Chapter 39 – Fighting the good fight

I actually wondered what an all divine party looked like in combat.  The Windfallians tended to be more warrior focused classes, and while we had our buffs they weren’t what I’d describe as overwhelming.  I got to sit for a good thirty seconds while both Paladin’s activated Auras, the Zealots cast a variety of buffing spells and the cleric prepared a number of floating orbs that could both shield and heal people.

“Ready?” I asked when it looked like they were finally done. “You are fighting the legendary Mayor of Windfall, after all.”

The five falconians in the circle all frowned at me, especially the Princess.

“You don’t have to remind us of the tales of the Mayor,” said Julia flatly.

“I think I do, Lance seems to have forgotten them,” I replied evenly.

Lance had a facial tick if you called him out the right way. He got it under control almost instantly, but you could see the vein over his left eye bulge at my words. The crowd was thinking about the legends themselves.

“In the legends, you’d be able to handle the five of us with little difficulty,” said Plasma Julia, a slight sneer crossing her face. As one of the rare individuals who could cast plasma magic, she had a slightly oversized opinion of herself. Typically high level combat tended to revolve around specialty damage types on Ordinal, and the strongest specialty damage was Plasma. She could theoretically end me in one spell, if I let her.

If I wasn’t still bonded to Badgelor. If I didn’t know Badger’s Stance. So many ifs, and Charles was just as well protected as I was, if not more. The jovial attitude I’d adopted for the fight slipped and for the first time Lance’s group saw my battle face, everyone but Angela and Julia stepped back.

“Have you powered up,” asked Plasma Julia, trying to break the silence.

“I don’t see why I’d need to for Lance,” I replied.

She shrugged, “Your funeral. . .”

“. . .would be an accident,” said Lance combing back on balance and glancing over at Cole.  I hadn’t even summoned my sword yet.  I probably should.

“How do these things start anyway?” I asked just as one of the Falconians outside the barrier struck the dome with his hammer, causing a massive gong.

Two balls of plasma shot straight towards me the instant combat started. I hadn’t been trying to disrupt them, possibly a tactical error considering it was plasma, but the glowing balls of heat and energy tended to do bad things if they were interrupted.

Now that they were coming towards me, I engaged counterspell on both simultaneously. Lance’s ball wobbled as my full effort went to destabilizing it. The other, launched by Plasma Julia, fared better. My secondary target counterspell was somewhat less effective than my primary and I really didn’t have much time to react.

Lance’s attack detonated with a powerful crack, sending debris from the field in all direction. The second spell continued forward straight at me while I dropped into Badger’s Stance. As the orb approached, I readied myself.

· Southern Badger’s Paw: Your left hand’s magical resistance increases by a factor of 10, you can deflect spells.

I swatted the spell out of the air, deflecting it into the dome. I’d never seen one of those damaged before, and that streak continued. The plasma burned into the dome but didn’t even leave the tiniest mark in the impenetrable field.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Plasma Julia, her eyes wide.

“Cole, like get him, dude,” yelled Lance. I thought he was joking, but realized he was actually falling into formal speech patterns as a sort of an emotional armor against me.

Cole was built around some sort of linebacker charge.  He lowered his shoulder and rushed me at an impossible speed, crossing the distance within a heartbeat of the gong sounding.  He had an odd shaped hammer that was practically built for smashing downed enemies. He charged towards me with sparks shooting off of his shoes and a look of pure malice on his face.

Impatient asshole.

When he got within arm’s reach, I activated Blink appearing beside him leaving the space he was going to run through vacant.  Then I punched him in the side of the head.

· Improved One Punch: You focus all of your stamina into one blow, then instantly recover 20% of your stamina.  Causes knockback.

Cole went flying.  He had Mitigate, Heavy Armor and a bunch of skills designed to keep him moving forward in a straight line and none of them mattered.  He flew, slamming into the barrier where his helmet shattered and then bounced off skidding back to where Princess Julia looked down in shock.

“Seriously,” said Julia as she knelt down and started repair the skull fractures.

“I’m going easy on you guys,” I offered. I figured Cole could take that sort of strike, but best put him near a healer just in case.

