Chapter Four Hundred And Ten – 410
Sounding his Skill but holding its activation back with his Intent and Willpower, Felix focused instead on pouring clouds of acid-green Mana from his channels. He stood at the edge of the balcony, careful to keep himself from leaning over and exposing himself, though he shouldn't have worried. The chaos below and raging forces of the Primordial's cage the Paladins were contending with had consumed all of their attention. Which meant he had time to prepare, according to Pit's plan.
Twice his Mana bottomed out as he poured more and more vapor into the air, coalescing into green thunderheads that flashed power held in abeyance. They crowded around the balcony and hilt of the Skyslain's Riposte, until he could no longer see the ground far below. At his side, Pit preened his feathers and subtly adjusted the barding around his chest, neck, and forelegs. Then he nudged Felix with a wing. Enough, I think. Take it, he sent.
Felix let the vapor peter out and took several deep breaths. His Mana regenerated fast, but hitting rock bottom again and again was never fun; add in the effort of activating a Skill with the Chant but refusing to let it fully engage and it all made Felix's head swim just a little. Still, he could handle this and more.
Turning to Pit, he gripped the proffered handle of a weapon he usually kept stored with his Companion. He pulled it free, and stepped closer to the edge with a grin. "I'll see you down there, bud."
He stepped out into the air.
Adamant Discord!
A crackling discharge boom through the air, so loud Felix was sure even the Paladins had heard itbut it didn't matter. Felix was rocketed downward, propelled by gravity and hurling force of his Skill so fast that the Paladin's had barely looked up. He landed, booted feet first, atop a set of armored shoulders...and crushed them into the massive crater he tore into the floor.
BOOM!
Before they could respond, Felix was up, speeding out of the crater already swinging his massive, six-foot long greatsword. The Blade of the Fang sizzled through the air, pumped full of Essence and shimmering with its own brand of sigaldry as it caught another two Paladins across the waist and chest respectively. It tore them in half.
Notifications flickered against Felix's awareness, but his eyes sought out the High Justiciar. "Haim!"
"Mr. Veil," said the older man, a frown on his face. He had moved faster than Felix's fall had accounted for, dodging easily out of the way. "You have made quite the mess, Representative."
More Paladins crowded close, their swords and halberds leveled toward Felix's throat. "You're playing with fire here, Haim," Felix said. He flexed his forearm and blood wicked from the edge of the greatsword he held with a single hand. "I suggest you turn around and leave. Now."
The High Justiciar didn't answer him, but his frown did turn into a wide smile. He gestured to his men. "Kill him."
The Paladins rushed forward, halberds thrusting and chopping at him in equal measure. Felix flared his Dexterity and Strength, rotating his Fang in a sharp, wide circle around his body. The sharpened tooth cut through every haft in an instant, before he slammed it downward through the nearest Paladin. Before the holy warrior felt into two equal pieces, Felix already pivoted, swinging his six-foot sword through one and then another Paladin.
You Have Killed A Paladin Of The Pathless (x3)!
XP Earned!
"Stop standing there and kill him!" Haim screamed.
Felix whirled and dashed, a slashing cyclone of death as he advanced on the High Justiciar. The gormless jerk retreated to the line of Inscriptionists that were still scratching out golden lines of sigaldry into the air. He moved and Paladins died, but there were so many of them, and the crimson-armored warriors stopped just dying. Beveled shields of conjured, golden light erupted between him and the Justiciar, while similar constructions in the form of swords and halberds slammed into his body from all sides.
Backpedaling, Felix considered his options his Intelligence and potent Mind firing on all cylinders. He held up the Blade of the Fang...and sunk it, thirteen inches into the tiled flooring. "I was never really that good with a sword," he said, and a haze of black-grey vapor poured from his palms. They spread, solidifying into four ten-foot long coils of thick, shadowy Mana. "Whips though. I've gotten pretty good with those."
He flexed his fingers, and the four whips split into eight, and then sixteen separate strands. Flicking his wrists, the whips lashed outward, each tendril grabbing a Paladin by the breastplate or neck before Felix clenched his fists and pulled. Every single Paladin was hauled off their feet, dragged toward Felix like they were on the losing side of a game of tug of war. More bolts of light Mana struck all around him, but Felix didn't dodge, instead too focused on his magic.
Shadow Whip is level 47!
Every tendril of shadow Mana flexed like a bicep, and each snagged Paladin was lifted bodily into the air...and then Felix began to move.
Shadow Whip is level 48!
The warriors screamed as Felix rotated his shoulders, twisted his hips, and wielded them as the world's weirdest flail. Armored bodies crashed down into conjured shields, shattering them to pieces and knocking more Paladins aside like gruesome bowling pins.
"Fusillade Flash!" cried dozens of voices all at once. More of those elongated bolts of light coalesced and shot at Felix. He twisted and interposed the bodies of his captives for most of them, but a few still found their mark. His Body shrieked in further strain as burns burst and bled across his chest and legs. The Aspect struggled to keep up with his movements and applied stats, fraying rapidly.
