Philip wasn't concerned about Grond's claws. Rather than try to dodge, hang back or even react to the attack from a god. Philip focused entirely his strike toward Grond's good eye.

Follower, Philip Spindle-Bite, requests a boon from you.

Grant your scale to his next action? Yes/No

I mentally punched the yes button as soon as I realized Philp was trying to exploit some aspect of me being a 'god'. He had requested to be a follower just before Grond had started mauling the shit out of me. Then a quick commune check put together this plan.

As the little red goblin lunged with the spear a large shadow manifested behind him. With one tremendous hand it seized the spear and drove it faster and with greater precision toward Grond's face. The chain pulled tight as its blades and barbs dug into my hands, and cinched around his neck.

The tip of the spear pierced Grond's eye, and continued. The blade cleave the ocular bone as the tip was forced into his brain. The shaft of the spear collided with the back of Grond's eye socket.

This didn't stop Grond's attack. All three of the claw's blades were aimed right at Philips neck. There wasn't anything I could do. I was two seconds away from manifesting a layer of ablative shell. Hell even as I was mentally reaching for the time stop I knew I was too late.

The claws rebounded off the shield of a spectral dwarf. The phantom protector's shield cracked and it was knocked off its feet from the impact. Brunhilda stood on the hood of one of the lead trucks. With one hand she was strangling a bigfoot warpriest to death. With the other she reached across the battlefield and saved Philip.

Philip's attack had been enough. Grond died.

Sacrificial Avatar has triggered!

The Essence of Grond, God of Beast*, will be exchanged for an avatar. Avatar will immediately be slain.

Note: * Purview of Beast is contested.

Of fucking course. The rotten son of a bitch had said he had a trick up his sleeve. Also Narrators suck. The body glitched and was replaced with a lesser version clad in a cloak made from a giant spider. The arachnid face comprising the hood did shock me as the body fell towards me. I pulled the avatar, the claws and the chain into my inventory.

Was Grond going to remanifest? Would he be at full health again?

Grond has relinquished the Purview of Beast to you.

You are now the God of Beast uncontested.

New Achievement

Divine Co-option

You have stolen from a god. That worked out well for Prometheus, right? Then again you took something far more precious that fire. You took a god's purview. You have taken a fundamental aspect of a their power and made it yours. The last person to do that was Aella. I am sure no coalition of gods is going to rise up against you…

Reward:

Please consult Narrator for assistance. You have not establish your divine aspect, or religion.

XP withheld.

Grace's taunt that I should just level up popped into my mind. I didn't have time to fixate on that. Grond seemed to have quit the field. Without his blessing all of the mobs refocused back on me.

Expend Free Action? Yes/No

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

I selected one second and time stopped with that familiar thrum. I stood. I had a plan to deal with Grond. Believe it or not, him ripping me apart had been part of that plan. It wasn't a great plan. I was going to build up as much damage as I could handle and then trigger Titanic Retribution.

This had been a dumb plan for a lot of reasons. The first being letting myself be harmed was a losing strategy in the long run. The static ringing in my ears, and dancing along my nerves overtly stated I shouldn't do this multiple times in a day. Yeah I was the tank but there were limits to things. Besides, damage mitigation was harm mitigation. The second glaring issue was I hadn't used Titanic Retribution ever before.

Please select an action…

I pulled up the description for Titanic Retribution.

Titanic Retribution

Attacking a Titan Spawn is a foolish endeavor at the best of times. Attacking the bearer of this perk is tantamount to suicide. Once per minute the Titan Spawn may rebound the Raw damage they have taken over the previous 60 seconds back at their attackers. When rebounding damage the Titan Spawn must select whether to select a single target or an Area equal to Magic Attribute square feet.

Note 1: Raw damage is the total amount of damage before being reduced by defense.

Note 2: Damage will be divided equally between every being in the area of effect.

That should do some work. I had absurd defenses. That said, I need to get something like Brunhilda's defenders. They would be a welcome addition to my maximum survival strategy. For now though I was going to try a kick ass offense as a good defense.

