Egbert vehemently chose to ignore what his “under revisions” stat sheet had told him and zoomed over the battlefield. He only had one last thing to do to motivate the violence. He planted a generous jar of the zip dust on top of a flagpole. And let it hang there in plain view from the top of the castle.

  Then he went over to Twitch’s shantytown and spent a bit more than he would have liked on bolts of the most beautiful royal purple cloth imaginable. They draped majestically down the side of Twitch's apartment complex temptingly.

  It won’t be long now. Egbert bought some spiritual popcorn and began munching happily as the first of each faction's loot bugs began noticing what the other side had. Curious peeking from Bubba’s force turned into rapidly marshaling squads preparing for a foray into enemy land.

  And Twitch’s side...well, it was a bit disconcerting how they peered over the maze and out windows with red eyes and crazed expressions. Someone finally told Twitch, and he walked to the edge of his roof, looking down over his kingdom. He hissed something incomprehensible that sent the swarm into a tizzy. While Bubba's forces were still marshaling, a clambering, frothing horde poured towards them.

  The first defenders on Bubba’s side sat stalwart within the watchtowers, bows ready. And more than a few of the drunkards on the tavern balcony were chanting “Come on, come on” to themselves with coins perched on the edge of coin slots.

  Twitch's frothing warriors clamored across the rocks and crags near the center of the battlefield, and all hell broke loose. Someone triggered a Barrel Oh Fun with a malicious laugh. Bannerman skittered around the plain-looking barrel for a moment, and then suddenly it imploded, sucking one bannerman into a gap in reality before spitting them out roughly a few strides away, knocking a whole swath of the charge into disarray. Where there once was a Barrel Oh Fun now a shimmering purple portal hissed angrily. Something stepped through.

  Oh boy, what's our first temporary…monster…oh…what the hells. Egbert identified it just to make sure he wasn’t having a stroke. [Maneater Daisy-Tier1] (lvl19). It was utterly insane looking—a flower with an extra thick stalk nearly the size of a man that walked on many root-like legs. A toothy maw stretched from the flower down the stem, and a dozen insane bladed vines flailed all around from its back.

  Ehhh, maybe it's not that bad.

  The daisy launched itself like a crazed cannonball into the densest patch of loot bugs and began stuffing them unchewed into its maw the second it got ahold of them. The entire right side of the charge was stymied as banner bugs rallied around the new foe, raining blow after blow down into its violent form.

  A flurry of arrows and a few spells sailed from the defenders in the towers, raining into the swirling melee surrounding the solitary daisy. The thing was horrific; it did not have a single fuck to give. It was peppered by nearly a dozen arrows, had a hundred cuts, and was still fighting like nothing had happened.

  Bannerbugs were falling in droves between diving sparrows of ice. The surprisingly good aim of the archers and one guy who was throwing fireballs that detonated with a really impressive smoke cloud in the shape of a middle finger. That guy was having the time of his life cackling like a mad mage on his final stand and chugging mana potions every third cast.

  Even with heavy initial losses, they were starting to get close to the towers. Bubba's forces rallied across the treacherous landscape to meet them before the towers. The party of knights in tow, Egbert could only tell them apart from the utter clusterfuck this was becoming because Randy was being all dramatic with his flaming sword again.

  The battle lines clashed in a swirling maelstrom of golden shells and diminutive weapons. From Egbert's overhead view there were two main confluxes of chaos. The slowly dying daisy and its overstuffed maw still singlehandedly making the drug-addled warriors regret life choices on the right flank.

  And where Joe had set up between the towers just in front of the short stone walls. He had a shimmering barrier that extended ten strides in either direction. The wave of enemies physically broke around him, washing either into the tight-knit pack of Bubba’s Crushers, who were laying about wrathfully with tiny hammers. Or into the utter blender that was the rest of the knights.

  Whoo, they must have gotten quite a few levels from the first village war. I think Carter just threw that dagger through two bugs at once… That was kind of cool.

  A stalemate persisted for a bit longer until the daisy was finally hacked into small enough pieces that the rest of the army could swing past it. Once the reinforcements crashed in, the lines started folding back once more. Egbert could see a shifty figure in a mottled robe sneaking along with the tide of banner bugs towards Bubba’s castle.

  Hey! Stay on your own damn side!

  The rogue stopped abruptly as instead of rushing around the tower into the clear like he had hoped. He physically ran square into an Orc half again as tall as he was. Thrognar leaned down, his axe in hand, “No Trespassing.” He roared and then gently handed the man a red card and pointed back to Twitch’s side of the battlefield.

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  The rogue looked like he was really considering fighting Thrognar for a second until he saw the adorable face of the puppy peeking from Thrognar’s backpack; it looked over his shoulder, tongue hanging out innocently. Then, as they made eye contact, it looked deep, deep into his soul; he found he couldn’t pull his eyes from the malevolent pits of guilt and power as it spoke straight into his mind.

  “Flee, flee mortal, or I shall have my champion feed your still-beating heart to my faithful while your soul screams in the torment of a thousand hells.”

  “AAGGHHhhaaaaaa AAAAA” The rogue shrilly screamed, dropping his daggers and sprinting not just back towards Twitch’s side but straight off the battlefield towards the nearest exit.

