Apocalypse conquest a du.., p.44
Apocalypse Conquest: A Dungeon Crawler LitRPG Adventure (Gravity And Divinity System 4), page 44
So when the projectile attacks of the corporals struck, filling the sky with dark unholy blasts that nearly made the nuclear mushroom cloud seem like yesterday’s news, the unholy wretches slowed when Brit appeared whole and unharmed. She waited behind her radiant shield once the initial barrage concluded. She just about finished a quick incantation, too, and unleashed the second half of [Shield and Smite] at the end of her chanting.
She gave the demonic army quite the show. From the reflective surface of her shield, over a hundred sparkling missiles shot out in a bright and fizzling volley. It looked like a big extravaganza with a bunch of white fireworks. And each sparkly missile had a golden sheen on the edges, a tiny divine touch that took full advantage of Brit’s absurdly high Chance.
The holy and divine missiles were packing annihilation magic in each one, and they looped around in the air with seemingly no course until they veered straight toward their targets. The Fallen Angel Corporals barrel-rolled, dove, and swooped out of the way fast, dodging every one of Brit’s darlings.
Which was perfectly fine. She wasn’t aiming to smite them. And the holy annihilation missiles hadn’t finished changing into their true forms. She had chanted for some local help to give her [Shield and Smite] Skill some extra oomph.
Some child spirits of Haiti jumped in on the fun when they heard her invitation. Each annihilation missile shaped themselves into little sparkling ghosts, like a bunch of fiery Caspers and Pearls, ghostly boys and girls. They laughed and shrilled and joked as they hunted down grunts and struck each one they could reach.
All at once, nearly a hundred Level 100 monsters died. They got vaporized into nicely scented air, leaving a bit of ash and no more. The echoing laughter of child spirits hitting their mark remained before fading away, having gotten their fun and revenge against the demons. Those spirits helped connect the vengeful small magic of Haiti with Brit’s power. This stacked with the power Brit had flipped on the fallen angels from their barrage-style attack.
It all added up easily, though it wasn’t a trick Brit could repeat twice. Not on the same day, at least. And never exactly. Certain incantation effects could only be used in the spur of the moment, and weren’t repeatable. This was the weakness of miracle magic, which Brit was okay with, because such unique powers were jaw-dropping strong, especially when used by a strong [Medium] like Brit.
“W-what?” the Fallen Angel Sergeant rasped. “No! I know of the power you’ve used. I bet it’s still named [Shield and Smite], isn’t it? You should’ve been overloaded by my corporals’ combined might! That basic Skill is limited!”
Brit shrugged. “That limit depends on the user, sugar. And I’m far from basic.”
Besides, she wasn’t perfect with it. A few of the grunts had managed to duck and find cover, avoiding outright annihilation. She counted about three survivors out of the whole army of grunts. Granted, being able to kill close to a hundred Level 100 foes was an incredible feat.
There was a time when facing a Level 100 monster was a dangerous affair. This had been the case with facing Bondye, The Grand Sea Witch, before realizing Jay was going to talk his way to a victory.
Brit was so absurdly strong now, she could utterly destroy Bondye from back then without trying. Which made the surviving three grunts a little vexing for her. The Ultra Human side of Brit felt bothered that she didn’t get them all in one move. But she would correct that weakness soon.
The destruction of the grunts heightened her appetite. Now she looked hungrily at the remaining demonic army. It couldn’t be helped. They looked like flying bags of Experience and new levels. The monster inside of Brit wanted to level up. She had to indulge herself.
“Please forgive me for being so selfish,” Brit murmured, knowing YoAnna would hear. Knowing Jay would feel her apology.
Thankfully, a touch of Jay’s fourth dimensional magic reached her. He was okay with her selfishness. He was okay with her gaining despite the suffering in the backdrop. They would deal with the suffering later.
Jay told her to have fun.
Gosh, she loved him.
Jay’s blessing made everything easier for Brit as she dove right in and took on the thirty Fallen Angel Corporals. Their unholy prowess gave them good CM compared to other demon types from what Brit had read in the archives. So it must feel terrible for them when Brit laughed at their pathetic attempts to hit her.
