They reached the foot of the volcano in less than an hour. The barren ground around the volcano was littered with blood colored rocks and boulders. Other the contrast between the color of the normal ground color and the bright red of the rocks it reminded Dave of some of the NASA photos he'd seen showing the rocky landscape of the planet Mars.

Bud the ghoul broke his normal silence, "Lord draugr."

Dave looked at Bud in question.

"Scent. Blood, butnot. Demons. They hide."

Bud's words were few, but it was all the information Dave needed.

"All right. Ready up, Formation 'A'! Archers and casters to the rear! Files One and Two guard the ranged units, the rest behind the dunlords!"

Formation 'A' was a spearhead formation, with Dave, on Stinger, positioned in the middle and four dunlords to each side protecting him from being flanked. The final Dunlord was in front of him acting as the tip of the 'spear.'

Dave ordered the dunlords to advance in formation, moving slowly farther onto the blood-stone plain, with the rest of the battalion following close behind.

Suddenly, the ground rippled outward, growing and moving like waves in an ocean storm. From the center of the disturbance worms thicker than Dave was tall and as long as a city bus it writhed out from a mound that burst up from the ground.

Blood Worm

Level 350

Danger Level

Tier: Mystic

HP: 200,000

Damage: 15,000 20,000

DN: 10, 000

MA: 10, 000

Skills: [Burrow] Burrows and un-borrows from the ground to surprise prey or hide from danger.

[Suffocate] entangles a target dealing 100% damage and executing targets who remain in the clutch of the blood worm for more than 1 minute. (Cannot applied to non living things).

[Consume] sucks the blood of the victim healing to heal the blood worm. Health restored is 50% of the damage dealt.

Bestiary:

Blood worms are vicious fiends that can scent blood from thousands of miles away.

When they are at a disadvantage they retreat by burrowing underground for safety.

Dave yelled to his troops, "This is good target practice, boyz! Light 'em up!"

The casters and archers ranged on the worms from behind the dunlords then fired off coordinated attacks with deadly precision.

Grand Strategist Title activated!

Battlecry!

All Undead under your command receive a boon: 20% damage bonus

Your underlings have a chance to resurrect immediately upon dying (1%+0%)!

The blind fate of your underlings gives them Courage!

There is a 5% chance that attacks made by those under your command will ignore the target's defensive values!

That resurrect number puzzled him. Weird.

but after carefully reading through it, Dave's eyes lit up.

"Wow!" He was excited by the bonuses the new title gave him. Rank and command do indeed have privileges.

His gloating was interrupted by the high-pitched squeals of the enraged worms as they charged toward the invading force, trying to get at their attackers. Fortunately the disgusting crawlers didn't even get close to the ranged units that had damaged them. Instead they ran up against the defending tank-like dunlords.

The scorpion men fired their heavy ballista continuously into the attackers as fast as they could load the mechanisms. With black blood oozing from the holes made by the bolts, the worms kept coming.

Whenever a worm moved too close for the ballistae, a dunlord met it directly, giant pincers extended. The boulder-crushing pincer-claws easily shearing halfway through the wriggling bodies in a single snicker-snack.

On one side two of the outer dunlords broke formation and used their stone-crushing pincers to engage a group of blood worms that were trying to get around the deadly spearhead formation and flank them.

Another two Dunlords did the same and then the last of the charging blood worms were brought under the focused barrage of the battalion's ranged elements.

The low level undead couldn't deal any damage to the blood worm, but at one point one of them landed a blow and removed some hp .

As of now, the low level caster that managed to decrease the Blood Worm's hp could be negligible.

Dave had only a hundred or so undead, but what if his rank increased and he had more undead under him? The measly 5% would not be a negligible anymore

Dave couldn't wait to get more troops to expand his battalion. It was folly to fight alone when an individual could leverage a position and have multitudes fighting for him. This was the Undead's true power, the power of numbers. As the saying goes 'quantity has a quality all its own.' Alone, a single Undead might not be worth much compared to a high ranked player, but when the Undead become legion...ahhhh, then things change! And the world will tremble at their tread!

Far from the hustle and bustle of the main player areas of Conquest, deep in the mysterious unexplored lands of the Underworld, a slaughter of monsters began. Soon to reap loots and EXP as a reward for his successful planning and tactics, a young draugr swatched as his Undead minions proceeded to crush a horde of demonic enemies into bloody wormfood.