The assault team's mbers gulped audibly when they watched a world-ending event. A scene straight out of the entertainnt they watch using Eidolon.
Their entire view was captivated by the shadow of a blade.
The impact tore Dusk's vibrational stabilisation. The ground they stood on trembled before it evolved into a full earthquake that forced Ebony to get his Turtle Fort into the skies.
'Even the skies are quaking…' Ebony and Dusk could barely stabilise themselves in the skies. The distant attack was coming at them in full force. The shockwaves and wind pressure were hard enough to handle.
'Vent can cast a spell of that magnitude?' Ebony admired the pure simplicity of bigger equals stronger. The power of mass couldn't be over or understated.
The amount of mana required for sothing like that was sothing he couldn't muster even if he had months more.
He was too far to sense the mana purity or density but it was clearly ice mana and Vent was the only one capable of ice magic of that degree on the planet.
Then, Vent returned from the river's direction.
Internally shocked when he didn't sense a drop in Vent's mana pool, he wondered if an item was used to generate more power. Perhaps the box from the river had a stored spell.
"Did you kill it?" Aethel asked in shock while resisting the wind pressure that was going through Ebony's Domain.
Ebony could block the wind, but it did no damage, and it would be a waste of energy to resist; letting wind pass through was more efficient.
He covered his ears and hardened his mindspace when a wailing scream tore his outer mindspace apart. 'The Worldcore is screaming? Did Vent sohow hurt the planet?'
"Missed. But its rely drenched sand now." Vent's Will pushed Dusk up again. He noticed the spell they were cooking up before glancing at Miss Wiggles.
Miss Wiggles shivered and jumped on her hooves like never before. Ebony didn't need Xin's emotion detector to sense Miss Wiggles' fear, sothing the piglet didn't have against him or Xin.
Miss Wiggles' gravitational support allowed their spell to increase in maximum capacity by leaps. An Emperor's might powered by Xin and his impressive energy reserves was enough to get everyone antsy in the event of the spell blowing up right above them.
"Miss Wiggles, you can stop there and maintain it." Xin slowed Miss Wiggles' intensifying charge. She knew the pig had a limited reserve, while Ebony could continue charging the spell till the target got within range.
By Vent's estimation, over an hour away but his last attack was causing the Soldier trouble to not drown now.
The Orcas heard Vent's whistle and swam out. "They'll try to freeze it to the ocean floor, but don't have high hopes."
"Change of plans, we can kill it." Vent's Will went from Dusk to the vortex of blood-spurting flas.
He raised his bow once more, taking a shot at their spell before the arrow exploded in a blast of mist. The spell shrank to an arrowhead's size, enveloped by white mist, and it attached itself to the tip of Vent's next arrow.
The archer stood unshaken with his bowstring drawn.
Ebony put his elbow around Xin's when he figured she was about to leave to et the Orcas and the Toddium party. She stopped adding fuel when her reserves were at 300%, still having triple her natural capacity thanks to her mask.
Arm in arm, he forgets about her while working with Dusk to modify and power the spell. Vent and Miss Wiggles were also charging in so way.
She recuperated by swapping states and stuffing herself with her soup stock and whatever food she could get her hands on. Her racing glances between her food and Ebony's body would have been distracting, but he wasn't bothered by it.
Ebony had a single Wolf Explorer with 10 points of Will following the bodyguard team. Although they kept their distance, the tidal waves ssed their plans up and hitting the skeletal abomination with their sli would have to wait.
The Soldier was within perception. Mismatched bones. Clip-on skeletal wings. Odd number of claws. An arm extended out of a knee, all 12 of the legs had the sa double-jointed arms but were made of single-knee legs.
The abomination carried weapons, bony blades and spines on all of these 12 arms. As for its main giant arms, it only had two. And they wielded a single giant bone lance made of another creature's spine.
'It was crafted by grinding so parts down with sand.' The Wolf Explorer used Mana Discern to tell that this lance was made by the Soldier. It had basic crafting ability.
'Every bone is made from another Saint-ranked creature,' He was already familiar with Legendary-ranked materials since the Xeng's lowest quality wedding gift materials were of the Legendary rank.
Crafting ability wasn't all that rare amongst intelligent creatures, monsters included, but they were mostly inferior to one made by soone with a proper Class, Fortification and skill set.