Please select an action…

I mentally selected the area and found it was extremely responsive to my wants. In the end I picked an area near Brand, and Aiko but shaped the area of effect. I almost triggered it.

Wait a minute. Having this be a six foot oblong was probably fine for use without a time stop. However, I should try and maximize this. How small could I make one side of the shape?

It was 0.01 feet. I had a Magic Attribute of 48. That meant I could stretch that line fourty-eight hundred feet, 90% of a mile.

Please select an action…

I need to hurry up. For All I knew Grond would be back soon. Also while that theoretical distance was real. I was in a low spot and my vision limited my total targets. I also had to factor in that with multiple targets the damage was going to be spread across. In the end I drew a line through about two hundred and fifty mobs around Philip, Sunit, Brand and Aiko. I mentally activated the ability.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Select Trigger Phrase for Titanic Retribution?

I raised my left hand. I snapped my fingers and said the first thing that came to my mind, "Die."

Titanic Retributions has been activated on 250 targets

Raw damage available: 10,583

Each target takes 43 damage.

170 targets slain.

What happened next was shocking. Every creature along the line was smashed into the blood and gore soaked ice. A wave of dark force committed this violence. It was immaterial but impossible to ignore, like gravity. Every mob had a black line etched into their body. The ones that died were flattened completely across the line of force. The dark energy bled out from the impact and formed a pattern in the ground. I hadn't realized it when I was selecting targets but it looked like a colossal left hand had reached down and swatted hundreds of monsters and left my friends untouched.

I stood in the new stillness. It wouldn't last. More mobs were coming. The area around me was a red bog of blood and bodies. The gore was beginning to freeze in the cold. The scale of the violence was what struck me. In the late morning light everything was tinted red like it was late sunset despite the blue sky. I think across all of the different types of monsters there was close to a quarter million in Grond's army at the start. Now less than an hour into the fighting I think there were fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand.

This was slaughter. It was industrial. If it was happening to anything other than mobs…

We still had to go to tower…

First though this needed to be finished.

Wrapping things up took a lot longer than I thought. About ten minutes into being swarmed again, I had the bright idea to construct a pillar from the ice. Over the course of a minute I was able to form a roughly two story tall platform with sheer icy walls. The mobs swarmed around it and a few managed to get up there with me. Philip and I made short work of most of them.

There was an Incident with a Cait Sith. I almost fell off. I hate snow lions.

The mobs in their frenzy lashed out at me rather than topple my perch. While I was playing distraction, and Philip was protecting my dumb ass, the rest of the army was carefully peeling off small amounts of the horde of mobs and killing them. This wasn't just soldiers anymore either. In the mix were younger goblins. We were farming the army of mobs for experience.

That was almost certainly a wise decision, but another part of me couldn't help but think something terrible was happening. This world was so much more violent than the world that was had been for the Titan. That said seeing a generation of young people being taught to kill, and being celebrated for doing it well… For me this was a horror. For them it was a right of passage.

They deserved better.

Over the course of the next six hours the army of mobs was whittled down into nothing. Rob Shiv and the other loot goblins were claiming they needed at least another six hours to pick over the battlefield.

"I feel like Hanibal," Toad exclaimed as we walked back toward the convoy.

"The general?" I asked. Certainty was needed here.

"Yes," Toad confirmed. He restrained his excitement, "This was a massive victory. We annihilated an army twice our size. Philip killed a patron! You have proven yourself essential to our war effort. It's all coming together."

"I only succeeded with Doug as my Patron," Philip said. He looked uncomfortable admitting that.

Toad stopped in his tracks, "That is… less than ideal."

"I don't regret my decision," Philip said flatly.

"I don't ask you too," Toad assured him as he patted Philip's shoulder. "What we do is beyond us. What are the terms?" He aimed that question at me.

"What terms?" I asked.

"For your patronage," Toad explained.

"He has set no terms," Philip said. He started walking to again, "I have been told to petition him to found a religion through the prompts"

"Is there some advantage to that?" Toad asked me.

"I have no idea. I'll look into it," I told him.

"Sooner would be better than later," Toad advised.

