It was as though a titan from a treacherous nightmare had descended, with the power to kill sunlight wherever its shadow landed.
The fact that the entire Sacred Forest was covered in the inky darkness in that instant, not only demonstrated its power, but the atrocity that was its size too. Perhaps 'titan' didn't even cut it.
All visibility was stolen, save for the line of weak light in the far horizon. All who had eyes could spot it, but it seemed too far to reach.
A great gust swept across the forest with staggering intensity.
The beating of wings could be heard, and each one, from the feeling of the large masses hurtling over and across, tore down great portions of the forestry.
Replicus gave out a sigh.
What a peculiar presence.
He didn't feel the surging of mana which would normally tell him what kind of an ability was used by an assailant. The air was strangely devoid of any residual energy.
This was raw might.
'This must be the thing that chased Timmit. Well, according to his story. If he really was pursued, and by this thing, then it merely hid itself while following him...' the Penetrator thought.
Speaking of the stork, the darkness around him was so thick that it felt like a viscous blanket which pressed down on the sensations of its ensnared targets.
How effective.
Killing of all senses, and splitting up its prey.
It was smart.
However...
Unseen in the darkness, grey lightning sparked from Replicus' fingers and hit the ground, travelling through it while fighting off the darkness to smash into two beings that had started to drift away from the Penetrator.
In the next moment, the three felt a lull, and then the bright light of the sun washed over them again, temporarily blinding their eyes.
The hiss of the wind then came, and with it a fortunate and unfortunate realisation.
"Goodness, Bright Storm!" Timmit was the first to speak while looking down, his feathers fluttering furiously.
"Whoa!" Yuyui screamed, half-thrilled and half-terrified.
The trio was high in the sky... and falling.
They appeared to be at least five thousand meters up, which made everything below them look small. Everything, except for a large mass that kept beating its wings to stay afloat.
Timmit grumbled.
"That thing again!" he called while plucking Yuyui from the sky, throwing her into his back and calling mana to his wings such that he began to glide.
Replicus became encased in a royal blue matte, which, like Timmit's gliding reduced the speed of his descent.
"You made it seem as though these creatures were dumb. It clearly outsmarted you, Timmit," the Penetrator said while looking down.
"I assumed a creature so large couldn't hide anywhere I couldn't see!" Timmit rebutted.
His eyes remained locked on the monstrosity below though.
He was more than a little anxious at the sight of this bastard again.
Unfortunately for him, the great creature arched its head up and looked straight at them with malevolent, ruby red eyes.
It was a massive, eagle-like creature with an ungodly pair of dark wings that looked so rough that they might as well have been stone. Above its head, large, stiff feathers sprang out, leading down its neck like upturned knives to reach its tail, which also looked to be made out of sharp, shiny black protrusions.
Strangely though, the creature wasn't nearly large enough to cover the entire forest. The darkness it seemed to be able to control only gave the illusion that it was so wide, when in reality, it wasn't the incarnation of the word 'vast' at all.
"Well that's not good," Replicus said while looking at the notification from his guidance field.
[Unable to interpret the nature of the target].
This was a first.
Replicus had never seen a notification like this before. Whenever the guidance field was unable to show him the status of an opponent before, it was usually because he was incredibly outclassed, not because the status couldn't define what he was facing.
This did not bode well.
Such a sentiment was demonstrated splendidly in the next moment, when the giant creature below them suddenly raised its wings and pushed itself up so fast that it turned into a blur.
Needless to say whatever was below it was flattened, ground to dust, incinerated by the harsh wave of heat or cruelly done in by all three.
The wind turned hostile as the creature approached, and a normal combatant would have been shredded to pieces just by the effects of the movement of the creature, but Replicus had already been prepared. And so was Timmit.
The stork dove down at hot speed while Replicus turned into bolt of lighting that shot up and dug into one of the clouds overhead.
Completely ignoring any natural law that dictated movement in Aigas, the mysterious creature made a perfect turn while maintaining its ungodly speed, making the definite decision to follow after Timmit.
To the stork's dismay, it didn't even take three seconds before the assailant caught up and opened its beak wide, ready to devour him and Yuyui on his back in an instant.
"Curse you, damn bird!" Timmit shrieked while bathing himself in the mana flooding from his purple mana core, which forced him to accelerated five fold.
It didn't make much of a difference, and neither did the impossible, angular turn he made just before he reached the forest. The odd, giant bird accelerated while making an even smoother curve.
Timmit made several more impossibly shrewd manoeuvres that made both Yuyui and the creature she held, scream aloud, but the giant bird followed after them, soon tailing the stork to the sea.
Once again, a large beak flashed to snap around Timmit despite his best efforts, but...
The sky rumbled.
Yet, its noise was a mere after effect.
A striking bolt of lightning so bright its colour couldn't be determined by the eye, had already landed on the giant bird's head by the time the skies made their declaration.
The beast was hit so hard it plummeted into the sea at rapid speed, leaving the surface steaming and incredibly humid.
"It's about time!" Timmit yelled before making a turn to the skies.
An innocent looking cloud was floating high up, right above where the giant bird had been hit, sparks dancing from under it.
A voice called from the cloud, addressing the stork.
"Take those two to your Territory, and have it ready for a Secondary assault."
"What?" Timmit said.
"You said you wanted compensation, right? I'll be giving it to you in a few minutes at most."
Timmit was skeptical, but he didn't have time to doubt. The sea below exploded, exposing the head of the giant bird, which was completely unharmed.
As it emerged, Timmit muttered ,"Fine" and shot towards the forest.
At the same time, a thick bolt of lightning shot from the white cloud and landed on the shore of the island.
As it did, it formed the image of the Penetrator.
"Let's see what this thing's all about, shall we?" Replicus said, but not to the air.
Three of his most trusted, and most powerful combatants were standing behind him, overlooking the figure of the beast a distance off which was glaring at them with motivated ruby eyes.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om