A spell matrix formed in front of Rowan’s face, and his left hand began hurriedly moving on its own. Runes in various positions were scratched out and replaced, and some were scrapped entirely. He completely pared down the formerly complex spell into a much simpler three-pointed matrix with only a few Runes. With a bright release, the spell dissolved and the ground around them rumbled and rose into a simple sand bulwark that surrounded their campfire in a “U” shape, leaving their back fully protected.

  It wasn’t meant to actually keep the creatures from breaking down the walls but to funnel their simple minds in one direction instead of rushing in from everywhere.

  “This spell is patchwork at best, it’s a ramshackle adaptation of the [Earthen Hideout] spell I used in the jade forest simplified to work with sand and make basic walls. Don’t expect a miracle, if they figure out how to flank, that wall isn’t going to stop shit.” Rowan was quick to relay the message to the rest of his party.

  The moonspawn themselves were ghastly abominations of shadow and moonlight. Their only real commonality was a generally humanoid shape, but everything else was up to chance. Some had long raking fingers with wickedly sharp moonlight claws, and others had snouts full of sharp glass-like shards in some mad corruption of the concept of teeth.

  Others were almost comically stick thin but freakishly strong. Rowan choked out a laugh when the stick monster hit another moonspawn so hard it rolled two dozen feet over the dunes before dying. Curiously, from its corpse leaked a thick darkness that seemed less… Ethereal than the other shadows covering the ground. Rowan resolved to keep an eye on it.

  At the very least, they were aggressive towards each other as well. Thank the gods for small miracles.

  Speaking of which, the moonspawn hadn’t noticed them yet, somehow. They seemed more focused on ripping each other to shreds. Vorn took advantage of their misplaced attention to dig a moat in front of their campfire about ten feet deep. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down. Rowan noticed, even with his limited knowledge of spellcraft, that the moat spell was an inverted [Sand Bulwark].

  “Good improvisation.” He complimented.

  “Stay on guard. The moment the moon has waned by half, they’re aggression will become more focused.” Ark said. She lacked any of the usual joviality that she had even in stressful situations.

  “So, is this on us?” Rowan couldn’t help but ask.

  Ark glanced upwards, observing the darkness on the moon, before answering, “For once, no. This is divine retribution. Someone royally pissed Lunaris off and this is his madness taking over. Once the moon has finished waning we’ll have to survive until it waxes back to full. Before you ask, I have no idea how long that takes. This hasn’t happened in… I couldn’t give you a date."

  Before she could go on, the moonspawn all stood stock still. Their pit of violence abruptly came to a halt.

  Above them, the moon hung exactly half corrupted.

  “Here we go. Rexen, first strike!” She ordered.

  Rowan had lost sight of him, but he didn’t miss the bright white explosion that obliterated over a dozen of their number, leaving a black stain that seemed more tangible than the otherwise ethereal and endless shadow that surrounded it. Rowan didn’t have time to say anything, but he was impressed at how quickly and confidently she took control of their party.

  Rowan didn’t dare jump to conclusions, but he kept an eye on both the patches of darkness that slowly oozed outwards like blood from a decaying corpse.

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  The explosion snapped the moonspawn out of their trance and they responded with instant and unrelenting violence. They loped towards their fire like disturbing caricatures of real creatures. Some on all fours, others like drunken one-legged sailors.

  “Vorn, light us up! Rowan, have a blast!” Ark ordered, and Voran complied.

  Vorn took a moment to reach through his [Spell Memory] to find his [Flare] spell. He only had a few dozen simple spells memorized, but he was already having to use his enhanced cognition and mental energy to speed through his mental repository. He could only imagine when he had hundreds of spells how long it would take to sort through them.

  Dozens of bright white lights sparked and ignited in an area around Voran’s body before launching into the sky and hanging there. The shadows that he moonspawn crawled out of didn’t disappear, but the edges of them grew hazy and it was clear they weren’t appearing quite as fast. The campfire they surrounded seemed to be the only thing that completely prevented the cursed shadows from spreading.

