COI C222

In Isekai City, the harsh moonlight has turned for the worse. The Mihayara district couldn’t expand further from the intense strong wind, dragging with shards in bits have size of pins. The city barrier is being porcupine from what they see inside. The citizens are steadily goes out from their evacuation areas to go and see it. The recovered buildings, cleaned from dusts and crystals, are side by side with the outside tall buildings. Comparing between desolated and safe. The sound of thunders heard from the sky, where there is no rain water falling, a dust storm or a shard storm.

Outside of the city barrier, there are people out there dared to venture the purest form of Jigeram’s light. It brought nightmare and lifeless shards like it was from the cold tundra. There they see footprints, still intact, and beneath the crystal cleared shards. The rain of shards on the daring people felt on their runic armor.

Altair says to them “Why did I agreed to come with you guys again?”

Maser smashes the shards with his mace “Your people want to see what is like in Rune Isles. Here is what you’re going to expect”

Haw looks at the shards both blurred and clear. The large crystals around them being rain by smaller shards showering to no reaction for it to grow, but treated like sand between the rocks. There are also other shards floating up to the air from the strong wind, portraying as like dusts. It was too different to compare the actual crystallized dust.

“Altair, do you have words about my guild and your friend coming back?”

“No, let me check first . . . Yeah, I have a reading, yet they didn’t respond. Wait a second, how am I able to reach them under the moonlight? It supposed to block all transmission, right?”

Somewhere among the winds, the spirits come across with the essence of the elven magic. The same elven magic that touches from the undergrown. They moved to the city barrier. They ram at the barrier. It bounces off as it touches the wall of crystal shards and the city barrier. Shroud with voices that no goblins will hear them speaks.

“Duck . . .” The spirits heard Kes’thar, clear and strong.

“Duck . . .”

It possessed pure essence of a Horde Chief, a worthy soul into their shamanistic doll. They look down, impossible to see except its blurred yellow coat. A beak that moves,

“Psai?”

The words spoke out that can reach out the living. The spirits move closer. Both the doll and the spirits trying to connect. The message of Puma is ready to deliver. As they about to use their rituals. The unbearable wails coming from the distance. The two stopped, the duck felt its enraging echoes. It moves up to see the spirits are still there, they were gone.

“Duck”

A sad tone, and a miss opportunity to wield some secrets from Puma. The speakers inside the city barrier shout out about the news.

“Warning! Paranormal activities are happening outside of the safe zone. Please advised to return your assigned area”

The toy duck opened its mouth in disbelief

“Duck”

The city spoken about paranormal activities, but it senses different kinds of mana penetrating the light effectively. It is not mistaken for a powerful being, but it is confident it was a common people. The citizens themselves are bringing their own unrest. A flying object fell in front of it. Digitalized matter as pixelated properties start to stasis out of existence. It moves closer and tried to touch it.

“Duck” said it in confusion.

Then the object disappeared. The toy duck sense nothing alive. It fears the old tech returns.

“Darkness will prevail . . .”

Ka’zei shouts it out in front of them. The cores revolving around him starts to shift the effects of the crystals. Feasting on his presence as the shard appeared all around. Hulyir, used his stamina potion as his body restored to his strength. He pulls something out from inside of his layered armor, it fell to the ground as it shows constriction on his body.

“Finally!”

Rusic feels the sense of danger coming from his runes. His presence reacts among their runes with great caution.

Ironno sees they are using their actual skills and techniques. Hulyir is taking a stance, instead of using his speed. Ka’zei is using the cores, a protective safe keep to use his magic under the light. It is the time to bring out their own equipment hidden in Ironno’s magic scroll. A bundle of papers filled with blanks, and with the use of Ironno’s personal ink. One tap as the paper is filled with ink, an image is formed. He reaches it in as puddle is form flowing his hand with black liquid. A box concealed in the dark, he places on the ground as the light is being consumed.

Ka’zei notices the dark blur. He gathers his cores then send it to box. Volley of cores rapidly targeting at it. The cores were blocked, a forcefield is form. Two city adventurers surround him. Heist and the Rogue charges in. The cores return as the others bounced off, missing them all together as they back away. The two cornered him as Silfa joins them from the other side. Along with Puma and the pet doll, Ka’zei is surrounded by the citizens. He opens a core stealing Heist’s inventory. A rune stone opened and lock them in time.

Heist froze as he is shocked. He checks his inventory as his item was stolen in a blink of an eye. The runes break their pause, but quickly gained back after another one is stolen from him. He consciously spoke to himself

“This is bad, he keeps wasting my secret weapons. The light exposed me . . . Wait!?”

