Spellheart 10: Chapter 24 (Patreon)

My thoughts of victory had been a little premature. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye was just getting started. I don’t think Louis expected me to deal with his Immortal Ascendant so quickly, but now that I had, he was throwing two more at me.

From the look on his face, if he had any more of these, he would have thrown them at me as well. Each required who knew how many human sacrifices to create. At least now I knew what happened to most guys who joined the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. I could at least be reasonably certain he didn’t have any more up his sleeves, but fighting these two would be hard enough.

Worse, he had many more Sorcerers, Wizards, and True Mages up his sleeves. Raising so many up had probably required stripping most of this world’s resources bare through several golden ages. Either that or buying them through the slave markets of the Primordial World. I wouldn’t have put either out of the cult’s capabilities.

I fell back to rejoin my allies. Whatever Louis had hit me with was still sending tingles up my spine, and I didn’t want to get hit by it again for fear that they’d worsen. I stretched my mind zeal through my body to figure out what was going on. It took me a few moments to figure it out.

The bastard had gone right for my neck and severed my spinal cord through a combination of kinetic energy and mind magic. Anybody relying on mundane biology to control their body would be completely paralyzed. Unfortunately for him, I moved my body largely through the World Titan Fiendbody. That was quick enough to react at the speed of thought. By comparison, the messy biological pathway running through my spine was slow. These days, it was just there as an emergency backup.

I quickly focused on healing the spinal cord injury. Meanwhile, I issued orders.

“I’m going to try to pull the same thing we did before. The two new Immortal Ascendants aren’t smart enough to dodge it unless they’re being directly controlled. The trouble is, that’s exactly what I think is happening. Meaning if we want to take them out, we need to distract Ethan and Louis.”

“You wish is my command, my love,” Elara declared. Sparks danced between her fingertips once again, and just as before, I was surprised by the sheer devotion toward me coming from this woman I’d met for the first time mere days ago. I still wasn’t sure if I was her husband from the future, but if I wasn’t, I was going to be very jealous of the guy who was.

“We will support her in keeping the stronger one off your back,” Yeminel promised. Behind her, Melaris nodded.

“Us as well,” Dean said, glancing behind himself toward his daughter and granddaughter. Tivana and Lyanva nodded along.

“Then I will counter Ethan, along with Ariel and Lyssandra.” Sam gestured to the two remaining Demigods, forming a smaller team. “If either of us can eliminate our target, we will help the other team.”

“Try to end things quick. I’m not sure how long I can keep two unknown Immortal Ascendants from doing something unpleasant to me.” And with that, we were off. The battle began again in earnest, this time boiling to a fever pitch. I was glad Minerva had evacuated our exterior settlements as soon as the fighting began because, at this point, there would be no preserving them.

The two Immortal Ascendants raised their hand. Ice flowed from one raised palm. Gusts of wind from the other. Both were simple and straightforward attacks, but were made imposing by the sheer power behind them. These two were just like Liora. I still had a little Void Kraken zeal in me. Could I land a hit to destabilize one of their cultivations?

I looked for an opening, dodging left as a blade of wind swept over me. I sidestepped, only to realize I’d been caught in a trap. My heels froze in place, trapped by icicles wrapping around my boot with terrifying speed.

Normally, a bit of frozen ice wouldn’t be anything to worry about, but the concept in this stuff made it too strong for me to break free. With one swift decision, I swept Spell Eater around and sliced off my foot at the ankle, then backpedaled to get out of the way. Blood spilled out of my stump, and with the loss of maneuverability, I had to resort to my new Impossible concept to dodge the Immortal Ascendants’ next series of attacks.

Using Spell Eater as a walking stick, I would have said I was on the back foot. But since I only had one foot until the severed stump regrew, saying it wouldn’t make much sense. I hobbled around the battlefield, bouncing on my makeshift crutch faster than any one-footed man had ever moved before. My leg tingled the entire time as I funneled energy and vitality to the stump as the nerves there replicated and stretched out into the new limb.

Even when my foot regrew and restored some mobility, it soon became clear that I was outmatched. Two Immortal Ascendants, even two who were merely puppets, were too much for me.

Their magic couldn’t be countered by any defense of mine that didn’t use some of my own concepts. But I had a limited supply of that kind of power and couldn’t afford to waste it.

I would have rather fought Liora again as one of the two Immortal Ascendants. The fire attacks she made were at least slow enough for me to dodge. The wind-aspect Immortal Ascendant in particular was insanely fast. She jumped around the battlefield, moving faster than I could blink. And I could blink pretty damn faster.

In the end, I had to give up on going on the offensive at all. The two of them were simply putting too much pressure on me. After a few exchanges, I had to start using the Impossible concept again just to stay alive, and blood was dripping out my nose and down my face from the strain.

By my count, I’d bought about thirty seconds, but as fast-paced as this fight was, that short time felt like an eternity. I glanced at my comrades. My one hope was that they were winning and would soon rush to my aid after dealing with Ethan and Louis.

Sam and our two allied Demigods had Ethan on the back foot. That’s much I expected. Ethan was only an Early Demigod, the same as the rest of us. They probably would have finished him off completely if not for the fact that Ethan had a few special items.

The artifacts that Ethan was using to stay alive were not something that could be made in this world. Or even in the Primordial World. Around one wrist, he wore a watch much like mine. Each time Sam or the others were about to deal him a mortal wound, the watch glowed and warned him in advance. Its connection to fate must have been strong enough that even Sam couldn’t fool it.

In his other hand, he clenched a steel ball bearing. It gave his entire body a silvery shine, and the ranged spells Ariel and Lyssandra threw at him vanished the moment they touched his skin, dealing no damage at all. There was also a crown of laurel leaves wrapped around his head. I wasn’t sure what that one did, but whatever it was, it was keeping him in the fight.

