TS3: Chapter #50 (Patreon)

Despite giving his attention to Elmvina, Thorn had been keeping a thread of his mental sense on Vencaligo as well, suspecting that the weasel would try and make a move when he wasn’t looking. As much as the god beast claimed to be a hunter, it was clear both from his fighting style and his title that he was much more comfortable attacking weaker targets than tangling with someone in his tier, so Thorn had been anticipating the move. A twitch of the god beast’s ears showed Thorn that Vencaligo clearly expected Thorn to try and stop him, so when Thorn didn’t move, Vencaligo’s bold rush faltered and a fear that something was wrong bloomed inside of him.

Gel, not knowing how to read the situation, leapt after Vencaligo, brandishing his sword as he tried to keep the god beast from fleeing, and even Elmvina twitched, her eyes tracking the weasel’s movement. Instead of chasing Vencaligo, Thorn threw himself forward, moving to block the former empress who had started marshaling her aura to launch an attack. The only person on Thorn’s team who responded to Vencaligo’s rush was Velin herself, who had clearly anticipated the attack. Stepping out of her fortress like a verdant goddess, she thrust her spear forward, borrowing the power of the World Tree that had gathered inside her.

Behind her back a tree bloomed, its branches stretching out like they could cover the sky. Everywhere in the garden and beyond, plants began to go crazy, growing rapidly as they tangled up everything they touched. The grass under Vencaligo responded the strongest, each blade growing until it was a dozen feet long. Barreling into the tall grass, the god beast found that it had started to tie him up, causing his fear to turn into certainty. He had fallen into a trap. Behind him, Gel’s sword was glowing with silver light as it cut toward him, but if he wanted to turn around and deal with it, he wouldn’t be able to deal with the attack coming from Velin.

Judging that the attack from Gel would be stronger, Vencaligo forcefully wrenched himself around and blocked the stab, only for deep terror to shoot through his mind. Velin’s spear, made from the twisted stems of half a dozen roses, stabbed forward, and the ethereal tree behind her thrust out a thin branch as well, mirroring her attack. The terror that the god beast felt did not come from the sharp spear tip headed his direction but from the barely visible branch that followed it. Velin’s power was only in the seventh tier, and though it was strong for her tier, it would barely scratch Vencaligo’s tough skin. The problem was the strange tree branch that attacked with her.

Trying to turn back once again, Vencaligo couldn’t rotate fast enough so he activated his fog form, hoping to vanish before Velin’s attack could land. Just when he thought he might succeed, one of the strange runes that he had seen Thorn throwing out manifested in front of him and a wave of strange energy flowed through him, causing his ability to fail to activate as his mana stalled.

[Ancient Rune: Klôna]

Focusing all of her attention on her target, Velin stabbed her spear into the back of Vencaligo’s shoulder, landing a solid blow. Despite her best effort, the thorn tipped spear slid off of the god beast’s fur, leaving a light scratch on his skin that healed up almost immediately. But that was not the end of her attack. The real attack came a moment later when the concentrated power that she had stored up from meditating under the World Tree landed on Vencaligo. Just when it reached his skin, he started to transform into fog, his ability finally triggering, but she didn’t give up.

Her foot moved forward and she twisted, letting go of the spear with one hand and pushing it forward with the other, using it to guide the ethereal tree branch into the mass of fog. A terrible scream sounded as Vencaligo appeared twenty feet away. Staggering, the beast fell to the ground, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. Withdrawing her spear, Velin jumped back as a confused Gel burst through the gray fog, having lost his target. Thick vines pulled Velin back even as others wove a net to tangle Gel and stop his forward momentum.

Not sparing a glance at Vencaligo, Thorn’s attention was all on Elmvina, who had frozen when Thorn moved forward.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Elmvina asked, her expression cold.

“Do I have another choice?” Thorn asked, a smile on his lips. “We won’t be your slaves, so if that’s the only option on the table, we’ll decline.”

“Then you have chosen to die. Your blood is not on my hands, but on your own.”

“If that’s not the most self-righteous, warped logic I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is,” Thorn replied, taking another step forward. “Enough prattling. If you want to throw down, let's throw down.”

For the first time, Elmvina’s perfect mask broke, and an ugly sneer crawled across her face.