Angela stopped running as my Stamina pool topped off.  I couldn’t perform endless punches like that, but I could do more than two with my upgrades to Stamina Control.  I picked up Cole’s hammer and lobbed it back over at him.

Princess Julia managed to get Cole sitting back up from my earlier hit when the hammer smashed directly into his face.  He flopped back down.

“Seriously,” yelled Julia, she grabbed several teeth and swore under her breath.

“Spells,” yelled Lance as he held up his hand and began chanting a spell.  I shut him down.  My Counterspell skill was advanced enough to give Charles difficulty in casting spells, Lance didn’t even know what that degree of skill looked like.  All of his active magical effects ended, and I started uncasting his buff spells.

I was helpful like that.

Plasma Julia realized what was happening and three massive force blasts came screaming across the floor at me simultaneously.  I dodged two, and then backhanded the third deflecting it across the field.  Cole stood up shakily as Princess Julia dumped even more mana into healing him, before the spell slammed him in the face.  Plasma Julia frowned as he went down.  She gathered up more power and started shooting dozens of smaller orbs at me while I watched Angela.

The orbs tore into my anti-magical barrier then into my Badger’s Stance.

· You have been struck by 36 Grapes of Wrath.  Base damage 22, Anti-Magic field reduces damage of all incoming spells by 12.  Badger’s stance reduces damage of all spells by 16.  Total damage, 0.

The aura around Plasma Julia dimmed as she realized what she was running into.  Zealot’s magic was build around their emotional state, and she was rapidly turning terrified.  She threw a defensive aura onto Angela who decided it was now or never.

She charged.

I held out my hand and summoned my longsword from its dimensional sheath.  The brilliant, flaming blade appeared just as she struck.  Her aura of goodness clashed with the sword’s malevolent aura.

The Paladin class had some equivalent to Hack and Slash.  She attempted it now and was quite skilled.  Angela was capable of striking at me no fewer than twelve times with her various attacks.

I countered with my own Hack and Slash, blocking all of her strikes.  She grinned, thinking that she’d matched me when I slammed into her chest plate with an open-handed slap that sent her flying backwards into Lance.

The poor caster still hadn’t been able to get a single spell off, and I’d unraveled all of his defensive auras so when the fully armored woman slammed into him you could hear the crunch.  She got back to her feet, Lance didn’t.

Princess Julia ignored Cole and ‘rushed’ over to heal Lance, whose legs were both suffering from compound fractures.

“Jules, Cole, all three of us at once,” said Angela, gripping her blade.  It took me a moment to register that.

“Wait, she has a nickname,” I said, pointing to Plasma Julia.

“Yes,” said Angela heatedly. “What, do you think we go around calling her Plasma Julia or something.”

“No, of course not,” I replied. “I knew that I was just thinking about Princess Julia.”

“Yeah, her nickname is princess,” said Angela. “Sort of like the Duchess’ nickname is Duchess.”

“But her name shows up as Julia,” I said uncomfortably.

“They all do, that’s why we use nicknames,” said Angela who suddenly inhaled sharply.

“It’s like he from another world,” said ‘Jules’ uncomfortably. A look of discomfort ran across the crowd, because that too was part of the legend of the Mayor.

“That means nothing,” replied Angela hefting her sword.

“I’m pretty confident he’s the Mayor,” said ‘Jules’ as she started gathering power.

“He can’t be, he’s just another false mayor. We’ll get him this time!” said Cole as I popped the knuckles on my left hand.

Angela looked at me for a second.  Then she and ‘Jules’ slid a pace away from Cole, which was good because it allowed me to use Fast Steps to close the distance without any issues.

Cole realized his mistake the instant I appeared in front of him.  He slashed up with his hammer, but I punched it away with a badger’s fist, bending the metal shaft.  Then I activated an actual attack.

· Fist of the Northern Badger, Hack and Slash:  Attack the target 22 times using your Badger’s fist.

This is what anime looked like.  Disarmed, Cole wasn’t set up or equipped to handle my Badger’s Fist, and I struck him in all of the places that Row Row showed me to break armor.  Then all the places Diddle showed me to break people, and finally I struck him a few more times in the places that Diamonds in the Sky showed me to break men specifically.

· Targets Mana and Stamina are locked out for 88 seconds.  Target suffered 612 points of damage.

