Chapter 378 - Slaughter (Patreon)

A million monsters were on Viers’ tail.

A million worth of lives, of blood, of souls.

Useful resources that he was eager to reap.

Viers’ strategy was simple: open a portal to Viridis and kill as many as he can. In orca form he lured the Monster Tide to a place of his choosing, where his other self and allies had prepared the trap.

The prime target was the Rank 4 shark monster. His alpha strike would ideally catch the delicious sushi-to-be. Dia’s space affinity and growing mastery gave her the precision to open a portal at the perfect moment. However, she still needed the Gate Plant in the real world nearby to act as a beacon for her senses.

The rift in space opened underwater and the shark monster charged headlong into it. The exit was at a desert area in the Biome. Viridis was almost entirely lush green but there were some places with sparse vegetation with nothing of value. It was by design. Viers had long strategized he would pull his opponents into the Biome to gain an overwhelming territorial advantage.

Since the exit portal was placed on the ground, the shark, along with a great amount of seawater, jetted upwards like an erupting volcano of water.

Arsène and the others were ready and bombarded the Rank 4 monster with their charged-up Artes, dealing mild damage to it.

Hm, as expected of a Rank 4, Arsène expected as much as he shot soul blasts at the target.

Soon, all sorts of marine animals joined the first guest. Almost all of them were only small fries, even normal fish were among them, lured by the tasty energy that Viers had. Arsène and the others kept focusing on the Rank 4, leaving the others alone for the time being. Without water to swim in, the shark was powerless to move, let alone fight back. Still, Rank 4 was Rank 4, even Viers hadn't reached that equivalent; the sooner it died, the less risk of something undesirable happening.

Dia and Faiya combined powers and hit it with Sunflower Beam. Paina strengthened everyone using her Anima Symphony, playing a harp on the battlefield just like a bard archetype. Clarissa and Futon engulfed the shark in a flaming tornado.

In the past, Clarissa couldn't fight because Viers didn't have fire affinity; he had no fuel to empower her techniques like the soul-state Paina and Farley at the time.

Viers still didn't have fire Victa, but he had a great amount of Victa thanks to Soul Energon Arte which converted souls into his own energy. Furthermore, he had an obscene amount of souls at his disposal gathered by him and his allies.

Human souls he ate, so it was other souls that he converted to Victa.

His current Victa reserves were greater than at any point in his life and he still had many many souls to spare. The excess of souls and Victa allowed Viers to experiment with different ideas, allocating some resources for a certain Lamia.

The result was a type of soul energy that was very flexible. With it, the lamia princess could finally wield her flames once more. This was the product of Viers’ soul mastery.

Souls were truly versatile material. It was as if it could be used for anything. The Fables certainly had many creative uses for souls. Viers once again felt his decision to pick soul affinity for his second one was an excellent choice.

Clarissa still couldn't do the things she could when she was a living Level 5. With Faiya’s special flame already spent, her Xiuhcoatl form was unavailable. Her current battle strength was at Level 3 high, the same limit as Viers. This was simply a little gift from the villain to the revived Lamia who fought and bled for him.

Her Artes packed a punch but consumed a lot of energy so she could not fight for long. Despite all the limitations, this was a step in the right direction and Clarissa was happy to be able to help.

Amidst the barrage of attacks, Farley found an opening to launch her strike. Spear in hand, she jumped to the sky. Not the real sky, she wasn't at that level yet but high enough. When she reached her peak, she repositioned her body and kicked the air. Aided by gravity, she charged downwards with an astounding speed right at the shark below.

The shining tip of her spear struck true, the landing was magically flashy, and yet Farley elegantly landed on her feet while the big-bodied monster shark cried in pain. Its heart was pierced yet it was not yet dead. The vitality and body toughness of a Rank 4 monster were no joke.

Clarissa, who hadn't seen her fellow tenants for some time, was impressed by their respective growth. The three familiars were always going to get far, yet surprising all the same. The main thing was Paina and Farley, one was a fae now while the other possessed a powerful bloodline. Oh how they improved so much after they had a new body in a relatively short time.

The styles they used in battle had transformed too. She could see that Paina and Farley must have incorporated tips from Viers on how to improve their respective battle styles. The signs were perceivable, a few of Viers’ colors were on their canvas.

“I’m going again!” Seeing the shark was still alive, Farley was about to give it another go.

“Paipai, Fayfay, kin are calling for you two!” Dia shouted. Her main focus was maintaining the portal and overseeing the situation. When she had some leeway, she also attacked the monsters.

Farley and Paina looked at Arsène.

“We got this. Go!”

“Paina, let’s go!” Farley leaped into the portal that kept funneling seawater and monsters.

“Waaaah! I’m going to get wet!” Despite her tone, Paina didn't hesitate to do the jump.

