I scooped up any small stones I could see as I went and stuffed them into a pouch on my right hip. I had about twenty of them before I drew to a stop by the coven and Kril, who were blasting away happily at the monster. A squad of my new mage-Huskars stood to either side of them and unleashed the magic in their artefact weapons and armour before starting to cast spells with their own mana.

Arcs of lightning, blasts of ice and fire shot across the ruined landscape to slam into the amorphous blob. With the Titans and the Fangs just behind me, I watched for a minute as the others worked systematically to whittle Ashrot down. It pulsed and surged; another section would crawl forward whenever it was obliterated in one area. The metamorphic flesh sent out thick tendrils, and suddenly, the mass behind it shifted to try and advance in another place.

Glimpse landed on my shoulder, and I offered him a sip from a mana potion, his beak dipping in and out several times before he took to the sky again and circled overhead. I could see we had done an impressive amount of damage already. The hulking blob was much reduced, barely half the size it had been.

I began enchanting stones with Firewall and hurling them across the few hundred metres that separated my allies from the nightmarish creature. I aimed high, letting gravity pull the stones down onto the upper reaches of the multi-storey abomination. Lines of white fire writhed and twisted in fractal patterns, burning their way into the thing's upper body and eliciting a many-throated below of rage.

It surged again, the mass at the rear humping forward and up as the thing rolled over itself to present undamaged parts of itself, drawing dangerously closer to our forces. The coven and the legionaries gave ground, retreating step by step, and they continued launching elemental magics into the new face of the thing.

And this time, it truly was a face. The upper surface formed into a gigantic face and howled at us. The eyes looked more like the compound eyes of insects, but courtesy of Glimpse, I could see they were composed of hundreds, maybe thousands, of human eyes. A face made of faces and parts of faces screamed in rage and pain at us. So I cast Burning Skies three times and chugged another of my diminishing supply of mana potions.

The sky darkened, and clouds red like blood formed above the beast. The triple cast meant it couldn't block the falling Fireballs quickly enough. A nest of tentacles rose up to try to trigger them before they impacted the main body, but too many made it through. Brilliant explosions rolled over the beast, immolating tons of its biomass and eliciting another shriek. This time, it sounded less like rage and more like fear and pain.

"Bob! Go!" I yelled, and our mechanical contingent broke into a sprint. Their bronze limbs flashed as they charged forward and disappeared into the grey flesh, becoming whirring, indigestible blades cutting through its guts.

"You wanted to fight this thing?" I asked the Fangs, and they nodded fiercely. "Then let's do that. Titans, I want you to harry it as well." I plucked at their soul bonds, and they winced but nodded.

Without another word, we broke into a sprint. I could see the rest of the legion forming not far behind us and preparing to re-engage. Massed cavalry squadrons had also swept round to come at it from the rear; they were getting into range and beginning to launch volleys of enchanted or imbued arrows into Ashrot.

The Fangs screamed their bloodlust and shot past me. I had slowed to launch more Fireballs at the thing. They slid to a stop and began carving into the beast, their imbued weapons flashing and burning. Clouds of stinking smoke rose from the injuries they inflicted to join the thick air around Ashrot.

The fucker couldn't focus on so many targets at once, it seemed. The barrage from my casters, the attacks to the rear from the cavalry, the internal assault the golems were no doubt inflicting, and now us, ants as we were before the nightmare, were stopping it from reacting effectively.

It should have simply rolled over us and tried to tear us apart once we were trapped within, but all it could do was lash out with tentacles and form tooth-ringed maws that lunged at us. With our impossible reflexes, most of these attacks were easily avoided, and with our healing magic, the minor wounds we took could be shrugged off.

The flailing attacks grew less and less effective, so I cast Combustion, my entire being becoming fire, and with a vertical slash, I walked into the monster's flesh. I cut and slashed, slices of grey flesh falling dead around me as I severed them from the main creature. The muscle walls that composed its interior pulled back, but I lunged forward and gave chase as it tried to buy time until my spell ran out.

I only had fourteen seconds of being an avatar of flame, so I made the most of it. I sank glowing fingers into the rotting muscles and refused to be separated from Ashrot's guts while my burning sword sliced away at everything around me. Those last few seconds seemed to drag on forever, but soon enough, my fire sputtered out. The fist I'd clawed into its organs began to burn with pain as Ashrot clamped down, the thing locked my left hand in place and reshaped the cavity I had made, dragging me upwards until I dangled by one hand ten feet off the ground.

A face formed opposite my own in the wall of flesh. It had dark eyes and an aquiline nose. A narrow mouth formed and opened.

"Allow us to withdraw, and we will spare your life." The voice was light and feminine, and I gawped at it like a goldfish in shock. The pain in my hand intensified.

"Want to run? Too late for that." I grunted, pulling back my sword as I planned an upward cut to weaken the wall of flesh entombing my fist.

"We were made with the Luminant of Death. You cannot stand against the King. If you withdraw, you can escape what's coming. Let us retreat or die," said Ashrot.

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"You're an abomination, a slave. Let me put you out of your misery!" I gasped.

"We cannot wish for such a thing." The face in the wall, flattened and distended like a human face stitched onto a wall, drew closer, the flesh behind it punching into my little cave as the entire space began to contract around me. "We can spare your life and those of your allies in exchange for our own. That is permitted."

"Sorry, bloke. No deal." This was going to suck, but it wouldn't be the first time I'd tried something equally stupid. Maybe I could learn from past mistakes? I cast Fire on my left fist; the flesh around it flashed into smoke and ash, and I began to fall. My blade swept upwards, slicing Ashrot's face from the stub of undead muscle that had protruded to bring it closer to me. As I hit the floor, I dumped the rest of my mana into Firewall spells, filling the space with lines of white fire that spread out and cleared a larger area around me. The flames were too hot for Ashrot's metamorphic flesh to pass through, so I began cutting my way out.

