A colony of seaguls
"NOW DIE! [Reflect: triple shielded damage!]"
Milly´s eyes widened as her two clones teleported in front of her trying to shield her from what is going to happen. All the damage and energy the endless shields have absorbed are now being sent back triple the fold.
Even Mavis's eyes widened as he saw the chaos ensue before him, it was as if a star exploded.
...
(Back with Raas)
Quickly finishing up, the group left the city without further complications. Raas breathed a sigh of relief, seeing the big city walls slowly fading into the distance.
"Now for our final destination, the black soul forge"
They stood around the triple armored mana-powered air sailor that was calmly floating in the red blood red. "And we are really crossing the sea with... this?" asked Raas pointing his tail at the shabby-looking wooden boat mixed with flesh and bones. He looked closer and regretted it immediately as there were dozens of flesh mounts that vaguely looked like faces. He could swear he saw one of the faces grin at him just barely in his eyesight. The boat was about 6 meters long and 3 meters wide with 3 masts without... sails. there wasn't anything fancy to it, it was more like a floating piece of blended flesh, bones, and wood shaped into a long bowl and 3 sticks sticking out of it.
Wendy and Scorge ignored him, as they walked past him and onto the boat.
"Can't we just like fly over the sea and not board whatever this thing is?" cried Raas slithering behind them reluctantly.
Scorge looked at Raas with a slight grin, "What dumb question to ask, this is the safest way to travel this sea. Of course, we could fly over it, but then we have to defend ourselves against the endless swarm of Barudas. And let me tell you they aren´t nearly as cute as they used to be. A truly sad sight, at least we still got them in our dimension." Saying it without stopping Scorge placed himself behind the steering wheel and poured his mana into it. Wendy
"But wouldn't the abominations in the sea attack us instead?" Trying not to step onto the fleshy part of the boat Raas slithered and hopped around the boat trying to reach Scorge´s position.
"They wouldn´t and even if they did, they wouldn't be doing that for long" Answered Scorge without an inch of care. Giving up Raas turned to Wendy, only to see her gnawing at one of the protruding bones around the ship.
Raas' eyes twitched a little. "Wendy, how can you be so nonchalant about all this, aren´t you even slightly concerned about this?"
"There is nothing scarier than Scorge, so I will just get this over with instead of fighting him and my soul being pulled into hell."
"..."
Raas silently turned around and slithered into a wooden part of the board before curling himself into a ball and silently mumbling some prayers to all the gods he could think of.
Wendy glanced at Raas for a second before shrugging her shoulders and going back to gnar at the bone. Scorge just finished pouring his mana into the boat as a strong current blew over them. Looking into the sky he could see black clouds on the horizon slowly encroaching towards them.
Scorge frowned and tapped the steering wheel in a thoughtful manner. "Hmm not good, but I still have enough mana left for this trip, even if I have to break the seal for a few seconds."
The boat suddenly shuddered before two fleshy legs grew out of the boat and started to walk deeper into the sea. The sound of moving water, the deep thumps and rumbles made Raas peeked up from his curled-up position and looked around the boat that was swaying left and right. Not wanting to get any more nightmare fuel he decided to go to sleep.
Just as he was done making himself comfortable coiling up, he heard the gruff voice of Scorge "Don't sleep too long or the Somniums will take notice of us."
"...what are Somniums?" asked Raas just as confused and as he was concerned.
"A void spawns that is responsible for infiltrations and assassination missions. Their activities just recently increased in this dimension. I don't know why they even want to have it, as this dimension is already nearly run dry of any kind of ichor and pure places. A really odd bunch of creatures. I will never understand them"
As Scorge was talking on Raas thought back on the encounter with the giant eye.
He already has so much on his plate that it has already broken the table, so he wanted to "avoid" any further unnecessary trouble. Shutting up, he tried to stay awake and just hoped for happier times.
...
There wasn't much to do as it was early quiet as soon as the boat reached deeper waters. Hours passed as nothing happened. Wendy was laying around and pestered Raas a few times but gave up as he didn't react. Scorge was still behind the steering wheel, looking towards the horizon. Keeping an eye on the black clouds.
Having finally had enough rest Raas carefully slithered next to Scorge, seeing the slight frown he followed Scorges gaze.
"Why the stern gaze?"
"They are hungry and, he noticed us," said Scorge still keeping looking at the far sea.
"Who?" spoke Wendy from behind Raas who crept behind him without his notice. Tensing up a little at the sudden voice Raas turned around to see her skull head just inches away from his.
"A someone I would rather not encounter again," answered Scorge.
'Oh hell no.' thought Raas, having a bad premonition about all that.
Scorge squinted his eyes and could see a white cloud slowly drifting towards them. It was quite unnatural as there were usually only black to grey clouds in the red sky.