That hardly mattered to the Soldier with materials superior to anything an Elcrain, or Hex-region crafter could work with to bring out the best of the material. The crafters would probably grind their forge down before they could grind a bone from another Saint into a weapon.
It wasn't only ground into a proper weapon, it had a vast energy signature.
"Hey, Hex. Why do the natural creatures have enchanted bones?" Ebony had to ask after noticing the mana flowing through the Soldier in a particular fashion.
"They must have found so enchanted items left behind by harvesters long ago. They either ate enough of these items and sohow evolved to have enchanted bones, or they studied and incorporated that into themselves over generations of monsters." Hex replied honestly.
They would be luckier if it was the first, natural evolution. If they were intelligent enough to study, they couldn't be too dumb in battle.
Sadly, Ebony didn't recognise the enchantnt. It wasn't Elcrian for sure, and his Wolf Explorer could only sense so much with Mana Discern.
The Orcas didn't have the Toddium's range problem and had long started firing beams of ice at the struggling Soldier.
The heavy bones couldn't float but had more than enough physical strength to fly with rely skeletal wings and mana.
The tidal waves were a nuisance but not deadly.
Having closed the distance, all the Wolf Explorer could sense were massive whirlpools forming and a gap in the ocean.
'Did the spell disappear?' The steam in the skies didn't affect them, especially when the ocean was freezing and dragging the Soldier down. 'There is a remnant Will left behind. It's familiar but...Vent? Can Will feel so different just for a different spell.'
Since every spell required a different thought process forced into Will, he supposed his clones and spells all had a different flavour of Will.
A string of Scout Pigeons spawn from the Wolf Explorer to dive into the ocean hole and whirlpools to see how deep it went and find traces of the previous ice spell, while the Wolf Explorer supported the tendrils of ice snapping at the Soldier and the Orca's ice beams. The ice tendrils must have been the remnant spell effect of Vent's attack.
New mist arrows covered the Soldier's body and the assault team didn't take long to understand the new instructions.
Being able to witness the effect up close, Ebony saw the physical arrows vibrate when an attack was sent through a mist pocket. The arrows connected to so pockets would explode but not others.
'Azzolith's attacks overload the arrows, or is it the mist portals that get overloaded? None of the others does.' Even after the significant enhancent from Resolve's Cadence, Vent's arrows mostly stood strong.
But the actual damage done to the Soldier looked insignificant. A single lted wing remains as evidence their previous plum bomb attacks' remnant mana did so work, but the Soldier had 3 pairs of wings, and the loss of one was not critical to its flight abilities.
They wanted to help the vines that were doing most of the work.
But the Soldier completely ignored the Wolf Explorers and Orcas.
Its legs and torso was entangled by a single vine with the rest of his legs and additional arms were wrapped up. Its two main arms swiped their bone lance around at the vine holding their spine and ribs.
The Soldier being slapped around while it tore the vines didn't catch his attention, till a blast of cold air rose with a white fla. It was a re flicker from the skeleton's single lizard skull's eye socket but that gave him enough to gradually sense the flas ravaging the bones of the Soldier.
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'Frostblaze. That's…how?' Ebony had already shown the Frost Elves his combustion of ice mana on many occasions, but none had achieved the sa result. They boiled it down to his Physique, genetics from Rueful.
Despite there being other people who were infused with Ful's sap, Ebony was the only one with a Physique closely related to the frostblaze, excluding Gen and their direct descendants.
But these flas in front of him were purer than Ful's.
The Wolf Explorer ignored the loss of mana caused by the raging sand particles in the wind and jumped onto their skeletal body. Biting onto the close vine to possibly to enlighten themselves about this fla.
Destroyed through their Relay Buffer, Ebony was able to receive enough information about the vines before the Wolf Explorer died.
'Korun runic language. Those vines are just like Dusk's trunk and the lollipop stick I make, layer runic scales. Just more flexible and modular since they are made of smaller but more nurous scales. Those formulas aren't just durability and mana capacitance either, a big portion are ice runes.'
A 'Jetfin' surfaced from the ocean surface, his Scout Pigeons failed to get far with their asly resources and surfaced to recombine with the Scout Pigeons around the assault team. The Jetfin design was still a work in progress for speedy ocean scounting.
"Vent. Was 'I' here earlier?" Ebony decided to disturb the archer and mage.
"You know?"
"What was 'I' here for?"
"Borrow my most valuable possession."
"Hmm? I see?" He didn't expect the random answer.