I drained another mana potion and recast the Firewalls, directing them to burn a passage back the way I had come. I burst out into the twilight and spun around to launch a barrage of Fireballs behind me before the monster could block off the tunnel I'd burned through.

The Fangs were still slashing away, gradually whittling the monster down, and the Titans were embroiled in an apocalyptic battle. Meter-thick tendrils of grey flashed around them as they bit and tore at the attacking tentacles.

Ashrot emitted a hiss like a gigantic kettle reaching the boil and suddenly lurched into motion. It was still large and vast, but having lost so much mass, it could move a lot faster. About two-thirds of the way up, I caught a glimpse of spinning bronze breaking out of the bulbous monster as Bob briefly surfaced before diving back in like a metallic dolphin leaping out of the sea for a moment.

The vast amoeba-like construct began flowing away, moving towards the city. The cavalry scattered like sheep before a wolf. A handful of the bravest, or stupidest, had gotten too close and were swept up by shifting grey limbs as Ashrot attempted to flee.

I cast Burning Skies and paused for breath as the clouds began to glow crimson again. Ashrot shrieked in fury and sped up, swallowing another batch of cavalry as it rushed to escape the zone of destruction it knew was coming.

It wasn't fast enough. The fireballs fell on it once more, but this time, it was more effective at blocking them with flicking threads of mutating grey flesh. The legion surged forward, seeing the enemy retreating and began launching barrages of spells from their ancient weapons.

The thing was barely the size of a large house now, and it surged down the furrow it had pressed into the dirt with its short-lived advance. I sheathed my sword and checked on the Fangs. They were battered but unbroken, grinning at each other and bragging about the part they played in the fight.

They clearly weren't capable of fighting this kind of being. They were almost unstoppable compared to less enhanced human troops or the undead, but the abominations would require whole new tactics. With the coven and the mage-Huskar, I felt we had the nucleus of what we would need. Once I got the assassin teams equipped and sent ahead to find the enemy forces, I'd have another tool at my disposal.

Taking down the enemy casters as I passed overhead had been a major turning point in the fight. If they'd been able to continue to support Ashrot and force us to spend mana countering their magic, the damn thing would have been unstoppable.

I looked over at Kril and the coven and saw they were fine. Soot smeared and dirty, but they were exultant and unharmed. I turned back to the retreating foe and started running. A bronze wolf pulled up alongside me, and I leapt on Wilson's shoulders. He upped his pace, and we shot past the Fangs, closing in on the Titans that were snapping at what passed for Ashrot's heels.

We caught up with it just as it pressed against the city walls and began flowing away to the side. Why the hell not just roll over them? Putting walls between itself and us was the logical thing to do. Some compulsion not to enter the city proper, maybe? Either way, it worked in my favour. The legion continued blasting away at it, carving lumps of it away as it tried to run. The cavalry had reformed, minus their losses, and was galloping in an arc fifty metres away from it and bombarding it with flaming arrows and javelins.

I leapt off Wilson and rolled back to my feet in a fluid motion, hurling Fireballs that I used to cut Ashrot into pieces. I drank yet another mana potion and used my spells like scalpels to chop the thing up. Sometimes the larger part would wither and rot when it was removed, instead of the smaller piece. There's some kind of heart or brain in there. Getting cut off from that destroys a connection or something that animates the whole thing.

If it had a vital spot, it had a weak spot. I charged in close, drawing my sword and my dagger and threw myself thirty feet up to catch the last animated part of the monster, and dug my way in. The flesh grew teeth and tore at me, and bands of muscle tried to contract and crush me. The thing was weak now. Its major advantage was bulk, and now it was barely the size of a small house; it couldn't bring enough pressure to bear on my enhanced physique.

Gotcha bitch! I thought with glee as I sliced through a tendril of flesh to find a cavity the size of a large cupboard. Nestled in the centre, suspended by pulsing grey veins, lay a pearl of darkness the size of my fist. I dropped my dagger and reached out as my sword swirled around to sever as much of the connective tissue as I could.

My hand closed on the black gem, and I squeezed. The glass-like structure was hollow and broke into shards that embedded themselves in my hand just as what was left of Ashrot went still and began to dissolve. I snatched a quick breath and closed my eyes as the grey flesh turned to putrescent liquid and smothered me.

I ended up in a cloying puddle of runny goop, desperately swiping it away from my nose and mouth so I could start breathing again. Once oxygen was getting back to my lungs, I wiped my eyes and looked around blearily.

The lumps that had been separated from the main body before had all dissolved as well. Battered bronze golems emerged from the putrid soup and began moving towards their respective owners. Bob had one metallic tentacle hanging loosely behind it as it scurried over on spidery legs. It stopped and focused its odd array of multi-faceted eyes on my hands and reached out with its human hands to pluck at the shards of black glass in my palm.

"Shard of a Luminant. Hadesti…" It rotated the sliver of dark material in front of its face, examining it from every angle. "This was the source of its power."

"He's using chunks of a Source to make these things. The big ones, anyway," I muttered as I pulled myself to my feet.

"That means they will be in short supply. And now we know their weakness. My brethren can hunt them on the inside."

"Fucking great bloke. Now, if you'll forgive me, I've got a bunch of magically enhanced women, at least one of whom is probably pissed at me, to deal with."

I checked my notifications, and sure enough, there it was. I'd gotten the kill.

Undead Amalgam slain x1. The Amalgam was composed of 23498 Reanimated Humanos.

Three hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and seventy Souls Harvested.

Well shit.

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