Blade Over Magic

Deadly Assault VIII

The beam arrived as soon as it left. And why wouldn’t it?

After all, everything in its path was invalidated like the concept implied, and that included distance. Hence, the Behemoth had no chance to dodge before the beam struck it. And there was no explosion.

There was no massive show of cataclysmic force. Nothing shook, mountains didn’t crumble, in fact, there wasn’t even any sound.

But that did not make it any less terrifying

One moment, the Behemoth was in the midst of conceptual chaos, and in the next, nothing. The silence was almost eerie.

Gradually, the concepts began to calm down as the laws were put into place once again. However, there was a stark change.

There was a hole.

A hole in the floor, a hole in space, and on the conceptual level, a hole where the concepts had been. Everything that had been in the path of the beam had been invalidated.

Usually, if an attack with the property of erasure happened, even affecting concepts, then it would act like a vacuum where the surroundings concepts rushed in to fill in the gap.

However, that didn’t happen here. Nothing rushed in to fill it. Because why should they? After all, as far as they were aware, that’s how that place had always been. An area completely and utterly invalidated. To everything else, that was its natural state. So there was no need to fill in anything.

That was the true terror of a Dragon’s Breath.

And yet, despite this...

’It’s not dead.’ It was Aubrey who relayed this to Keir and Mary. Even though she was fighting against the void creatures, her perception was still trained on her surroundings, and she’d been watching the cataclysmic battle from start to finish.

Because of this, she was able to see that the moment Mary’s ring bound the Behemoth, it had completely given up on defense and... changed.

By the side of its titanic skeleton, something broke away, and right before Keir had breathed, the bones lost their luster and turned brittle, like they’d lost all their power. And she saw when all of it concentrated into the part that broke away right as Keir’s breath landed.

And that wasn’t the only strange thing.

Even where Xander and co were fighting, the void creatures they’d been handling with minimal exertion started to behave strangely.

One moment, they were mindlessly throwing themselves at the group, and in the next, they began pulling back.

Falael pulled back a bunch using her gravity, but there were too many of the creatures as they began to converge at the base of the Void Tower, which is also when Aubrey noticed the eye at the no longer looked wary. Instead, it seemed almost... amused, by the turn of events.

Xander’s expression turned solemn.

In his eyes, the interlocking paths that were everywhere changed, and the ones from the Void Tower, specifically those from the eye, began to weave into something absurdly complex.

”Starlight Magic: Solar Flare.” Falael didn’t hesitate and threw a punch at the structure, and a wave of incandescent heat erupted from her fist towards it. However, when it neared, a shifting black void appeared suddenly and swallowed it, rending the attack null.

”Tch. This thing’s playing with us.” Falael stated as she lowered her fist, not seeming very happy with the developments.

Aubrey had come to this conclusion, too.

At the same time, she observed what had happened with the Behemoth, her eyes narrowing slightly.

The giant skeleton was gone. But the piece that broke away... looked exactly the same, just smaller.

A lot smaller, actually. It was barely three meters tall when on all fours, which was large compared to people like Xander, but small in the grand scheme of things.

But it’s precisely due to this that she grew solemn.

Because in the same vein that Dragons had innate abilities and special traits, Behemoths were also similar.

And one such trait they possessed was something called ”Condensation”, and its purpose was simple.

It took that massive body of theirs filled with terrible strength, and began to shrink it down. And the smaller they became, the more that strength was concentrated, becoming utterly obscene.

It seemed like despite being a skeleton, it still possessed this innate ability. Though that raised some questions. After all, a normal Behemoth would have to shrink their body first, but the Behemoth had to break away a piece of itself while its larger body had been destroyed. So would the concentration effect be as good? Would it be worse? Better?

The fact that the bones had now turned an obsidian black, a similar color to the Void Tower, wasn’t reassuring, either.

Then Aubrey’s eyes widened as she looked towards the base of the Void Tower.

