We walked away from that little conversation with the sure knowledge that you couldn’t make Slayer Effects modular within a Weapon or Gemstone. If you wanted a Slayer effect built into a Weapon, it would have to be permanent, and you couldn’t swap it except by using Artificer Infusions to change it for the short term to something else.

  It also happened that Disruption basically did everything that Skeleton/Undead/Ghost Slayer Infusions did, although it took Slots, not Runemarks, and so adding a Slayer effect to a Disruption Weapon, eh, disrupted the Disruption. Which was annoying as heck, but such is life.

  Disruption was also relegated to blunt Weapons for some unknown reason, and those weren’t all that popular. There were definitely some lugians around who wanted to swing a Greathammer like Briggs could, however.

  Whatever. Just put the Slayer Effect into a Main-Gauche Wand was my way of thinking. If that meant I needed a Christmas tree of Wands, well, I could fuse a Baneskull to ‘em, too, and go all Edgelord-y with my collection of skull-topped Wands, messing up my wholesome image.

  Actually, no, that would be perfect for a Wand Sheathe of Holding, which honestly was a better way to store Baneskulls, regardless.

  Hey, just a little more downtime Crafting. I had to have something to spend my ungodly fortune on.

  -------

  Several weeks of planning pass, with days filled with tons of mana expenditure for a too-dutiful and absurdly generous spellcaster with rather too much pyreal to spend...

  “Come on out, Bonecrunch. It’s time to die.”

  Magevoice could be heard up to three miles away. Barriers and locations didn’t matter, only who you wanted to hear it within that range. Convenient, powerful, and ear-catching.

  There were no drudges left spawning around Cragstone. Briggs and Kris wandered up there and butchered any who were set in place whenever they had an hour or two to spare, and re-Sealed the Spawn Points just to make everything the more irritating.

  I reached down and snipped off the ley-line taps of the Drudge Fort once again, and the gathered mages and warriors of the Freehold Forces, a full army of which were here, went to it with fire magic and Firephasing Weapons, chopping through the reinforced magical logs and destroying them, with a score of Aun Shamans there to make sure they did not regrow at all.

  There were drudges of all of the stronger advancement paths inside the walls, but they died, too. The walls came down, the forces rolled in, and blazing Weapons reached hungrily for them in lines of spears and shields in lockstep formations.

  Bonecrunch didn’t show. He wanted us to come down and get him in the ruined chambers below, so that was exactly what was going to happen, right?

  Well, that was what he thought. When you have someone who can Shape massive volumes of stone, that wasn’t exactly necessary.

  ---

  To say he was surprised when the ceiling of his throne room vanished and he blinked up at the sun and a brooding gray sky above was not an exaggeration at all. Then the walls of the throne room and the very floor receded into the ground, like water flowing down into sand, and there was only him, his throne, his Chest, and the great mound of bones and skeletons of his victims mounded up in a tumbling horde behind him.

  Oh, and over two thousand Isparians with flaming Weapons around him and pointed his way as he sat there in the clearing at the center of the Drudge Fort, its walls burned down to smoldering embers around him.

  There was one simultaneous thrum from hundreds of Bows. Streaks of white fire arched up, and as the Prodigal Drudge flinched, descended upon his mound of bones, his kill trophies, and swallowed the whole mound in vivus.

  There was very little doubt that if all those arrows were aimed at him, he’d be dead in short order. The crimson Rune on his forehead burst into fire as his green eyes glowed with leaking virindi energy. His semi-transparent form seemed to grow a little bit more phantasmal as he crouched to charge.

  Three people stepped forward from the host, directly in front of him.

  In the center was King Borelean, his long Sword Hoshino a-swirl with Motes of Radiant Lost Light… and Drudge Slayer, with a Baneskull against Drudges additionally adorning the pommel.

  Ceding him pride of place, Kris stood to his right hand, Quaver ringing gently, somehow conveying a note of irritation that they weren’t going first.

  Tellingly, both of them wore suits of form-fitting Olthoi Celdon armor in its eye-catching swirls and folds. It was totally non-magical, and so completely useful against the chorozite-laced hollow attacks rippling in bands of sapphire and ruby about Bonecrunch’s over-sized claws.

  On the King’s left, Briggs loomed tall and menacing in his blue-black adamantine Named Armor Coat, Jadeworked to a full +IV and so its foundation also unmoved against hollow attacks.

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  “As you have sown, so will you reap, Butcher of Cragstone!” King Borelean declared grimly, raising his long straight Sword. Spiraling Motes of radiant energy lit up around it in preparation for what was to come. “Now come at me, and see if I am like the helpless souls whose remains Burn behind you!”

  “Bah! Isparian King! You run from me once, Bonecrunch shall make you run again!” the drudge spat back in quite passable Isparian.

  Borelean’s only reply was a hard smile. “I have two arms, and my lady is again at my side this time, drudge! Let us see if you are as dangerous now as you were long ago!”

  The drudge charged.

  So did the king, Sword and Shield very ready, indeed.

  The drudge was a whirlwind blur of attacks, a savage and yet calculating fighter, virindi energies playing at the magic around him. His flesh was both ephemeral and harder than oak at the same time, magic bent and twisted the very space around him to deflect attacks, and a whole lot of Health Qi bubbled and boiled in and around him.

  But King Borelean’s Sword training under Kris had been very thorough, and the one creature he wanted to defeat above all others was Bonecrunch the Drudge, the Butcher of Cragstone.