These all had to be items from other humans absorbed by the cult. People like Issac, who’d died just because they were competing with Louis. Perhaps Ethan was to Louis what Sam and Dean were to me. An old friend from his past life. I suspected that was the only reason Louis had allowed Ethan to reach Demigod.

But Louis... he was another matter entirely. He was the one who’d come to this world with a ship of his own and all the advantages I had. In the short time I’d had here, I’d become the strongest of my friends and allies. Louis had apparently been up and about far longer than I had, and he’d used that time accordingly.

While Ethan was merely holding his own, Louis was winning.

Louis’ mind magic was something to behold. He clearly had some level of body cultivation to be able to hit as hard as he did. He also had spirit cultivation related to the force aspect. Both of those had been perfectly combined with his powerful mind cultivation.

In other words, Louis was a threefold cultivator, just like I was. In battling him, my allies weren’t fighting one Demigod, but three of them. He was weaving circles around Dean and the others. We had underestimated Louis’ skills. As I watched the fight out of the corners of my eyes, I watched Dean unleash a ferocious series of killing blows that tore the landscape and shredded Louis into a million pieces ten times over. Each swing of his axe took a chunk out of the ground, large enough to be called a canyon.

But when he was done, the Louis Dean thought he’d killed dissolved into mist, nothing more than an illusion. The same scene played out several times throughout the rest of the battlefield as Louis divided my allies up and took them on one or two at a time. Despite being vastly outnumbered, he was putting all of my allies under pressure.

In other words, our current plan had already failed. If we kept at it, sooner or later, he’d kill one of them and start evening the odds. Either that, or I’d fail to dodge an attack from the two Immortal Ascendants I was keeping busy, and that would be the end of me. We were losing.

“Fall back to the walls!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. This offensive wasn’t working, and broken plans needed to be tossed aside. It was time to retreat to the safety of the Level Reducing Sentry Towers. If any of our enemies pursued us, we could turn the tables then.

I held on a single breath longer as my allies fought to disengage and fall back. The two Immortal Ascendants chased me for a while, and my hopes rose that the towers could hit them, but Louis ordered them back before Mac could target either of them.

Meanwhile, on the walls themselves, things were far from peaceful. Allies, new and old, were battling for their lives against the hordes of elves and monsters being thrown at them. The sky was dotted with thousands of wisps drifting along the edges of the battlefield.

Some of them were ours, but most belonged to our enemies. Thanks to our extensive defenses, we were killing about thirty enemies for every one of ours that fell. And most of those who died were followers of Lyssandra, Ariel, Yeminel, or Melaris. Their forces didn’t understand our defenses, and a few of them had taken flight and fought beyond the reach of the sentry towers without realizing it.

That ended now. Louis and Ethan weren’t willing to risk themselves with the presence of the Level Reducing Sentry Towers. Nor would they risk their Immortal Ascendants.

That meant their minions fighting our defenders were suddenly on their own against ten Demigods who were still nursing grudges from being on the losing end of the previous fight. I grabbed two Late Sorcerers, one in either arm, then dragged them over to the Level-Reducing Sentry Towers until they were good and drained. They struggled uselessly in my hands.

“Lock these ladies up down in the dungeon. They can generate zeal crystals for us until we can fix them.” I tossed them toward Yorik. She’d know what to do. She’d helped me capture many a wayward elf just like these two. And I really did plan to fix them up... eventually.

Until then, I realized this battle was burning through points like water. Capturing a few hundred sorcerers like these would go a long way to replenishing our zeal reserves when this battle was over. And it would end sooner or later. If Ethan, Louis, and their Immortal Ascendant minions couldn’t come into the city, then the most they could do was place us under siege. And the more zeal we could generate during a long-term siege, the better.

Unfortunately, my Demigod comrades weren’t quite as forward-thinking. Either that, or they were working their frustrations out by slaughtering the enemies and throwing themselves at the walls. They cut through one enemy after another, killing dozens with every spell.

That was alright as well. They’d pop out a little weaker, but we could recover elves from their wisps. It might even make purging the cult’s mind control a little easier for those at True Mage, though higher cultivation levels like Wizards and Sorcerers would retain the brainwashing despite reincarnating into a new body, at least until they were treated.

With ten Demigods on the walls, the wave of attackers broke like waves upon stone. We could handle attacks like those for a thousand years and still be standing strong. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye had a lot of elves at their disposal, but there was no way they had that many. Surely, they were running low on mind-controlled underlings by now. I’d visited their main compound, and while they had a lot of minions, they weren’t infinite.

When the fighting finally stopped, a cheer went up from our walls. To our allies, it must have looked like we’d retreated to slaughter all the attackers after successfully driving back the Immortal Ascendants and enemy Demigods.

“One more victory for the Hearthwood!” I heard Comela yell. Several others joined her.

“Our enemies are cowards. How dare they stand outside our walls so arrogantly!” Segolas added. “I dare those Demigods to rush me right here and now!”

Despite his words, I took note of the fact that Segolas was standing directly between three Level-Reducing Sentry Towers. He was also right over the hatch that would reveal Argona’s Demigod-level golem if the need for it arose.

I waited for the jubilation to die down. We weren’t victorious yet, but if our people were seeing this as a victory instead of the first step in a long siege, then all the more reason to let them celebrate.

As I took to the walls, I took Segolas’ spot and waved to Ethan and Louis. “Not going to try your luck again? I’m right here!”

Louis and Ethan stayed where they were, much to the jeering of our people. Instead, Louis waved his hand. A tent appeared right beneath his feet, and he slowly drifted to the ground. Several more tents appeared around the city. As I feared, we were only just getting started.