All the void creatures had fully lost structural cohesion, turning into black masses, and a moment later, she saw the figures of multiple skeletons emerge and promptly get filled by these void masses, their bones becoming increasingly dark until they matched the color of the Void Tower, too.

One skeleton had the lower half of what looked like a horse and a humanoid upper body, but from its skull were two spiraling horns that held purple flames like those that filled its eye sockets.

In its hand were two lances, and in its chest sat a black and purple mass that pulsed intermittently.

The next was... hard to describe. It looked like a floating ring made of bones from various creatures, and behind it stretched four large skeletal wings that blazed with that same purple fire. And in the center of the ring, the black concentrated void energy had formed an eye with a purple iris.

The third was larger than the first two. It’s lower half largely humanoid, but its upper half was unnatural thick as it held four torsos that were stuck together. The front facing one held a mace in one hand and a shield in the other. The one at the back held a staff of bones, and the two by the sides had their hands clasped together in a praying motion, and floating above their heads was a large crown of purple Void fire.

They all gave of dreadful auras. None as potent as the Behemoth, but they weren’t far off, either.

In the back, Ben’s face paled as his heart began to pound. This... this was too much, wasn’t it? The Behemoth was already a problem, now these things? What else was the Tower capable of? Could they even handle this?

But just as he seemed on the verge of panicking...

’Take a breath, Ben.’ Aubrey’s voice sounded in his mind. It was calm, almost comforting, and the boy blinked before looking around.

Everyone was visibly tense, their expressions serious, but none of them seemed to be panicking.

Take a shaky breath, he nodded.

’Good. Just support us as best you can, we’ll handle the rest.’ With that, Aubrey focused forward. In the short period she’d eased Ben’s mental state, she’d already analyzed and cataloged everything around them.

’The Void Demon is a higher dimensional entity. I thought initially that the Tower simply served as a conduit for it to channel some of its power while also erasing everything in the vicinity, and that belief held true, but I’m now seeing its secondary purpose. To destabilize the surrounding laws enough for the Void Demon to directly descend. The logic isn’t very far off from how the Calamity Invoker functioned to open a Hell Gate in Landor. But this is meant for a singular entity, and the more time passes, the more power the Demon can channel into this place ahead of its descent.’ She began as she drew her bow taut.

’As for the undead. Each one, similar to the Behemoth, is the skeleton of creatures considered to be mythical in Tatonia. A Centaur, A Tyrian Gazer, and a Tatrarach. The Centaur is likely a close ranged combatant, the Tyrian long-ranged, and the Tetrarach a mix of both. Proceed with caution. Also, Mary, Keir, reduce your sizes in possible. It makes you bigger targets for the Behemoth. Curtis, as usual, focus on defense. Ben, support where you can. Falael, Xander, handle the Centaur and the Terarach. I’ll handle the Tyrian.’ All these orders were sent within half a second, and a moment later, Aubrey received the same response from everyone.

’Got it.’

’Hey, what about me?!’ Mira asked with clear indignation at getting her presence completely ignored, and Aubrey didn’t even look at her.

’Your job will be to distract the Void Tower.’ Mira froze.

’I... huh? W-Wait. That’s not– Hey! Don’t ignore me!’

Everyone ignored her.

Xander brandished Abscinde, Falael smashed her gauntlets together, and both stepped forward.

In the same vein, the Centaur held up its spears while the Tetrarach hit its mace against its shield twice.

Off to the side, Mary and Keir abruptly began to shrink, Keir’s size reducing to only half a dozen meters, while Mary assumed a humanoid for, however, her head remained that of an eagle, and her hands and legs became feathered, but still kept enough of a human shape to be used like normal limbs.

Ben took a breath and reached out, his suitcase depositing two items into his hands.

One was the opulent feathered mask, Reminiscence, and the other was an opulent silver mirror the size of a palm which he gripped tightly.

Curtis waved his wand, and dozens of complex magic circles bloomed behind him, and from them, floating frost golem carrying shields appeared. But they were by no means simple.

There was a brief moment of silence as both sides stood off.

Then everything erupted.