Without access to his mana or stamina, the big Paladin was reduced to a broken pile of meat on the ground in front of me.  He could be healed, I didn’t go quite that far, but he wasn’t going to be fighting anymore without some actual reconstructive healing being performed.

Of course, for the people watching it was even more spectacular.  I’d torn Cole’s armor clean off his body.  That was high grade Falconian stuff made of materials quite a bit more expensive than High Steel.

“Still want to try?” I asked Angela and ‘Jules’.  Angela dropped her sword and ‘Jules’ dropped all of her spells.  “I thought not.”

I started walking over towards Lance.  Princess Julia was focused entirely on healing his legs, so when I got next to him, I simply used a Judo Chop.  Lance failed his con save and passed out.

“Alright Princess, you wanted to fight with me,” I said, focusing my intimidation aura on her. With all of my skills, that aura was crushing, and I didn’t use it often. I half wondered if I could just compel her to surrender, but Julia was made of sterner stuff.

Julia looked down at Lance, shrugged and dropped him unceremoniously in the dirt.  The Princess of Falcon stood to her full height as her body began glowing golden with power. Then the power expanded out as she started using her rod to enhance her spells. Her barriers shone like the sun as I stood before her.

And waited.

“Aren’t you going to attack,” she asked.

“Your barriers absorb damage, you are likely the only person here who could actually hurt me,” I said, loud enough for people to hear, then followed more quietly. “I also know you can’t keep them powered on at that intensity for very long.”

“Then we are at an impasse,” said Julia as she continued to reinforce her barriers.

“I don’t think so, they know I can fight. You are just standing there waiting for something to happen,” I said dryly. As Julia glanced around. “Every single member of your family is watching you, and you chose to do nothing.”

“I don’t need to, you are the one who needs to be impressive and win the fight if you hope to be King,” said the Princess carefully. We were both feeling each other out.

“I’m not so sure about that, even if I lose how is that going to look to your family,” I offered. Julia inhaled, glancing around. She was the last person standing against the Mayor, but she hadn’t really been fighting. This was an opportunity for her to impress the family, but it was also an opportunity to fail miserably. However, it was the Princess and I knew her.

Two golden disks flew in from either side of me and I flipped between them. Either would have bisected me if they hit, but of course they hadn’t. Julia formed up more disks and flung them at me and I continued dodging as I watched her barriers slowly start to weaken with my arcane sight.

Julia’s rod started to glow as she tried to focus more power through it and that was actually getting close to damaging it so I decided I needed to act. I surged forward, grabbing her around the waist. The surge of power from the barrier was enough that I could smell ozone, but with Badger Style I could actually grab the barrier. Julia looked at me in shock the moment before I suplexed her, Badgelor style.

Her barrier faltered after I drove her entire head into the dirt and I drove a thumb into a spot on her mana network causing her barriers to warble and fail. She looked crestfallen, until she spotted my cheek. A single cut was there from a disk that had gotten too close. I healed it instantly, of course, but she had done more damage than everyone else here.

· You have approval of over 50% of the Falconian Royal Family, would you like to declare yourself ‘King of Windfall’

“Fecking finally,” I growled, selecting the prompt.

***

The Dark Overlord looked over his army and shrugged.  There weren’t enough fresh zombies so he’d made do. The bodies of all the inhabitants of the town that were already dead combined with the outlying villages gave him a fairly rancid army, and too many were made from bodies that were either too old or too young, but it would have to do.

His only bit of luck was that there were a great number of older adventurers who were past their prime. That didn’t matter as undead and they would actually make decent champions for his army, he was going to gather more when the prompt hit him.

· Mayor Jim is now the King of Falcon

That hurt, just a touch, and it shouldn’t have.  Charles could remember building up that kingdom from literally nothing.  A single province granted by Leia’s father and his delusions of grandeur.  That was Ordinal to him to a large extent, the early years when it at least made sense.  When he found Badgelor.

Badger’s promise.

Badgelor, Windfall, Falcon.  They were all Jim’s now, and good riddance.  The Dark Overlord didn’t need those things.  All he needed was in Windfall, and he was willing to do anything to get it.

His preparations were complete.  Let the world again writhe in my presence.

“Be ready Windfall, The Dark Overlord comes.”