Some people, when faced with an evil god wearing the form of a ursine attacking them, may contemplate the odd vagaries of their life. Others would review their life choices and wonder if they should have done things different. A few may even regret provoking such an attack. I didn't do any of that. Not because I was brave, but because it took all of my mental facilities to dodge.

Technically I only dodged the first of Grond's attacks. A paw the size of a volkswagen beetle sailed over my head. I only just barely ducked it. The blurry shape of a Photogenic Bigfoot didn't get out of the way and it lost everything from the waist up as Grond's claws scythed through it. The second paw slammed down on me… well… like the wrath of god. There was an earth shaking impact.

Attack from Grond successful.

You phased through the attack. No damage taken.

I failed to dodge, but Tenebrous Form let me phase through the attack. This was more than a little upsetting. I was still technically suffering from the Blind Condition. Also Grond didn't have any lights inside his body. That said I still saw the interworking of skin, muscle and bone as his paw passed through my head and then the rest of my body.

Thankfully his attack had so much force behind it, Grond's paw punched deep into the ice and ground below me. I doubted stay where I was would be a good idea.

I jumped back. Voice of the Titan was still on so when I cursed, "Ah shit!" The words were back with grandiose power. That made it sound important and wise rather than a knee jerk expletive.

Grond tried to swallow me. He was a giant bear with a mouth full of terrible fangs to match.

Attack from Grond Blocked.

Counter Attack Successful. Grond takes 27 damage

I managed to push Grond's lower jaw off course. Despite him being hundreds of times larger than me he moved rather than knock me down. The system seemed to care more about the die rolls than the minutiae of physics. Grond's teeth clacked around empty air. That's when I hit his chin with an uppercut. If I had been thinking I would have tried to hit him with the knife. But Humbaba was coming at me with his club.

As I was failing to dodge Humbaba's club, Angelica launched herself into the air. For a brief moment she seemed to hang almost suspended midair. Then with a flash of lightning she crashed down on Grond's back. Angelica's shiny new spear punched into Grond's spine and power flashed through his body. For the briefest of instants his flesh blazed with light causing his skeleton to be visible. This was more ultra violent than cartoony

The air stank of ozone and blood as Grond collapsed.

The avatar of a god has been slain!

Like I said I failed to dodge Humbaba's club, but I did manage to deflect it. This caused the tree trunk to bounce off of me rather than send me flying. So when the giant bear body shrank back to a humanoid form and began to dissolve. I managed to grab it and pull it into my inventory.

Avatar Acquired.

Mantle of the Ursine Dread Acquired.

"Hey Grond, I got a second avatar! What else am I going to-" I thundered. Again I still had Voice of the Titan on so my words rang out with power over the noise of monsters screaming and guns firing. Trouble is that was the exact moment a White Shadow hit me. The stealthy snow lion knocked me off my feet and raked its claws along my body. This didn't do my armor any good.

Humbaba bringing his club down on my head shattered the shell completely. He then hit me again. This did thirty damage and re-upped all the debuffs he had inflicted on me before. It also rang my bell very hard. I wasn't quite seeing any tweeting birds, but I did see a flash of stars.

I hate snow lions, but Humbaba was climbing the power ranking of my shit list rapidly.

"You die!" Humbaba roared. He raised the club again. He then roared in pain and outrage. Sunit's flaming wheel caught the lord of bigfeet in the neck. He abandoned the attack and ripped the wheel out. He flung it back vaguely in Sunit's direction. He then tried to shout something in challenge, only for Philip's crossbow bolt to hit him in the eye.

I managed to push the Megaleo off of me. Then Angelica hit it from the side. The giant cat splattered.

I got back to my feet. A giant spider launched itself at me. The nightmare creature was coming at me hooked legs and venomous fangs first. So the knife was roughly one and half times the length of my hand. The giant spider was the size of a small horse. The logistics of how my slash with the knife split the giant spider in half didn't quite make sense, but I wasn't complaining. Not about that, I will take a moment to say this resulted in me being spackled in spider goo. It was upsettingly lukewarm and smelled wrong, think a mix of copper, fish, and plastic. The gore was also the incorrect viscosity. It was like pancake batter.

Why?

The list was as follows: snow lions, Humbaba, and then giant spiders... and lastly the creepy twins. No, the twins hadn't done anything to me, but they were weird… to me. I am going to stop talking about this.

The swarm of mobs hadn't stopped coming. Since my armor was gone, I turned off Claws of Darkness. I was going to need the regen. Standing in the low spot of the wrecked city and seeing a horizon full of monsters was more than a little asshole puckering.

"I don't see Grond," Angelica said before impaling a bigfoot. She then charged through a crowd of spiders back toward Aiko and the others.

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"He hasn't reappeared," Philip shouted over the rumble of Angelica's thunder. He had climbed up my back, and was now using me as a platform from which to attack the mobs. That is the description we are going to use. Any claims he was riding me are to borrow Rachel's phrase propaganda.

I was more than a little impressed he could stay on my back. I was ducking and weaving through the crowd at a near Angelica pace. My main goal was to pull the mobs further from everyone else. That said I absolutely put resources into the side quest: Stay the hell away from Humbaba. This was hindered slightly by Philip continuing to shoot Humbaba in the face.

The Boss Mob besides being obnoxiously strong, clearly had some sort of healing factor. I didn't care for that. It was unfair. I didn't see any hypocrisy in my feelings. Why would I? I like not being hurt. When I heal it is a good thing. Humbaba was a bastard trying to kill me. Him healing was bullshit.

