Chapter 132- Still As A Raging Storm (Patreon)

The two beasts soared above the Graymin horde. Behind them, a wave of motion rippled as perhaps fifty knights swiftly followed. They didn’t bother waiting for the pawns to move out of their way; they simply blew right through them, leaving a gory mess of trampled figures in their wake.

Jiran cracked his neck as Enthralling Touch began to fill Ravenna and Reihnhardt’s mana. The Graymin nearby fell in droves—squashed by his aura even as he drained them.

Astonished, Reihnhardt turned wide, excited eyes toward Jiran, “You can transfer your mana to us? I assumed that only worked on lower-tiers. I-Incredible!” Reihnhardt’s arms began to crackle with arcs of lightning and triumphant laughter burst from Ravenna. He quickly turned deadly serious as he gazed across the battlefield at the thousands of screaming pawns. “I didn’t know they could make sound if they wanted to. Have you ever heard of anything like this, Ravenna?”

Ravenna stopped laughing, though tiny chortles were interspersed with her response, “No. This is something entirely new but the shrieking of a few pawns is nothing. Compared to what Mas—”

“Enough!” Jiran waved his hand and a convex layer of bent light created a zoomed-in view of the two beasts. Short spikes covered their head, and stretched down their necks and shoulders like a lion's mane. Their skin looked thick and sturdy while powerful muscles spoke of incredible speed and strength. “Plan first, small talk later. I can take one if you two hold off the other.”

Reihnhardt's breaths turned quick and shaky as he licked his lips. “Not good, Slayers are highly resistant to aura and have a very low teleportation recast. We’re two short of a full team and there are two of them. It doesn’t matter how confident you are, this is suicide.”

“Are you really going to miss this chance after waiting for so long, Reihny?” Ravenna flexed her entire body as the mana stolen from hundreds of tier three and four Graymin flowed into her. She shook as the power coursed through her channels, sprouting into flames that tore free from her skin to circle around her in a quickly growing tornado of immense heat. Her missing arm reformed, though made entirely of writhing flames. A cackle emerged from the living blaze she had become. “Don’t look away, boy. Let me show you why they call me the Flash Witch!”

She blasted forward, nearly fifty meters of aura now infused with flame that moved under her every whim. Beasts below her cooked alive as the ground she passed over turned to bubbling lava. In a split second, the tornado of fire was sucked into a space the size of a pinhead before exploding outward again much closer to the two beasts.

So that’s an aspect.

Jiran lifted his chin in the direction she had flown, “Back her up while I deal with the other one!”

Jiran was already racing away when Reihnhardt shook his head with a grumble, “I have my own way of fighting, and it has nothing to do with running in like a lunatic!” He raised a fist into the air and a bar of solid metal grew from his grasp. Within a moment, it was three meters long and he hurled it at the ground where it stuck straight up toward the sky. Five more metal bars followed, their positions forming a wide circle around Reihnhardt. He then lifted both arms and the clouds far above crackled in response to his call. A torrential waterfall of lightning fell around him, completely filling the space between the metal rods and forming a massive pillar of energy. His aura became suffused with the arcing currents as a horrific boom of thunder swept thousands of beasts off their feet.

A geyser of blue flames propelled Jiran at such velocity that he was nearly rendered unconscious. He traveled low to the ground and every Graymin he passed was slain, their mana devoured and bodies incinerated in a wave of ignited gas. The shockwave from Reihnhardt summoning his lightning aspect pushed Jiran even faster, and he rode the wave ever closer to Ravenna and the two beasts.

[Graymin Rook - Slayer: (Tier 7) 91k/91k]

[Graymin Rook - Slayer: (Tier 7) 123k/123k]

Why is one so much stronger than the other? They both have higher than average health for their tier, too. This might be harder than I thought.

The stronger of the two slayers raised an arm and pointed. The obvious display of intelligent communication sent alarm bells ringing in the back of Jiran’s skull. He followed the trajectory of the beast's finger to see the distant soldiers struggling to get behind the wards. Jiran grabbed a bundle of synapses to the side with his aura and demanded they hold as his considerable momentum swung around in an arc that sent him jettisoning back toward the city.

His gamble paid off as the weaker of the two slayers vanished and reappeared just out of the range of his aura, between him and the vulnerable soldiers. Jiran wrapped his aura around the beast only for it to slide harmlessly off its skin. Three beams of ice lanced toward it in rapid succession, but it teleported several times per second, easily dodging his attacks and widening the distance between them. Jiran gave chase with everything he had, knowing each second could mean the difference between thousands of soldiers living or dying.

***

Ravenna halted her momentum with a single punch. A massive cone of combusted mana filled the air before her and engulfed the second slayer. It appeared at her side a moment later, completely unharmed. Its descending claws sped toward her throat before they met a blast of lightning that crossed the battlefield in an instant. Reihnhardt’s attack knocked its arm back even as the electricity skittered ineffectually across its thick skin.