Ignored as usual, Ebony was confused by this possible future version of himself. All common knowledge on Eidolon told him that ti travel wasn't quite possible in conventional terms. 'Future' version wasn't quite accurate, according to Shi Tao it was closer to a parallel version of himself.
However, it was clear that this man wasn't leaving ssages. He was interacting with the present with this spell or the borrowing of a physical object.
The Soldier was more than busy, it was getting hurt.
However, the vines didn't last long. Their mana faded to obscurity in the fierce struggle with the Soldier within re minutes. It was too much to ask from a remnant spell to permanently take the Saint down.
When the main vine holding the Soldier's spine snapped, the assault team retreated with the Orcas. Every remaining Scout Pigeon was returned to dust, including their crystal relay buffers with a flap of the Saint's bony wings ravaged by flas internally.
The rest of the team were hurt by the re shockwave of the Saint's recovery from the vines, but they all avoided the sand lumps and remained in one piece. They were smart enough to put distance the mont Vent's mist pockets were back, so they weren't directly implicated by the abomination.
Ebony didn't need to report to Vent, who had an insane sight. The archer decided to unleash their creation on his accord instead of waiting till the Soldier got any closer to make use of every mont to charge the spell.
"A scary spell indeed." Vent comnted after he unleashed his arrow.
"He's not referring to the spell we just made," Xin explained to him as if he didn't catch the drift.
Vent was referring to the internal damage the white frost flas had did to the Soldier. The vines played a fool of the Soldier's lance mastery, which was no surprise.
Ebony didn't think it was more refined than a tier 4 spear or staff mastery. It was impressive enough that a monster developed a technique but it was an old creature made of many creatures and fought countless battles to get to its age and strength. Developing techniques was no different from a tiger learning how to better use its claws. It was still a humanoid two-handed usage of a long pointy stick.
The Will imbued vines should not have trouble against sothing so simple, and they did not.
Vent's arrow and the combined magical prowess of the Emperor pig, King Frost Elf and a pair of Grandmaster was the last straw that pushed the frozen bones over.
They might have vastly underestimated Miss Wiggles. Despite the energy contained within, it was still the majority of the spell's power. The point of impact had the tiny arrow unleash gravitational disintegration upon the ribs of the Saint.
Vent was another amazing specin for landing not one, but nurous arrows on the superior beast that had gaps across its bony body.
The weakened Soldier appeared flimsy compared to the devastation two re Grandmaster's energy was inflicting across its body.
Black and cyan flas produced a purplish glint across the horizon from where the party was watching. The heat waves bizarrely collided with the cold.
Vent's Will carried the main point of the spell in an arrowhead, drilling through the bones and unleashing the vibrational bursts of the fla mixture throughout the Soldier.
"Young lady, it'll be your turn soon." Vent set his gaze to et a bloody pair. The hunter himself was surprised to et a lethal gaze and not the gentle one re monts before, since Xin was switching between states.
Ebony swung a horizontal Crystalline Avalanche at his partner to get her going.
Tossing Icicle back to the Turtle Fort after it was sliced on contact with Xin's blades, he swapped the sword out for Dusk. They used each other to build montum and her sword art.
All of them knew that a Saint wasn't so easy to kill.
The fluttering ball of fla was caught up with his use of repulsion before he unhesitatingly whacked at her with another Crystalline Avalanche and followed up with his Shade's secondary knockback with both their Mantle of Reservation activated and repelling each other.
Her wings took charge from there and propelled her, but not without a barrage of icicle copies chasing the gravity threads he attached to her. Out of his Domain, they couldn't catch up even with the abundant gravity mana present but they could blast apart right behind her. The blast was strong enough to catch up to her.
Her Sword Art cascaded the ice shards that blasted towards her to build her combo up.
A trail of mist overtook both of them. They couldn't outrun the hunter. Ebony was rely building Xin's combo while he could build his montum without external help.
The Orcas were racing by them before they knew it, and Azzolith headed his team behind him.
The Turtle Fort was chasing behind them but every fighter knew they had to take advantage of the situation instead of hiding under strong covers.
The colourful explosions across the Soldier's body didn't deter any of them as they attacked any part they deed safe to touch. Nurous waves of energy flew towards the Soldier, shattering limb to limb.
