Affinity: Chaos

Chapter 2118: Dreadful Battle Experience

Old Humphrey did not wait for the enemy to reach the walls. The moment the Gnome army came within a few kilometers, he rose into the air, raised one arm, and gave the signal to advance.

The warriors of Serepolis poured out through the main gates and over the battlements in a dark tide of armor and elemental light. Dust rose in thick clouds beneath tens of thousands of feet as the army of Elementalists marched across the cracked desert plain. The sun hung high and merciless, turning the sand into a shimmering white glare. The air already carried the dry, metallic scent of approaching bloodshed.

They halted roughly one kilometer from the Gnome lines. From that distance the disparity in numbers became painfully clear. Serepolis had fielded just over ten thousand Elementalists. The Gnomes stood more than fifty thousand strong, a black sea that stretched farther than the eye could see. At least five to one. The weight of those odds settled over the human ranks like a second sun.

No speeches were exchanged. No final challenges rang out. The instant the two armies closed to striking range, the plain erupted.

Peak Sovereigns from both sides were immediately drawn away to a separate battlefield farther to the west, their clashes already sending distant shockwaves through the air. The Ninth stage and Eighth stage fighters remained on the main field, forming their own brutal arena of dust, elemental attacks, and the constant crack of colliding forces.

Grey and Reynolds stayed buried within the human ranks. Their identities were too valuable to reveal at the outset, so they moved with deliberate restraint.

A Gnome who commanded only the darkness element locked onto Grey at once. Shadow spears, binding chains, and swirling voids of black energy crashed against Grey’s defenses in rapid succession. When the Gnome realized he could not overwhelm his opponent in the first exchange, he summoned his puppet, hoping superior numbers would decide the fight.

Yet even with the puppet joining the assault, the Gnome found himself unable to land a meaningful blow. Grey’s movements remained calm and controlled. Every attack was either redirected or neutralized with minimal effort. The longer the clash continued without a decisive result, the deeper the doubt grew in the Gnome’s eyes. Frustration soon followed.

Grey began to take small liberties. Between parrying the darkness attacks and batting aside the puppet’s strikes, he occasionally flicked a bolt of lightning or a gust of wind toward a nearby human who was in danger. Each time he did so, a Gnome who had been on the verge of finishing his opponent was forced to abandon the kill. The rescued humans lived. The interrupted Gnomes turned their heads and glared at the Gnome who was supposed to be keeping Grey occupied.

The Gnome’s irritation soon became rage.

In one critical moment Grey was in the middle of slipping past a heavy downward strike from the puppet when his vision caught sight of a Ninth stage human under severe pressure. That man faced a Gnome and two Eighth stage puppets at once. Though none of the three was individually stronger than him, the combined assault left him with almost no room to breathe. One of the puppets had already raised a bladed limb aimed at the back of his skull.

Grey abandoned restraint for a single heartbeat. Lightning and wind elements flooded his legs. In a blur he appeared above the struggling man and intercepted the puppet’s strike with an open palm, sending the construct tumbling sideways through the air.

The Gnome controlling the puppets stared in disbelief. He had not sensed Grey’s approach until the last instant. When he recovered, his eyes locked onto the darkness-element Gnome still trailing after Grey.

”What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

The chastised Gnome could only lower his head and continue the pursuit, humiliation burning hotter than the desert sun.

From that point forward Grey largely ignored his original opponent. He moved across the Ninth stage section of the battlefield like a restless current, appearing wherever a human fighter was about to fall. A timely shield of earth here, a precise lightning strike there, a sudden acceleration that dragged a wounded ally out of a killing blow, each intervention cost him almost nothing, yet each one denied the Gnomes a victory.

The human side fielded roughly twenty-five Ninth stage Sovereigns. The Gnomes had nearly forty, and their puppets pushed the effective numbers even higher. Every life Grey preserved mattered.

Reynolds fought with far less freedom. Without Grey’s unusual mobility and multi-element control, he could at best pin down a single Ninth stage opponent if he fully committed. That was one less Gnome among dozens, useful but nowhere near as disruptive. He kept his presence deliberately muted, conserving strength for the moment the larger plan required it.

Ten minutes passed in a continuous storm of elemental force. Bodies from both sides fell every few seconds. The human death toll climbed faster. The numerical advantage of the Gnomes made itself felt in every corner of the field. Even among the Ninth-stage fighters one human Sovereign was overwhelmed by two Gnomes and their puppets before Grey could reach him. The man died with a short, cut-off cry.

Grey felt the pressure mounting. He had expected Old Humphrey’s signal by now. Distant shockwaves still rolled across the plain from the Peak Sovereign battlefield, proof that the highest-level fight continued, yet no opening had appeared. Worry would change nothing. He forced the concern aside and poured his attention into keeping as many of the remaining Ninth-stage humans alive as possible. That was the only contribution he could make while waiting.

Another ten minutes crawled by. More humans fell. The line of Ninth-stage Sovereigns grew thinner. Grey gradually revealed more of his capabilities, sharper bursts of speed, denser elemental combinations, broader awareness of the surrounding fights. Each increase in power only deepened the nightmare of the Gnome still chasing him.

That particular Gnome had never experienced a battle like this. He flew after Grey without pause, only to watch his target slip away again and again to ruin yet another killing blow. His own companions now cursed him openly whenever Grey’s interference cost them a victory. The constant stream of blame, the inability to land a single solid hit, and the sight of Grey remaining composed under every pincer attack combined into something close to a mental collapse.

This was the worst battle of his life, and it showed no sign of ending.