He sees shroud of broken light being absorb, weakening the light blue glow. A slight touch of his body being shaded from the light. A slim glow of his UI opened, then quickly faded as the light returned from Ka’zei’s reflected cores.

“. . . There is still a chance”

The Rogue quickly understood what’s going on. As her side of view glimpses where the Enders release black smoke. It absorbs the light, and something below crawls beneath is Archivist’s bending, smoothly moving without being crystallized nor the mana fading rapidly by the light’s touch. Cheering inside her head with excitement, she uses her copy-cat ability, dared to use Archivist’s ability to control the mana.

Archivist had given her the opportunity before they meet the two brigands that she never expected. The ability to control mana.

With the last Heist’s rune stone, the moment as time returned. Ka’zei uses the last item. Heist felt fooled that all of his rune stone wasted by a thieving brigand. He thought so less of them that never he could imagine those two can do. The final stone, with all of them out of the way. Ka’zei will have no threats to deal against time magic. As it about to open the rune magic, the Rogue suddenly grip it with all of her might. Runes overflowing on her armor, using up all of its powerful quality runewords. The writings written in their language, no Rusic tongues or anything from this world. The consequence is on her body now, she resisted it, and she is not going to waste such opportunity.

Bending time, what such power interacted between bending runes and magic? It was simple, the rogue stats luckily had enough to be a high rank bender. The absolute jarring for her to be able to bend a rune is legendary. Her cheats made it possible. She steals the rune stone and gives it to Heist. The three broke free as they dodge Ka’zei’s cores. It fires like shooting stars or as pinballs when it hit the ground. Silfa uses her forcefield, and multiple hits on her magic defenses quickly give in. A random core fly to her. Puma blocks it and uses its shield and a face is form and swallow the core.

The face shield starts vibrating. The core is too much for Puma’s shield and spits it out like it was food that can’t be swallowed. Silfa drops the stone she found from the undergrown. Its bizarre texture fell straight down. The cores hit it, but couldn’t make it move. Ka’zei sees the stone, and forgot about it. The intense pressure inside of the stone, its glimmer under the light. It tries to shines but multiple of its colorful gems blinking so little at the same time very clear. The small spec reaches the aura of the core. The core quickly weakens its flight and tremendously goes heavily down to the ground.

The cores simultaneously back away from the three. Puma and the pet doll follow the cores as they distract him. Closing into the distance, Heist follows them as they tried to find his weak spot. They moved around, over, and somewhere in between. Rituals start to appear, resisting against the light, and Heist’s runes forced into max power ready to strike. The pet doll acts first as its rituals transformed into the mighty beast. Maneuvering the cores as it runs on it. Its ferocious fangs ready to open its jaw to Ka’zei’s shoulder. It got him, and Ka’zei uses the cores to pushed it back. Its crazy flexible body evade his attack, but when it keeps evading, a enhance spell on the pet doll to move itself away beyond its preferred movements.

The rituals on the pet doll are being diverted from the other cores continue to force the pet doll to move away. It lands from the fair distance and quickly ready to attack again. The cores are channeling a spell. A few of the spell has cast. The exposed of the light forced it to fade, but the rest of the cores are maintaining the spell as it aims at Heist. Heist uses his rune armor to shield it. The spell casts like smoke curving and surrounding him. The core appears at his back, temporarily disclosed his rune magic.

“What the?”

A hit to his back, he knocks down to his knees as another spell coming to the side. Puma catches it, but more of them are coming.

Heist gets hit continuously only at the same spot. When his rune armor recovers, the cores immediately dispersed. He looks at Ka’zei as the Rogue and Silfa are already fighting him. The rogue faces the core with all of her runes blinking to its limits. The required mana needed for her to bend mana is phenomenal. Only by her own mind to twist the cores, leaving Ka’zei uses more of it to not let her get to him with her daggers. The rogue starts to struggle as her head starts to hardened, barely to think straight. Her mind places her control to the cores, but the spells are waiting as she holds it.

“He knows more than I could credit for. Silfa, I can’t use my copy-cat for long”

The rogue forces to imitate how Archivist bends his magic. From what happened before, Archivist has difficulty to bend those crystals against them. Where she sees the cores come flying at her again, she is forced to do so with the stats she had. A powerful thud from the air, a sudden blow quickly crystallized and hits Ka’zei. He didn’t get knock back but only blocked his cores as it bounces off. The rogue feels the tension of Ka’zei’s mana forces back into her unexpected to happen. There was no pain flowing inside her body, her runes helped stop it. There she saw her mistake, her rune armor turned dark and the moonlight sink into her flesh.

