The ork was massive, even compared to someone like Martin. The beastly god bulged with muscles to the point where he could barely wear any armour. Spectral skulls had been attached to the various parts of the god's outfit, and the thick nosering looked like it weighed more than a tractor tyre.
"Finally, my vengeance has been destined, and once more I shall rule these lands." Orleks bellowed, sending spittle and flem from his mouth as he roared his victory.
The god of spirits let his eyes settle on the people who had released him. "I know you. You may not have the form that I swore vengeance upon, but your spirit and your stench are obvious, Armandos." Orlek said, stepping through the portal completely.
The moment he did, thick celestial bonds wrapped around his limbs, as the wards the Scribe had put in place tried to restrain and banish the god back to his home Sphere. However, something was clearly wrong, and Jasper quickly realised what.
"Aww, crud." He mumbled, looking at Martin. "Orlek doesn't have a home sphere. It was designated as the Spirit Sphere, but with him not being a spirit, it doesn't seem to be able to banish him."
Martin sighed. "Fine... so the play is to kill him, forcing the game to run through a forced banishment process and sphere initialisation?"
Jasper nodded, having come to the same conclusion.
Before any of them could react, however, a shadowy figure appeared from the woods. He seemed dishevelled and on the brink of collapse, as if the effort of walking was a great pain to his old bones. The hood of his cloak pulled back just enough to show a broken tusk and an eye white as milk, though the way it kept focusing on everything around him told a story that it was still able to see. The figure was definitely an ork, though his skin wasn't a deep green like Orlek's, but rather a minty green as if the lusterous colour had faded with time.
As he approached, the figure spoke up, though it sounded like paper being rubbed against itself, a whisper and barely audible. "My lord. I have managed to manipulate these beings into releasing you from your prison. Please, finish them off so we can rule over these lands once more."
Jasper sighed, looking at what was clearly supposed to be Hrothgar, the first shaman, an ancient being so skilled in the ways of magic that he had achieved immortality, though not eternal youth.
"I am calling it now... Hrothgar is actually Raffael Moordet in disguise." Jasper said, leaning over to Martin.
"Oh, I will take that action. We can't have Raffael Moordet be the villain behind everything bad, and the AI knows that. I am saying that Hrothgar is just a mad mage of some kind." Martin said, and Jasper had to make an active effort not to explain to his friend that a shaman wasn't a mage, and there were quite a few differences between the two.
"Hrothgar, old friend. You expect me to believe that you manipulated the gods themselves? You stand before the god of gods, and while one of them might wear the skin of my people, do not let yourself be fooled into thinking that the miracle they had performed here was done by your will." Orlek bellowed, the insight that the normally brutish ork god showed was honestly impressive.
"Wanna take the mage? Then I take the god?" Martin asked, letting the servant and god discuss what level of glory Hrothgar deserved.
"Sure. The one who finishes last pays for pizza?" Jasper answered, making
"Fine, but if you put banana on your pizza, I swear, I will convince Celeste to file for a divorce." And with that, Martin exploded into action.
His cannon unleashed a barrage of metal towards Orlek, peppering the god with solid iron balls at a speed that would have left the barrel glowing red with power.
Orlek was mid-speech when he was hit by the attack, knocking the air out of him and making him groan. The ork managed to catch one of the attacks mid-air, crushing the ball of red-hot metal with his bare hand, making it look like little more than playdough.
In the background, Martin could her Jasper chanting, power and magic rushing to the God of Magic, as he invoked an Ur-spell. Something that Martin thought was overkill for what was effectively just a spellcaster that lived for a long time.
Martin didn't pay it any further attention as Orlek was charging him. With a flick of his will, the God of Dungeons let the roots of the still-growing Tree of Life and Chaos spring from the ground and bound Orlek. The ork bellowed in fury, as despite his might, he wasn't able to break the bonds of the divinely and demonically infused tree.
Forced to fight at range, Orlek tried to throw one of the skulls from some sort of spirit creature at Martin. However, having the Range Domain, Martin activated the power Lord of That Which Falls, making the thrown object reverse direction mid-air and hammer into Orlek.
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Lord of That Which Falls
Type: Activated ability
Energy usage: Variable
Full effect: Commit Energy. Redirect any ranged attacks in your presence, with their attack roll applied against the new target. Projectiles may be redirected at any target, though a single victim can be targeted by no more than one attack per round this way. Subjects who have also bound to the Range Domain are immune to this power, as are other divinities affiliated with Range.
Instantly, Orlek's body started to decay. Apparently, the skull had contained something from the Death Domain, and the bellowing scream that Orlek unleashed indicated that having the flesh rot off your bones while still conscious wasn't a pleasant experience.
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Martin was quick to follow up on the attack he had prevented with another barrage of cannonballs, and within a minute, the god was little more than pulp. The remains of the once god slowly turning to goo, which sank into the earth, leaving behind only the skull of the massive ork.
The God of Ranged combat knew that Orlek hadn't been killed. While the body that had been torn to pieces, he would reform within his own Sphere. There were only a few things that could truly kill a god, one of them being the Whirlpool of Souls and the other being killing the god within their Sphere, something that was quite hard to do. Though Orlek was in a much weaker state now, thanks to the defeat, if Martin truly wanted to kill Orlek, he would need to follow him to his sphere and finish the job.
Looking around, Martin found Jasper sitting at the foot of a tree. Hrothgar had two blades piercing his heart, pinning him to the ground.
