The Occupation Pt3

By the time the restrictions from the phantoms finally started wearing off, there were only three hundred demons left and I had spent my last hundred of them practicing the same staff technique again and again.

[Learned Staff Art: Blunt Whirlwind]

[+200XP]

[Blunt Whirlwind Uninitiated: Swift as the wind, turn to any opponent around you with the speed and strength of a small storm behind your staff or blunt weapon. Turning and spinning attacks with blunt weapons now have +(10)% speed and PATK. At higher levels, simple blunt weapon attacks can generate a small knockback cyclone to push away more enemies at larger distances. To Initiate, land 10 Blunt Whirlwind critical hits]

Since this was a technique that involved spinning and attacking with either end of my staff, both Tasmanian and Spin Specialist applied their own speed and attack perks. Sadly, this skill did not seem to be a perfected technique like 360 Edge. 360 Edge was usually uninterruptible unless the enemy simply overwhelmed me by Strength or magic, this skill had no such advantage.

Regardless, this was still an occasion worth celebrating. I had managed to acquire an actual combat skill for a new weapon. Even with swords, I only had four and used three actual attack skills that did not use magic. This one also applied to blunt weapons so I could pair it with a mace or some form of heavier polearm greater than a simple staff.

Now that the restrictions were gone, though, I could not continue at my leisure because even the Taurians had slowly begin healing out of critical condition. The other clans were still not even in sight from the outpost, meaning they were probably at Outpost A recover while waiting on me to just take care of business here.

Many of the bodies here were still in great repair despite many of them being burnt and most of the enemies I had practiced my skills on were the remaining skeletons who were incapable of separating while restricted. I did not think I would receive too many complaints about the loots situation. Since it had been almost half an hour since we started our own defenses, nobody could really blame me for being greedy, right?

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I chugged potions and ate food while holding my position and using my staff and Telekinesis to harass and savage the wounded demons that came after me. My main goal was to practice my Telekinesis but I made sure to only attack already wounded or ruined areas. I was told that most organs were of value and so I had to be careful when landing critical hits about the head with my perpetually spinning weapon.

When the new skill was finally initiated, the weapon itself began generating a perpetual whirl of blurred air currents that stretched out and down for a few feet around the staff. This wind was not all that strong, yet, so it could not precede the attacks with knockback to open the enemy to a combo. However, after being hit, each enemy was sharply thrown aside.

Many of the demons outright died to critical spinning strikes about the head on the first try, narrowing the numbers sharply. By the time the last Taurian was knocked into a headlong somersault, Blunt Whirlwind had reached level three and Telekinesis had reached level six. It was no becoming much harder to level the skill.

Most of my other attack skills like 360 Edge or the cutters were all around level eight and nine with no signs of reaching the max any time soon. Slash itself was a rarely used basic of the basics skill that I did not use unless I needed to fill time between other skills. Its level was only five right now.

Currently, Telekinesis had only gained another combat perk that increased the range of my attacks and efficiency of the skill. It was not a perk that directly increased my applicable numbers but thanks to Hyper Coordinated I could still now use my golem's swords and my staff at the same time. That was a total of five weapons and zero hands.

Only when the last demon fell did I stop and turn around while holding several mana potions in one hand and several biscuits in the other. My party and the other clans were no marching across the distance from Outpost A and none of them looked happy. All of them looked worn and tired as if the constant struggles of life and death were getting to them.

I, on the other hand, was not even using my body to fight and thus stood leisurely in a small area of 'clean' ground covered in crumbs and empty bottles. Everything outside of my little litter circle was painted and cemented dark with blood and bodies. Knowing I would probably fall victim to their frustrations, I simply walked ahead to meet them while corrupting my armor clean.

Behind me trailed along a hundred curious pale gray phantoms who appeared to be walking in slow motion despite maintaining my pace. These kobold ghost guys were creepy as hell and they had only helped me once but that one time was enough to leave both of us impressed. Not only did I do all the killing myself but their restrictions lasted for like half an hour!

When my company finally met my party and the other clans in the middle, I simply wave hi and wait. Stepping up to the plate first, Donna asks, "How long did it actually take you to finish up here? Were you playing around this entire time?"

Nodding my head shamelessly up and down, I simply say, "Yeah, pretty much. The plan was to keep these guys on hold until you finished up your half and then came to back me up. I'm only one person!"

"You're the bully! There only needed to be one person," she argues in a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. "Those guys were seriously hard to fight, we had to use a lot of the arrows I already made from the original 'rewards'," she continues, adding a certain emphasis to the word rewards. "And your familiars barely fought at all, they just healed my healers!"

