Donut: THEY’RE WAY AHEAD. THEY HAVE SOME SORT OF ROCKET THING ON THE BACK OF THEIR STUPID TUMBLEWEED, AND THEY’RE ROLLING. WE’RE IN SECOND PLACE!
“Shit,” I grumbled. I pulled the eight-pack launcher from my inventory, aimed it straight up in the air, and I fired out the back of the zooming truck.Thwum, thwum, thwum, thwum.The eight missiles spiraled off one by one. Four moved toward the heavily armored One Fine Pig, and four moved toward team Sparkles.
We still had thirty seconds, but that was okay. The missiles weren’t designed to explode.
I caught sight of Rapture in the passenger’s seat of their muscle car. She flashed a pair of devil horns. I moved to the front of the truck.
The music abruptly stopped before the song finished.
Invulnerability is about to time out, and the next wave comes.
Above, the rockets corkscrewed down toward the distant unicorn team. A new shield appeared about them, this one glowing purple.
Bang! Bang! Bang!Three of the four rockets slammed into the bush, which immediately veered off to the side and started spinning in panicked circles.
The Denial of Service missiles weren’t meant to kill the vehicles directly. Each impact caused a chemical reaction thattriggered a thick mucous membrane to form over a wide area. In this case, the three missiles utterly covered the round shield with a thick goo, making it so they couldn’t see. They were now encased in the green slime. They could turn off the shield, but the sludge would just fall upon them and get stuck in the vines, which Mordecai insisted would slow them to a crawl.
Invulnerability has timed out.
“CastingShield?!” Donut shouted.
Donut: IT SAYS THE SHIELD DOESN’T COVER THE TWO GHOULS OUTSIDE THE TRUCK!
Carl: Okay. We thought that might happen. Stick to the plan.
“Oh, fuck!” Gluteus shouted. “Would you look at that!”
Up ahead, two literal waves of skulls appeared out of nowhere, coming from both sides of the road, zooming toward the track like twin tsunamis. Each wave was about twenty feet tall. In a few seconds, we were going to be buried in the sugar hermits. The wave on the right side was much closer and would reach us first. I quickly returned to the back of the truck.
“Ghouls, get ready!” I yelled. “You,” I shouted, pointing to the ghoul dangling off on the driver’s side. I pointed upward.
I yanked the chain, raising him up in the air. The ghoul would have to open the cage all the way and climb to the roof of the truck. There he’d move forward to deal with the enemies coming from the front. But it would take him a few moments to get in place.
I returned to the back door as the other ghoul started hurling his potion balls at the approaching waves of colorful skulls.
This was a potion similar to the Denial of Service missiles, but much thicker. These were called Biscuit Packs. Each potion ball caused a round-ish foam-filled explosion about three meters in diameter that hardened in seconds. It was the same basic principle as the polyurethane expanding foam they used inconstruction and boat repair, but this stuff hardened instantly and had the consistency of rock once toughened.
The ghoul hurled the potion balls one after another at the rapidly approaching wave.
Each explosion made a loudpopas it hit the ground or one of the skulls, and the results were instantaneous. It’d explode and poof out, popcorn-like, snagging dozens of them at a time while also creating a barrier. The ball would then either veer off the road or start to roll alongside us. The screams from the sugar hermits went up in pitch, even louder than the engine, as the little tentacles reached out from the giant foam balls.
We hadn’t known what sort of mobs we’d be facing. This was the best solution we could come up with that would be effective with the widest possibility of enemies. It wasn’t perfect and plenty were getting through and around the foam balls, but it was keeping us from getting overwhelmed. For now.
We passed team Sparkles, who were all the way on the other side of the wide road. The slime-covered vine floundered.
We didn’t have time to celebrate.
“Hold on!” Gluteus shouted as the skulls flooded the streets ahead of us. They were hitting the asphalt and immediately turning toward the finish line, leaving an increasingly narrow path ahead. The ghouls were doing an admirable job, but we were quickly losing ground.
Donut leaned forward and cast her level 15Wall of Fire, which had been powered up to level 16.
On the passenger’s side of the truck, a line of flames materialized. A wave of heat radiated over us.
“Whoa, shit!” I shouted as the wall appeared, running parallel with the side of the truck. There was a good thirty feet between us and the flames, but it still felt like we were way too close. I gawked as the wall rapidly raced ahead, reaching far intothe distance. The flames went straight up, easily a hundred feet into the air. The line had to be a mile long.
“Heavy fucking metal!” Gluteus screamed.
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