“Kill him!”

A dozen enraptured warriors let out loud yells and charged toward Thorn, their eyes crimson with rage. As they moved, Thorn could feel Elmvina’s domain flowing into them, causing them to grow and change, their muscles swelling and their skin toughening. She moved as well, but at a more sedate pace, somehow managing to preserve her regal poise even as she charged into battle. Lifting his tetsubo from his shoulder, Thorn brought it down on the ground, throwing stone and dirt into the air in a massive wave.

[Tremor]

[Biting Wolf Chains: Earth]

The explosion threw the charging men up into the air and the wall of dirt suddenly transformed into a dozen snapping wolves that latched onto their limbs. At the same time, Thorn brought his own domain into focus and stepped forward, propelling himself a dozen feet forward in the blink of an eye. His tetsubo slammed down, but a fair hand appeared in front of him and caught it without apparent effort, throwing his attack to the side. Dodging back, Thorn saw Elmvina look at her hand and frown when she saw the red blood.

“You are strong, I’ll give you that. But there is a difference between us. A difference that cannot be transcended.”

“We’ll see.”

Stepping forward deliberately, Thorn swung his tetsubo again, this time in a wide arc. The heavy end of the weapon crackled with lightning as Thorn sent a surge of mana into it, but once again, the attack was blocked with a hand. This time, Thorn failed to do any damage as Elmvina coated her skin in an extremely dense mana that Thorn had never seen before. Before he could attack again, the former empress advanced and pointed her finger at him. Despite being taller than her by almost three feet, Thorn felt as if he was a small child looking up at a disapproving adult. Mana collected on her finger and shot toward him, forcing him to pull up his mana shields.

A faint cracking alerted him to the fact that his shields had just shattered so he quickly used Blink to get away, only to find that Elmvina had somehow moved with him and was slapping toward his chest. Using the bottom of his tetsubo, he hooked her wrist and pulled her attack out of line with his body, slipping into her guard and throwing his shoulder forward. It was like running into a solid wall, and though he managed to force her back a few steps, Thorn realized that he had hurt his shoulder doing it.

Using the brief moment when she was still recovering her balance, Thorn jumped back, his mind racing. He could tell that she was still holding back her power, probably to avoid breaking whatever restriction prevented tenth tier people from acting freely, but despite that, her strength was still out of his league. Seeing him retreat, Elmvina stood up and snapped, dissipating the spell that he had used to trap her minions.

“Finding out you’re outmatched?” she said with a haughty sneer. “I’m afraid it's too late for you to change your course. The only thing that will satisfy me now is your death.”

“And here I was about to offer you one last chance to back down,” Thorn said, shrugging. “Are you really sure you want to walk down this path?”

Staring at Thorn, Elmvina’s expression grew serious for a moment, and Thorn thought that she might actually be considering it, but her next words completely obliterated any hope he had of a peaceful resolution.

“I’m wondering. Should I enslave your wife and kill you? Or should I kill her first, and then you after?”

Taking a deep breath, Thorn stretched his neck out and lifted his tetsubo, pointing it at her.

“To the death it is. When your ancestors ask you why everything went so wrong in your generation, you can point to your blind stubbornness.”

“All talk and no action is not a becoming character trait for a man,” Elmvina sneered.

“Good point.”

Thorn began to walk forward, pulling his mental sense in as he advanced, each step marking a compression of his powerful mind. His breath came long and deep, taking on the sound of a pair of bellows, and as his arm lifted, Elmvina felt the world around them change. Thorn’s figure seemed to blur, and in his place stood a massive blacksmith, hammer lifted to the sky. The image collapsed in on itself, folding over and over in a solitary, frozen moment, but no matter how many times it compressed, the blacksmith remained, his hammer hanging in the air.

Trying to draw her own domain together to block the blow that was coming, Elmvina felt like she couldn’t grasp it anymore. Strangely, the more that the image in front of her collapsed, the less control she felt like she had over her domain and the more fearful she grew. She knew that Thorn was still walking toward her, but for some reason, all she could see was the massive blacksmith and the hammer over his head. Then the hammer began to fall. The closer it got, the slower it seemed to go, but the greater the pressure that Elmvina felt. Abandoning her attempts to gather her domain which wasn’t responding to her, she tried to retreat, but her body was no longer under her control. The blacksmith’s hammer fell, and the entire world shook, cracks forming at its edges.

