Ank

Eight thousand soldiers, from atop of ten meters tall walls, looked like an endless sea of men standing there, on the sea of ashes, right before a burned down forest.

The army extended far enough to the sides, that it covered half of the entire circular wall around the city, and still had many rows of people, deepening its lines of spears, axes, shields, swords clubs, bows and arrows, and, of course, staffs, wands, and shrunken heads for magic users.

There were the beasts too: dogs, dinosaurs, and a variety of animals and monsters, summoned, revived, enslaved and tamed, they all creeping around the furthest parts of the siege, flying over our heads.

Lower deities floated or stomped from one side to the other, leading the separate battalions; the [Zemis] had a few teens of men under their command, and behind then came the [Apachetas], ordering the [Zemis], and, following this divine order, the Intermediate [God] awaited, comfortably seated on a litter at the very back of the army, surrounded by floating [Ol-Heads].

“Damn, this is quite a lot of people”, I said, low enough so the already sweating and shaking city guards wouldn’t hear me.

Standing right over the gates to the city, arms crossed and with our capes flying on the wind, Hunah and I, all in red, imposed ourselves over the overconfident army beneath.

“Yeah, there must be, at least, like… twelve bad guys there”, Hunah answered back.

And, I noticed, a man with a white mask and white robes whispered something to the Intermediate [God], who laughed out loud, hitting the hand rests of his seat. Some kind of spy magic to hear us, for sure… I felt just a little embarrassed.

Then, after whipping his tears, Aipaec muttered something to the masked man in white (who, I presumed, must have been his [High Priest]), and this one somehow spoke loud enough to everyone hear:

“MORTALS! THE GREAT LORD AIPAEC, IN HIS INFINITE GENEROSITY, PROMISES YOU THAT NO PERSON SHALL BE VIOLATED, OR TORTURED, AND EVERYONE WILL BE BLESSED WITH A QUICK AND PAINLESS DEATH, IF YOU SURRENDER, AND HAND HIS MAJESTY THE HERETIC TWINS OF THE [GODSLAYER PARTY]!”

“…A quick death is the good ending?”, A city guard asked, and let out a gloomy, ironic laugh.

Before the city inhabitants started to kill themselves in despair, or the guards passed to actually consider the [Gods] offer, I sighed, stepped ahead, and over one of the wall’s merlon.

“I’ll be going first, then”, I said to Hunah. And jumped off the wall, for everyone’s surprise, including the invading army, but my twin sister. Just before I hit the ground, I conjured: “[Perfect Summon Embodiment: Ol-Head]”

Green flames enveloped my entire body beneath my armor, and by the time I touched the ash-gray ground, the transformation was complete; a stony-gray body with multiple mouths and eyes run beneath the dragon scales, leather and feathers.

“[Rule Bender: Carnotaurus, skiron armor]”, I choose a dinosaur so I’d save up [MP] with weapons, and conjured five hundred armored summons. “[Summon: Ol-Head, Make General]”, I spent the rest of my energy, saving just enough that’d I’d be able to shot once or twice with [Rock Sphere], and bring forth a few low leveled summons, and conjured a floating stone head [Level: 600].

The mortals making up invading army were all between [Level: 10] and [Level: 40].

“Let’s pierce this army”, I ordered my [General], and the floating head quickly shouted the dinosaurs in a perfectly straight line, as the [System] tried to annoyingly notify me of the [Fear] effect being inflicted thousands of times, even in the weakest Lower deities.

Then I dashed forward.

My foot shattered the ground, once I reallocated all those extra 4.000 points into [Strength], [Resistance], and [Perception], and I shot forward faster than most of the enemies I was facing could even follow: the [Zemis] eyes were still focused where I had first landed on the ground, when I got to the army front lines.

“SWUUSH!”, two dozen armored soldiers, and crawling beasts were flung upwards, as I slapped the air in their general direction. Well, the remaining parts of them did.

“[Rock Sphere]”, I used one of the [Spells] from the creature I was embodying, and from the mouths in the openings of my armor, I shot a volley of small rocky pellets in a semi-circle, which pierced cotton, metal and flesh with equal ease, turning those before me to living dying, bloody sieves.