A corporal swung a giant mace with spikes, and he used lots of Strength and heavy unholy might. He roared stridently as he put his back into the swing as if he could bash through her shield and armor, and break her bones.
Brit pivoted gracefully with a quick and subtle flap and swing of her wings. She leveraged her Chance, her fate, and let the mace slide off her shield like someone stepped on a slippery surface. The mace-using corporal lost his balance and flipped out of her way.
A corporal with a double-headed battle axe swung with even more Strength. His unholy power created shadowy clones of himself that swung more double-headed battle axes. And each of those shadowy clones coated themselves in unholy flames.
Five dark flaming battle axes attacked from all angles while a different corporal with a halberd covered his weapon with a vortex of flesh tearing feathers. Another corporal with a rapier blitzed in lightning fast while coating his weapon with unholy acid.
Brit’s response?
She used her [Great Light of Cleansing] Skill to blind her foes and weaken their powers. She placed her [Encourage] Skill on herself to buff up her physicality uber high.
Then she smashed aside the battle axes with a single swing of her tower shield. She tanked the halberd with her shoulder pauldron. And she let the rapier corporal run himself through on her eight-foot lance.
With a willful flex of Brit’s magic, the lance spiraled in different directions.
It chewed through flesh, bone, and armor like running an inverted blender through a toy made of puddy, koolaid, and tinfoil. The lance tore the rapier corporal apart from the inside out.
It made a mess everywhere, which had Brit grinning. Killing higher level enemies really got the blood pumping.
27. Caribbean Conquest (III)
“What are you fools doing?” shouted the sergeant. “Attack with more order and patience! You outnumber her! Don’t be so overeager!”
Uh oh. Brit didn’t want them to get wise with her just yet. Then again, it might be time to tie up loose ends.
She flashed them with [Great Light of Cleansing] again, causing a bit of damage, but that wasn’t her goal. The moment they corrected their blinded Perception, they would notice she had disappeared from their sights. Like she became thin air. They might spot her diving away in the next few seconds, but until then, Brit squeezed the Holy Affinity to trick Perceptions and boost her [Champion Cloaking II] Talent.
The upgraded version of the original Champion Cloaking intensified her attempts to hide, infiltrate, cloak, or go completely unnoticed. She didn’t truly have an invisibility power, but [Champion Cloaking II] plus her own powers worked pretty well in concealing her for moments like these. Especially when she was about to catch one of the three remaining grunts rampaging through a mountainside village.
He was smashing down walls like they were made of stacked cards, terrorizing the lowly Rank 1 humans with no trouble. He was way bigger than a normal man, standing at nine feet tall. It made the weak and innocent humans seem so small around him.
But when Brit came down, she somehow made the grunt seem puny even though she was just a few inches north of six feet. She slammed down on him with her boots first, breaking his ribcage as if she was bigger and badder. A few bonks from her tower shield crushed his skull, leaving him as an afterthought as Brit turned around quickly.
She flashed more of her [Great Light of Cleansing] to hold back the spreading green radiation and give the villagers time to flee up the mountain. It took more effort than she liked to cleanse the area. There was powerful small magic involved with nukes. Brit didn’t like that. She didn’t like that one bit.
Magic nukes almost felt like a threat to YoAnna, a last outcry of foolish Earthlings to deny the rulership of Brit’s [Godling]. Would those fools rather see Earth be turned into one big nuclear wasteland than to let YoAnna take control?
No.
Brit wanted to believe there was more at stake. Especially with the 777th involved. She also had to admit the Protectorates hadn’t done a good enough job with keeping their reputation clean and stopping the System Admins from making them look bad. That might push people over the edge and see nukes as the only option.
Brit made a mental note to pray for Hailey and her new position as the Chancellor. That poor girl.
“Merci!” a father trying to guide his family yelled back at Brit. His thanks was appreciated, but unnecessary.
Every loss here was losing a potential person to add to the church and turn the power of small magic toward YoAnna. Brit had to fight on two fronts to enjoy herself and do her work.
