Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 803: New Powers

He stepped sideways and the patch followed him.

Nyx’s hands lifted at his back.

”Got it.”

The Spatial Drain reached forward, caught the casting thread mid-pull, and folded the dark patch’s anchor sideways. The trap peeled off the rock under Kaiden’s boot and bent into a curve that vented harmlessly into empty air past the chokehold’s flank. A month ago she would have missed the cast entirely, blind to the spell’s path until the floor had erupted under his feet.

The two Wraithstrides hit the kill zone.

Luna disappeared.

The red lightning peeled her body off the floor in three trails at once. Each reformed her at a different angle on the lead Wraithstride’s flank, the Lunas swinging Stormblades crackling crimson on the same heartbeat, and the simultaneous Calamity detonations went off through the dorsal plating from every vector before the Wraithstride had registered the first one.

The body split into four pieces along the seams the explosions had set, and the three Lunas collapsed back into one at the center of the kill, lightning trailing behind her in a slow settling shimmer.

”Okay that’s epic!”

She screamed it delighted, eyes wild.

”I am ABUSING the fuck out of this!”

Nyx caught the second Wraithstride.

She did not move from her position behind Kaiden. The Spatial Drain reached forward across twenty meters of open ground and the coral haze closed around the Wraithstride mid-stride, mana-load mapped and mass mapped in the same instant.

The Wraithstride pushed back.

Pre-fusion she would have died on the spot trying to hold a level-95 anything in place. The Drain’s bypass kept the backlash off her, but level for level the creature was still too much, and what locked between her grip and its body was a battle of wills on a spatial axis. Her hands clenched at her sides. The Wraithstride’s stride seized half a meter from where it had committed, four eyes locking on her position past Kaiden’s shoulder, body straining against the spatial fold she had wrapped around it.

She did not let go.

The coral haze tightened by a fraction, mana already siphoning off the Wraithstride’s body in a thin steady thread that emptied into her palms, weakening it second by second but nowhere near fast enough to kill on her own. Her arms started to shake.

”You manic gremlin...!” she grunted. ”Stop playing!”

Nyx didn’t need to wait for the Storm Valkyrie to help her out as Alice’s halo split a second beam off its primary fire line, the gold pivoting independently of the violet she was already winding for the Veilbinder, and the secondary track crossed the Cavern in a single pencil-thin streak that took Nyx’s Wraithstride through the dorsal plating between its shoulder blades from above.

The body Nyx had been holding folded under the strike. The spatial fold she had been pulling on collapsed as the resistance went out of the creature, and the carcass dropped to the floor, mana streaming out in a final thick coral thread that emptied into her hands as the body died.

Nyx exhaled slow, breath shaky.

”Thank you, little sis.”

Kaiden moved on the Veilbinder.

He threw his left blade.

The greatsword lifted out of his off-hand at full Wrath charge and flew in a low flat arc across the Cavern, harvested blood igniting along its edge, and the Wrath-detonation hit the veil-shield head-on at the fastest closing speed the throw could manage.

The veil ate it.

The dark cloth wrapped the impact and muffled the detonation inside the layered shield, the greatsword burying halfway through the wrap and stopping there, the Veilbinder still standing under it with its empty face untouched.

Alice’s halo cracked open above his head.

The violet undertone of Radiant Sovereignty had eaten the surface gold and was now the dominant register of the strike, a violet-edged column of Pride-anchored Light that bit into the veil-cloth where pre-fusion gold would have skipped off it. The beam anchored into the dark cloth at the entry point and began carving outward in a widening corridor, ripping the layered shield open along a two-meter line.

Through the rip, Kaiden’s stuck greatsword came loose. The Blood Monarch’s Gauntlet pulled the blade back to him along a blood-thread that snapped taut between his right palm and the hilt, and the greatsword flew back through the opened veil into his hand.

The Veilbinder was exposed.

”Now.”

Nyx siphoned.

The Spatial Drain reached past Alice’s beam through the opened veil and pulled the Veilbinder’s mana out of its body in a thick stream that emptied into the coral haze around her hands. The robe sagged. The empty face turned toward Nyx at the same moment the body underneath started failing.

Kaiden put his right blade through the Veilbinder’s face from twenty meters away.

The throw went in clean this time. The body underneath the wrap had no defenses left, and the Wrath charge let go on contact. The casing of the robe lit white from the inside and the body underneath came apart in a soundless concussive flash that took the surrounding veil-cloth with it.

[You’ve slain invading Veilbinder (Level 108). +3,780,000 XP. +1,800 DMP.]

[Companion Kill: invading Wraithstride (Level 95). +820 DMP.]

[Companion Kill: invading Wraithstride (Level 96). +840 DMP.]

The Blood Monarch’s Gauntlet pulsed once, harvested blood from the Veilbinder rising along Kaiden’s right vambrace and folding into a new greatsword in his hand.

The gate flexed again.

Five more silhouettes were already crossing the threshold. Two heavyweights flanking the line, three Wraithstrides between them, and behind all of them the gate strained the way it had strained for the first boss monster minutes ago, another template too large to fit politely insisting on coming through anyway.

Then...

Kaiden checked.

[Phase Time Remaining: 01:42:18.]

[Dungeon Ground Held: 53%. Enemy Forces Eliminated: 3%.]

Kaiden read it twice.

Then a third time, slower, because something had to be wrong with the rendering.

”...Fuck.”