Bonded Summoner

Jake woke up lying in the warm embrace of his lamia lover. Bloodberri had a happy, contented smile as she hugged him tightly. Her tail was wrapped around most of his body, leaving only a bit of his shoulders and head free.

His head was placed between her breasts, her chin nuzzling on top of his head. Jake’s body was facing mostly toward her, but his face was angled out, so he could breathe. Her eyes were open, but Berri was asleep, dreaming.

Blood was awake. She was floating a book in front of her, reading. “The smile is half hers and half mine. Last night was…painful, challenging, and pleasurable. But it feels like the three of us are stronger for it, and now closer than ever.”

Jake chuckled. “It was. I’d love to do it again, but we do need to get a move on, don’t we?”

She sighed, as the book closed. “I don’t think our body or soul can handle it repeatedly in a row, nor can yours–both of us will require some amount of rest, but here in the Refuge, daily may work? I know we can do it without the energy. We may not have much time, but before she wakes up, we can enjoy a moment…”

Blood laid a smoldering kiss on his lips, her large, pillow-like lips full of love and lust. They kissed for a time as Jake was wrapped up tightly in her tail and arms in a hug. Eventually, her serpentine pupil seemed to move into the corner of her eye.

He asked, “What’s she dreaming about this time?”

She frowned. “It’s a weirder one than usual. She was playing baseball, but then she followed a bunny person into a little hole, like a weird version of Alice in Wonderland? But then she went into a rage and ate the person for tricking her and making her small, and then she got into a rocket ship and flew away.”

“Uh…huh. Well, it’s time we get moving. If things work out today, we’ll be assaulting the Greater Rift.”

“I believe it’s inevitable. Their ability to spawn Rifts has already slowed as a result of our other victory. Combined with our forces becoming more numerous, having superior mobility, and becoming more experienced, they shall crush the opposition with ease.”

“You’re right. Even if the Boss Tier enemy spawns, I think we can manage it anyway. Without Champions, they can’t stand up to us.”

***

Once again, they found themselves in front of a Greater Rift. Their armies had cleared dozens of smaller and larger Rifts, and they had actually pushed the Conquest Progress several percent more. With this moving the progress ten percent like the other, they would surpass the required percent to trigger the Raid.

However, they would hold steady for a period to prepare. They would craft their final equipment, and do their best to maximize their skills and prepare for the big Raid. Jake hoped they could get a few weeks of time.

It would allow the various beastkin and Adventurers a chance to gain experience as well. Tartarus would put itself in a holding pattern, saving its expenses for the moment it might win the Raid, to cascade into a victory of its own.

While they had been gaining nearly an entire percent of conquest per day, it may dwindle to a half or less without Jake’s party defeating every possible Rift without losses, and so rapidly.

Still, Jake didn’t think they were far from being ready. Of course, he would like to spend time with each of his girls doing the Void Body Tempering technique, and boost their Hearth Enchantments and craft the best possible equipment for his Battlegroup.

However, he knew that was a tall order for such a short period.

He would definitely try his best. The Raid was a complicated event, and he would do his best to make the beastkin and the Elysians ready. The Raid was an event in which the entire world, and each individual could earn more potential for themselves from the enemy.

It was paramount that everyone took advantage of this event where possible, as few could enjoy such a thing during their lifetime. Trials could be nearly as good when taken on as a party, but those could be even more risky and challenging.

Brock’s Clan had passed theirs, but it was beyond too close for comfort. Brock and Bria were the last one’s standing, covered with wounds when the final boss died. They thanked their superior equipment, Fhesiah’s pills, and pure tenacity for their success.

Thankfully, despite dying Brock’s lovers still got the benefits from completing the challenge, once resurrected at the Shrine.

Jake’s party marched for the massive portal. This time, they had cleared even further around it. They had even more time now, less in a rush due to having the East and West Coast situation under control.

Once again, it was Jake’s party that would be entering by itself. Timone and Dahlia were nearby, along with Warrior Brotherhood and the Emberborn.

Longwei had a scowl on his face when Jake looked at him. “What’s going on, Longwei?”

It looked like he got a little upset, but Yiming elbowed his brother. “Don’t mind it, Lord Jake. He just feels a little left out that your party is hogging the challenge.” Yiming turned to Longwei, “Alliance protocol is certainly to take on these challenges with the strongest Battlegroup. You could certainly duel Champion Ophelia for her spot? Or how about Bloodberri?”

Longwei blanched as he looked at the towering Bloodberri, who was now tapping her baseball bat against her open palm. The bat was larger than Longwei himself, and looked particularly brutal.

He coughed, and seemed to be at a loss for words. “M-My bad, you are right, brother Yiming. I will…look forward to the Raid, and fighting alongside such…” Yiming whispered to him, before he continued, “honorable allies.”

Timone laughed. “Your victory is the will of the world itself, Clan daughters and son. Your claws are sharp, and your hearts will sing the song of glory. We will hold the area and await your return.”

Dahlia added, “You make me proud, my Tanda. Your great hunt awaits, Clan Hart.”

