Forty Khaaz, in the densest part of the swarm, became a single connected target the moment the first twelve had died.
I do not have to tell you that they did not survive it.
The voltage ran through their bodies’ inner fluid, into the chitin of the next Khaaz, through that one’s inner fluid, on and on, no power loss, the way a current runs through a pre-built wire.
Forty Khaaz dropped together as the chain reached the back of the swarm and ran out of bodies before it ran out of voltage.
Two seconds, fifty-two Khaaz dead, and there would have been more if the demons had been a bit closer together.
A single thought crossed my mind, and it was: oh.
This spell used all of my seven Primary channels, and all the secondary channels that Resonance had dug out of me, including the new channel being dug through my heart.
It occupied my senses in such totality that it was as if I was slowly assimilating into the field surrounding me, and although I knew this was just a portion of Storm Sense, adding extra nodes to my senses.
Adept Spells, unlike Acolyte spells, had multiple spell configurations nested inside, so Lightning Dominion not only had Field Sustain, Directed Arcs, Storm Sense, and Conductive Leash, but also Voltage Modulation, and I activated this part of the spell.
This is where I really started having fun with this spell.
I was using this spell to kill, but let us not bother with that at this time. They deserved it, evil little fuckers.
Voltage modulation meant I could pick the intensity on each of the twelve arcs independently. The Khaaz at the closest range needed lethal voltage to break the chitin in one hit; the Khaaz at the rear needed only stun-voltage to keep them down until the next cycle picked them up.
I distributed the kills along the optimal pattern, six high-voltage arcs at the front line, six low-voltage arcs at the back, the field rotating its attention through the sphere the way a lighthouse rotates its beam.
And as they fell, Conductive Leash sent out arcs of lightning from their bodies to strike those who were following behind.
I had to engage with my spell to fully understand it and allow it to grow; this, more than anything, was what this loop had taught me.
The Khaaz piled up at the field’s edge in three, deep rings of broken chitin.
I held my position. I did nothing with my feet. I had cast one spell, and the spell was doing the work of an Adept battalion.
∞
Three minutes in, the field count crossed eight hundred dead.
I had begun to sweat. Lightning Dominion was an Adept-tier spell and had a moderate Anima drain.
Cor Telluris was supplementing my Anima Depth, and the beat of my heart was pulsing harder than it had pulsed at the time I awoke.
I discovered that each pulse was supplementing a fraction of the cost and then Lightning Resonance was further reducing the per-second cost.
The math of the cast was, by my best estimate, going to let me hold the field for another ninety seconds at this intensity, possibly longer if Cor Telluris kept growing channels at the rate it was growing them.
For the first time ever, I detected that the swarm of Khaaz, whose greatest feat of intelligence was to run at me like headless chickens, was beginning to slow down before they came at me from the sides, even from the back.
I could see a great number of them beginning to encircle me, before they began rushing at me again.
Did they think they could find a hole in my field?
Hehe... there is no holes in the sphere. Storm Sense, even though I did not fully activate this part of my field spell, saw every approach, the arcs adjusted in milliseconds, and the new attack vectors of the swarm became the new kill vectors.
Oh, in case I forget to mention it, the Khaaz demons were beginning to make sounds that were closer to shrieks; however, through the clarity that my Hollow State was giving me, I could decipher a single word said over and over again by all of them.
Kill... Kill... Kill... Kill... Kill...
Nah, I don’t feel guilty that I was enjoying killing them in droves.
Another thousand fell, and I knew that I had comfortably crossed the ten thousand essence I needed to unlock the Second Earth Gate, and so that meant that I had to gather even more essence to push that gate open.
Cor Telluris pulsed and supplemented my drain by one more unit. The effective operating capacity in the corner of my vision ticked from thirty-four to thirty-five.
My core was growing, and my spells were growing as well.
Five minutes, two thousand, three hundred and forty dead, and I let myself enjoy this accomplishment, briefly.
My body was not burning, my staff was not shattered, and I had not even taken a single step.
The previous loops had taught me to value the moments when nothing was killing me. This was one of those moments.
I was standing, and my surroundings were being filled with chitin corpses; my body was uninjured, my reservoir was holding, and the kill count was climbing into territory I had previously been required to be the Hollow Avatar to reach.
I was, despite the circumstances, having a pretty good morning.
The second foghorn sounded.
∞
The sound of it cut through the field’s hum and arrived at the back of my tongue. The name in the foghorn was clearer this time.
I could not yet make out the syllables, but the shape of the name had a weight to it.
I closed my eyes and fully opened my Storm Sense, and everything went silent as the world resolved in blue-white contours.
The Khaaz were bright, their chitin conductive, their nervous systems blazing with the arcs that struck them.
The grass was dim, the earth beneath it darker still. And to the east, beyond the field’s range, a shape was moving.
Not Khaaz, it was larger and hotter. Its signature was not conductive... it was abyssal, a cold spot in the Storm Sense where the lightning feedback simply stopped.
The Narghul Sorcerer was coming.
Two kilometres out and closing fast.