The slayer's jaw split in half as it opened its mouth wide in a haunting grin and its body convulsed in a sick parody of human laughter. Ravenna’s fiery aura surrounded the beast, the heat making it glow a rudy orange but failing to do any real damage. Her fists flew at blazing speeds, each punch sending out waves of fire and force that blasted apart the slayers' lesser brethren by the hundreds. It met her attacks with casual swipes from its clawed hands, each clash causing more of her blood to flow. The crimson liquid turned to gouts of flame as they ignited within her aura, each drop forming an exploding bonfire within the rapidly dying mass of squirming Graymin below.

The slayer teleported around her constantly while she spun in a flickering blur to try and keep up. If not for Reihnhardt’s lightning intercepting dozens of attacks, she would have died within the first two seconds. She danced on a razor’s edge as the heat billowing from her aura ever so slowly worked through the beast’s impressive constitution. Unfortunately, it was far faster than their combined efforts and its claws continually made contact, ripping out gouges of flesh that taxed her dwindling mana.

Despite their impressive teamwork, they both knew they had no chance of victory. Every ounce of their focus was directed toward a single task: Survive until Master Mortemer came to even the odds.

***

Jiran’s slayer vanished from his sight again, appearing even further away. He knew he had, at most, two more teleports before the beast would be amidst the soldiers, and his friends. He saw them in the distance, Cameron bodily throwing men and women through the air. Olive screamed directions even as her aura pushed back against a throng of pawns. Niya scrambled between soldiers behind the wards, healing and draining mana while Mayalyn stood nearby and watched him with intense focus. When their eyes met, she nodded firmly, as if to communicate that she would not be a distraction no matter what happened next.

He silently thanked her as he stretched his aura for everything it was worth, extending it far forward to envelop the beast again. Instead of trying to grab the creature, he focused on the single synapse that vibrated within the framework ahead of it. Surprisingly, that thread traveled all the way back to him and directly through him. His eyes widened as he spun around even as the beast attempted to exit the synapse right on top of him. He tried to prevent the teleportation by squeezing his aura around where the beast would appear, but his manabody slid around the spot in the air as if it were a fish coated in oil.

Foresight sent a frenzied warning through his neck as he threw unaspected mana at the synapse in an effort to do what his aura could not. The bulging thread finally responded, constricting back to its regular size as the beast was forced to move its teleportation further away. Jiran kept up the pressure, sliding his mana along the synapse and forcing it to exit as far from him as possible.

It popped back into reality five meters away and was instantly greeted with a beam of superheated fire. Despite the point-blank range, the beast managed to spin and duck before leaping off the air and crossing the distance between them. Faster than he could release the next blast, its clawed hand shot forward, blasting through Jiran’s stomach and out his back in a spray of blood.

Its jaws split open, revealing a too-large mouth that shot forward for the kill. It saw Jiran’s attack coming at the last second but his mana squeezed every thread of the framework within five meters. A glimmer of confusion crossed its eerily intelligent eyes as a rotating chakram of Elemental Castigation completed its rotation around Jiran, flying straight through the beast's extended neck, [-32k]. The slayer's head fell to the side and a wellspring of gore sprouted from its body. Jiran kicked the beast in the chest, sending it flying away from him. The clawed arm buried in his torso was ripped free, the spikes along its length tearing huge gashes as it was ripped out.

The mana already in his stomach instantly spent itself to convert into healthy flesh even as Enthralling Touch replaced that mana with the bountiful resources beneath him. Suddenly, the beast’s head teleported to its falling body which reached out an arm and stuck the severed cranium back onto its neck. Little fingers of flesh writhed between the two before they became whole once more.

Fuck! No wonder the damage was so low!

Once more, the beast vanished, attempting to teleport behind him but Jiran was far more prepared this time. His mana squeezed the synapses, forcing the creature to exit right where three chakrams intersected. The beast didn’t even have a chance to react before it was cut into ribbons, [-23k, -23k, -23k]. At the same moment that those three deadly blades of ultra-fast spinning mana connected, Jiran’s hands came together. Thirty percent of his mana shot from his fingers, forming into an icy prison that encased what was left of the slayer.

Jiran didn’t stick around to confirm if it was dead or merely frozen, the concern of possibly restarting his timer was easily crushed under the weight of protecting two powerful defenders of his empire. He turned to race back toward them, his heart falling to his stomach as he laid eyes on their desperate battle.

Even though his fight had only lasted a few seconds, the woman was nearly spent. Her fiery aura sputtered on the verge of extinguishing completely, revealing a barely recognizable body covered in gaping wounds. Ravenna screamed as a final spasm of channeled mana erupted from a hole in her chest, causing an explosion that shot her away from the beast. As her limp body blasted toward the ground, the slayer teleported behind her.

It lifted an arm to absorb Reihnhardt’s blast as its jaw revealed a gaping maw full of ravenous teeth that closed onto her neck and shoulder. Skin, meat, and bone were sundered with ease as a single bite sent a fresh fountain of her blood spraying through the air.