The Rogue crystallized, fragile enough to break. Ka’zei sees her didn’t prepare something like this. The sight for the kill is reaching to his cores. It vibrates itself ready to shoot at his crystallized enemy. His cores shoot from the far distance hiding from his enemy’s view. The core bullets itself through and pass through Silfa’s forcefield.

“No!”

The Rouge crystallized facing the death she couldn’t believe will come. The sounds of the shot cracking the crystals into her body.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Suddenly, the pet doll rescued her as its mouth catch the core nearly touching her by finger’s reach. The rogue’s eyes feverishly losing sight as she is fully exposed. Silfa tries to free her with her runes, and one of the runes she had given by the Enders. One of the rune words disappeared, breaking the crystallized chrysalis. The rouge fell into Silfa’s arm. Silfa checks her enemy. Puma picks Heist up from the barrage of spells. Its shield rituals barely hanging on from the cores. She waits for Ka’zei’s attacks but he didn’t move, where his body gets gnaw from the pet doll’s ritual.

Ka’zei is holding off the pet doll. Hiding his weakness as the bizarre gem stone is sneakily hiding from the doll’s mouth. Any sense of mana will fell to the ground like mountainous boulders. He is very impressed how they did they find it or did the goblins found it and play around with it. It was obvious in his head it must be either the dwarves or the goblins. Those non-possessing magic users are indeed left behind such lost natural resources of this world. The pet doll uses it and against him. It keeps hold of him as it tries to find a way to taste the flesh.

Healing in this light is impossible, a wound that heals fast is where it will petrify by the crystallized dust the quickest. Unless the light nor the dust will touch them. While the city adventurers busy fighting against Ka’zei. There is another fight from the other side. The darkness bloomed from Ironno’s box. Runes adjust to the essence of the lack of sight, blurring their vision into the dark. Magic restored, but corrupts from the blackness of its view. The sounds that barely bell the fight between weapons, and the armor is only their tunes banging by their powerful weapons.

Rusic was cut off from his weapon. The hammer’s handle cut off cleanly, and it attached itself as the runes reconnected it.

“Your partner says darkness prevail, is that joke you want us to say, Hulyir?”

Hulyir focuses where four Enders are waiting to strike. The dwarf recklessly attacks have his sword swing low where he feels something is gripping the edge of his weapon on the ground. The combination both Archivist’s bending and Voldemyr’s chain lashed on to the tip, including the metal piece of the chain link is crushed to hold his sword still.

Hulyir’s light blue flaming sword is fading, the presence of the dark is losing its effects for breaking any magic items, and left with its steel blade strong enough to against the toughest armor. He pulled it out at the moment he was hit by a metal ball. A weight of it stunned him, moving him backwards. His rune armors shines tremendously as he recovers as fast as he could. Ironno lands his pickaxe at Hulyir’s back, Hulyir moves his sword back struck to his gut, it phases through where its rune magic won’t hurt its wielder. Stab through as both of them hit each other.

Archivist bends the ground pushed Voldemyr from melee range, bringing also his chains and metal ball. Voldemyr detached the ball and search in his bag, a handle or piece of a head made from runes. As he attached it in his chains, the dark view lose sight of him as the item he attached reflected into the dark light. Hulyir remained blind after the Rogue’s counter. Always countering, but still senses them when they are near. The sword lost the moonlight, the extension of his senses goes through it and his sight extend by the touch. Fresh blood spills, but didn’t satisfy his confidence. Hulyir hears the dwarven footsteps as the fight keeps going.

Rusic continues to fight with hammer trying to hit anywhere with it. Hulyir stops him to hit anything from the hammer’s head. Runes bursting with powerful spell ready to release. Ironno uses his runes and pushes Hulyir closer to Rusic, and Hulyir didn’t hold back as he steady his stance and faced Ironno’s floating runes. From Hulyir’s stance, the rune words release and turned Ironno’s runes to dust and smoke. Rusic uses his runes to collect the dust back into solid stones. He raised his hammer to smash it to release the spell on his hammer. The solid stone is formed, and the impact causes a sound.

The stone destroyed release rubbles into a powerful blast. Hulyir’s armor shred into scratches on his runes. Tearing him into shred, with the demonic magic left on him. He guided the blast at the front towards Ironno. The shredded stone with magic runes containing demonic spells. The flow of damage sends to them, Archivist bends it to stop it from hitting them. The strength of both demonic magic and runes were too great as he tried to slide away along the blast. Both him and Ironno able to stay away from the blast safely, yet the demonic spells hit them.

