Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends - Chapter 367: Selia, Erdania and Ryun

Chapter 367: Selia, Erdania and Ryun

Waiting Game

They stood above the field of battle, not high enough in the sky to be part of the areal battles, but high enough that they could see most of it. They stood on a platform that she constructed. Selia watched as the battles turned chaotic as all semblance of order was lost. Generals trampled into the battle lines, killing hundreds or thousands in seconds before people would step up, burn their powers and stop them. She could help, she knew that she should help, yet she didn’t move. The knew that to act, to spend your strongest powers would leave you vulnerable, but that wasn’t the reason why she was waiting. No, the reason was Ryun, and his plan.

It was… a hard thing to believe in, what he wanted. But she had come to trust in him and his estimate of both of their power. She watched and felt so many powers being used that she couldn’t even tell who was winning. She stayed still when the enemy was enhanced and their hide turned harder, when the Sect lines started to collapse. When a General the size of hills fired into the Sect army and decimated thousands, when it shot down a fortress out of the sky only for it to fall on top of a Sect in the distance and crush whoever was unlucky enough to be beneath it. Then she observed as the Golden Phoenix burned across the sky and killed it, only to then be harried by a swarm of flying monsters.

“How much longer?” Selia sent.

Ryun didn’t outwardly react, but he responded through their bond. “Soon.”

His eyes were closed, but she knew that he was watching everything with his skill. She could feel his willpower trailing out of him sufficing the layers of space around them and beyond. He had been training his skill to be able to handle chaotic areas, but she didn’t know how anyone could follow something like this.

And she couldn’t help but feel a bit apprehensive about what they planned. It was… almost too arrogant. But she remembered what they did in the Tournament City, and felt that perhaps, they could do it. So she waited, and watched as the monsters started to push the Sects harder.

Erdaina fought on the walls of Emaros, a taken team jumped her and she wove in between them. A sword hit her shoulder and didn’t pierce her skin—her Forging of Body and Aspect: Cosmic, made her body extremely hard to damage with physical forces, but also resistant to special damage. It took overwhelming force to actually harm her.

As the physical force of the sword hit her body, and didn’t do anything, one of her tattoos flashed.She turned around and slammed her palm into the taken’s stomach, releasing a {Pulsing Shifting Strike} faster than he could react. The force collapsed his armor, and sent him flying off the wall and into the city. She felt another attack from the side with her |Enhanced Sphere of Awareness| and she sidestepped the hammer blow. It smashed into the ground and Erdania stomped on its haft, breaking it in half and cracking the ground beneath. The Wall shook and made the taken stumble, she executed a {Reverberating Blow} at the taken’s side with a closed fist, sending him flying into the air, probably with all of his organs turned to mush. The last taken unleashed a plume of fire at her, but she just let it hit her and walked through it, increasing the gravity’s pull on her so that she didn’t get blown away. She kept her primary Path’s fruit technique active using her second Aspect, the Worldstone Qi. With it, her {Goddess of Worldstone} infused her body with the essence of the Worldstone. It scaled of her endurance and made her already durable body far more so. Once she got close enough to the taken, she hit him in the chest, making him bend over. She then grabbed his head and squeezed while activating [Essence Drain]. His death sent a surge of Essence into her that she ignored, her Vampire perk was more important now, with every death her stats rose higher.

She whirled around as she felt a spatial power, and nearly took the head off a wide-eyed warrior wearing sect robes.

“Message from Sect Head Hitor,” he said quickly. Erdania nodded, and he touched her, transmitting the message directly into her head before blinking away.

Erdania turned and looked in the distance, across the city. She saw Hitor coming down from his fortress and hitting the large shield that surrounded the Elder King and his forces. Erdania glanced back to where she was heading. A sect had been pinned against the wall, and it was where she had been headed before this message. If she went to help Hitor, they would most certainly die. She could see the defenders of the city on the towers launching attacks down at the sect warriors as they were being pushed from the front by monsters and a General.

She grimaced, then jumped down from the wall outside of the city. She triggered her Evolved Form Gravity Titan and started to run as she grew. Soon she was the as tall as the walls and was noticed by the enemy. She kept close to the walls where there weren’t people to trample.

The tower defenders turned their attention at her and soon attacks started hitting her skin. With her technique and now boosts from her Evolved Form, they barely did anything, but her tattoos still flashed with every hit. She slammed into the tower with her shoulder, cracking the stone and sending a few of the defenders toppling down. The core of the tower still held, so she increased the effects of gravity all around her as she held the tower. She heard the stone cracking and whining, and then it collapsed, falling and taking a big chunk of the wall with it. Erdaina waded into rubble, increasing the gravity with every step and making sure that the taken that had been buried got crushed beneath the stone. Then she reversed the flow of gravity and lifted the rubble up.

She turned toward the sect army who was now running in her direction, and she switched her aspects for her technique, now using {Goddess of Unwavering Gravity} and {Wrathful Assault} together. She punched out and sent the rubble of the tower and the walls shooting away from her and above the sect people, smashing into the monsters and the general behind them.