She left the families to their own Rank 1 fates and hunted the second grunt. He was trying to climb over a mountain ridge separating Haiti from the Dominican Republic. No doubt, Dennis and Casey could handle the grunt. They would get levels out of it.
“Great Holy Bolt!” Brit cast on a flyby pass. She had a bunch of those inscribed into her gauntlets. It was a stroke of genius from the original Magic R&D to find the right runes that invited holy magic to work in a spellcraft form. But it required a [Medium], any [Medium], to do it. So Great Holy Bolt, a 3rd Circle spellcraft, worked especially well for Brit.
The purely white and oblong magic projectile struck the grunt in the back, obliterating a chunk of unholy flesh and clipping off the wings. The grunt screamed in pain as he tipped forward on the rocky ridge and started falling toward the Dominican Republic side. One more shot would kill the grunt, but Brit turned away.
It was hard to not chase down a kill.
The Ultra Human side of Brit wanted perfection. It would make sense for her race to want that. She’d gotten it for doing what was perceivably impossible, defying the Holy Affinity and forcing a portion of the affinity she had control over to do her bidding. Being an Ultra Human, possibly the only one in the entire universe, would want to see an objective handled personally.
But that Level 100 monster was good killing for the Champions who needed it. She injured the creature to make it harder for him to terrorize Rank 1s and 2s, giving Casey and Dennis ample time to find him and kill him.
A part of Brit thought it would serve Casey right to not get any good kills, but Brit couldn’t stop herself from caring for her fellow Champion despite their personal issues. Casey was still trying to find her way, and Brit wanted to help guide Casey somehow.
That depended on whether Brit could control her own anger when her marriage got encroached on. That was neither here nor there as Brit chased after the third grunt trying to flee across the water and find new hunting grounds in Cuba.
Brit stopped on the shoreline and aimed her gauntlet forward. She cast, “Awesome Holy Smiting Beam,” a powerful 4th Circle spellcraft.
Brit had enough Intellect to handle the highest of 4th Circles. And this one packed a punch. It truly tested her runic memorization just to trigger this thing.
The spellcraft took a second to charge, building up a pin-prick of holy white light that cast everything else in deep shadows around Brit. The naughty and monstrous spirits of Haiti howled in rage and fright from the sharply rising aura Brit cast on the area. It burned out the evil spirits by the root.
It was a big show, and the corporals arrived just in time to see it. Some of them even tried to intervene. Three corporals slid in the way while raising big and heavy shields covered in unholy magic.
Brit’s Awesome Holy Smiting Beam came out as a thin little thing. It was a bead of light that stretched forward like a very long string held taut.
But its emission blasted aside tons of sand in huge waves and turned to glass the sand in front of her. It parted the water as if Brit was making a walkway, the sheer force showing the seafloor for a hundred feet ahead.
The nearest corporals trying to jump Brit from behind screeched in pain, assaulted backward by the sheer force, and burnt to near death by its heat. One tried to intervene anyway, getting close to Brit before turning to ash on the spot. The three shieldbearers trying to thwart Brit’s shot became ash riding on the rushing wind of this power’s passing.
Not all spellcraft were the same even within the same circle of power, and the purity of Brit’s specific spells gave her a huge leg up when she packed more magic into them. So it was a little disappointing when the fallen angels’ attempts to thwart her shifted the flow of fate and saved the grunt from pure and utter destruction.
The grunt lost his legs, but no more. He kept flying straight for Cuba where only the Soldiers of Challenge could fight it.
“I will know if my Protectorates die,” Brit said, turning slowly toward the remaining demonic force. “For each death suffered against that monster, I will make your punishment a bit worse, Molech.” The sergeant didn’t have to say his name. Brit could see a lot with her [Analyze II] Talent plus a little extra juice squeezed out of the Holy Affinity.
“Come with me,” Molech said, remaining in the air as his corporals landed around Brit. The sergeant watched the water rush back to refill the void left by the passing of Awesome Holy Smiting Beam. “It is beautiful in the 4th Hell Circle. Wicked, yes, but that is also ingrained with beauty. Steel-barbed roses. Rainbow thunderstorms that shower the lands with needle-tipped crystals. Grand radiant castles that could use a queen like you to walk its halls.”
