Wrath Part 4

"This is not ideal..." Gorum mused aloud, reflecting on circumstances as he jumped around the ballroom, deflecting spells and rubble from above.

It was one thing receiving a barrage from above but having to protect a whole group in the process made it that much more troublesome. Thankfully for Gorum, Idalia didn't seem to be flinging any spells herself and instead conserved her mana, allowing her underlings to fire off spells instead. Frankly, the real problem was the number of spells. There were at least a few hundred enemies at the top of the hole, and they were all flinging spells and rocks down into the ballroom without a single care for their fellow emissaries.

Gorum grumbled at the annoying nature of the situation, and then looked over to Tacitus, beginning to bark orders at him.

"Boy! Gather everyone into a group! I can't protect the lot of you if I'm running all over the place like this!" Gorum said as he smacked away another boulder.

"O-Of course!" Tacitus shook the fear right out of himself and started rounding up his fellow emissaries, huddling together so that Gorum may protect them better.

"It seems Idalia holds no love for her servants, I'm sorry this is the kind of situation where you find that sort of thing out." Gorum said, swatting away a particularly large boulder, reducing it to dust.

"W-Well Madame Idalia was never really like that anyways. It was more so Mistress Damia who looked after us all..." An emissary said, clinging to Gorum's leg like a child as he struck away rubble and swatted away spells.

"I see, well we can't sit here like this and wait for their mana to deplete, on my say you all must run for one of the exits. And do not bother asking me which exit, you're all smart enough to pick one." Gorum said, relayed to them his plan for their escape. Gorum waited, carefully examining the timing of the volleys, waiting for a point where the severity of the attacks was at its lowest.

"Go, now!" Gorum shouted, the emissaries all scattering for the many exits, a few of them unfortunately falling to the bombardments. Soon enough though, Gorum was the only one left in the room, standing still in the center of the room.

'Good, now that I don't have to worry about collateral, I can actually assess the situation for more than half a damned second.' he thought, putting his hand on his hip. Gorum stood with his spear to his side, looking up to the top of the hole, boulders colliding against his body and shattering in the process, spells dissipating the moment they hit his armor.

'The hole is maybe...50 Kuart wide? At least 100 kuart tall... I think there's at least a thousand enemies up there, but there's too many to count and they're all moving around. At least none of them are casting magic above tier 9, I wouldn't be able to just stand around like this if that was the case...' Gorum scratched his head, trying to run numbers and come up with a plan. Although, he was at a disadvantage already due to having to actually think about it.

Gorum was far from being a tactician. He always left battle plans to actual strategists, and if he didn't understand whatever plans they made for him, he would just charge the opponent until they fell to him. That said, it wasn't as if he had no battle weariness, after all he had plenty of experience. Sooner or later though, he would toss aside the more complicated thoughts and just charge in eventually.

"To hell with all this nonsense, I can't just sit around!" Gorum said, making up his mind right on cue. Gorum did half a squat. tensing up his leg muscles before leaping up to a wall, then bouncing off it to the opposite wall, and so and so on until he eventually boosted himself out of the top of the pit, somersaulting over the forces amassed around the hole. Gorum landed cleanly on his feet and turned to see the shocked faces of roughly 2,000 Omen's Order members. All of them being of various race, species, shape and size. However, judging by the energy signatures of the many presences Gorum could sense, they lacked in firepower. To the point maybe only 5 or 6 of them were above level 25,000.

'Odd, I'd figure the majority of their forces would be at least level 30,000...are they hurting for combatants that much?' Gorum thought as he scanned over the mass of enemies, unaware of the fact that he was the culprit for their weak forces.

Before getting invited to join the Order, Gorum had been tasked to hunt them down and had been doing so for a couple months already. In that time, he executed well over 75% of their combat forces simply by targeting whatever groups he stumbled upon via rumors and other hearsay. The forces before him were mostly made of recruits that were still training as combatants for the organization. It didn't really matter much to Gorum though, either way he was glad they were just a bunch of small fry. Small fry were usually intimidated quite easily, after all.

"Attention! I will give you a deal. IF you wish to live, kneel. If not, stay standing so it won't be as much of a hassle to cut your heads off." Gorum said, pressuring the poor soldiers. A feeling of inescapable dread crawling up their backs, many breaking out into a cold sweat accompanied with shaking knees as Gorum's mere presence snuffed out their desire for battle.

"Gorum, don't be unreasonable..." said a sultry woman's voice, which was quickly revealed to be Idalia, riding on the back of Damia.

"We can settle this, I'm sure. Although I'm a bit upset about the stabbing, I can see myself forgiving that little outburst. Besides, you don't really want to slaughter all these poor outcasts, do you?" Idalia seemed to be brimming with confidence despite the circumstances, although Damia was shivering a bit, likely affected by Gorum's pressuring atmosphere.

"I cannot just allow a race war, Idalia. I understand your want for revenge, but I refuse to further the suffering of the innocent just to make a point. Stand. Down.". Gorum said, planting his spear firmly down, the shockwave causing the already weakened forces behind Idalia to waver even further.

"And I can't allow you to muck up everything I've worked on for the past 9,000 years. But I'm a fair woman, you know that don't you? How about a different deal hm?" Idalia said, the smugness in her voice making her sound a bit sarcastic.

"I'm not going to-" Gorum started to speak but was cut off rather quickly.

"Yes yes, you're not accepting of the racial motivations to my plans, and I get that. But a coup must happen regardless. You said it yourself that you were going to slaughter the current nobility once you were done here. So, I have a proposal. This clearly isn't ending completely peacefully, so why not minimize bloodshed?" Idalia said, continuing after a short breath.

"Our strongest will combat you and you them. If they win then you stand aside while we prepare our version of the coup, and I'll respectfully drop the majority of the racial motivations. If you win, we'll follow the principles of your own coup. How's that sound?" she said, ending her proposal with her arm outstretched for a handshake, although Gorum was at least 10 kuart away.

"Hrm..." Gorum grunted softly, contemplating for a moment. Idalia was right, a coup would happen no matter what, whether he stopped their specific attempt or not. Frankly it was a good deal, but not perfect. IF he somehow lost then there would still be suffering for humans of Ugdual, but it would be reduced from their original fate after the coup. On the other hand though, he didn't really have a guarantee that she'd actually uphold the deal in any way shape or form, she was crafty after all.

"I accept." Gorum said, casting away complex thought once more. If she didn't uphold the deal, then he could just return to his original, bloodier plan.

"Excellent, JUILIAN!!!" Idalia seemed rather pleased, then immediately shouting at the top of her lungs for one of her subordinates.

"Wait a moment, Julian? You don't mean you-HNRGH!?" Before Gorum could finish his query, a colossal figure sped into him and hammered a fist at him. Gorum was just barely able to block the punch with his forearms, but was sent backwards, even flipping due to the weight of the strike. Landing on his feet after being flipped, Gorum gazed at a towering and bulky figure before him.

There stood a man at least 4 kuart tall, with muscles so thick and defined you'd think they were carved. Veins bulging all over the place as his skin looked like it could barely contain all the muscle beneath it. He was wearing strange attire such as a golden, bejeweled crown accompanied by a porcelain face mask and an extravagant red cape that was lined with a leopard pattern fur trim. On top of all that the only other bit of clothing he had was a plain grey thong with no other coverings.

"Prince Julian?" Gorum said in surpise, tilting his head at the strange sight.

"Soon to be King Julian. It's a pleasure to see you again, 'Master' Gorum." Julian said, his crude yet pompous voice filled with pure spite.