Archivist releases his mana dispersing the mana away. The demonic spells persist and stay on him into a hold. Holding in place, he gathers all the presence of demonic mana, able to snatch away from Ironno’s presence. Gathered into a whirlpool before the rest of its magic causes harm. The demonic mana solidify comes alive and dread with its hands in different sizes. An insignia formed all around him, he recognized them. Barely form a resemblance from the Demon’s faction of the demons.

“This Daemos is less likely competent”

Archivist says it as the darkness shrouded him into nothing.

Hulyir waits as it seems the fight stops. Rusic still chases him as he elusively dodging the runes around him. They should be cooperating as they do after each movement they had done. Now alone to feel nothing of danger; there is no Ironno’s back hits, there is no Archivist’s bending to disturb his movement, and there is no telling when will Voldemyr take another critical action. Only him and Rusic, he eventually gets hit on the leg, and the rune magic sips into his body causing a vibration damaging his armor.

He calls out to the wind, gathered with dusts. As he can’t sense the darkness removing the light, he blindly fights without the strength of the negating spell. The two dared face off one another, none of them dodge their next attack. Hulyir raises all the might of his swordsmanship with pincer like snake, and Rusic endured the assault and hits back like a crazed drunk. Rusic receives the slashes and cuts through his armor, easily cutting through like cloth. Then one hit from Rusic to Hulyir’s body, quickly shatters like glass. Both dared to remove the other’s best defense, now gone, the wounds are boldly opens.

Defenses fell into shreds, nothing left for Rusic to protect him from the Jigeram’s light. Fully exposed as soon as the darkness left. From the mist of the darkness moved; Archivist, Voldemyr, and lastly Ironno used all of their runes to pierced through all Hulyir’s evasive maneuvers. Hulyir, lost all of his runes and opened new sets of skills. Used the last demonic magic to move like a poltergeist. His hands twitch in an unbelievable speed in reverent motion. Unphased by his own sense of pain, they laid all of their weapons on his body.

Rusic’s hammer, Ironno’s pickaxe, Archivist’s bracers, and Voldemyr’s sets of weapons. The images of Hulyir fought like a ghost to appear in every thought. Desperation goes into the man’s blade as it starts to chip. His body bruised or cut whoever gets a hit of him. The Enders have braced Hulyir’s attacks, trading blows for just one man will never ceased to lose his braved stance. Through the loud noise coming across between them. Ironno’s secret box was hit from the random slashes.

The darkness soon fades away as soon as the light have a single slight advantage. Ironno kicks the cut box to the side, giving the others a chance to hide what black items they carried. The sounds of powerful thud going through the dark, as the light touches each one of them. The ablaze of their ruined runes come exposing to all of them, including Hulyir himself. There they witness the warrior with a core exposing from his belly. One exposure alone, Hulyir turned to crystal glass as all four nearly hit it.

A motion of them closing in with their weapons and look at the crystallized body. The core is open releasing deceitful the moment to counter. Wise action among the four as barely for the pick axe slowly moving into it. The dwarf catches it as his hand wounded from the cuts, already lost his rune defenses as the light sizzling his very wounds with the struggling runes remained on him. A smile of this crazy dwarf’s face as he is being harmed by the runes of Ironno’s pickaxe. Ironno tried to pull it back in a strong jolt. He walks backward and fell to the ground.

Others turned to check on him and saw Ironno’s stash of magic scrolls fall and exposed to nothing. Ironno tries to save the remaining scrolls. Archivist quickly bends the ground and sinks the box and the rest beneath the surface, saving it before the light consumed it too. It was over. Hulyir stops fighting and left into a husk inside a crystal. They then look around to find the three adventurers fighting against Ka’zei. Broken as the flesh and remains disappeared into the crystallized dust, falling as shards as remnants of magic still pouring out heavily.

Voldemyr grips his hand on his chains with anger, his face was relief, and his voice tone down after such many scenarios happened to them.

He said “We should’ve known”

Archivist notices it too “Hulyir fighting in the middle of the dome, this is the second time I have to fight him while he preserved”

Rusic points out to their other companions “What’s with all the talking? We still have the other guy fighting the adventurers”

Ironno smirks “Eh, this is not the time for you not being clever, Rusic. You’ve seen Hulyir now”

Rusic feels the light overbears him with harsh mana drought, but this dwarf is resilient and couldn’t feel the mana drained nor the harsh crystals shard pin to his exposed skins. His overexaggerated thrills calm down and soon realize it too. His agitation comes to Hulyir’s body, and tried foolishly to cracked open.

“This little pathetic wimp, I’ll bring his soul to my gods to the damned if the daemos stop collecting souls for just an eternity . . .!”

Archivist bends the ground to slip him off to his feet. Down to the ground his rage bolden his fall, it hurts enough for him to fell unconscious.