  Rowan bulldozed into the crowd of monstrous creatures like a wrecking ball, his fancy new knives tearing through the leathery darkness of their skin like butter. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that while the spawning of the moonspawn had slowed everywhere, their spawning had only totally halted in the undulating mass of darkness that spread from their corpses. He had hoped that would be the case!

  A claw tore through his back, drawing some blood. However, the attack was thoroughly resisted by the mithril thread in the dark fabric of his armor. Boy, was he glad that he conned that wizard now. Still, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to become distracted. All the movement detection in the world was meaningless if he wasn’t paying attention.

  Rowan clumsily funneled Authority towards his mind, strengthening the barrier on it. Then, he went feral on Lunaris’ minions.

  He rushed towards more of the moonspawn and began to tear at the creatures with astonishing violence. He used his gravity honed daggers to dig into the flesh of a dog headed moonspawn and finished by stabbing both daggers into its ruined chest and lifting it above his head, bathing in the creature's shadowy blood. He was entirely focused on the fight now, [Thrill] and [Elenia’s Blessing] finally starting to ramp up.

  Rowan reentered the fight by throwing the mauled creature at its fellow spawn. He was surrounded on all sides now and positively entrenched behind enemy lines. On the bright side, it brought most of the attention away from the campfire where Ark was trying to avoid attention. Plagues didn’t work on shadow monsters, unfortunately. Or so he assumed, as she wasn't sending plague beams at them.

  Rowan weaved through the claws and ‘teeth’ of the moonspawn as best as he could while leaving as many cuts on them as he could. Then, he got an idea.

  With a feral grin, he stopped focusing on defense entirely, instead letting claws shallowly dig into his body. As the blood from his wounds covered his torso, he finally reached the 75% threshold of his blessing. Why make their blood do all the work?

  His eyes turned a bright shade of green and bark began to grow from his torn skin. He flicked his tongue over his teeth and felt them sharpen to viscous points. Rowan could feel the energy from the skill trying to tear down the barrier on his mind like screeching banshees, but his Authority held valiantly in the face of it, barely wavering.

  With the boost from Elenia’s Champion skill, he could feel his wounds closing up much faster and his heart speeding up. Bright and freakishly quiet explosions sounded off behind him, but besides a quick glance to make sure Ark was fine, he ignored them. Rowan had no idea Rexen was so fond of explosions.

  Rowan continued his massacre and bloodletting of the moonspawn, letting [Regeneration] and [Elenia’s Blessing] take care of healing his wounds. He made sure not to let their claws dig too deep into his skin, but allowing himself to take hits at all vastly improved his ability to dodge. The moonspawn seemed to go even further into madness as the light of the moon above them waned even further.

  They sped up even more, and now even the clawed moonspawn hit as hard as the stick figures. He absolutely couldn’t afford to be hit by the lanky bastards now, based on that fact alone. From shadows at his feet, clawed hands attempted to grab his ankles, but a quick [Jet Vault] from Vorn launched him out of the way.

  “Nice save!” Rowan shouted in his mind before continuing his frenzied attack.

  Having his faculties entirely in check for a rampage was so much nicer than being taken over by his skills. This was what he lived for.

  A glimmer of movement was all the warning he had before he was struck by what felt like a tank shell. As his skills wove his skin and ribs back into place, he turned his grinning bloody visage towards the strike.

  A new moonspawn type appeared. Standing at eight feet tall, It looked like a cross between a minotaur and an armadillo with thick armored plates of moonlight covering its densely muscled body. This creature looked more like an actual monster instead of a freakish abomination.

  Rowan gave it his brightest smile before rushing at it. The moonspawn roared and met him head on. He couldn’t help it, Rowan laughed as he dodged under its first strike and leapt at it, tearing his daggers from its armpit to the bottom of its ribs. The creature attempted to retaliate by hugging Rowan close to its body to crush him, roaring towards the sky as it tried to crush him like a bug. A few of his ribs cracked, but Rowan was able to escape by tearing into the creature's flesh with his sharpened teeth, surprising the monster enough for it to temporarily loosen its grip.

  That was all he needed to slip out of its grasp. At this point, he could feel his berserker skills practically screaming with rage as they attempted to tear down his mental barrier. Rowan merely smiled, reveling in the additional challenge.

  This was going to be a long night.