Brit narrowed her eyes.
Molech raised his hands, gesturing for peace.
“Hear me out, my good lady. I can already see you as a ruler of a Rank 5 subsection. Mistress of a grand and mighty court that would put the lash on miscreant deities and play with the fates of crawlers who dare journey into your realm for loot and glory. I can make you into a power that would rival many a [Godling], or completely crush them and enslave them. Are you truly satisfied to be of service to one mere [Godling]? Don’t you want more than that? More power?”
For a moment, Brit’s Ultra Human side considered Molech’s proposal. She turned it over in her mind like a merchant appraising an item. She gave it some thought. Then she shook her head and started walking toward the nearest corporals.
“Is that the end of your ambition?” shouted Molech. “You can be so much more! You deserve to be more! Stop being a mere toy for a [Godling] and make them into your toys. Make YoAnna your toy!”
“I don’t mind our relationship,” Brit said. “It works for us.”
“Stop devaluing yourself. You can achieve more power if you seize it for yourself!”
“I will seize more power while in service of YoAnna, my husband, and my pantheon.”
“You are a fool!”
“Yes.” Brit smiled. “I’m a fool in love. That is the source of my power. And I will become more powerful beyond everything you can offer.”
“Destroy her!” Molech roared, getting the words out a little too late. Brit had already rammed forward like a bull in a China shop.
She lanced through three of the corporals faster than they could react and plowed the rest of the way forward, smashing aside other corporals. A purposeful flap from her [Wings of the Stormy Celestials] Skill left thunder and lightning in her wake, battering the corporals that tried to follow right behind her. She kept trucking forward, going further and further with her three victims, until they struck the underside of a hill beneath a village. Nobody was alive up on the hilltop. It was all covered in radiation magic.
The thick green fog disrupted magic quite a bit and slipped past Poise mainly to target Resilience. Brit kept a soft aura of cleansing light around her body while ripping and tearing the corporals with the spiraling shards of her lance. She took full advantage of the nuclear magic as her enemies ganged up on her.
It became a dirty and destructive scrap. Brit stayed on the move. She switched from defensive forms that used her tower shield heavily to offensive forms that shifted the length and size of her lance. She could shrink her weapon into a small spear when she crashed through villas and buildings, drawing her foes inside even though the mundane or Basic Quality constructions were like sandcastles for them.
But the constructions still obscured vision. They still slowed the enemy just a teensy bit. Brit made it all count as she swatted a sword-and-board corporal through three empty homes, throwing up a plume of smoke to add to the nuclear fog.
She dodged a war scythe coated in unholy hellfire, which had an interesting effect on radiation magic. Every sweep of hellfire made a patch of the radiation magic burst explosively, doubling on the effects of both. As Brit lanced through the neck of another corporal, she barely blocked another swing of the war scythe as it brought to bear the twin catastrophe of magical effects.
Brit got knocked back a couple of feet, her shield arm shivering from enduring the impact. Huh. That could be troublesome.
“All of you, hellfire up now! Burn your flesh if you must!” Molech ordered from above. He still wouldn’t join the battle. Brit was doing her best to keep hidden her best tricks until he joined.
But he was going to make her work for it, wasn’t he?
The corporals burned. Dark unholy hellfire. It was twice as powerful as normal hellfire and had way more power for harming holy types. Resilience would be weak against that, too. It would eat up tanks. Toss in the nuclear magic fog all around them and Brit was dealing with a bunch of exploding fallen angels. Every second in the fog invited a big blast of unholy nuclear hellfire. The easiest solution was to rise out of the fog and get away from the affected areas.
Brit refused the most obvious path. She became more mobile and defensive. She flapped her wings once before tucking them tight. She spiraled like a bullet, blasting through windows and doorways, in and out of homes and buildings. She spread her wings when she was out in the open, angled them, flapped once or twice, realigning herself with tight maneuvers. She was like a holy jet fighter skimming across the ground.