"Holy shit..." mumbled Raas as he could see that the cloud that was drifting towards them was dozens upon dozens of white feathered abominations that looked oddly similar to seagulls. Only they had their whole head covered in eyes and no beak or legs.
"You can say that alright" replied Scorge as he drew a magic circle on the ground with his own blood. "If he wants to fight with numbers he can have that. [Realease household: Phantom Ravens]" "[Realease household: "Dragon Apparition"]" "[Release household: Gargoyle´s Wraith]"
The blood-red magic circle lit up and dozens of ghostly green and blue semi-transparent monsters fley out. Like a stream of water, they flew towards the approaching "cloud".
"Those gluttonous sea birds are a pain to deal with but soul monsters are a hard counter against them."
"Why that?" asked Raas, his eyes glued to the two approaching armies. The number of creatures on both sides is mind-boggling but the summons from Scorge is clearly dwarfed by the approaching colony of oversized, nightmare-inducing, seagulls.
"Because they don't have any flesh to consume and assimilate to get stronger and split themselves." Spoke Scorge while his eyes glowed red, and hundreds of birds dropped from the sky.
Raas could see Scorges eyes bleed and close suddenly, "Did you do that?"
"Yes, but they all have some kind of soul look, preventing me from reaping their live force without backlash."
"Can I help somehow?" Asked Wendy from the side. She was quite bored the whole time and now seeing a hoard of monsters approach she could finally let out some steam.
"No stay here and protect the ship, you are not suited for this kind of battle."
It was true that she wasn´t good against large groups, but she wasn´t useless, so she got annoyed at Scorge, but decided to stay silent and nodded her head.
"Raas this would have been a perfect opportunity to exp boost you, but without your core, you are as effective as garlic against vampires."
"So very effective, right?"
"..."
"Right!?"
"..." The two stared at each other in awkward silence.
"But if you decide..." started Scorge as slowly a devilish grin formed on his face, "to become a fortress destroyer, you could temporarily have some mana so we could power level you."
Raas eyes widened but quickly his pupils turned into slits, "did you plan all that."
Scorge´s grin widened nearly splitting his face, "nope, just a coincidence." Somehow Raas doubted this...
"Really...?"
"Really."
"Okey, so... let's say I decide to become a fortress destroyer, how will that affect me?"
Scorge grin was so wide now that it looked unnatural. The happiness that he emitted was creepy, he was too happy about that, thought Raas, backing away a bit from Scorge. "Well, first you will be growing in size and durability. Second, your mana reserves will increase. Third, you will unlock super long-range, overcharged, high damage spells, 2 at that. Fourth you will get a few basic resistances. Lastly, you will be able to do a breath attack like a dragon´s"
"This sounds too good to be true... what are the drawbacks?" asked Raas suspiciously.
Scorge happy smile turned to a displeased one as he clicked his tongue "Tss, yeah there are some drawbacks to it as every specialization has. You will lose a lot of agility as well as some skills that are not in the fortress destroyer skill set... your size will be stuck at that for quite some time as transformation spells are quite hard to master... and you will gain a random mutation that is not always beneficial, so there is a risk of you growing a useless limp or you might become blind or something like that..."
Raas stared at the demon who was lightly scratching the back of his head.
"..."
He turned his head towards the sky as he saw that the two hoards of monsters almost reached each other in striking distance.
"How many levels do you think I could gain by doing that?"
"HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM" hummed Scorge in delight after hearing Raas speak. "at least 15 levels."
"fuck it let´s do this..."
"HELL YES!!!!! THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!!" Screamed Scorge as he immediately pulled out the mending sprouts and a chemfusion injector along with some strange red liquid. "I FINALLY FOUND SOMEONE THAT IS CAPABLE AND WILLING TO BECOME A FORTRESS DESTROYER!! HAH! A SNAKE THAT STARTED OUT AS A MENACING SERPENT, WITH SOL´S GEM AND AN ACUTRA WHAT ARE THE ODDS? I WILL MAKE YOU ABLE TO DESTROY CITIES WITH ONLY ONE BREATH. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DESTROY SO MUCH! THE EXPLOSIONS YOU WILL CREATE WILL BE LEGENDARY. AH, I CAN ALREADY FEEL THE SHOCKWAVES FROM THE EXPLOSIONS!"
Suddenly Raas has a bad feeling about all that as he watched Scorge screaming and rambling in fanatical joy
.
.
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Author note:
Hey guys sorry about the slow releases, anyway, I just want to mention that I fucked up the leveling system in this novel as I decided to give them too much exp gain and powerups for what I have intended. I won´t nerf any characters, but I will buff enemies so that Raas couldn´t one-shot everything. He is still only a tier 2 at the moment, and already quite op. I think I will be posting a leveling chart so that I will have a proper leveling system. Help would be advised!
PS: Fun fact a large group of seagulls is called a colony.