"Then your healers probably needed it," I inform her with a shrug. "Imagine the overall casualties if the primary healing troops had dropped. Having to isolate their efforts made those efforts more efficient. Plus, I saw them use their large-scale spiritual attacks. That was mass spreads of serious damage to everything on the field."

Turning away from the angry young lady to look at Mr. Thirteen who she seemed to defer to on most things, I say, "They were all contained and dealt with as cleanly as possible, I even flew up in the air for ten minutes and waited on you guys. The enemy actually used their undead to make a giant platform, I had no choice but to use a mass-attack so many of the bodies have some degree of burning but all the insides and bones are preserved.

"And these guys," I go on with a meaningful look at Donna who was not happy at being talked around while I pointed at the canine wraiths. "These guys are devastating. A dozen of them and a surprise strategy could render a hundred enemy entities crippled in a few seconds. For half an hour. BEST PART," I add with heavy emphasis.

"They're not demons or undead but an evolved or ascended chaos entity with absolute neutrality and partly unrestricted AI-slash-sentience," I explain quickly and somewhat thoroughly. "They can choose to absolutely destroy me or all of us in an instant, they simply have a minor gratitude to me for essentially freeing them. We need to make friends with them."

There were a few moments of silence following this as any eyes not currently examining the Wraith Fiends turned to them and then turned away as they started examining the other players as well. It was a tense time for every player present, including myself, considering nobody knew their actual intelligence of understanding of the circumstance.

For all the ghosts knew, this big group of players had suddenly appeared and started yelling at me. Of course, from my limited understanding of them, it did not look like they had any real interest in the other players. There was definitely a lack of wariness such as how they once viewed each other before all of them had been 'neutralized'.

Finally, Go and Ivana started walking across from the front of the other players to walk up to the chaos ghosts. Ivana actually greeted a few of them from in front, only earning the turning of their heads in her direction. Go, on the other hand, openly circled the ghosts looking at here while examining them.

As the other members of my team started making the other clans look bad by technical disassociation, Go actually went so far as to poke one of the kobold-looking phantom's tails. Not only did the ghost simply appear turned around and facing him so that his finger was touching only air but Go's entire hand was crackling with black static and slowly clenching into a fist in half-second frames of spasms.

Pointing at the results of my companion's experiment, I say, "That's what touching them does. Imagine if THEY touched YOU. Being touched lasts for about half an hour and it's full-body. The time I took was really training and studying my own skills while waiting to find the time limit for their restriction curse. Time well spent. Papi, try purifying that."

"What else can they do?" Little Thirteen asks while waving Donna to follow him on his way toward me and my neighboring phantom.

"No clue, the only action I have ever seen from them was when I neutralized them and asked them to simply assist me," I reply with a shrug, returning to my usual forced nonchalance. "However, every time I see them they come with personal protection priority so they're automatically high-profile targets. If we can convert more of them, we can easily take outposts in smaller groups."

"If YOU can convert more of them," Little Thirteen clarifies with the same nonchalance after recovering from the surprising multi-meaning introduction. "What, exactly, is that going to take and how long? I lost a lost of people and their equipment is shit. We brought a spare suit and material for as much per person, like you said, but that's not going to last us a week at this rate. We'll have to find a way to go in and out for crafting equipment and materials as it is."

"With our magic and alchemy skills, we can fashion equipment from freaking rock," I argue. "With manpower or mana as the fuel, everything you need and the people for making and using it are already at the cathedral. The only thing we might lack is food, I myself have taken a large chunk of my battle rations just in this fight. However… we might can eat demon meat."

[They CANNOT eat demon meat unless they are beast people but this will trigger an evolutionary path many players may regret]

"Never mind, demon meat will kill everyone but me," I inform the masses while turning to walk away. "Hey, Skooma!"

Knowing that Skooma's race as a panther person would probably conflict pretty heavily with something like the Taurian or reptilian sand demons, I simply and discreetly informed him to keep his eyes out for feline-profile demons that he may be able to take somewhere out of sight.

Using looting and transport as the excuse for this, I set my party's speed swordsmen front liner to gathering up members of the clans and surviving familiars to handle the dead bodies. Not surprisingly, many of the familiars used as mounts among the other clans who lost their riders also ended up losing their lives. Even several of our own auxiliary familiars like the ice birds and two of our trolls had been lost.

Those trolls had been equipped with Stonewall-style equipment and weapons, there's no reason for their deaths in these environments except for the weakness of the other clans. The trolls were incorporated in their inner front lines to support the tanks and archers. Their placement was not bad but their actual use cost them.

The birds themselves made for somewhat easy targets for Taurian weapon skills early on while in the air, so most of the ice birds that had been sold out were also gone. Their supportive armoring abilities would be sorely missed and the lack of it will probably lead to more player deaths.

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