Jasper had used one of his lower-tier Ur-magics, something that was fairly easy to do in combat, though each cast cost him Energy for the entire day.
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Kiss of the Crane
Effect: Bathe a blade in the target's blood or establish an arcane connection to the target. The blade will then pursue the target no matter the distance or obstacles, always hitting the target for 1d12 damage per Rank the Ur-mage has.
Turns out that an Arcane connection could just as well be able to see that target, which meant that casting two of these ur-spells had effectively made two homing missiles.
Hrothgar was clearly pretending to be dead, though Jasper could see the mana streaming from his body. "Looks like I will be paying for the pizza... though I am pretty sure that not being killed by ur-spells means that I get a point in the 'Hrothgar is actually Raffael Moordet'-bet. " Jasper said calmly, knowing that if the ancient ork tried to resist or move, it would show that he wasn't just a shaman who had obtained immortality.
Martin scoffed. "That? It proves nothing. A lich wouldn't die from that either," he argued, walking over and picking up the skull.
"Fine, but I am going to banish this guy before he becomes a problem," and with that, he used the spell that he had stored: Sign of Avulsive Banishment.
However, nothing happened as the spell was unleashed, indicating that Hrothgar really was from this Sphere. Jasper cursed, and Martin got a rather smug look on his face. Jasper grumbled a little more.
"That doesn't prove anything. You said he claimed to be human-ish. So his home sphere would be here." The god of knowledge countered. Making the massive ork shrug before walking over pulling the swords from the corpse of the first shaman.
"Hrothgar, you have two options. Voluntary exile to Orlek's realm, or us being your body until it is a smear across the forest floor." Martin stated out loud, looking at the ork that still pretended to be dead.
It took a heartbeat before Hrothgar slowly stood up, dusted off his body and agreed to the voluntary exile.
Ten minutes later, Jasper had made a divinely enforced contract that Hrothgar would spend at least a hundred years in Orlek's realm from today, all while Martin was looking at the newly created tree.
Thanks to a bit of Divine magic, the rift in the world that Orlek had used to escape the spirit sphere was repurposed and used to send Hrothgar to Orlek's realm, before it was closed properly by the God of Magic himself.
The process was fairly quick, though it was slow enough that Martin had started to inspect the newly created tree, and by the time that Jasper had wrapped it up, the ork turned to his friend and nodded.
"Before we leave, I would like to make a dungeon here. Place Orlek's skull at the bottom of it, or something like that. I have only created a single dungeon so far, and I need to change that up." He explained.
Jasper could see that he couldn't really say anything that would change his colleague's mind, so he just nodded and took a seat in the cover of the tree they had created together.
As Martin started to work, Jasper realised that he still had a single point of Energy left, after he had released one of the Ur-spells that he had been holding on to. He decided that making a skill for banishment might be a good idea, so he tinkered with the skill while Martin worked on his dungeon.
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New Skill Created!
Banishment
Effect: This skill governs your ability to exile beings or energies from the mortal sphere. Your chance of success is equal to your skill level plus your level, minus your opponent's level as a percentage (Magical resistance or Willpower skills might apply). If successful, the target is forced back to its home sphere or, if it has no home sphere, it is shunted into a harmless pocket void. They cannot enter the Mortal Sphere for 10 seconds per skill level.
At level 25: You can banish magical effects as easily as you can creatures. Any spell cast with a skill level lower than your Banishment Skill Level can be dispelled by touching it or its caster. Additionally, banished creatures cannot return for a number of hours equal to your skill level instead of 10 seconds.
At level 50: Your banishment creates a dimensional tether, preventing the target from escaping the void early. While the tether persists (10 minutes per skill level), you learn the target’s true name, nature, and intent. Attempts to return to the plane before the tether expires deal damage equal to your skill level each second.
At level 75: You may choose the destination of your banishments. Instead of simply returning a creature to its home plane, you may send it to:
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a sealed pocket dimension.
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a prison sphere.
- the sphere of a god who has given you their approval.
At level 100: Any extraplanar creature is instantly banished upon your touch unless it has an invulnerable defence to banishment. You also gain an invulnerable defence to banishment. Any banishment you perform is permanent until you will it to be otherwise.
As soon as he had made the skill, a new pop-up appeared.
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Skills have achieved extreme synergy/overlap. System will now create Skill Frame based on this information
The system seemed to compute for just a second before a new Skill Frame appeared.
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New Skill Frame Created!
Exorcist
Requirements: Level 50 Banishment, Level 40 Final Rites, Level 60 Religious Lore
Effect: You are able to sever the connection between a soul and any malignant force attempting to bind, possess, or reanimate it. When performing rites on a corpse or confronting a possessed living target, you may commune simultaneously with both the trapped soul and the intruding entity. Furthermore, you can target any of them independently as if they were two distinct beings. Any entity banished as part of an exorcism is unable to return to the host or the location of the exorcism for a number of weeks equal to your Banishment skill level, and you gain a temporary boon inspired by the soul you freed. This boon lasts for a number of hours equal to your Final Rites skill level.
Jasper smiled. He had a fairly solid idea of who might have created the Final Rites skill, and it was kind of fun that, despite being separated, they were still feeding into each other's gameplay loops.
With that done, he leaned back and enjoyed the evening sun, waiting for Martin to finish his dungeon so they could travel to the point on the map they had discovered from the tree.