It was as much as she could spend on them, but she had opened up a way into the city for them. She turned and pulled out her staff in its enlarged form to fit her Evolved Form. She stabbed it into the ground and vaulted into the city, over the buildings and into a square some distance in.

She landed and switched back to Worldstone Qi, then reached for a nearby building and pulled it out. A moment later she threw it in the distance where Hitor was flying and firing techniques at the Elder King’s shield. Her building smashed into the shield from the side and Hitor took advantage to send a powerful attack that pierced the shield.

A taken pushed his king out of the way and took Hitor’s attack for him, the black and red molten Qi melted straight through him.

The Elder King raised his hand and Erdania felt the gravity in the distance obey him, even the gravity that Erdania had control off around her shook. Hitor was pulled down and smashed into the ground behind buildings so Erdania couldn’t see him anymore.

She grimaced and then vaulted again, now coming down straight on the Elder King and his people. The taken did something and a tree of lightning smashed into her sending her off course. She let a strike out with her fist, hitting only air, but she released one of her tattoos. All the kinetic energy that the tattoo had stored got released and hit the roof of the building where the enemy stood. She saw a field of white light surround the king and his closest guards, but then her blast of kinetic energy as wide as a barn erased the roof and the entire block of buildings behind it.

A wave of red and black covered Qi erupted out of the rubble nearby, shaped like a dragon. Hitor opened his mouth and breathed his Qi all over the ruins. Erdania fell and crushed some buildings, then winced as she felt the pain in her chest. She looked down and saw some of her skin was red and blistering. Her tattoos were glowing.

She shook her head and stood, heading to help Hitor who fought in the distance.

Ryun kept watch on the enemy army as they pushed the Sects. He didn’t pay much attention to the city and the fights in the sky. His sense was as powerful as it had ever been, stretching across the entire territory, but he kept most of his attention on the battle around them.

He had been part of the planning; he knew that their way of operating was to wait and spend their aces in situations where they could get the most out of them. It made sense, but Ryun would’ve probably ignored them if he had seen a better chance. No, he didn’t want to just make one good hit. He planned on annihilating the enemy army. The biggest issue was that when they teleported in, their formations were… thin. The fact that they surrounded the Sect armies meant that they had to split their forces in a large band to encompass them all. Which meant that in any area that Ryun could influence, there were… at most tens of thousands of them, while their numbers were much higher. He needed the enemy to pool their forces somewhere, to gather. He needed more of them in a single place to take the most advantage, but also, he needed an area free of the Sect people.

His power could very easily hit allies and kill them. His techniques worked on intent, but he didn’t know most of the sects here, and the ones he considered his allies were fighting among others that he did not. Even then, he couldn’t really keep track, he couldn’t see the colors of the sect uniforms. And he knew that deep inside he wouldn’t really care for those who weren’t part of his own. He didn’t want to risk killing them by accident though, that was… a bit far.

So, he waited, and watched. He could tell that Selia was getting impatient, that seeing so much death was getting to her. He understood and shared the sentiment, though probably not for the same reason. Then, he saw it, a Sect battleline faltered, they got pushed to the city and were trying to evacuate inside. The enemy was following, widening, and separating the sect lines as they punched through. They were pulling troops from surrounding lines to funnel them in through there, creating an area filled with hundreds of thousands of monsters.

“Now,” Ryun sent to Selia and she immediately readied herself. “There,” he pointed both with his hand and through their bond. Ryun channeled his Qi and activated {Mantle of Gathering Twilight} while Selia flew them over the fighting.

“I’m ready,” she sent, and he felt her preparing her techniques.

Ryun pulled down the stealth screen that he had kept around them, devouring sound and light that left their bodies. And then, he jumped using his Oblivion Aura and letting gravity resume its pull on him. He wore the Armor of the Last Star Set and that meant that his mass was counted as if it was 2000% higher. He shot toward the ground like a meteor and fell in the middle of the enemy positions. The monster that was unlucky to be beneath him was pulverized on impact, the ground heaved and rolled as it exploded in all directions killing any monster near enough. Immediately, the surviving monsters turned in his direction and attacked immediately. He let his aura spread, thinning it out, but increasing the range to the edge of his the enemy forces around him—His sense covered the entire territory, with Zenker’s ring and armor increasing and boosting his sense far above anything that he could do without them. But, he focused his sense only on just the army around him, hundreds of thousands of monsters, the rest he could still feel, but they were in the background of his mind, not important.

As monsters came, he released his Presence of the Eternal Hunter and he felt Selia do the same above him, the two fields mixed and joined. What was once two, became one, their minds again as close as they had been only once before. Monsters came at him and with precision dark green and black spears fell from the sky, piercing every single one of them through the head. Above him thousands of spears were coming into existence and firing faster than Ryun had ever seen before.

He smiled to himself and then moved.