He would have continued, but a small goblin child shouted, "Papa!" a split second before slamming into him in a full contact hug.

I nodded in agreement and kept following Philip. My god killing friend was focused on finding his kids. I worried about that. Yeah Marge had said she wanted to limit casualties, but she had specifically pointed out needing more soldiers for the big fight. Spine had been terrified in the conference room. He was young, but I trusted his instincts. He had asked for help. Angelica and Celeste answered. That still didn't mean that a spiteful Narrator couldn't have killed some of the children just to… I don't know… drive pathos.

We found Pappy Havok sitting on a hardcase smoking. The old goblin was covered in blood. He was holding a bandage over what seemed to be a massive wound on his side. He nodded to us and spoke, "Doug, Philip. We won."

"Are you alright?" I asked.

Pappy Havok looked at me implacably, "I'll live. You?"

"I'm fine," I told him. I was still covered in gore, but all of my injuries had long since healed. I was Ignoring the Vitae again. The timer on that had ticked down less than six hours before it would trigger that whole 'Blood for the Blood God!' Condition. I didn't want to deal with that. So I was stuck powering through the Extreme Agony Condition.

"Don't look it," the old goblin said. He turned to Philip, "Spine your boy?"

"Yes," Philip said. His answer held a lot of tension. He, like me, expected bad news.

"Kid did good," Pappy Havok said. He waved us off, "Go away."

We made our way further into the convoy. The sound of children shouting hit me. Now that is a noise to the uninitiated that unilaterally sounds like kids screaming in terror as they are murdered horribly. There are a bunch of clues that parents and others can use to filter the noise. Subtle clues in tone and timbre differentiate the overall mood. Also, an easy binary is if the screaming never stops they are probably playing. Since if someone was murdering them at some point things would go quiet. Blessed, highly suspicious, and potentially horrifying quiet.

We rounded the bus and found the goblin children lined up pushing and shoving as they used Angelica's spear as a chin-up bar. Angelica was holding it just below the point with the shaft away from her. Once it was loaded with excited children she would then zip forward ten feet and then back. This caused screams… of delight… for the most part.

Spine was leaning against the bus holding Janky. She clearly wasn't having the best day. She didn't look hurt, but the little doll she had was split open, and basically destroyed. Her snow lion skin clothes were tattered as well.

Nanny Shank sat next to them. The old lady was sitting in the door to the bus. She took a swig from the bottle of medicine. She was breathing in a labored way and looked pallid.

"Dad!" Janky shouted when she spotted Philip.

"Dad, you should see why I-" Spine Pointed toward one of the dead mobs, but he stopped short.

Philip hugged both his kids. He spoke quietly, "I love you both."

I felt like I was intruding.I stopped listening to what they were saying. I started sidling away toward Angelica. Nanny Shiv grabbed my leg before I could walk more than a few steps.

"There he is!" a large crowd of goblins rounded a corner and pointed at Philip. A lot of them were holding bottles. A few had instruments and began producing a discordant celebratory marching theme. A bunch of the crowd surged towards Philip. Cheering, they lifted him up. They also hefted Spine and Janky. Janky screamed and it wasn't a shout of joy.

"Grab the kids," Nanny Shiv poked me hard.

I reached over the crowd and Philip handed Janky to me and Spine grabbed my arm.

The crowd was chanting as they drifted more toward the middle of the convoy "God Killer! God Killer! God Killer!"

Eventually the din quieted.

Nanny Shank stood and spoke to Spine. "Your dad is doing a job." She had to take a few breaths before continuing, "We lost people. He's keeping morale high. He wants to be with you two."

The look Philip gave me before being carried around a corner confirmed Nanny Shank's words.

For me at least, Spine stared at the corpse of a spider roughly the size of a horse. Its armor body was covered in knife wounds. The corpse had been pushed over to the side, clearly a path between the vehicles. Loot goblins were breaking the body of the Silken Jailor down into resources.

He held his sister's hand. When he spoke his voice was very small, "He killed a god."

I put my hand on Spine's shoulder, "You stayed where you were needed. You protected those in danger. You saved lives. Spine, I am proud of you."

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