Their stare-off continued for a moment before erupting again.
With each thunderous beat of Aegrasian’s wings, it controlled a blizzard of sharp ice shards to rain down upon the beholder. The beholder’s eyes flashed briefly as suddenly the immediate area around it started to slow. As if encased in a bubble, time itself seemed to slow down allowing it to more easily dodge the icy hell surrounding it. It then sent out clashing dark energies back in retaliation.
Marinelle, her elegant form left Lassim’s side under his encouragement. Weaving through the tempest, she launched precise strikes with her water blades, controlling them to cut through the beholder’s defenses. Her attacks, deadly and unyielding, aimed at the creature’s most vulnerable spots.
The beholder reeled, its body punctured by ice and sliced by water, oozing the dark essence that fueled its form.
The beholder, though formidable, looked more visibly frail and emaciated after it’s [Time Slow] technique. Though it could dodge more with the aid of it’s ability, it started to falter under the relentless assault of ice and water. The combined might of Lassim’s [Grand Aegis] and elemental spirit bearing down upon it was beginning to be too much.
~~~~
Back at the Myriad Spirit Academy’s courtyard.
In a matter of moments, a multitude of students reappeared. Their forms materializing out of thin air as a result of the trial’s emergency teleportation function. The sudden influx of nearly all of the remaining students at the same time, weary from battle and visibly shaken, created a stir among the academy’s Elders and the students that had failed earlier.
Among the returning students, Lustria and Sirium stood out by gathering themselves before running towards the front with their expressions etched with urgency and concern. They pushed through the crowd, heading straight for Vice Headmaster Evelyn Nightshade, who stood bewildered by the unexpected event near the portal.
Before they could reach him, the atmosphere changed. A profound sense of power and authority swept over the courtyard as Headmaster Caelum Ferrum appeared. His presence was so commanding that the sudden commotion quieted instantly.
The elders, recognizing the gravity of the moment, immediately knelt in respect, their heads bowed. "We greet the Headmaster!" They shouted. This was the first time the first-years had seen the Headmaster, but they all followed by the Elder’s examples, falling to their knees in greeting.
The Headmaster, with a glance that seemed to take in the entirety of the situation, gestured for silence and attention.
"Tell me. What happened inside?" his voice was calm yet carried an undercurrent of fury that resonated in the air.
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Lustria and Sirium, standing before the assembled masters and the Headmaster, quickly recounted the final events within the trial realm. They spoke of the beholder’s appearance in the trial and it’s attack. They told of its terrifying power, and how Lassim, with his new cultivation stage and elemental spirits, had stood against the creature to protect the students and ensure their escape.
As they narrated the ordeal, the courtyard was enveloped in a heavy silence. The elders listened intently, their expressions growing increasingly grave. When the tale reached the moment of Lassim’s stand against the beholder, a collective murmur of disbelief and concern swept through the gathering.
The Headmaster’s face, usually impassive and stoic, betrayed a flicker of emotion. His eyes narrowed, and the air around him seemed to thrum with barely contained power. The mention of the beholder drew a sharp look of recognition and, perhaps, apprehension. It seemed there was something he knew that made him worry.
Worry much more than any creature at the mere Spirit Growth stage should give someone at the pinnacle of power in an entire continent.
Upon hearing the full account, the Headmaster’s expression hardened. The ambient bloodlust that he emitted was palpable, filling the courtyard with a tension that made even the bravest of warriors among the elders shift uneasily. Thankfully the headmaster had enough clarify to protect the students from this bloodlust.
Slowly, he turned his gaze towards the portal that still connected the academy to the trial’s battlefield. His great axe, in all it’s glory, materialized in his grasp. He rested it casually on his shoulder, yet the action was filled with an ominous promise of impending wrath. The air grew sharp as his metal elemental mana surged with the rotation of his cultivation technique.
"Guardians!" Headmaster Ferrum declared, his voice like thunder, resonating with the force of his will across the entire Veridian Continent. "Situation: Yellow. Location: Myriad Spirit Academy. Code: Abyssal Dawn."
