense of pride came back in full force and I threw my head back to celebrate my victory. However, instead screaming 'fuck yeah' like I intended to I opened my mouth and the sound that came out was a deafeningly loud roar that should have come from a bestial body several times larger than my own.

It was deep with a bone jarring bass at the start and rose in pitch from a roar to a wail after only a few seconds but suddenly picked up even more volume as my body began vibrating and separating from the sound waves. Then, the splits and openings about my face and neck began loosing a multitude of roars and wails as if my corrupted crystallized body had produced dozens of mouths and vocal cords.

I quickly clamped my hands over my mouth and stopped, just as swiftly regaining control over my body that locked back into a normal human form after having begun to separate and space out in thin lateral segments. I was still breathing heavily from exhaustion but now their was a faint trembling in my hands against my face. The others were all staring at me with wide-eyed shock in various forms and mixtures but I could tell that they all had the same thought in mind that I did.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!

*