Azzolith's sli was acidic, and he was inflicting the most physical damage to the Soldier by removing joints, the most efficiently compared to a pair of swords or a couple of tiny arrows. He similarly used a great axe like many of his Toddium brothers.
Miss Wiggles didn't shrink behind her powers and challenged the puny Saint by expanding, munching on fallen bones regardless of the mixture of energy devastating the internal structure of the Soldier.
After taking Resolve's Cadence bumped up to 80 tis by mana compression and the limits of its Will rate, Xin was nearly constantly in transmuted fla form except for a pair of hands and a mask. She was able to burn and cut directly into the Saint. But overall, she was scratching the creature compared to Azzolith and Vent.
The rest of them had differing degrees of Resolve's Cadence from 10 to 30 tis compressed version but their originally superior stats gave them a bigger boost than an 80-fold compressed version did for Xin after the stats are added to their base, the unleash Skills benefited more than a low-level 500 person could.
Ebony silently orchestrated the net and seal to fall upon whatever's left of the Soldier. He knew better than to show off his physical moves at the mont. With his mana and Will all at work, he wasn't able to Domain Augnt himself to a useful degree.
"Step back!" Xin warned at the sa ti as Vent.
Ebony waved his hand up and dragged everyone except Miss Wiggles, who was still expanding behind. It was fortunate they all let his mana through for Resolve's Cadence, so directly touching their bodies with gravity was possible.
Hachiken roared and punched the mouthful of sand that was sprayed downwards and swept around like a loose water hose.
Two of his shield-wielding team mbers followed along with a shield bash that generated a shockwave that blocked the sand that recoiled against his punch. It wasn't enough but Miss Wiggles shifted her butt high enough to cover all of them. The assault team bought her just enough ti.
The toughest creature amidst their party took the Saint's attack with her body long enough for her to smash her butt down on the skeleton that was a re fraction of Miss Wiggle's size and mass.
'Miss Wiggles just took that with her body...' Ebony Flicker to the other side of the mountainous pig to see her skin and flesh sandblasted to her bones but he only saw pure black. 'Pure gravity mana? How does her body work?'
She smashed the Soldier deeper into the ocean with each butt slam but was raised and pushed into the skies even with her superior size and mass after her fourth smash. Her squeal was loudly heard, but none of them could help her.
The assault team retreated further back on their hover packs. They did prefer standing on frozen ground for their lee skills to activate with more ease and power, just like Ebony preferred, but across the surface of the ocean, frozen ground wasn't guaranteed.
Their pilot arrived with their vehicle and light beam showering on their target's angered push. Miss Wiggles had another dent in her lower body while she was flung into the distance and quickly shrinking.
Battered, missing more than half its body. The Soldier held up but it had little to no mana in its remaining body. It was the whole reason why Vent thought they had a chance to kill the creature, and this was thanks to the mysterious runic formula vines earlier. If the Saint had been using so form of body enhancent, none of them would've dared to co close.
Dusk Crystalline Avalanche the entire Turtle Fort onto the Saint but it dodged even though the Turtle Fort arrived invisible. With feet in water, Dusk miss didn't last as their ice mana charged right through the water and latched onto the Soldier who couldn't feel cold.
Every bit of mana rged with the flas, tearing the Saint from within and their Will changed the mana motions into a different spell. Ice-Lightning Respite.
Vent's Will envelops Ebony's once more and strengthens the seal by suppressing the resistance.
The ntal battle didn't last as the Soldier didn't have a strong Will or any at all. Their ice mana reigned free and froze every inch and corner of the bag of bones.
The magical strength holding the bones together and giving it physical strength burst forth over and over again to shake the weak ice mana off, but the freezing never stopped trying. Even in its state, it was recovering, but its recovery seed pretty much halted by the foreign Will.
As expected from one that wasn't bound by stamina limits, it was persistent.
Persistent t him.
Three weeks later, Ebony returned to the Turtle Fort on land with the rest of them waiting for him. Vent gave up after 4 days when his Will ran dry, but the Saint was weak enough that Ebony didn't need his support anymore.
The Orcas were playing with Vent.
The bodyguards, other than Hachiken and the two shield bearers who never left his side, were patrolling. These three were partially sealed by Dusk so they could recover faster.
Miss Wiggles was hibernating with most of her body sealed in his ice except for her wounded bottom.
His return ca with a slightly different notice for everyone.
'Ting' 'You have killed a [Hallowed Marrowlord Lvl 1159]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 600 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.'
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