Chapter 613 - Black and white world (Patreon)

"From the darkness comes light!" Helena's voice echoed through the entire field.

At the same time, the shadows that made everyone blind changed. Hera could see things now, but all in black and white. The ground was gray, but the monsters were completely white, with dark lines helping her see their shapes.

"What the hell was that?" Blue asked through the communicators.

"New spell. We can still see them, but they will see everything covered in shadow. It's not a 100% blind, but it works better against large crowds," Helena's voice sounded strained, "I can't do much right now, but this should be enough to help us."

"Are they really blinded?" Shane asked.

"Like I said, not 100%. We are also showing in white for them, but it's like they are seeing us through a curtain. They have only a general idea of where we are," Helena explained.

"Do you need someone to protect you?" Mylo asked.

"I wouldn't say no, but I can still move around. The problem is fighting back."

"I'll cover you," Mylo said, rushing to her side.

Since Helena never said anything about the spell, everyone was caught off guard, but Hera had to believe that Nimbus and Lurize would be able to deal with whatever happened. She focused again on the monsters that were right in front of her. Every one of them had stopped moving, and now they were just growling at each other as if they didn't know who was close by.

'Edge, go. I think you are completely invisible to them right now,' Hera said, activating an Elemental Reinforcement on the knife. She used a weaker spell because the Elemental Strength had to be used with the same element as the weapon, and right now, she wanted to give him fire to make the monsters freak out with the smell and the heat.

The blade became bright white, giving Edge a nice contrast from his normal metallic grey color. He charged forward while making sure he kept himself hidden behind some of the grass so the others couldn't see what he was doing. When he reached the first monster, he stabbed into its chest without even slowing down. The tiger with two sets of claws on each paw roared and tried to pull back, but the bear-moose behind it lashed out, slashing at the feline who lost a chunk of his back leg. Adding to that, Daskka flew to the tiger's neck and bit down, causing blood to spray everywhere. Funny enough, Hera also saw the blood as milky white, which was an odd sight, to say the least.

Dao flew up and came crashing down the back of the bear, triggering a Chain Lightning skill. A flash showed some color for a moment, but that worked only to flashbang everyone around the impact.

"Don't do that again," Hera said as she rubbed her eyes.

'Duck!' Scythe yelled, and the Empress did as she was told. One of the smaller creatures, a mixture of a honey badger and a mole, jumped, trying to hit Hera's head. Whatever mutation happened to it removed its eyes, so even in this situation, it didn't care about the darkness or the light, 'Frost, swing to the left. Ooze, slash down, Hera Stone Elemental Armor!'

They all followed what Scythe was saying. Her way of giving orders was a bit more invasive than what Armory did. The tiara would just send them the information they need and let them decide what to do. Sure, she would also send them some advice, but the earrings were surprisingly forceful.

Hera felt something hard hitting her shoulder. She looked over and saw that a creature had managed to bite her. It wasn't a deep wound, but it hurt quite a lot, even if it wasn't able to draw blood. Then, when she turned to look in the attack's direction, she heard a familiar roar.

"Emprezz!" Lurize came charging towards her and grabbed what looked like a giant squirrel with one hand before slamming it against the ground repeatedly.

'My man... Chill,' Core said as he noticed the squirrel had turned into a white paste on the ground.

"Lurize, I'm fine. Don't worry," Hera said as she jumped on top of a wolf covered in ice, slamming both her daggers into the creature's back.

'Empress, use the bracelet. The Battle Rattle to buff everyone,' Scythe commanded.

"Oh, right. Good idea," Hera nodded and jumped away from the wolf that was still moving, but it was already severely injured. She raised her hand and shook her arm, the sound of a rattlesnake echoed through the entire field, increasing not just her party's but all the Xandari warriors' strongest attribute by 30% for the next 15 minutes. She considered calling the snakes right away, but she didn't know how many of them would be needed to complete what Nimbus was working on.

Daskka assumed her giant snake form, becoming bigger than most of the monsters that had shown up so far. Only the spiders were bigger than her at the moment. To make things even better for the snake, in her silver mist form, she would show as an odd formless smoke to Hera. When one of the beasts looked at her, she became practically invisible. Ooze went flying by, killing some of the smaller critters in a single hit just as Hera noticed something flying toward her. She jumped to the side at the same time that Scythe yelled, 'Duck!'

The Empress tumbled on the floor, rolling as if she was trying to reduce the fall, and got back up quickly, only to notice that there was no attack coming for her at her current location, only the first one she evaded by stepping to the side.

"What?" Hera mumbled.

'Sorry. I noticed we were moving a bit too late… you didn't have to duck,' Scythe replied, and the Empress could sense the embarrassment coming from the earrings.