“I’m gonna use your skull as a cup!”, a [Zemi] screamed, its artificially inflated body towering over mine, its hand pulled back for a punch.

“BOOM!”, I didn’t even need to move against the Lower [God], as a rock sphere shot by my [General] crushed the multiple times weaker enemy besides me, instantly killing it.

“ROOOAR!”, my dinosaurs started to show up all around; way more effective than I expected, they easily bit and crushed through the first few lines of invaders, the poor mortals not even able to scratch their armors.

Still, if we had killed more than three hundred enemies, it would be impressive already.

“Not yet…”, I mumbled, and dived even deeper into the incoming army, the mortals simply unable to retreat as their overlords were [Gods], and would kill any deserter.

Surrounded by attackers from all sides, I punched, kicked, and shouted, and at every movement of mine, the fragile bodies of the ever-advancing invaders exploded, split, and were completely crushed to paste, or reduced to red mist.

I may have been entering the first thousand, in body count.

“Not yet”, I repeated myself, and punched the ash-covered ground, shattering it like glass, taking everyone in an era of twenty meters around me off balance, “NOT YET!”, I screamed, and the shock wave alone sent those who lost their footing away, crashing into their companions, or raining from the skies further away, getting impaled in the thousands of spears pointed to the gray skies.

“Now!”, a Lower [God] screamed, and half a dozen of his peers jumped towards me, thrusting with their spears.

In reply, I kicked in a circle, breaking their weapons, and hurling the Lower deities upwards. Then, I jumped after them.

I was about to put a hole in the chest of one of the enemies, when I noticed a thousand multicolored lines crossing the skies and quickly approaching me: magic missiles.

Quickly pulling a pair of the [Gods], I used the [Stelaes]’ bodies as a shield against the combined effort of two thousand mages. As ice, fire, electricity, darkness, light and every other element hit the back of the stone deities, even if the [Spells] were individually weak, they continuously increased the size of the explosion intended to end me, until it became big enough, so the shock wave hurled hundreds of soldiers beneath off their feet, and the [Stelaes] I used as shields were reduced to rubble.

Before the curtain of quickly vanishing green magical particles was lifted, I punched every single [God] fragment, and still alive [Stelae], using my fists to shot the deities against the enemy mages as my own improvised projectiles, so to save [MP].

Before I fell back on the ground, the magic particles cloud dispersed, and I saw a the mages’ battalions decimated, hundreds of craters and brutalized corpses littering their position, and terrified magic-users abandoning their posts… Just to be immediately executed by the floating stone heads’ [Spells].

As my [General] stopped by, floating right above my head, shooting its own [Rock Spheres] everywhere, each strike shaking the earth and crushing multiple enemies at once, we all approached dangerously the very back of the army. And the commanding powers of the invading force noted.

The Lower [God] were all called back. But [Zemis] were not enough to even make through my armed dinosaurs.

“ROOOAR!”, my summoned beasts screamed, as they ganged up on the [Zemis], five dinosaurs easily destroying one of the lowest of Lower [Gods], and double that to deal with the [Apachetas], the second weakest of the Lower deities; and they could basically ignore the mortal soldiers, swapping them away with their armored tails by the dozen, instantly killing individual spearmen with each stomp.

“SPLASH!”, a disgusting explosion echoed as the spear of a [Stelae] made through one of my summons, and splattered the creature’s entrails and blood all over the battlefield, before they vanished in magical particles.

“…We’re far enough, keep the stony boys occupied before they destroy all my summons”, I ordered my [General]. “It would be a pain in the ass to have to push through even more weaklings, and I can take care of the [Ol-Heads] by myself”, I concluded. And dashed again, straight forward.

Most of the Lower [Gods] occupied, I didn’t even need to stop to attack no one, my sheer [Resistance] and velocity by itself killing any mortal I came in contact with, their bodies simply exploding away, as I dashed through them.

“Finally.”

Then, I made through the sea of metal and flesh, and before me, only a small circle of floating [Ol-Heads], and an Intermediate [God] whose appearance was that of a jaguar-man covered in fine clothes and gold, comfortably seated on a litter.

All of them looked equally flabbergasted, and shocked.