I need to get closer now! he thought frantically. Then, from above, he heard a faint whistling. Pit!
A barrage of long, one foot diameter spikes of ice dropped from above, slamming into the hundreds of Paladins and outright killing several. Pit's Frost Spear, dropped from above and through the cloud of acid, they were a cloudy green that soon brightened to a virulent purple-yellow as each and every one of them exploded.
Paladins fell back, the closest felled by shards of jagged ice, but even those thirty feet away were hit by the wash of sizzling, noxious acid. Their screams escalating, turning to wails of pain as more Frost Spears dropped, each of them exploding again with similar consequences.
Etheric Concordance is level 78!
Etheric Concordance is level 79!
Etheric Concordance is level 80!
New Sub-Feature Unlocked!
Confluence - The fastness of your bond has revealed the ability to combine certain Skills between Companions to create something new or unusual. Experiment to find out more!
Yes! Pit bugled in joy. It worked!
Hell yeah! Felix celebrated, spinning his homemade flail into the breach of howling Paladins. Pit had been convinced he could do such a thing, but hadn't been entirely sure what the result would beChimeric instinct only guided him so far, Felix supposed. With a grunt, Felix released the Shadow Whips, letting the majority of them fly forward, right into Haim's scowling face.
The High Justiciar slashed his own men out of the air, his blade swiping them easily off to the side. He was fiddling with something in his off-hand, with
The Regalia! Felix's heartbeat sped up, but he was already running into the momentary gap of confused defenders, Blade of the Fang returned to his hand. "C'mon Haim! Come and fight!"
"Not quite yet, Mr. Veil," said the yellow-eyed Justiciar. "I will be with you afterah, yes. This."
Suddenly the Paladin was limned by a slick, golden glow. It sparked to life across his entire body and weapons, like a sun was setting directly behind him...and it spread rapidly to every other Paladin around them. Felix's eyes took that in as well as the crystalline case of the Regalia, which was settled neatly into that box of golden Mana in the middle of his intrusive array. Refusing to pause, Felix surged forward.
Adamant Discord!
Lightning blasted at his back as the connections to the defeated Paladins hurled Felix forward, six-foot greatsword held like a goddamn lance. The air screamed in Felix's ears as he crossed the last twenty feet with incredible speed and hit Haim square in the chest...only to be stopped dead. Felix gaped at his weapon, the tip of which hadn't even penetrated the thin layer of golden light.
Haim laughed, and that scar across his chin stretched his smile into something vicious. "You cannot hope to defeat us, Mr. Veil. Your power cannot stand up to God's own Light."
Felix wet his lips, still leaning his weight into his blade. "How about a little darkness then?"
"What?"
"BEEF'S HERE, MOTHERFUCKERS!" came an ear-splitting roar, and from the other end of the chamber the seven foot Minotaur waded into battle...with a horde of Risen at his back. "PAYBACK TIME!"
"What? The Unbound!" Haim screamed.
"Eyes on me!" Felix shouted, dropping the tip of his Blade and punching forward...his fist glowing with a golden-azure haze.
Wild Threnody!
Arrow of Perdition!
His fist met the Justiciar's breastplate and unlike his blade, it caught Haim off-guard. The jerk was thrown back from Felix's sheer Strength, but that damn light dispersed his Skills and any real damage.
"Fine, Mr. Veil. I have given you a chance for an easy surrender and death." Haim lifted his side sword and lifted it to his face in an odd salute. "Do not let it be told that the Pathless is without mercy."
Beef slammed his maul down, shattering the skull of a Paladin and he laughed.
Until the guy just got back up.
"That's not fair!" he shouted, and launched the Paladin back with a savage kick. "How come you're all immune to bludgeoning damage?" He flipped around his maul, where the back had several savage spikes, and struck another one to little effect. "Piercing damage too?"
"It is the light they are wrapped within," Hallow said, calm as ever. Beside him was the biggest of the repurposed god-warriors, a man almost as big as Beefhammer himself. The spirit's Risen were spread out around them, punching with a sizable fraction of Beef's own Strength. It was cutting a swath through the battle, but none of the Paladins were staying down. "It is negating any damage we inflict."
"That's cheating!" Beef growled, blocking another sizzling bolt of light Mana. It splashed against his chitin armor, ripping a hole in it that Beef couldn't easily fix, not in the midst of a fight. "What're we gonna do?"
The teen-turned-Minotaur had rushed down the spiral staircase as fast as he could, but Agility was not his strong suit. It had taken way too long, and by the time Beef and his Risen has reached the ground floor again, Felix had already started fighting. Now Pit was flying around somewhere above, dropping more exploding ice, which wasn't killing anyone either, but at least kept throwing Paladins off their feet. And it distracted a number of them, who were shooting wild spears of light into green cloud after the Chimera.