  Way of Wind at III. Way of Fire at III. Way of Water at III. Way of Iron and Stone at IV.

  Hoshino’s misting edge cut through the deflective fields around the drudge, barely registering them. Silver Soulfire pursued his superhuman agility, somehow keeping up with eye-blurring reactions and hand-speed. Fluid swordstrokes flowed through the Drudge’s reinforced hide and enhanced musculature and bone.

  Infused Ghost Touch made Bonecrunch’s partially-phased body entirely real. Blooding meant his superhuman vitality couldn’t regenerate. Greater Soulbound, Enmity to Evil, Bane of Legends, and Bane to Drudges meant +X bypassing any resistance to non-magical damage whatsoever and slicing through his Legendary Damage Resistance as if it was not there.

  Sword beats Fist triggered regularly as the claws reached in and exposed the Drudge behind them, Hoshino slicing up the arms, through the throat, across the sinister glowing eyes. Riposte drove into the gut and heart and throat as Borelean’s Shield stopped some of the blows. Healing Edge kept him alive as the claws and kicks of the creature in front of him tore and smashed with superhuman power at his Armor and Shield, and the Ways of Iron and Stone took the blows and reduced them down, down, down in strength as magic could not.

  Efforts were made to grapple him, and Close-Quarters Fighting erupted in boiling Health Qi as clawing phantom hands were nearly severed. Blizzards of standing and ripping claws triggered Defensive Sweep when Bonecrunch failed to move, and when he did try to step and circle, Thorned Stance punished him again, and again, and again.

  Biting Strikes drove in crits, Crushing Blow magnified those crits from running drawcut slashes to gaping wounds billowing Health Qi as they were fixed frantically. Positive energies flashed and burned across the king’s body as he flowed through the attack motions, advancing, retreating, circling, pouncing, his eyes intent and his Combat Focus firmly in place as he took the steel-rending blows that couldn’t quite manage to just destroy his olthoi plate, although it chipped and crumpled and tore at the force of the blows against it.

  But delivering those blows cost the pale ghostly Prodigal Drudge delivering them, the swirling stabs and thrusts of the Sword opposite him as fast or faster than his own clawing attacks, armored feet impossibly light and nimble, or just as stalwart and immovable as Bonecruncher’s own unnatural strength and swiftness.

  Hostile magic churned in the Drudge’s blood and on his flesh, and his energies could not heal and restore him. He was dying by inches, but those inches were adding up with a terrifying speed!

  I could see the moment when he passed below a quarter-Health, greenish Health Qi venting in particle effects as the Lost Light buttressed every blow, Improved Power Attack crashed and cut, and Weapon Mastery worked on diligently and profoundly all did their things.

  Bonecrunch was basically a barbarian warrior running on rage and cunning, a near-berserker frenzy that his impossible constitution and deranged emotional state could keep going forever. He had never really had a teacher, especially in profound combat.

  King Borelean hadn’t forgotten the lessons or methods of Master Oswald, either, and had Way of Shadow at III, also, along with his Cunning Damage triggering on all those Attacks of Opportunity, among other things. The tip of Hoshino was a cobra, a scythe, a knife, and a spear, always moving into every undefended area, impossible to grasp, shrugging off steel-shattering blows as it knocked aside those swiping claws and grasping hands to sink into sensitive areas that would be lethal on any other foe, Health Qi erupting to keep Bonecrunch alive.

  Alive, but not for long.

  King Borelean had also long maxed out his Favored Hunter Mastery for Drudges in the Direlands, taking care to hunt down and kill any of the spawns he encountered. Bonecrunch’s overconfident attacks, used to ignoring magic and taking down plain steel, held no surprises for the King, and his eyes were those of a hunter taking down his prey.

  Not mere vengeance. Not empty hate. They were the eyes of a king bringing justice for his people, and if Bonecrunch was the great hero of the oppressed drudges, that was not the truth in the eyes of the many, many people of all the other races who had fallen to his claws.

  Swirling flurries trailing light and fire and mist now chased after the drudge as he attempted to retreat. But all directions around the circle, save where the deadly swordswoman and the towering Hammer-wielder were standing, were replete with layers of flaming Spears ready there to greet him.

  Oh, he got in his licks, here and there. Bone cracked, flesh bruised, skin broke, muscles tore, ligaments strained, armor cracked and pressed into meat as it deformed under tremendously powerful Hollow blows.

  Healing Edge swirled on the injuries and mended anything that would impede the fight, stopping the bleeding, mending the tears, easing the pain of crushed bone, and it kept King Borelean firmly in the fight.

  Bonecrunch tried to stumble back, a plunging point plucked in and out, and this time the energies that spurted out of the cut in his phasing flesh were more liquid.

  He was bleeding! Truly bleeding!

  His bleat of pain came out unforced, and he knew he was going to die. There was no mercy in the eyes of the Isparian in front of him.

  Massive forms moved through the press behind the King, looming over the soldiers as the spearmen shifted out of the way.

  Bobo, Oolutanga the Tusker King, the Prodigal Tusker, moved slowly and grandly up to the edge of the circle, the great tusker’s bright orange fur and armor giving him an impression of true invincibility. In front of him, Harraag the Prodigal Banderling with his burning red eyes crouched impassively. To Bobo’s right side floated Candeth Martine, the Prodigal Human’s purple-blue eyes glimmering behind his white mask. Hea Rheaga, the Prodigal Tumerok, floated to his left, shimmering golden eyes somehow enlightened and at peace.

  ============================

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