A wave of attacks flew forwards, smashing into the incoming grounds of chitterlings. Since there was still a significant amount of trees in front of everyone, and not everybody had the best aim a lot of the attacks missed. But the tanks did their jobs in holding in the line and making sure that the Chitterlings wave broke against t he wall of defense that they had created. But because this was not the nest, the waves of chitterlings coming this was were not much, in fact there was always small pockets of breaks between each waves that allowed everyone to rest and the tanks to switch out.
Ultimately even when the Next wave came, it was not everyone that had to defend or attack the Chitterlings and other darklings as there just wasn't enough of them. Because of this they were making faster progress than Cole had expected that they would have been able to make. So as they moved forwards, tree fell and darklings were slain. Amongst everyone around there was a dedicated group of aspirants whose jobs were to go about picking the drops left behind by the chitterlings after they had been slain. Everyone had made a collective agreement that whatever was found should just go into the development of the Glade rather that individual distribution as no one would have been able to do so equally.
Of course since they were all a part of the same faction, Cole would have set it by contribution, but that way the resources gained might not be enough and some people would get more out of it than others. And the truth of the matter was that everyone here was playing his or her own part, so while some might have smaller roles than others, no one was contributing less than the others. So rather than share loot, dedicated spotters picked it up and ran back to the Glade to deliver it to the Glade's inventory. Cole took a moment to step back from the front lines as he sent a message to Farida.
<How's your side doing?>
.he wanted to say more, but Cole was not one for long talks, this was just the sum of what he cared about right now. It wasn't up to a minute before she replied him, he words short and ore use and straight to the point.
<Rough around the edges, some Ursalings broke through the formation in a concentrated attack effort, few aspirants arguing. No casualties formation intact and advancement still on board. Watch out for Ursalings, suicide attacks are being carried out by them in an attempt to break formations. They explode themselves, give warning to tanks and prepare to intercept should any group of more than three Ursalings attack a part of the formation.>
It was somewhat military like, but Cole like it. He quickly relayed the message she had given him to the group with him and made the necessary adjustments to their formations to make sure it was as tight as possible. But Cole couldn't possibly be everywhere, he knew that his group had been functioning a lot better than Farida's because of his presence, forget the respect, Cole had already proven he was a no nonsense person so perhaps they were a lot more afraid if him than the creatures attacking them from within the shadows of tall trees.
*Roooaaaarrrrrr!*
Cole's heart dropped, at first he had thought that perhaps another dragon had shown up and was about to cause problems for their formations, but the roar was a lot more subdued. From the east, close to then golden boundary that separated their forest from whatever lay beyond, a massive crocodile darkling surged out of the forests, smashing trees to pieces and it rushed towards the formation, almost a dozen Ursaling on its heels. Cole remember the crocodile darkling even if it's official name seemed to evade him at the moment, even he hadn't been able to stand up to it's strength and speed, all he did was rely on his skills and hunkered down to endure it's onslaught, if it got to the formation then all of their plans was fucking ruined.
"Stand your ground! Everyone attack!" [Shadow Dance]
Cole popped out of the Crocodile darkling own shadow, directly under it's form as he grabbed it's tail and dug his heels into the ground. Safe to say he was not as successful in his attempt to bring it to a stop as it kept dragging him forwards with a single minded focus to get to the formation. But ultimately after a few seconds it realized that there was a person attached to it's person and moved to attack, it's massive jaws snapping behind it in an attempt to snap Cole in half in bite. But Cole was ready for that.
[Vertigo]
The crocodile Darkling shuddered as it's legs seemed to loose power and it crashed to the ground, it yowled in confusion about what was happening to it, but Cole was already making the next move as he pulled out his sword and jumped onto it's back. Black Malakai's blade blazed alive with a black energy that was tinged with a reddish purple hue. He had used [Black Cut] augmenting it with his one hit kill skill [Assassinate]. The blade found purchase in the middle of the Crocodile darkling's skull. Bringing it a swift and shuddering end as all movements seized and another &dealing decided to use that opportunity to jump at Cole in an attempt to attack him by catching him unawares.
He turned around swiftly and gave the Ursaling, a bear, a literal bear hug as he immediately activated [Sin Eater] he focused on the skill, pushing it to the limits as he drained the Ursaling, turning it to dust in 5 seconds as opposed to the long ten or 7 seconds he has been used to with the skill. He was stronger than he was the day before, faster, wiser, a lot more dangerous and in more control of his abilities. Of course Cole knew he still had quite a ways to go, but he was dangerous enough that an ambush from an Ursaling won't mean anything to him, he would see it coming.
His blade flashed into the air as he sliced a chitterling in half. Some of the aspirants had moved past him, breaking the formation in order to attack the Ursalings. The ranged fighters had even decided to focus all of their firepower on the creatures, saving them from the suicidal exploding attack that Farida had warned them about. But everything did not always go according to plan. Three more groups of Ursaling burst out of the forest, each and every single one of them led by two of the same crocodile darkling he had just finished eliminating. And what was even worse was the fact that there were more Ursalings now, at least 25 to a group, and they were coming with a purpose.
Cole knew that just sitting on his ass would cause even more casualties as he realized he had made a big mistake. The first Ursaling had been bait, and because of what Farida had told him he had been panicked enough that he made a bad call and broke the formation all by himself. People had stepped out in order to deal with the approaching sui ide bomber darkling squad. He turned and looked around and realized that he had to figure out a way to set thing straight and fast, the darklings were now attacking them with strategy, and because Cole could now see these strategies he realized that the rating of danger he had attached to the this raid had gone up by a factor of 2 or 5. He had to Cole up with something and fast too, because he really couldn't be everywhere at once…. Or could he.
"Reform the formation! Back in Formations now! All ranged attacks be prepared to be unleashed on the enemies on my go!"
[Spectral Rover]
The world became grayscale as Cole became capable of moving extremely fast. It was as he was using Spectral Rover that he realized or that he could finally see that the Darklings all had tethers made of energy that connected each and every one of them to each other. And even at that the same tether all came together in a central string that led deeper into the forest, most probably in the direction of the nest. Cole narrowed his eyes, worried but at the same understanding what he had suspected before to be true, all of the darklings seem to be part of a central hive mind, perhaps if he could figure out a way to attack that tether, he would be able to take all of them out at the same time without much problems.
Ultimately that was not what he was up to at the moment. He couldn't figure out a way to attack those tethers now, so the best of what he could possibly do right now is attack them all as he had originally planned. The skill [Chaos Blast] had a delay that he could actually increase or reduce as he used it. The longer the delay the more powerful the explosion, of course he could also sink more energy into it than the norm and the explosion would be stronger or lesser depending on his choice. The maximum amount of time he could set the delay for was 5 seconds, and from what he could see it would take the Crocodiles 3 seconds to reach them and the Ursalings close to seven. Cole calculate the distance as beast as he could for all three groups then he began to leave [Chaos Blast] after [Chaos Blast] on the ground.
Each of them had differing delays, but were all packed to the brim with energy. It was safe to say that Cole bottomed his very impressive energy pool out in order to create a literal mine field. He rushed back to the formation just as the duration for Spectral Rover came to an end. And just in time too as he gave his army the orders his army were already waiting for.
"ATTACK!!!"
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