Suddenly, several powerful individuals across the continent immediately stopped what they were doing and disappeared in flashes at their maximum speed.
~~~~
In the crescendo of their cataclysmic struggle, a tempest of thoughts raged in the beholder’s mind. It realized the grave mistake it had made in underestimating the human before it.
Lassim, a mere anomaly in its eyes, had evolved into a dire threat, an anomaly that could not be allowed to grow further. This realization sparked a primal fear and a strategic retreat in the beholder’s ancient, dark intellect.
’This flesh-sack is too dangerous. He possess too much strength for a newborn,’ thought the beholder, its many eyes wincing in pain as the ice and water elemental attacks battered its form. ’Retreat... must retreat... Warn the Abyss... He is a danger...
A danger to the great-grand master’s plans.’
The beholder, now desperate and cornered, decided to invoke an innate and sacrificial technique known to the scout division of the Abyssal Legion—the blood teleportation ritual. It was a last resort for these scouts as it would require an exchange of nearly all the caster’s flesh and blood to teleport it back to the Abyssal dimension.
Yet, a single Spirit Growth stage being could never have enough energy by itself to accomplish such a feat.
With a twisted sense of duty, as if a seed to control it’s mind had been planted in it’s brain at some point, it began to sacrifice its own flesh and ooze via the burning of it’s own mana-like energy. Each drop fueling the dark magic needed to pierce through the realms back to the Abyss.
The battlefield grew tense suddenly as the beholder’s form started to contort and warp inside it’s [Time Slow]’d zone. Its remaining eyes fixated on Lassim with a hateful glare. Blood and ichor pooled and spiraled around it, forming runic patterns in the air that glowed with a sinister light.
Every single demon creature, nearby and in the far reaches of the elemental plane of the trial, suddenly had their bodies go stiff. As if some sort of mental order went out across the plane, they two started to shatter and have burst. These beings were much too weak against the beholder casting the ritual and were now fodder for it.
Their bodies exploded into putrid mists that surged towards the beholder’s growing mass of abyssal energy.
Lassim, sensing the shift in the beholder’s intentions, urged Aegrasian and Marinelle to intensify their assault. He even used his own halberd to stand allowing Zaphyrella to join the fray, sending thick bolts of lightning outwards. Ignoring his bleary consciousness as the drain on his mana was leaving him with nothing left. The storm around them crackled as the air filled with elemental fury.
Their attacks reduced some of the gathering energy, but it was too little to make a difference against something carved into the minds and bodies of the legion the Dragal had created. The ritual was nearly complete.
The beholder, sacrificing it’s last tentacles and remaining drops of blood, watched as the pieces congealing together. The ritual complete. Its form beginning to shatter and fracture as a portal to the Abyss tore open behind it.
This portal that appeared was extremely different from the pink and bubbling cauldron style portal that transported Lassim.
No, what he saw was pure horror manifesting itself.
It was not a mere tear in space but a pulsating, living and bloody embodiment of the Abyss itself. It pulsed with a rhythm like a heartbeat. Each throb exuding waves of the same malevolent energy that empowered all abyssal creatures Lassim had met so far.
The edges of the portal were ragged, lined with tendrils of darkness that writhed and twisted like the limbs of tormented souls, reaching out into the mortal realm.
The center of the portal was a pitch-black void that gave the feeling of a giant red abyssal eye that stared back at those who dared look upon it; promising oblivion and despair. Fleeting glimpses of the other side revealed a realm of a red colored endless night. Flashes of twisted landscapes and horrific forms moved in the shadows like a world of nightmares made real.
As the beholder sacrificed parts of itself to fuel the ritual, the portal’s pull grew stronger, the dark energies coalesced. The air around it hummed with the power of the unbound abyss
In its final moments before disappearing, the beholder’s central eye locked with Lassim’s, a silent message of hatred and retribution passing from it to him. Then, with a sound like the tearing of flesh and space itself, the beholder vanished through the closing portal, leaving nothing behind except the blood-drenched ground as evidence of what occurred.