Jiran funneled more mana beneath him as milliseconds ticked by with agonizing slowness. Another lance of lightning was dodged as the beast teleported again, appearing right behind Reihnhardt. The man’s body was engulfed in lightning before he vanished, appearing outside of his ring of crackling energy only for the entire thing to explode in a pillar of lightning that breached the clouds. The slayer appeared behind him again and its clawed arm came down, raking across his back in an attack so fast, Jiran’s perception couldn’t track it. The man screamed as his armor and flesh were rent with equal ease. All the while, the slayer contentedly munched on the human meat filling its mouth.

Its head snapped toward Jiran, meeting his rage-filled gaze with a vicious smirk. Without breaking eye contact, its arm reached out and grabbed Reihnhardt’s leg, arresting his fall. A clawed hand plunged through the man’s torso before it threw his limp body in the opposite direction of the falling Ravenna. Jiran didn’t hesitate for a second under the beast’s baleful grin, redirecting his path toward the dying woman. The creature’s eyes blazed as it teleported to Reihnhardt, its claws grasping to tear him apart.

But Reihnhardt was no longer there. Jiran had seen the flare of an activating skill within the man’s manapool and it blossomed into a teleportation that brought Reihnhardt to Ravenna’s side just as Jiran arrived. The slayer’s hiss turned to a rage-filled scream as its plans were foiled. It vanished, appearing far outside of Jiran’s aura to the northwest. Without looking back, it continued to blink further away from the battlefield.

It’s running, just like that? It must have seen me lock down the other one’s teleportation and realized I would have murdered its ass in a second. Damnit!

Just in case it returned, Jiran’s mana wrapped around the nearby synapses even as he fed Ravenna and Reihnhardt mana. He pulled all three of them away from the city with his aura. Enthralling Touch drained each pawn the instant it was within his range. Reihnhardt’s destroyed lung filled with air in a gasp as every scrap of mana Jiran fed him went to work on healing. Seeing the man would be fine, he focused entirely on Ravenna who was completely unresponsive despite her manapool quickly filling to the brim.

Jiran sent his own mana into her torso in an attempt to regenerate her missing organs but quickly discovered healing a higher-tier individual was no simple feat. Each cell of her body was packed with several times more density than his and required significantly more mana to repair. A lack of mana was not the issue; her limp, unbreathing form and ruptured heart that refused to pump blood to her brain was. Agonizingly long seconds passed before her heart was whole once more. Just like he had done with the dead voicer, Jiran sent arcs of electricity into her chest, forcing her heart to beat.

His mana infiltrated her lungs, turning to oxygen even as he pumped them manually with his aura. More jolts of power slammed into her chest, forcing it to rise and fall in a simile of life. Mana Omnis showed him the grim reality far more clearly than he wished. Her brain was completely inactive, the currents of sentience that he could see in the man floating beside him were nowhere to be found behind her dead eyes.

It’s only been a few seconds. I refuse to give up, she can’t be beyond saving! It must have done something to her.

Jiran held her in his arms and pulled his aura in until it only covered the two of them. He flooded her body with it, filling every wound and forcing her blood to flow. Even as he worked her lungs and beat her heart, he scoured her corpse for the problem, almost immediately finding it buried within the bone of her knee: A broken piece of one of the slayer’s spikes that caressed the nearby framework in such a subtle way he had missed it before. He tried to grasp it but his manabody slid over it, and knowing he was out of time, he cut the leg free just above the knee. He sent another jolt of electric mana through her, and finally, her eyes flew open with renewed life.

Before he could take a single breath of relief, an unfathomable wave of energy appeared a kilometer away and rippled outward to sweep across the land. The air boiled as the sky turned into a flaming tsunami of raging mana. The ground churned, crags of stone rose haphazardly, sending humans and Graymin flying. The city’s wards flickered and buckled, then collapsed under the unfathomable storm of mana that raged around them. As suddenly as it all appeared, every mote of rampaging mana was sucked back to where it originated from, forming a single pinpoint of blazing light that shone more brilliantly than the suns above.

It hung in the air for a single second before re-expanding, blanketing the battlefield and city with enough mana to mimic the surface of the sun. The energy was ten times heavier than before as it blanketed everything within its massive range. The incomprehensible quantity of mana slowed then stilled, and with it, all movement ceased. They were frozen in place, though not with brute force. Whatever controlled that all-encompassing power commanded stillness within its domain, thus, not a single living entity dared to so much as twitch.

Jiran couldn't breathe, he could barely think. In his bones, he understood one simple truth: A true predator had descended. His eyes were locked on where that pinpoint of energy had blossomed and Identify revealed what his instincts had screamed from the very beginning.

[Remalon: (Tier ?? - Sapient) ????/????]

The Remalon’s body was made entirely of incredibly thick mana, or at least it looked that way to Mana Omnis. Twin blazing orbs swirling with intelligence gazed across the completely still battlefield until they landed on Jiran.