Standing in the middle of the battlefield, Thorn stared at the point where his tetsubo had impacted the ground, where Elmvina had been standing a moment before. There was no blood, or even any sign of her, but not because she had been killed, but rather because, at the last moment, driven by extreme fear, she had unsealed her true power and fled. She was standing a dozen feet from Thorn, staring at him with a mixture of fear, anger, and resignation.

“You… what are you?”

Exhaling, Thorn lifted his tetsubo and rested it on his shoulder.

“You asking me or him?” Thorn asked, gesturing with his chin to the figure who had appeared out of thin air behind Elmvina.

“I know who he is,” Elmvina spat. “He’s the Arbiter. Though why he is here for me and not you, I don’t understand.”

[YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO BROKE THEIR SEAL. HE IS NOT IN THE TENTH TIER.]

“What?! Wai—“

Both the Arbiter and Elmvina were gone, leaving Thorn standing in the middle of a group of confused Tardoff warriors. Giving them a look that sent them scattering, Thorn leaned on his tetsubo, trying to avoid revealing the fact that his legs were trembling violently. He had managed to deal with the main threat, though he knew that he had only kicked the can down the road and it would probably come back to haunt him later, but there were still other threats on the field.

“Velin.”

Despite being caught up in a fierce fight between Vencaligo and Gel, Velin still managed to cast a rapid slew of spells at Thorn, causing his body to surge with energy. Feeling strength returning to his legs, Thorn let out a loud laugh and charged forward, tackling Gel to the ground after hurling his tetsubo at Vencaligo. Slamming the Knight to the ground, Thorn pinned him there and began to rain punches down on him, one after another, each blow deforming Gel’s gleaming armor. His mental sense was entirely locked into his own body, so he couldn’t track everything going on, but that simply supercharged his domain, causing its effectiveness to nearly double.

Rolling to the side as Vencaligo tried to ambush him, he pulled Gel with him, using the unfortunate knight to block the god beast’s bite. Reaching around Gel as the weasel’s teeth sank deep into the knight’s back, Thorn grabbed Vencaligo’s jaw and sank his fingers into his flesh. Sharp nails made from darkness mana grew from Thorn’s fingers as he wrenched the weasel up into the air and slammed him down. A moment later, he was on the beast’s back, his legs locking around Vencaligo’s torso as his hands gripped opposite sides of the god beast’s head.

Squeezing down with all his strength, Thorn heard the bones starting to creak and felt Vencaligo go wild. Thrashing and rolling, the weasel tried to dislodge Thorn with all his might, but the Titan wouldn’t be moved. Pressing harder and harder, Thorn suddenly twisted his waist, turning his hands as well.

*CRACK*

The sound echoed across the estate, so sharp that it caused everyone to freeze and stop fighting. With a roar, Thorn yanked, at the same time casting an almost invisible spell.

[Earth Dividing Blade]

Vencaligo’s head came off in Thorn’s hand, ripped from his body by brute strength and application of a void blade. Untangling himself from the dead god beast, Thorn stood up, the still dripping head gripped in his hand. Throwing back his head, Thorn let out a howl that seemed to echo forever, causing everyone who heard it to shudder. A bright golden light leapt from his chest, forming a large wolf that devoured the body of the weasel god beast whole. Bloody and breathless, Thorn turned to glare at Gel, causing the knight to back up. Thorn looked like an absolute savage at the moment, and though Gel typically wasn’t scared of anything, he had no desire to tangle with a mad man.

“Anyone else want to go?” Thorn asked, letting his glare cover the garden.

When there was no response, Thorn felt secretly relieved, but that relief only lasted a brief moment as Velin and Sparky stepped up next to him, Master Levandi hurrying over a moment later. As the blood covered magical blades settled down beside the master artificer, Thorn heard Velin cough lightly and point. Standing right outside the garden, staring at Thorn and the others were five figures, each in the ninth tier, with close to a thousand armed and armored warriors behind them. Letting out a deep sigh, Thorn tossed the god beast head he was clutching to the side and groaned.

“Oh, come on.”