Things got hyper violent for a few minutes there. I kicked, punched, slashed, and stabbed dozens and dozens of creatures as I blocked and dodged hundreds of attacks. Having Philip on my back increased my damage output, but it did limit my movements. I wasn't willing to expose him to a majority of the attacks coming our way. That translated to me absorbing a good handful more hits than I would have.

Honestly that was probably a rounding error. The immense weight of attacks bearing down on me meant I was taking damage. Claws tore at my face and neck. Fist pummeled my ribs and stomach. Fangs pierced my legs. The pain would shock through my nervous system before regen erased the damage.

A big hurdle in dealing with an army is that you are dealing with an army. That probably sounds circular, but even as I fought to the edge of the crowd more enemies pressed in. the edge was getting further from me. The drop in damage output without Claws of Darkness meant I wasn't killing everything I hit. The knife was still doing work, but I hesitated to spend mana. Brunhilda may need that. My ability to will the world around me into new shapes was also being curtailed. The giant spiders were carpeting the area in thick nets of webbing. The webs were the worst combination of tensile steel cable and snot. On touch and I was entangled and pulling even more of the awful stuff onto me. So I was using my free action to destroy the webbing on me basically every second.

Like I said before, living second to second is a terrible thing. I got a layer of ablative shell up only for it to get shattered again in about twenty seconds. That resulted in another forty seconds of bettings. That cycle repeated for a minute, then two minutes, and then three minutes. My blood mingled with the gore and ichor of monsters as the damage started to out pace my regen. Philip and I were deeper in the sea of mobs then we were at the start. I had wanted this. I had asked for this. The strain was beginning to catch up on me. Professional boxers fight in three minute rounds, and then take a break. I was going to be at this for hours. In the context of a fight that was an eternity. For most it would be for the rest of their lives.

The static was beginning to creep into the edges of my mind. The weight of sensation is all but impossible to convey. I summarized the first seven of five seconds tanking, and things had gotten even more hectic now that I was fully surrounded. It was all I could manage to block, dodge, and deflect attacks. Don't get me wrong I was countering when I could, but my attacks were getting sloppy. I was missing as much as I hit. A bad sign. I should be hitting something even if I was just throwing attacks at random in that press of monsters.

This is how you fight people like me. Bait them out with something that they won't let go, and then drown them in a constant assault of bodies. I shouldn't be too surprised. This was a more ruthless version of how I planned to kill Grond.

"On your right!" Philip shouted. From my shoulder he jabbed with his spear, and missed the Cait Sith.

Attack from Cait Sith successful.

You take 7 points of damage.

You are afflicted with the Extreme Agony Condition

Mental Resistance blocks the Extreme Agony Condition. You may act as normal.

Titanic Regeneration heals 22 HP

HP: 427/600

The demon cat was going for my face. Instead it mauled the hell out of my hand. Burning claws cut to the bone. Skin blistered and blood boiled. I screamed. The Cait Sith would have gotten me a second time, If Philip hadn't stabbed it in the eye. The spear was barbed and hooked pieces of metal snapped as massive chunks of its eye and skin ripped free.

That had to hurt.

Good.

That is when Humbaba hit me. It was a grand slam, crack of wood against my head and all. It was a crit as the prompt told me. It also sent me flying. Philip came along for the ride. This was actually a blessing in disguise. Yeah that hit re-upped all the debuffs, and did seventy-four damage, but it also launched me up and out of the reach of most of the mobs. The incredible force of the impact also caused me to crowd surf for a good three hundred feet. One industrious Bigfoot War Priest did try to stop my progress toward the edge of the crowd, but Philip gave him an eye full of spear.

Expend Free action? Yes/No

Note: you must select the total number of seconds spent before activating.

Time for an executive decision. I selected one. Even before the thrum of time stopping I floundered to keep moving toward the edge of the army of mobs. A successful Sprint check and I found myself in the hopeful situation and having elbow room. I also turned all the ice around me into water. The mobs were resistant to cold but clearly hated being soaked. Sucks to be them.

Time snapped back into motion.

"What!" Philip managed. He then realized he did not actually care about the details of how we got out of the horde, and devoted his time to shooted a terrible, half-rotten bear in the mouth. A lot of face injuries with Philip. If it was against anything other than mobs I might worry about that.

A second noise cut through the roars of mobs and the static in my mind. The thwump-thwump-thwump of blades whirling. The goblins actually had a helicopter. I am not sure how long it normally takes to get one of those in the air, but roughly six to seven minutes seemed pretty fast. I am going to say it looked like an Apache helicopter. Not because it did, but because that is literally the only attack helicopter I know the name of.

Helen's voice blared over a speaker, "Move, Doug!" Then with no further lag time the goddam chain gun on the helicopter started spinning. A blazing stream of bullets followed shortly after. Helen, having left the speaker on, cackled maniacally.

I moved my big ass out of the line of fire. I have said before and will say it again, I am a violent man. I am not proud of it, and think that is something to curtail in most situations. This wasn't one of them. I took the moment of reprieve and watched a significant amount of living creatures rupture and explode like water balloons full of bones and gore. That sight made me happy.

I probably did that for too long. The Cait Sith was back. It had snuck up on me. Philip was shouting some sort of warning. I was too slow.

The spectral Dwarf wasn't. Its shield panned the hell cat in the face and knocked it back. Brand being polite shot several times.

Then Angelica killed the damn thing. "We need to group up. You can't keep this up."

"Where's Grond?" My voice thundered. I had forgotten I had left Voice of the Titan on. Oops. oh well it sounded kinda like a cool challenge.

That is when I felt it. A dread aura pressed down on me. It was like that feeling of being watched at night. You know, those times when you pray you are alone?

All Mobs now have the Blessing of Grond!

The Essence of a God descends!

Prepare yourself!

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