And then there was Felix.
He was fighting Haim, a guy that Beef was pretty sure was a Master Tier. And not just fightingFelix was going toe-to-toe, giving just as good as he got, even if that stupid light was protecting the Paladin. Their movements were a chaotic blur, especially Felix who moved faster than Beef could even track. One second they were both on the ground swinging their swords, and next second they were twenty feet away slinging blue and gold spells at each other. More than anything, it filled Beef with a startling, upsetting realization. If Felix had fought me seriously...I think I'd be dead.
A cold shiver shook him, quickly replaced by the stabbing blade of another Paladin. The pain drove the memory from Beef's Mind, sharpening his focus as he backhanded the warrior. He roared in surprise and pain, and hauled off on the bastard. His uppercut caught the Paladin in the chest and hurled him bodily through the air over thirty feet. The guy would have doubtlessly gotten back up, completely unharmed, except Beef had unintentionally hit him into that whirling cage thing. The moment he hit the array, that huge, building-sized mass of bones and grossness inside shook and screeched.
The Paladin, however, was held in place as his body was squeezed dry. He tried screaming, but only managed a choking gasp, until a crumpled suit of gold limned armor fell to the ground...and the Paladin didn't get back up.
The curse thing Felix mentioned! Beef grinned and grabbed another warrior, using both hands to hurl them into the air. The same thing happened as the to the first, and Beef cackled. "Hahah! Ain't much when you get a face full of curse!"
Beef advanced and this time the Paladins ran away.
Felix spun away from another strike from the High Justiciar, this one scoring a line of melted stone in the tiled flooring. Dodging was easy, but the problem was doing any sort of damage at all. Nothing Felix tried seemed to work, from magic to physical force from either of his swords. The only thing he hadn't tried was his talons, but activating Sovereign of Flesh still felt dicey. His core space was less full of Essence, having used a good chunk of it to fuel the cutting edge of his Fang, but the abyss of Hunger was still unpleasantly satiated. It didn't make sense that it would affect his Sovereign of Flesh Skill, but it caused ripples of disrupting pain throughout the ability regardless.
Haim wasn't a Grandmaster, but he was at the upper edge of Master Tier, that much was clear. He was strong and fast and tough, with Stamina and Mana pools that were likely very deep. Down so close to the cage, he found his Voracious Eye relatively nonfunctional sadly, but the way the man was throwing Skills around it was clear he had plenty of gas left in the tank. Felix did too, but if he couldn't remove that golden glow, the fight would never end.
"You are stronger than I anticipated, Mr. Veil," Haim said, breathing light and easy. "That Strength of yours; to have devoted so much to it and yet still remain remarkably fast and deadly with magic, it intrigues me. What is your secret?"
"Show me yours and I'll show you mine," Felix said, circling the man warily. "How does your little shield work?"
Haim scoffed. "It is the Light of God, heretic. The Pathless Himself descended to gift unto us the knowledge of this Divine array, a tool to grant his chosen warriors protection and strength unheard of on the Continent. Even if you knew its workings, you could not stop it. You are a mortal man: worthless before the might of the Divine."
Felix only narrowed his eyes, sensing with everything he had. Suppressed as they were, his various sense Skills could only barely pick out the heavy golden threads that connected Haimand the other Paladinsto the array...and up, toward something else far above them.
The array is clearing doing the lifting somehow, and something up above is helping. That piece of Regalia at the center of their formation is key, but every time I get close Haim shoves me back. Felix bared his teeth as Haim threw another spear of radiance at him. It missed, but the splash damage as it burst hit and consumed another Risen far behind Felix. Damn. Okay, destroy the center and take that cloth.
But if he did that...how would it affect the Primordial's cage?
"Hey!"
Beef was yelling across the battle, but his huge lungs made themselves known. Felix glanced at the guy just in time to see him hurl two Paladins into the Primordial's cage. Both of them were almost instantly desiccated and their armor crushed as if by some immense force. The cage itself flickered dangerously.
Meanwhile, Beef laughed in dark delight. "The big bone pile hurts them even through their fancy shielding!"
Haim's face went ashen before it flushed with rage. The High Justiciar kicked off the ground, shattering it beneath himself as he accelerated toward the Minotauronly to be tackled to the ground by Felix himself.
"Focus on the Inscriptionists! Stop them from finishing!" Felix shouted at him, and grappled with the Justiciar.
Yet the Divine shield made the bastard positively slippery, and Haim wriggled free of Felix's grasp, just far enough to shout out a command himself. "Fallen Judgement: Nightfall!"
Above them all, a flare of gold, orange, and black vapor flashed into existence...and nine massive figures manifested, each twenty foot tall and half as wide, shimmering with all the colors of a fading sunset. Golems unlike any Felix had ever seen before.
Haim kicked at Felix's clawing hands and howled. "Drop!"
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