Chapter 77: Mass Mutation

Red hovered his hands over the obsidian console. He tracked the digital timers ticking down on the holographic grid. Five minutes passed in complete silence. No incoming communications from Gorvash or Sylis flared.

The rival gods were actively ignoring him. Red tapped the localized comms rune on the terminal and broadcasted his voice directly into the minds of his Vanguard.

“Stop playing with your food,” Red ordered. “Take the Spire.”

Down in the courtyard beneath the towering obsidian and violet crystal statue, Gorak dropped the half-eaten roasted meat onto a silver platter.

The grease splattered across the polished white marble. Iron-Scale adjusted his quartz monocle and leaned on his Star-Iron cane. The Kobold Inquisitor stared directly at the Orc captain.

“The feast is over,” Iron-Scale announced. “Evacuate the premises immediately.”

The Orc captain burst into a booming laugh. He drew his jagged broadsword and pointed the rusted tip at Gorak’s chest.

Across the plaza, thousands of Blood-Orcs and Venom-Dryads drew their weapons. The terrified human civilians scrambled backward to press themselves against the courtyard walls.

“You march for two weeks after bleeding out against the Sun King,” the Orc captain mocked. “You bring one hundred and ten broken monsters to a fortress crawling with our combined armies. Your pathetic grunts will die before they even take a single step forward.”

The Venom-Dryad matriarch slithered out from the shadow of the pillars on her writhing vines. “The Ka-Lam-Tee cannot save you here on the polished stone. There is no mud to hide in. There is no swamp to pull your cheap, dirty tricks.”

High in the Void, a standard system ping chimed from Red’s interface. A text message materialized on the holographic screen, routed from a combined channel used by the two opportunistic deities.

[ SURRENDER THE SPIRE. YOU OVERREACH, NEW GOD. ACCEPT YOUR LOSS OR BE DELETED. ]

Red stared at the floating green text.

Then, a snicker and laugh echoed from his featureless visage. The absolute audacity of two low-ranked scavengers demanding his surrender amused him deeply.

Red dismissed the text with a wave of his hand and pulled up his newly unlocked system commands.

[ MIRACLE UNLOCKED: MASS MUTATION ]

[ DESCRIPTION: Spend DP to instantly force an evolutionary leap on a selected group of followers, adapting them to extreme environments. ]

“Let us see how you handle a dry environment,” Red whispered. He targeted Iron-Scale and Gorak on the tactical map and dumped a massive reserve of Divine Power directly into their avatars.

Blinding violet light erupted from the spiral brands burned into the chests of the two monsters. Gorak roared as his gray flesh tore open from the inside out. Thick plates of calcified bone pushed through his skin and fused into an impenetrable exoskeleton of jagged armor.

His muscles expanded violently, snapping the leather straps of his old gear. His jaw unhinged with a sickening crack, revealing double rows of serrated teeth designed to crush steel. He grew another three feet in height, towering over the Orc captain like a prehistoric nightmare.

Beside him, Iron-Scale underwent a terrifying metamorphosis. The Kobold’s frame straightened and elongated. His dark scales hardened into overlapping metallic blades. His eyes burned with concentrated violet fire. The Star-Iron cane melted and fused directly into his right arm, reshaping flesh and metal into a wicked, elongated scythe blade.

The Orc captain screamed a battle cry and swung his broadsword. Gorak stepped inside the guard and swung his maul. The impact shattered the Orc’s blade into shrapnel and caved in his chest cavity in a single, devastating motion.

The Orc captain flew backward and crashed through the banquet table.

The Venom-Dryad matriarch shrieked and deployed her poison-tipped vines. Iron-Scale blurred forward. His new scythe arm reaped through the thick vegetation, slicing the matriarch in half before her poisons could even leave their sacs. Her upper torso hit the marble floor in a spray of acidic sap.

The slaughter triggered the rest of the plaza. Blood-Orc reinforcements flooded the courtyards with weapons drawn.

Outside the immediate banquet area, the remaining Shell-Kin of the Vanguard locked their massive spiked shields together. They formed an unbreakable phalanx and slammed headfirst into the rushing tide of enemy warriors.

“Protect the livestock,” Red commanded, watching the chaotic clusters of human and monster life signs on his holographic map. “Shield the civilians and slaughter the rest.”

Red dumped another massive reserve of DP into the system. Down in the courtyard, Old-Shell stood at the front of the Shell-Kin phalanx. Blinding violet light erupted from the brand carved into the veteran warrior’s carapace.

Old-Shell roared as his body expanded outward in a violent surge of forced evolution. His hardened shell thickened into a massive dome of jagged, obsidian-like armor plates. Thick bone spikes erupted from his shoulders and forearms. His heavy iron shield melted and fused directly with his skeletal structure, transforming him into a living, impenetrable siege engine.

Thousands of Blood-Orcs charged across the plaza with their broadswords raised. Venom-Dryads slung poisonous thorns from the flanks to cover the infantry assault. The two allied gods clearly believed that nine thousand troops could easily overrun one hundred and ten monsters. They calculated a victory based on pure volume, completely ignorant of the power disparity.

Old-Shell slammed his massive, mutated body into the marble floor directly in front of a huddled group of screaming human civilians. A wave of Blood-Orcs crashed headfirst against his new obsidian carapace and shattered their weapons on impact.

Old-Shell swung his fused shield-arm in a brutal, sweeping arc. The blow pulverized the front row of Orcs, sending shattered armor and broken bones flying across the courtyard.

Gorak waded deep into the center of the enemy formation. His new bone-plated exoskeleton absorbed every sword strike without a scratch. He swung his Star-Iron maul with terrifying force, caving in skulls and snapping spines with every rotation.

Blood painted the white marble beneath his heavy boots. Whenever an enemy tried to bypass him to reach the terrified humans cowering by the walls, Gorak grabbed the attackers by the throat and crushed their windpipes with his bare hands.

“All hail the Spiral!” Gorak roared and raised the morale and confidence of the army.

“For the Spiral!”

“Ka-Lam-Tee!”

Iron-Scale’s scythe arm cleaved through the Venom-Dryads before they could deploy their acidic sap.

He severed limbs and decapitated commanders with absolute precision. The Kobold Inquisitor

danced around the huddled civilians, actively creating a perimeter of severed body parts to keep the enemy forces at bay.

The humans wept and covered their eyes, completely surrounded by the gory defense perimeter built by their new monstrous overlords.

High in the Void, Red tapped the interface of his obsidian console. The Omniscient Eye tracked the catastrophic losses of the enemy armies in real-time.

Gorvash and Sylis frantically hammered at their standard console slabs on the other side of the server space. Their holographic avatars flickered with panic as they watched their numerical advantage evaporate into the stone.

The two foolish gods watched their Faith counters plummet as their followers were butchered by the dozen. Their entire strategy relied on swarming the plaza with disposable troops. They fundamentally misunderstood the difference between a large militia and an apex military force.

Red leaned back and smiled beneath his featureless visage. He watched his evolved fighters turn the combined might of two divine armies into a localized meat grinder.

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