Chapter 444: Pest Control

Mac leapt high into the air, letting out the Orcish war cry that he had been taught, before he plummeted towards the ground hammer first.

He was swallowed up by the buzzing cloud of blackness in his descent, which quickly exploded with a gout of roaring flames the moment Mac’s hammer made contact with the earth.

He quickly rose and began swinging his two handed Maul - the head of which was already on fire around him madly, swatting at the blackness around him which started to retreat. Wherever he swung, charcoaled dots and small puffs of incinerated ash burst, as he cleaved and smashed the darkness into a pulp.

But the darkness was oppressive, and all devouring. No matter how much of a gap Mac made, how many he killed and disintegrated with a single swing of his mighty hammer, there were thousands more buzzing wings eager to take the place of the fallen.

Fireballs streamed through the air and rained down around him, shaking the earth with every explosion. The Devouring Black being illuminated within by the fire that was devouring it.

The swarm that was the Devouring Black responded in rage, their wings buzzing to create a high pitched screech of pain, before a column of blackness composed of hundreds of thousands of insects surged towards Belladonna, who was still standing on the original rooftop.

"Navash Ivin Ro’kum, Sagni!"

Her hands blurred, performing the series of movements in the blink of an eye, before she thrust them forwards and sent a marble sized ball of fire shooting towards the insect tendril lunging towards her.

The swarm swallowed the marble, which immediately exploded and consumed the tendril in flames, as did the two other marbles that quickly followed the first.

Even more tendrils burst from the cloud and surged towards Belladonna, thousands of humming wings screaming towards her as they moved as a single unit and flanked her from different sides.

She leapt back, letting the tendrils explode against the rooftop before they reformed and pursued her, as she leapt from roof-top to roof-top.

Every few leaps, Belladonna sent half a dozen fireballs behind her, burning through her supplies of magic components and as she had to constantly keep smearing the paste on her hand.

She sent a few fireballs into the main body of the swarm, letting them explode around Mac as he desperately fought off the Devouring Black that was trying to add him to the menu. Some of the fireballs exploded close to him, burning him and the insects clinging to his body alike, whilst others exploded in the distance seemingly uselessly.

But whenever they exploded far from him, Mac always kept his eyes locked on the explosions, studying the imprint the roaring orange glow left on the swarm.

It illuminated and silhouetted every buzzing insect that made up the Devouring Black, but Mac wasn’t interested in them. His eyes locked onto the latest explosion, as the silhouette caught his attention.

That was what he was interested in. The non-insect. A silhouette that could only belong to the hulking form of his fellow orc.

He wanted to shout, to call out what he saw, but Belladonna had warned him against that. There was nothing this hellish swarm of insects would love than for him to open his mouth nice and wide, and give them a premium entrance.

However even if Mac was keeping his mouth clenched shut, to the point that his teeth were straining from how hard he was clenching, that didn’t stop the insects. He could feel them forcing their way into his ears or trying to force themselves up his nose.

When they couldn’t find an already existing entrance, they started to make their own. Hundreds of small teeth and pincers peeling, plucking and pulling at his flesh as they dug their way through. But Mac ignored them as he rushed forwards, right towards his fellow Orc, and stopped right in front of them.

They barely had a chance to turn before Mac’s Maul struck them in the head, and turned it into a visceral water-balloon.

The Headless Orc staggered, but remained on its feet as hundreds of worms wriggled beneath its skin, and dozens of bulbous growths each the size of a bowling ball convulsed and squirmed across the Orcs body.

Mac twirled his Maul and struck again, catching the walking corpse in the chest this time and sending it tumbling across the ground, as it burst into flames.

The stench of their children burning, and the soft pops of the maggots tiny bodies bursting like popcorn, drove the swarm to madness.

Brood Thralls. They were bodies that had been taken over and puppeteered by an entirely separate swarm. The spawn of the Plague Lord would turn them into roaming hives, allowing them to breed and expand their numbers no matter where they were, even when the Plague Lord eventually moved on after draining his environment of all life.

The higher tier, or more potent the magic, of the body the children were born in, the more powerful they grew up to be and the more plentiful the swarm.

The bodies were corpses, if you were lucky. But not always. While many of the swarms spawn thrived on flesh that was brimming with necrosis, some required something that was still fresh and brimming with life.

Mac turned his own hammer on himself, slamming it into his head and letting the flames wash over him. Again and again, he smashed his own hammer into his face, as he beat the insects out of him, reducing their squirming and invading bodies to ash before they could make him replace the hive that he had destroyed.

Every strike hurt, and every single time the flames washed over him they lapped at his skin and seared it with every searing lick. But he kept doing it, even when the insects trying to invade his head were gone, he kept smashing.

With every strike, every smash, Mac grew larger and larger. His frame expanded, his muscles bulged and the spaces between them became tighter as his skin strained to contain the new growth.

The insects trying to burrow into him suddenly felt like they were trying to burrow through solid steel, and those that were already inside of him were crushed with little more than a flex of his muscles.

[Damage Threshold met - Increasing stats by 25%]

[Damage Threshold met - Increasing stats by 50%]

[Damage Threshold met - Increasing stats by 75%]

[Current Stat Increase - 150%]

The notifications flashed before Mac’s eyes as he beat himself bloody, before finally stopping at the 75% mark. His chest heaved and with a single swing of his Maul, which he could now easily hold in a single hand, he wiped out thousands of insects and sent a wave of fire roaring through the Devouring Black.