Clan Hart entered the portal, arriving in a gatehouse quite similar to the last challenge.

[Welcome to the Greater Rift Challenge. Your Challenge: King of Storm Peak!]

[Rules: At the top of the mountain, a Capture and Control point exists. Race to the peak, then defeat your enemy! The longer the peak is held by a team, the faster points are earned. Flying is heavily restricted in this Challenge.]

[As the peak is held, a storm builds above. The longer the storm builds, the more dangerous it becomes. Lightning attacks the owning team, wherever they might reside on the peak. Lightning attacks prioritizes the highest point of the peak, but can randomly strike anywhere. Give up the peak to reset the storm. First team to 1000 points wins.]

[Respawning is enabled within the challenge! Should you die, your body will respawn at the gatehouse within two minutes. Divine Energy will not be replenished, and other energy types will only be restored more rapidly within the Gatehouse.]

[Battle begins: 10 minutes.]

The biggest thing Jake noticed right away was the rapid respawn rate of this Challenge. As they killed their enemies, they would stream rapidly to the peak once more.

Once again, instructions and rules were placed within the Gatehouse. As far as Jake could tell, they were almost identical, only some rules added about means of circumventing the flying restrictions.

Ophelia used [Ride of the Valkyries] and floated herself only a few feet off the ground. “I wonder how this will work. Obviously, people can jump, right? I guess they just don’t want us to fly right to the peak?”

Fhesiah pointed to scripts on the wall. “It’s a fly versus glide thing. You can leap and glide, but you can’t use flight to gain altitude. I can still use my wings, as long as I don’t gain height using them.”

Berri said, “Oh, so I can still fly!”

Tanda giggled, her tail wagging. “Sure you can, sister. So this will be kind of like the last one, only it’s focused on a singular point. Let’s do it!”

Looking up at the mountain, it looked like it would take a few minutes to reach the peak. They couldn’t see anything from the other team, as they appeared to be on the opposite side of the peak.

Blood noted, “It appears there is a sort of buff to be obtained on the peak somewhere. In addition, a sort of storm-charged sentinel can be released with investment from the losing team. So it’s possible to force confrontations outside the capture point.”

Jake read that section. It appeared that the usage of the sentinel was like a double-edged sword. If they used it and failed, it would almost always signal a loss. It would increase the point gain of the center holders.

On the other hand, it would reduce the point gain of the users for a period after. In the game, there were two multipliers. A multiplier for the time the team held the peak, and a multiplier for how long the game had gone on.

The detriment of using the storm sentinel was so that the winning strategy was not to just wait until the multiplier was the largest, then capture the point. To Jake, it appeared most strategy only really mattered if the two teams were close in strength.

Jake summoned his Garuda, followed by Bree. Ophelia summoned Valora, climbing onto her mount.

The Garuda was annoyed. It was one of the first negative emotions Jake felt from the creature. It had a dislike for the Tartarus unliving, but otherwise it seemed to enjoy its service.

The Garuda did not like being unable to properly fly. This creature was the master of the winds, and it did not like its freedom being restricted in this way.

“You want me to summon something else?”

Jake received a feeling that was a clear no, but also got the feeling it would take out its frustrations on their enemies.

That was good because Jake didn’t have many great options. He had Jasmina, but she was particularly bad against lightning. The Garuda, if it had a weakness, it might be lightning. However, it was really only a slight vulnerability, compared to the siren or Kevin who really had trouble with it.

Short of those, Jake only had his free [Advanced Summon Humanoid] spells he was given, and those were not all that great. The kobold acolyte he had used before had significantly improved as he went up in level.

The caster, compared to his girls and other summons, was a bit of a letdown, barely worth the mana to cast without being able to replenish it.

The gates opened, and Ophelia and Valora bolted up the mountain. The Garuda and Fhesiah trailed not far behind, with Tanda and Bloodberri with Jake on her back trailing behind. They raced up the mountain until they reached several natural curvatures.

Each area was like a blind turn, and Jake imagined it might be possible to camp at each location, to slow the enemy down toward the peak. There was a secondary path heading up the peak, which was the path to the Sentinel. There was a barrier preventing the enemy from keeping his party from entering this area, and he knew the same was true on the other side.

They continued to the peak, the few turns passed rapidly as they raced up.

[Current King of the Hill: Alliance.]

Ophelia arrived first, but it didn’t take long before the enemy arrived as well.

A bolt of lightning slammed into Ophelia’s shield, announcing their arrival, but it was not from the storm.

Ophelia chuckled, as the rest of Jake’s party arrived. “Cheeky bastards. I wonder how this is supposed to be fair?”

Across from her were several storm elementals. More crept over the ridge to arrive at the peak, each punctuated with bolts of lightning.

Thankfully, Valora had an innate resistance to lightning. The spells absorbed by Ophelia’s [Ride of the Valkyries] didn’t phase her, reducing her mana only slightly when her mount was struck.

