Yuriko looked at the falling mountain with not a little bit of consternation, as well as a hint of smugness.
‘If that rotter thinks this will defeat me, he’s delusional,’ Yuriko muttered to herself. The falling mountain came swiftly, but not as fast as her ability to burrow underneath the earth using her sunblades.
Her thread to Fluffington pulsed as the wolf pup slaughtered the invaders seeking to capture her charge. She had almost fled to the caravan when she noticed the cavalry flankers, but her familiar sent her a pulse of reassurance. She didn’t see his defence, only felt the threads of satisfaction pulsing through their connection.
Her threads connecting to Juliette and Sofia, as well as Ryoko, on the other hand, were filled with anxiety and worry. Not her handmaiden, as the woman remained calm and confident. It wasn’t the demeanour of the arrogant; instead, Yuriko intuited that it was more the fatalistic certainty that her Fate was bound inextricably to another and there was little Ryoko could do to improve her lot other than root for Yuriko.
The fact that Ryoko yoked her Fate to her had not bothered Yuriko ever since the World Trials and she would do her best to live up to the expectations. It was a pity she lacked the Ambrosia to initiate Ryoko into the Ancient’s Way, but the fact that Gwendith and Heron encountered other Ancients would probably give her a way to initiate others without having to resort to the rare material. Even rarer now that they weren’t on the Chaos Sea.
As always, extraneous thoughts filled parts of her consciousness while the rest focused on the urgent. She found that doing so allowed her to be a bit more flexible and stopped her from being blind to other events. The sunblades dug into the earth and stone, already weakened when she built her ramparts, parted easily. She shaped her Anima into a spindle shape and had it rotate as she pushed herself under. She thought briefly if she should have just flown away, but this allowed her to jump on the elusive magus.
She went down for nearly fifty paces when the mountainous stone struck the hill fort.
Booom!!!
The hill crumbled around her and a powerful shockwave went right through her Anima protections and shook her to her core.
“Ack!”
She gasped as she coughed up blood from her damaged lungs. Pain spiked all over her body, and she was driven deeper into the earth. Her sunblades idled as she lost manual control, and when she blinked, she couldn’t see anything.
‘Oh, wait, I’m underground,’ she muttered to herself.
The stones pressed against her Anima barrier as she expanded them to give her room to move. Bruises dotted her skin, but her Anima was mostly unharmed, as the shockwave went through it rather than striking directly. Her mind felt fuzzy, but she focused on her Will, then briefly took on her Radiant Elemental Body. The stones around her melted with Radiant heat at the brief Transformation, and when she returned to her corporeal form, all of the damage was gone.
A brief examination of her Radiant reserves, not the one in her Essence Core, but within the small parts of herself, her cells according to Karcellian, and now, Bresian, sciences. Radiant energy was depleted but was quickly replenishing. She would be able to use her Elemental Body again after a few minutes. Normally she'd be able to use her Elementalisation in quick succession, but most of the reserves had been used to heal her.
She spread her perception, threading it through the cracks rather than forcefully penetrating the solid material, and through it, she managed to perceive outside of the rubble. Frowning, she realised that she must have been stunned for longer than she expected since there were already soldiers on what was left of the hillside.
She dug deeper underground and pushed herself towards the army. She took control of the remaining sunblades and pushed downwards, avoiding the soldiers and making easy progress towards the main army. But she pulled up short. She felt the intense concentration of Elemental energies and the all-pervading mists that somehow penetrated into the ground. She could feel glimmers of Intent in the mists, no doubt from the hundreds of Magi arrayed against her.
A moment of hesitation, then her intuition prodded at her. It was better to keep moving than to stay still…not, that’s not quite right. Yuriko frowned. There were moments when waiting and staying still was better than being impatient. Now was such a moment. The soldiers and the elusive Magus were preoccupied with the rubble that was the hilltop, and if she revealed herself now, it would only focus their attention on her. She needed to bide her time and strike so that she’d gain the maximum benefit.
The gun-wielding soldiers were of no moment. They could unload their entire payload on her and it wouldn’t matter to her. If they were using spell activation tools instead of basic firearms, or if their bullets were enchanted with spell effects, then that might be another matter, but past experience and the fact that none of their bullets made it past her soft shield meant that they didn’t have the armaments to take her down.
A sudden vision, a memory of Damien’s, unfolded in her mind. He had not always fought alone, and when he was younger and weaker, he had led armies to battle Behemoths and Primordials too.
Army Potency mattered a lot. Empowered weapons and soldiers protected by the best armour were necessary to fight anything with a greater Anima level. Little tricks Damien used to empower his warriors without spending too much time or resources filtered in, and Yuriko couldn’t help but whistle in surprise.
The simplest thing he did was to infuse a small packet of Radiant energy, no more than a mote or two, wrap it up with a tiny bit of Animus to contain it, and when his soldier shot their weapons, it would hit with the strength of his Radiant might. It took no more than an instant to implant as long as the ammunition was within his Anima range. He didn’t even have to do it before the battle in his later years. As long as they fought within his ambit, he could infuse their weapons with his Ennoia and Radiant energy, too. The army became an extension of his power, a force multiplier that allowed him to fight well above his weight.
