A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower
Chapter 139: This Is What Resisting Me Costs
Chapter 81: The Paladin’s Light
Langford moved first.
He crossed the twenty feet between them before James finished lifting his blade, fast in a way the armor should not have allowed, and brought the white sword down at James’s head.
James got his own sword up in time.
CLANG.
The hit drove him back off his feet entirely. He hit a pillar shoulders-first.
BOOM.
The concrete cracked across in a long line, and dust came down off the ceiling. The stream feed squared and smeared for a second, then caught itself and stayed live.
James got his legs under him.
So that was the answer to whether the man in the coat could fight.
[poggers_pat]: HE THREW JAMES ACROSS THE GARAGE WITH ONE SWING
[grimreaper_99]: that’s not a diplomat bro that’s a PALADIN monkaS
[tower_dublin]: get up get up GET UP
[viewer_0451]: chat James is in trouble. real trouble
James raised his free hand and pulled mana for Necro Blast.
It hurt before it formed. The mana dragged through his arm like it was being pulled across a hot wire, and it had never done that before.
He fired anyway.
[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]
[MANA: 1,470/1,470 → 1,420/1,470]
The black bolt left his hand. Langford turned his sword into its path and the blast split around the white blade, peeled off both sides, and ate into two parked cars behind him.
The metal rotted from the inside in a second. Panels caved. Then a fuel cell went.
BOOM.
The blast tore through the side wall of the level. Somewhere above them, through the ceiling, people started screaming.
This was not a floor. There were rooms over their heads, full of people who had checked into a hotel.
Langford did not even look at the cars.
He set his stance, and pale-gold light spread out from under his boots across the concrete in a wide ring.
The Dark Knight came in toward his flank, sword low.
She stepped into the gold light and her armor began to smoke.
She slowed. The wolf, coming wide on the other side, dropped its head and backed off the ring entirely, a low sound in its throat.
James felt it in his own body. His mana twisted when it crossed that light, and the pain ran up under his skin.
The holy ground answered death with burning. That was the matchup. Langford had been built to put men like James down.
James did not waste time learning it twice.
The guards were still on the floor, some up on their knees now, some reaching for dropped weapons. James gave the order through the command link.
[GRAVE COMMAND: BREAK]
The Dark Knight broke off Langford and turned on the crew.
She caught the nearest man across the chest with the flat of the great sword and folded him over a car bonnet. The wolf came off its line and took a second man down by the leg, dragging him off his feet and away from his gun.
They were not the fight. They were keeping the floor clear.
James’s uncle saw the gap and crawled for the ramp again, dragging the leg the wolf had already chewed.
The wolf saw him.
It crossed the floor and bit down on the same leg, lower, and dragged him back across the concrete.
CRACK.
The bone went. His uncle screamed into the open feed.
James looked at him once.
Then he turned back to Langford, because Langford was already moving.
The Paladin vanished from in front of him.
James felt the air change to his left and got the sword across just in time.
The white blade hit it and the force still drove him sideways, off his feet, into a parked car. Glass burst out of the windows. He rolled over the bonnet and hit the floor on the far side.
[JAMES GANNER — HP: 1,020/1,020 → 744/1,020]
He coughed, and there was blood in it.
[tower_dublin]: he’s bleeding. JAMES IS BLEEDING
[grimreaper_99]: is he actually gonna lose this monkaW
[viewer_0451]: he can’t land ANYTHING the knight counters him hard
[Sadge_enjoyer]: i can’t watch this Sadge
Langford walked around the car, unhurried.
"This is why kingdoms don’t negotiate with children," he said.
He kicked James through the payment booth.
The little glass box came apart, and James went through the wall behind it, into the support level, and the impact ran up through a column. The ceiling cracked overhead. Dust sheeted down from the floor above.
Then the floor above gave.
CRRRAAACK.
A section of the hotel lobby came down into B2. Marble, steel, furniture, and people. Some of the people were crushed where they landed. Others went under the debris and screamed from inside it.
The feed caught all of it.
James was on his knees in the broken booth, and for half a second he was somewhere else, watching a teammate go down in front of him and learning that if he stopped to grieve, more of them died.
He had looked away from a body before.
He knew how to do it.
He looked away from the people under the marble, because Langford was already lifting his sword again, and stopping now only added to the pile.
"You did this," Langford said. "You resisted. This is what resisting me costs."
James did not answer him.
He had corpses now.
He reached for the armed men crushed near the fallen marble and pulled.
[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON ACTIVATED]
[MANA: 1,420/1,470 → 1,330/1,470]
Bone hands dragged themselves up out of broken suits and torn tactical gear. Three of them, then a fourth, rising on the floor of an Earth car park in front of forty million people.
[viewer_0451]: are those. are those HUMAN skeletons
[grimreaper_99]: he raised the dead guards. on earth. on stream 💀
[tower_dublin]: HE’S TRYING TO SURVIVE the knight dropped the building on people
[dub_dee]: people are DEAD and now skeletons are walking. this is a nightmare live
[Sadge_enjoyer]: nobody win here. everyone watching this is gonna be sick
The skeletons went at Langford. They could not beat him and James knew it. He sent them anyway, to make angles.
Langford swung once.
[PALADIN ART: CLEANSING CUT]
White fire ran down his blade and burned three of the skeletons apart in a single arc.
But it took him half a second, and half a second was a gap.
James was already inside it.
He came at Langford with the sword.
He was not the better swordsman. Langford was trained, older, stronger, and his footwork never opened. But James was faster than the man expected, and James did not fight clean.