The creatures resembled a living tornado, with electricity flowing through them. All told, it appeared there were fifteen of them. He supposed their lower numbers somewhat made up for their strength against the environmental factor.

Each of the girls began their own assaults. Tanda fired her arrows, Ophelia created an earthen spear spell, Bloodberri took out her baseballs and hit them, and Jake launched his own earthen spears.

Fhesiah shifted to her Kitsune form, and started sending fox fires at the enemies like arrows.

The Garuda launched itself at the targets, and Bree formed a barrier of vines as she charged.

Each of the attacks had decent effects against their enemies. None of them except Berri’s target were killed outright, but those struck were disrupted by the attacks striking them.

The few remaining gave a return volley of lightning bolts, but Jake’s party proved much more solid. The lightning sent electricity racing through their bodies, but their powerful constitutions ensured only minor wounds were taken.

The Garuda arrived swinging its wing blade, absorbing a lightning attack on its shield. The wing cleaved a storm elemental in two right through its core, and Jake was shocked by its effectiveness.

Launching more earthen spears and ranged attacks, the elementals created a net or chain of lightning through each other, shielding against the oncoming onslaught.

The lightning was decreased as the earthen spears, arrows, and baseball struck, but enough left over lashed out at the nearest target: the Garuda.

It struck the creature’s wing shield, and knocked it back powerfully. Ophelia’s Guardian used [Sacrificial Flames: Renewal] on it, restoring the burnt damage on the wing shield.

Bree then arrived, spearing one of the elementals with her vines and crashing into another with her tusks. The lightning barely jolted her, her vine-covered body strong against the element.

The Garuda flew back into the fray, killing two more elementals with one large swing of its blade. The elementals formed another lightning net, but this time, they were unable to counter Jake’s party’s spells.

The earthen spears, arrows, fox fires and baseballs crashed right through and killed the remaining elementals, Bree slicing into the last one with her vines. The enemy party was defeated, and not even a few minutes had passed.

Berri said, “That was fun! I got to use my baseball attack.”

Above their heads, dark clouds were building. A bolt of lightning struck Jake, a jolt of electricity shocking his body. The damage was shared with Ophelia, and the damage was similar to the few bolts that hit them previously.

Ophelia chuckled. “How ridiculous. The peak would empower our enemies if we let them take it, probably. An unfair advantage.”

Fhesiah smirked. “We’ll just not let them take it then.”

Blood hummed. “We are certainly much stronger. We just need to hold this point, right? We’ll regenerate enough of our mana between.”

They waited for their enemies to return, and they didn’t have to wait overly long. They had been struck by over a dozen bolts of lightning before they did.

This time, the Garuda and Bree were much closer to the enemy at the beginning, ready for their attack. Jake also worked out a Tier 2 [Group Runic Magic: Earthen Spikes] spell.

Their runes all intertwined, all five of them capable of contributing runes of their own into the spell, coordinating together. Berri’s contribution was small, but it still counted as she shoved mana into their joint construct.

The mana surged and the staggering amount of mana coalesced into a single magic.

Several giant spikes were expelled from the ground, one large enough that without a barrier spell, Jake’s party themselves would take significant damage from it. The many massive spears of earth slammed into nearly a dozen of the angry tornados, piercing and disrupting them.

A few of them died outright, their cores pierced. Others discharged lightning into the earth invading their forms, shattering the stone and allowing them to escape somewhat unharmed. Only to be pierced by vines from Bree and cut down by the Garuda’s wing blade.

Ophelia charged in on Valora and cut through another, and Tanda’s arrows finished off her target. The elementals were easily defeated once more, the party only expending just a little more mana than they’d regenerate by the end of two minutes.

“Not bad, girls. We just have to keep this up for five more spawns. Once again, they chose a battle that allowed for a rapid landslide victory, it seems.”

Fhesiah nodded. “It seems they really hoped for exploiting a weakness. A Battlegroup of twenty-five would handle this somewhat easily with the right strategy. But if they get overtaken just once, they may have difficulty turning the tide. The sentinel is likely useless or near it against these.”

Another bolt of lightning struck, this one hitting Valora ineffectually.

Tanda wondered, “Can these things do that sacrifice or combine thing like the last one? That could be terrifying.”

Jake frowned. “I doubt they have the intelligence to do a sacrificial ritual. Combining, though? That seems plausible. To be safe, perhaps we should allow them to reclaim the center just after we reach the halfway point.”

Berri asked, “Are our earth spike thingies still supposed to be there? I thought the flag thing would erase them.”

Fhesiah shook her head. “This one is a little different. You can’t conjure stone, but magical stone persists. It does cost mana to keep going–you can see it's already starting to fall apart.”

A bolt of lightning struck down, the Guardian taking the blow. Already, the power of the bolt increased. Fhesiah and Ophelia both added some additional flames to the construct, allowing it to persist for longer.

Blood hummed. “It may be worth it to create a shelter against the lightning, when things get bad.”

[Energize Buff spawns in one minute.]

Jake frowned. It appeared the timing was one that made things more difficult to deal with.