The two protected themselves with defensive measures and utilized water Artes to fight the strong current, with their Unreality Field doing most of the work. After countless bumps with the fish, they arrived at the other side.

What they saw was a moving swarm. So many fish at a stage so chaotic they couldn't tell what was what. They couldn't even see their own hand.

“Oooh…” Paina looked around, keeping her defenses up. “Amaz- Hiiii!?”

A monster squid came uncomfortably close to her face. Her Unreality Field would not be broken by a mere Rank 1 like it but the sight of its mouth was disturbing.

“Paina!?”

The next thing they knew, they were teleported to an orca’s side, speeding away.

“Lord Viers, how may we be of service?”

In monster form, Viers lost his soul affinity, but because of his arrangements beforehand, simple short-range telepathy could still work.

The reply came in the form of an image to the two new arrivals.

“Leave it to us,” Farley replied.

“What a showy way of doing things,” Paina sighed.

The two took position to each side of the opened portal and willed the surrounding waters to their needs. Thanks to them, even more marine life was caught by the portal’s sucking power and went to the killing ground on the other side. Paina and Farley didn't attempt to attack the monsters around them, only focusing on defending themselves and herding the monster tide. Since the two were water Pathseeker, they were the women for the job.

Orca-Viers was the target of the crazed monsters and he moved in a way that caused chaos. His many teleportations made him more slippery than an eel, even the Rank 4 monsters having trouble chasing him amidst the throng of fish around them. This resulted in them not realizing the portal that caught them in its grip until it was too late.

Meanwhile, with the huge amount of seawater coming in, the desert area in the Biome was starting to turn into wet sludges, pools with water and blood, and monster remains.

Like a processing plant for the fish industry, the tons of fish caught were systematically massacred. The bodies were piling up into hills made of all sorts of marine monsters of all sizes, from the tiny fish to the blue whale.

With the amount of prey coming in, Arsène and the others weren't able to kill them fast enough, but that didn't matter. They were trapped with no way of going back, sooner or later they would die on their own. It pained Arsène that all the biomass and material were going to waste because they prioritized wounding and disabling strong monsters among the bunch, but it couldn't be helped. The splash effect of their Artes sometimes obliterated the weaker monsters, leaving naught of value behind.

The attackers fought with fervor, and all those lives lost nourished the realm because of the Circle of Life formation.

This was the main reason Viers funneled the monster tide into the Biome. The food and monster cores were a nice bonus though. Gradually and slowly, the Biome was brimming with ambient mana. After the land was drained and damaged so Dia could fight with a Level 5 phantom embedded inside Prince Marvin not long ago, the harvest of life was like a healing salve on the land.

Their life went to Biome, their bodies and souls went to Viers. Arsène acted as the stand in and gathered the souls released from their mortal coil. If it wasn't for the Evil Overlord List, he would have laughed like a maniac the whole time.

Most of the monsters were worth nothing much because of how weak they were, a lot of them weren't even Rank 0 monsters and were simply regular animals. But in a great enough number, quantity was a quality of its own.

The battle went from dusk to dawn, none were getting any sleep that night. Because Orca-Viers kept making a show, the aura of the tiny crystal in his mouth kept luring in other monsters from miles and miles away. It was as if there was no end to the monster tide no matter how much they funneled into the Biome. In the end, even the land and aerial monsters were joining in the fray. The fighting had drained the combatants of their stamina to the limits.

One must always know their limits and that was when Viers called it quits. He went into the Biome with Paina and Farley then Dia cut off the portal.

What Viers saw next was a macabre field of gore and death.

And by gods, the smell.

While the portal sucked an incredulous amount of seawater for hours, the pocket dimension wasn't flooded. Dia’s Biome was shaped like an floating island in the sea of nothingness. The water spilled outside, to the outside of the pocket dimension. To where? Viers didn't know, didn't care.

Paina and Farley collapsed after they landed on a relatively clean place and so did Viers. His other self and the familiars were there too. All were too tired to care about anything else.

Within arms length, the baby Tyra Xerg queen, Zerri, was happily munching on a fish provided by her Pukupukus entourage.

The two Viers were lying on the ground looking at the multicolored sky. While Viers who transformed from his Orca didn't seem to have had so much as a scratch, Arsène was different, but both were tired all the same.

They exchanged a fist bump and they became one.

After a few minutes, Arsène emerged again. The difference was that this Arsène possessed the experience and information that were exclusive to both of them earlier.

“Dia, dia, wake up. Sorry to ask you this but I need you to send me out.” Arsène poked at the sleepy dryad.

“Yesss…” Dia mustered the motivation to create a portal.

After he was out, the portal winked out, cutting this place out from the rest of the world.

Finally, peace and security.

While Viers and the gang rested, the caught but not-dead marine monsters were suffocating to their deaths.

By all accounts, it was a slaughter.