Under Shiv's direction, the wall melted into the ground, paving the way through the barrier and into the castle complex.
With the tunnel opened up, Shiv charged forward with his brothers in arms following close behind. They yelled their battlecries, and Shiv joined them, a wild shout emanating from his mouth.
On the other side of the tunnel, they came out inside a building that looked to Shiv like an infirmary. There were cots with bloody men on them, and water mages spread throughout the building. They were currently scrambling away from Shiv, knocking over beds and tripping over themselves as they tried to reach the door at the opposite end of the building.
One of the men with Shiv put a stop to that by sending a well-aimed fireball at a damaged portion of the ceiling, causing it to collapse in front of the door, crushing several people.
Shiv decided to sit back and watch how these guys did things. They started with their fire mages stepping forward and setting fire to everything. Then, the water mages replaced them and doused everything. The earth mages then replaced them and took care of everyone who had survived the onslaught, that being mostly the enemy fire mages, who had a high resistance to heat.
All of this was done quickly and efficiently. It helped that their opponents were mostly stuck in beds with gruesome wounds and ailments, but Shiv had no doubt that this would have a very similar effect on enemies that were perfectly capable of fighting back.
"Impressive." Shiv complimented them, and they moved through the wreckage of the infirmary, out the door and set their eyes upon chaos.
Looking out from the front door of the infirmary, Shiv saw that they were on a slightly raised area, and that their target was directly to their right. Ahead of them and to their left, a battle was raging. Fire was everywhere, but there was almost as much water putting out the fires. Particularly the fires on people. The very ground itself was moving in a confusing pattern, sometimes going one way and sometimes another, with walls and spikes jutting up at what seemed like random times and places.
Shiv was stunned by the scene before him, but was brought back to reality when one of his compatriots knocked him in the shoulder with his own shoulder on his way to their target. Shiv stumbled forward a step, then turned his head to look at the place he was about to go: the castle's main entrance.
It was up a set of stairs that had several enemy mages waiting on them. They clearly wanted to either be in the castle, or down to Shiv's left, helping their fellow guards, but had been ordered to guard the castle. Now, Shiv was going to destroy them.
Before he got the chance, his comrades had already reached the guards on the stairs and a flurry of spells had been sent flying in every direction. The most notable was a line of spikes that shot up all along the first wide step. It killed two of the men on Shiv's side who were on that step, but distracted everyone's attention from the slew of lightning darts flying toward the guards.
Just like that, there were four electrified corpses. Four more dead men.
'That's nothing when compared to the city I just destroyed.' Shiv reached the foot of the stairs, keenly aware of everybody's mortality except his own, and ascended the steps with his favorite weapon growing from the dirt in his hand.
Crack!
His flaming whip was sent flying faster than even the lighting darts had been, and wrapped around two of the guards. He came to an abrupt stop and pulled back on the whip, severing the two men.
'That's eight dead in two seconds.'
While he was doing that, one of the guards had sent a billowing wave of fire in his direction. Shiv had ignored it, knowing his affinity to fire would protect him, but one of his teammates didn't know that. He stomped a bare foot on the ground and a wall grew in between Shiv and the fire. But while the man was distracted with summoning the barrier, an arrow of water had pierced his throat.
Shiv didn't see this, as he was focused on dodging a spinning air discus that was shot at him. 'I don't think I've ever fought an air mage before.' He backed up into the wall, causing him to take a wound in the shoulder and drawing a string of curses from the reincarnated dude.
He moved to retaliate against the wind mage, but he was already dead, with half of his face missing from an attack Shiv didn't see.
He pushed off the wall and went around it, ready to fight the rest of his opponents… but they, along with three more of his team, were dead.
'That was what, seven seconds from start to finish?' Shiv shook his head.
'That was intense.'
Shiv took the lead at the giant door to the castle that looked like it was made from a giant redwood tree from earth. He put his hands on the wood and activated his fire Ability.
With his exponential increase in levels, he'd gained a much higher capacity for using Abilities. It was much more difficult for him to starve himself, though the new lightning ability did a great job of draining him.
As such, he felt almost nothing from the previous battle, and burning down the giant doors still didn't seem to put much of a dent on his reserves.
The door rapidly disintegrated, and the group of men immediately entered, checking the giant corridor the door had been hiding. They found a few servants that were rapidly killed, but other than that, the place was empty.
'That hole where the door used to be should be a big enough opening for the rest of the troops to come through. Should we go back and help them, or stay here and prevent enemy reinforcements from coming out of the castle?' Shiv was not used to thinking tactically, and he had no idea which idea was better, or if either of the ideas actually had any merit to begin with.
He was saved from his confused inner dialogue by the man with a lightning affinity. "Farhad saw us make it here. He wants us to push into the castle and begin wrecking the place. Briggs is about to join the fight out there, so they'll be fine."
Shiv nodded, glancing at the rest of the team. Some had casual expressions, like they were simply doing a job… which Shiv guessed they were. The rest had serious and determined expressions. Either way, they were ready.
They pushed deeper into the castle, getting farther away from the sounds of explosions and men screaming, until they encountered their first obstacle: A wall of metal had been erected in the center of the main corridor, preventing deeper access into the castle.
Or that was the defender's intention, anyway.
Shiv was actually the one to come up with the solution to this problem. As one of his teammates, a metal mage, stepped forward, Shiv proposed they go under it. The entire group looked at him like he was joking and a few of them even cracked smiles. Those smiles disappeared when Shiv knelt and the floor in front of him seemed to melt into the form of a very respectable sized passageway that led under the wall.
"You're powerful. And pretty sharp. We can make that tunnel open up behind the enemies waiting on the other side of the wall in ambush." The lightning mage gave him a nod of respect.
'They're planning to ambush us? Oh. I guess that makes sense.' Shiv laughed awkwardly. "Yeah, uh, follow me, guys."
He missed the confused looks they shared at his word choice, because he was already in the tunnel making his way forward, expanding it forward as he went. They followed quickly after him.
They continued moving forward like this until the lightning mage judged that they had passed the enemy forces. At that point, Shiv made a set of stairs and quickly made an opening into the corridor above, then ran up those stairs.
The lightning mage had been correct. About everything.
There was a group of guards in decorative uniforms hidden at various points behind different barriers, and all of them were looking at the metal wall.
Not one to waist opportunities, Shiv struck first. The nearest man was massive, and was wearing the colors of a fire mage. Shiv molded the ground underneath his feet- having a slight sense of de ja vue as he did so- into a greatsword, grabbed it, and swung with all his might in a downward strike.
The giant of a man's head suddenly had a new, very deep dent in it.
During Shiv's attack, all of the men who had been facing the wall turned to look at him. First, with confusion, but that rapidly morphed into hatred.
As a rush of power entered Shiv, he realized something. 'These guys are at a higher level than I am.'