"Don't worry. It's ok," Hera smiled but this small moment was cut short as a cheetah ran towards her and almost reached the Empress with her claws. Thankfully, Lurize was right there and he blocked the beast, letting the claws scrape against his armor, barely scratching it. Dao and Ooze followed that up by attacking the feline and quickly finished it off, but the creature let out a roar as its final gesture of defiance before it died. Helena's shadow spell only affected the sight. Noise, and smell were unaffected by it.

That cry was enough to call some of the monsters to where Hera was, and now the shadows became a problem since a large mass of white running at her.

"Fall back to the rest of the group. Let's fight them with the Xandari!" Hera told her blades and quickly moved back. Even if the monsters were doing a pincer maneuver, if she stayed there, she would be surrounded by who knows how many beasts.

It didn't take long for some of the Xandari to join her and form a barrier as more of the beasts appeared. Hera was doing her best to attack them, but unlike what happened with that fringe group, the ones coming now seemed to be both supporting each other and preparing their attacks better. It was almost as if they were getting orders from someone. A few beasts would try to push forward, but after receiving some attacks, they would retreat and be healed by those in the back. It felt like some odd form of guerrilla warfare, and it seemed to be working. Little by little, everyone was being pushed back. It didn't help that Blue was still locked in her struggle against the giant spiders and Helena was holding the spell that seemed to be making the monsters somewhat blind.

"Where the hell is Nimbus? This should be more than enough time for him to plant everything," Hera huffed as she grabbed a bull by the horns quite literally and used a stone wall to topple it to the side. She followed that up by slamming Fang on its neck and pulling the blood with Claw to empower the Bloody Claw attack that she sent to the next wave of enemies, "You know what. Fuck this," the Empress activated her Poison Elemental Armor to increase the potency of her poison. Following that up she went for a classic. Flaming Poison Rain. She tried to cover a wide area, even took a page out of Blue's book, and tried to make the rain move as if it was being battered by wind. Her idea was to do that using the Mana Shaper skill since it would be the easiest way to change the effects, but to her surprise, that created a new spell.

Instead of just a spell circle appearing in the air, a massive green cloud showed up, and several large drops of orange poison rained down on the field. Each of them was covered in a different type of elemental mana. Fire, ice, lightning, thunder, wind, gravity, darkness, light, shatter, sight, radiation, and every single element seemed to be present in the cloud. They even showed their actual colors despite Helena's spell.

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Elemental Poison Storm

Advanced Spell
Creates a localized storm of poison. Each droplet will be imbued with a different element that matches the affinity of the caster dealing increased damage and increasing the effect of said element.

Naga Variant
This spell was created with Naga poison, the strength of the poison is increased by 50%, and the amount of mana used is decreased by 20%.

Anyone who possesses the Naga Poison skill will receive 20% less damage from this spell for each rank of the Naga Poison skill.
Someone who has the rank 5 Naga Poison skill will be immune to the effects of this spell.
Someone who has the rank 6 Naga Poison skill will receive a 5% buff to their attributes while under the storm. This buff is increased by 5 % for each rank above 6.

Base radius: 30 meter
Base mana cost: 3 000 mana/s
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Hera didn't open the notification manually. Instead, Daskka was the one who showed her. Since she was the herald, she was connected to Hera in a way that gave her access to some light control of the system windows.

"This is really good," Hera smiled.

'Your Naga Poison is already at rank 5, right?' Dao asked.

"You mean ours? And yes," Hera smirked.

'Right… that will affect all of us,' Dao replied in a tone that clearly showed he was smiling, even if he had no mouth.

"That iz our domain. Charge!" Lurize announced proudly before rushing forward. At the same time, some of the Xandari started walking, but Hera stopped them.

"Not you. You all stay away from the poison. Fight against any stragglers that go beyond it," Hera said before rushing to the field covered in the Elemental Poison Storm. Every monster under that area was struggling not just because of the poison but because each raindrop would also do the same damage to them as a basic spell like a flame arrow or a stone fist. Of course, using one of those spells with the same amount of mana that Hera was spending would be much stronger, but the attacks were already leagues better than what the berry shooting bushes would do. She danced in the rain, cutting the beasts and splashing the poison with her feet to spread it to more monsters as her court flew around her. Each of her blades was suddenly dealing more damage thanks to the liquid poison that started to coat them. This spell became something much more powerful than she could ever expect, and there was one more piece of good news about to arrive.

"Hera!" Nimbus yelled as he got closer to the group.

"Did you finish it?"

"Almost, we just need to close the loop there," Nimbus pointed to an area in front of them. The Empress could see a couple of hedges on the sides and an opening in the middle, almost like a door.

"Right, we close that and we finish the spell circle. If this works, we can finish this really quickly."

Almost as if showing that completing this plan would take even more work, a large hippo appeared in front of her, blocking the path to the last part of the spell circle. The monster was outside of the rain, and just by looking at it, it was clear that if she wanted to pass, she would have to deal with it first.