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The memory faded away, fully assimilated into her mind, and Yuriko shook her head, returning her focus to the present before abruptly revisiting the memory.
Radiant energy didn't play well with any other Element, Yuriko knew. It had the tendency to consume and convert whatever it touched. Quite like Fire, honestly, but so much more. After all, Fire Elemental energy, much like natural fire, was limited in what it could burn, and only when the conflagration was large enough could it easily burn what was originally difficult to. Not so with Radiant energy.
But if she could stop that effect simply by coating it with Animus…
Then she wanted to slap herself. Was she not already doing something like that with her sunblades? So if she created those little packets and infused them with regular matter, should any pebble strike with her full might?
Her initial attempts at weaponizing her Animakinesis, specifically by throwing pebbles, which she had a significant range advantage with, returned to her mind. The trick was how she, or rather Damien, built the package. It was fine in such a way that it inverted the effects of Radiant energy, using its own tendencies to expand and consume, to instead compress and stabilise. The packet then had a trigger, often on impact, where it reversed the Intent, and the Radiant energy was released explosively.
She wondered if she could construct a spell node around the packet so that the trigger would cast the spell using the Radiant energy as a power source instead… but that would require significantly more experimentation and didn't belong on the battlefield.
Now, she had to choose what to do. Either she pushed forward and got into a deadly confrontation which she wasn't sure she could win, or she could move back and try the shiny, new thing she learned. She wasn't averse to charging in, but she also knew it would be impossible to remain undetected for long.
So the second one it would be. Just not from the same direction.
She dug around the reach of her foes and moved east, practically hitting them from behind. She lost sight of the searchers, but that was fine, then she burst out of the ground, her Animakinesis already carrying several Jins of pebbles and stones. She ignored the shouts of surprise and focused on building the Animus packets. Her internal and external reserves allowed her to create roughly a thousand or so Radiant-charged pebbles at once, but that also depleted her Animus. And while she could easily recharge her reserves, she'd rather not black out from depletion. Five hundred charged pebbles were readied, and from the air, she aimed at the groups of Magi scattered around in formation.
As soon as she was ready, she flung one of the pebbles straight at a Magus. The speed she flung it caused a loud boom that propagated shockwaves around it and would have disintegrated the pebble had the packet of Animus and Radiant energy toughened it up.
A moment later, the Radiant pebble slammed against the army's spell shield. Now the pebble disintegrated but at the same time, Radiant energy spread across the shield and devoured its Elemental composition. By itself, the Radiant pebble would have done nothing more than that, but Yuriko's next shot came less than a second later, which slammed into the weakened part of the barrier, and the kinetic force of the blow shattered the defences.
The Radiant pebble didn't hit the Magus directly, but the explosion of Radiant energy caught them anyway.
Their scream might have been audible if there were no other noises. The brief shout of pain was swallowed by the screamed orders followed by spells and guns shot her way.
She noticed the elusive Magus in the midst of the formation and she was tempted to strike him down right then and there, but he was no doubt well protected, and her pebbles were of better use against the rest of the army. She briefly lamented the fact that she no longer carried slingshot bullets with her as they would make excellent projectiles, but she would make do. Besides, pebbles were plentiful and if there weren't enough, it was easy to make more.
Her Animus reserves quickly replenished as she converted excess Radiant energy, but the infused bullets were far from depleted. She shot several, three to six of them, every second, but that still meant they would take a couple of minutes to run out. And that was probably why the technique was meant for supporting large groups instead of fighting by herself.
The surprise lasted less than a minute before the elusive Magus already enacted a counterattack. The Magi created thicker barriers, ones that rotated in and out of the surface, and now her Radiant energy couldn't eat away at them. Still, she was distant enough that most of their small guns and spells couldn't reach her, she she shot at them with impunity. She also blasted more of the cavalry trying to go after the caravan, and after the third company, they gave up on that course of action.
Instead, they bunched up and layered their barriers, then they wove more powerful spells to catch her off guard.
The stalemate lasted for half an hour, then Yuriko felt Fluffington nudge her mind. The caravan had entered the Vitrovin Forest Conflux and were out of immediate danger.
Yuriko sighed in relief, glanced at the battalion that had lost nearly a thousand soldiers and a handful of Magi. She could feel the simmering anger coming from their commander and the Elusive Magus.
Yuriko smirked as she turned around to leave, but she suddenly noticed the smirk on the Magus's face. The Elemental mists that surrounded the army expanded explosively and Yuriko was caught within.
The runescript lines glowed on a spell circle that was nearly a longstrides wide, which then projected a bluish barrier into a dome.
She slammed against it, but the force of her impact simply spread across it instead of breaking through. And her sunblades did nothing more than burn a tiny bit of it before the thick mists recovered the barrier.
She was trapped.