  Thrognar nodded to himself appreciatively. “That’s right, Thrognar in charge.” The puppy snorted in amusement and settled back into Thrognar’s backpack.

  Well, I did just mean for Thrognar to be the ref, not Thrognar and the eldritch menace that lives in his backpack half the time but. Okay, beggars can’t be choosers; it’s not like I’m paying him.

  The glimmering bulwark holding back Twitch’s forces suddenly flickered and then disappeared. Egbert flew over in excitement. No way, Joe, are you the first!?

  Joe was in fact the first to fall into one of the treacherous slippery holes that led to underground caverns. He plinked off the walls of the narrow chute a few times with a grunt as he slid into the flooded cave. Egbert saw him thrashing underwater in panic for a few moments.

  Shhh...SHH, it's okay, Joe; your savior is right over there.

  As if on cue, a radiant golden-white beacon of hope lit the underwater cave up, revealing an underwater vending machine with a simple, beautiful Egbert sent message. “Water Breathing potions: one gold.” Joe stared blankly at the machine for about half a second before ripping his coin purse free and acquiring a potion. Ahh yes, my foreplanning has saved another.

  Egbert went back to the battlefield while Joe began a grumbling crawl back up the treacherous slope. There was a mighty rumbling, and his gold total had just ticked up again; he was excited to see if it was what he hoped.

  Sure enough, someone had activated the “Boulder” now that it was in the dead center of Twitch’s forces. The wrathful, roiling hunk of agitated rock and pissed-off energy begrudgingly pulled itself from its cozy nest in one of the caverns and rumbled to the surface. Its beady, not eyes scanned the foes arranged against it, and it groaned in displeasure.

  Twitch's forces went from pushing all the way against the tower to full retreat in less time than it would have taken Egbert to fly to his front porch and back. The Elemental folded itself into a ball of quivering stone and get-off-my-lawn energy and rolled straight into the densest pack of yellow-gold loot bugs it could see.

  It didn’t slow or falter; dozens of shells were crushed, and bug guts shot strides across the battlefield as it finally rolled to a stop against the first tower. It looked around in annoyance, realizing it had more squishing to do, and threw itself back into the nearest pack of enemies.

  Bubba’s side surged forward, finally given the chance to change the momentum. The knights fought all the way to the midpoint of the battlefield and stopped dutifully. Thrognar nodded at them thankfully and rounded on the crazed fire mage who was trying to rush after the enemies. Still throwing fireball after fireball at their retreating forms.

  “Stop! You are out of bounds!” Thrognar shouted, thudding after the cackling man.

  Before Thrognar reached him, he got a firsthand introduction to why adventurers weren’t supposed to charge the other team’s lines. The first row of Bubba’s banner bugs and the fire mage disappeared down into a puddle they ran through with a definitive BLOOP noise that rang out far too loud across the cave.

  A moment later a giant bubble of brackish water hovered from behind the labyrinthine walls of the shanty town. Inside of it, loot bugs and one very fucked-looking fire mage flailed around helplessly. A dark, shark-like shadow of bone and teeth was cruising around languidly, snatching up the helpless prey one by one. Before Egbert could even try and help, the mage disappeared into some shark-shaped eldritch bullshit's gullet.

  Dammit, yokels! That probably counted as feeding a soul to the puppy!

  The tragedy didn’t slow the forces of Bubba at all, though they piled forward into the tight confines of the labyrinth and pressed onwards straight into Team Evil, with a capital E. Edith and Hank had locked down one pathway.

  Another was guarded by what looked like a bunch of assassin types that all copied each other's outfits. There wasn’t a color brighter than grey, and not a long arm to be seen. They all waited along the top of the labyrinth walls like edgy vultures preparing to pounce down onto the beautiful little bundles of essence and sellable loot.

  The final pathway was somehow the worst. Lily was standing at the end, backed up by Boo and a smattering of other cave spiders. NO, Lily, that is so not allowed. Put the spiders back in the awful spider room!

  She started cackling in the most menacingly cheerful display Egbert had ever seen. Flames oozed from her hands and snaked along the ground like…well, actual snakes with black flaming scales. I’m literally watching a villain being born; this is how villain origin stories happen. The flaming serpents wound their way into Bubba's forces in a crackling hiss of shattering, burning golden shell.

  Boo… Boo glowed dramatically with strobing purple and white light from all her eyes that lit the entire cavern as her psychic attack built. And built…and kept on building. People all the way over in the tavern started getting headaches; a few of the weaker-willed ones even excused themselves with a nosebleed. Finally the strobing flashing light stopped, and Boo’s main eyes flared with unfathomable power.

  An entire stretch of the battlefield was suddenly drenched in bug guts as Boo popped an entire squad of loot bugs like a wrathful child with a handful of beetles. Golden chunks rained down, and Lily's laughter never slowed.

  Sighh… Well, at least if anyone tries to kill me, they have to get through the psychopaths that technically I’m legally in charge of.

  The whole room’s energy shifted slightly as the singing of Choral Bugs began wafting across the cave. Starting soft and building in power as a shape held aloft by wings of shadow wafted towards the disturbance in his domain.

  Oh, now you come back! Did we have a fun field trip! Murderer…you better have at least brought back some loot for me to melt down.