"Move," commanded the Collector, its deep yet calm, elegant voice resonating powerfully across the snow, reaching the ears of the goblin champions that had been downed or still panting and struggling from the Amoraks.
Without hesitation, the champions gained a burst of energy and gathered behind the Collector, for though they loved the fight, they also felt great awe in witnessing the might of the one they revered as Sovnar.
"Come, infected specimens, and meet your end." The Collector glided forwards, its arms outstretched to its sides in invitation as its voice projected even further, towards the undead the remaining undead Amorak.
It could sense that they were approaching rapidly from the distance, through the swirling rage of snow and Grain.
A full pack of twenty-three more.
But what use was crashing ants against a tidal wave? That was the futility of these Amorak specimen fighting against the Collector.
Before the rest of the twenty three could converge fully, the Collector first freed the three elites from their burden: the Alpha specimen.
The Collector pointed one of its left arms to the snarling, maned, hulking mass of ferocity, and as Goromir dodged deftly under a swipe, the Collector fired a spine from its Spine Spitter.
An immense collection of contractile muscles lining the pathway for the spine's delivery accelerated it at hypersonic speeds, and in an instant, the spine – the size of a tinkerer's blade – embedded into the alpha's heart, punching right out the other side.
For a moment, the alpha faltered, slumping down to its knees in inactivity. It was far more efficient to disable the cores than the heat, the Collector came to realize, for the cores, charged with foreign energy, were the source of the undead's continued movement, fueling them like automatons.
With the alpha's constant and wild movements halted, the three elites gave a swift end to the alpha, digging their light blades into the beast's form and causing it to explode into smoking smithereens of charred flesh.
The elites then leaped backwards, behind the Collector to rejoin the rest of the swarm and act as their guardian.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtThe Collector used Sapia to take the regenerating remains of the Amorak it had killed and entomb them in a ball of snow. Chunks of flesh, half grown hearts, half formed skeletal systems, all of these swirled into one pulped mass that further encased in snow.
The Collector closed its fist with a powerful movement, its carapace clinking together, and the Sapia intensified. The purple aura around the snow tomb intensified before condensing with cracks, the snow compacting into hardened ice that crushed everything within and kept it there for the foreseeable future.
Snarls, growls, and howls echoed out in front of the Collector. Now just twenty meters away, and would rapidly approach in the next second and a half.
A whole host of furred grey bodies striding forth across the snow on all fours with predatory ease, their movements so agile that their paws barely even made indents on the snow. These creatures, the elder had greatly feared before the ascension of the swarm.
The goblins had thought them beasts of savagery and also measured intelligence that they absolutely had to avoid, for they preyed upon anything their jaws caught, including goblin flesh.
But against the Collector, they posed no more threat than a litter of pups.
The first Amorak leaped up at the Collector, snapping at its throat.
The Collector tore this one in half too, ensuring the force of the tear would rupture its heart also.
Another Amorak reached out to the Collector's legs. This one, the Collector kicked with a burst of chaos mana, and the force of the blow was enough that coupled with the shockwave it emitted, it completely eviscerated the upper half of the specimen's body, sailing back chunks of splattered flesh, viscera, and shattered bone.
Ten Amorak now circling the Collector.
The Collector's dorsal fin glowed with a ghostly blue electrical charge as it primed. When the Collector poured in its immense mana into the fin, it reacted explosively, glowing pure blue, almost white, as lightning crackled all around it in a screaming torrent.
The bolts and arcs of electricity condensed and gathered tightly around the Collector, forming a ball of pure electricity, and this, the Amorak saw and began to step back a little, attempting to see how they could penetrate it.
Yet, the Collector was not here to clam up in a defensive shell. It was here to slaughter them.
The Collector slammed two of its fists together, and the condensed electrical energy shot out into multiple forks of lightning that pierced through the hearts of the ten Amorak, completely eviscerating the organs before the electrical energy surged further and simply blew apart their torsos wholesale.
Three Amorak lunged forwards at the Collector, seeing the lightning sphere gone.
The Collector opened up it stomach maw and unleashed a torrent of its Pyrocatalytic Glands. With its new Instant Trigger sub-adaptation, it did not have to wait for the biotrigger to activate against the glands. The entire system was adapted into one single mechanism, and the blue-white flames burst outwards in searing power, engulfing the three Amorak.
The Amorak fell to the ground not because of pain, for they felt none, but because the flames melted their bones, flesh, connective tissues, tendons, and brains in mere instants.
More Amorak lunging now from various different angles.
The Collector performed a rapid, stationary spin, and the three Pliomatter Tendrils on its back extended and used the Collector's rotational momentum to act as whips that traveled so quickly they simply sliced through the Amorak bodies wholesale, cutting them in half accurately at their heart level .
As severed bodies landed around the Collector, they showered it in red, painting it in life blood, and the Collector's carapace pores quickly drank it all, restoring it to its shining white figure.
This was a symphony of carnage, a triumphant medley of body parts and destroyed hearts, and the Collector was its expert orchestrator.
A particularly large, black furred Amorak now appeared.
Another maned specimen, and one that stood as tall as the Collector's three meter height. It would seem that the black-furred maned specimen were not the 'Alphas', but more like sub-commanders.
Indicating that this force of thirty was not the full extent of the swarm. There was to be an 'Alpha' specimen if the elder's information was correct, though before the elder's Breath of Life ascension, his memory had been faulty to some degree.
This one also lunged at the Collector with primal, bestial savagery, but to face the Collector with such simple and predictable movements when it itself was the premiere master of all bestial fighting was simple and utter foolishness.
The Collector cocked back a punch, and its fist began to rattle and vibrate as it channeled the Seismic Shock of the Shaker Fish.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmThe Collector side stepped the lunge and then slammed the seismic punch into the larger Amorak's back, and the effects were quite exceptional.
Boosted with the Collector's formidable mana reserves, the seismic punch injected an enormous quantity of destructive shockwaves that channeled inside the Amorak, pinging off of its every internal surface in a whirlwind of damage.
The Amorak's body rapidly heated up from the surge of energy growing inside of it, turning a bright, molten orange for an instant before simply exploding into a shower of blood splatters.
The Collector clicked its mandibles, adequately having tested its newfound capabilities to satisfaction. The remaining Amorak, the Collector dispatched with quicker ease and less usage of its mana, simply blitzing through them with high speed flight, tearing out their hearts with its fists and its tendrils.
"The Sovnar…is like god," said one of the champions as they simply stood back and watched the Collector unleash its might. "God of killing."
Thokk smiled as he beheld the Collector's power. "Our god."
A murmur of reverent agreement spread among the swarm.
The Collector ended this minor engagement, taking the corpses of the Amorak it had slaughtered and once more sealing them shut inside of their tomb of ice. This way, they would pose no future threat and pursue the swarm, though eventually, they would break out of it.
"We move again now," said the Collector to the swarm, and they followed.
Goromir came up to the Collector and spoke a suggestion. "O Sovnar, if I may ask, will you not return these Amorak from their affliction? The life you grant can reverse the Undeath, something I have never known to be possible."
"For what purpose?" said the Collector.
"The Amorak are a fierce tribe, but they are long lived. They roamed the icy wastes in my age, and they still do now. I know not how much their ways have changed, but in my time, I knew they were beings of honor.
Blood for blood, blood by blood.
This was their way.
If you save them from their affliction, I hope they will lend us aid in our journey."