Ironno shouts out Archivist “Don’t knock him out!”

Archivist picks the big oaf “I didn’t mean to do that. He will blow us up when that core opens . . .”

Voldemyr orders Ironno “We take this chance. Ironno, go make the barrel shot on the core”

“Barrel shot? You know how much mana can move under this light?”

“No, I don’t. But that hammer can be the trigger to push it through. Shoot, making it a javelin, or laser from what those Dexters told me, they aren’t real anyway”

Voldemyr goes by himself and find the others. Meanwhile Ironno shakes his head checks his materials if he could do it. While Archivist release his breath in exhaustion releasing the images of him in toxic air, preparing what Voldemyr told them.

Nowhere to go and nowhere to see, Silfa gathered her friends around her. Puma and the pet doll are the only ones are fighting Ka’zei. The pet doll gnaws at the core, losing its teeth from the core’s exposed mana to the light. Once its turns to shard, a chip of its able fangs on the core freeing from its grasp. The pet doll’s frightening claws gripped on to him again, but only his limbs as he tears it off like it was his lizard’s tail. All the cores move again and accordingly aimed at them. Spells sealed into crystallized balls. The pet doll approaches to it with its claws able to break causing a crystallized explosion in a big blast radius turned everywhere into crystallized dust.

Silfa is forced to use her ultimate. She took a deep breath and sees Puma is cheering her from a far and at the same time fighting Ka’zei. She can’t hear the sounds of its voice from the loud crashing of the crystals.

“I can do this” Silfa said it as she used her ultimate.

Links formed between her and her friends. Wounded or exposed, their powers are taken away as their abilities being transferred to her. Her UI pops out but couldn’t be read. She knows this a warning sign

“Warning! Allies’ abilities are transferred to you. They will be vulnerable . . .”

Then another one she remembers after “All abilities transferred. Duration: ___”

She forgets how long this ultimate will last, but she must do it quickly. She picks up their weapons; The rogue’s daggers, Heist’s hand claws, and something from the copy-cat, it was from Archivist’s bending. With limited knowledge she could remember how he uses it, she sets up her RAPs to match what she had remembered in the cartoon she remembered, matching it all together, and hoping it will work. There she feels something is not right, her ultimate links to the Rogue’s used of it. She didn’t make use of it properly.

The mistake was bending the environment. Too much exposure will ruin the body, and Archivist was able to do it, but lead to his exhaustion. Yet, there is something she feels about the bending on her body. She feels lighter and her body could break something by her own strength. Her magic items, this is what she thinks of using her mana bending for. She pulls out her shields, then thrown to the distance. She controls the mana from the shield creating small barriers to control its direction. The direction curved and turns as she aims it to Ka’zei.

The shields reach Ka’zei while he fights the two dolls. The shields bend with magic changing the impact and the speed. He sends his cores to block it with large radius crystal formation. The shields maneuvered around before it gets caught, the exposure reach her shields start to mold it bigger and heavier for the mana to move. Ka’zei with his exposed core on his belly, trying to find ways to fight back. The other cores tried to go find the fallen adventurers, but Puma catches it and plays with it by batting it back to him with its rituals. The pet doll persists to get him close, but the explosion of the cores releasing the crystals back away. It still doesn’t stop it.

Ka’zei is losing, the crystals are getting thicker made it harder for the cores to control. Time goes on as it will soon explode. Its core is recharging for the full blast, but it was negated by those spirits stubborn attacks. He thought he could handle this, but it seems he was blessed weakly. There is one thing left if they have to lose. A shield hits him from the front, a hole that is linear, size of claw length. He loses his focus and the pet doll made it in able to grabbed the core again.

The crystals start to fall apart into dust. Silfa comes in with the speed both Heist and the Rogue’s abilities. Quickly using their lethal attacks, all of her focus directly in one strike. The cores tried to stop her, and Puma intervene again. She hears its prideful voice

“Puma!” then it disappears again into the light.

Ka’zei’s body shatters leaving the core behind. Silfa don’t know how to control this ability as she overextends and pushes further without stopping. Into the dusts, as her runes are burning to its limits. As she gets through the random spirits and it swipe her to the side.

Silfa got knockback, back to her friends. The spirits finally found them, their angry wailings with a ferocious unbearable screeches reach to her ears. The curse is filling into her as her ultimate is over. It was too soon, Silfa didn’t remember this will end quickly. It was too sudden as the spirits are already hording themselves into them. She casts her forcefield out of reaction, but her mind is mumbled and couldn’t see where she used her forcefield. The protection barely covers all of them. The spirits found an opening and dragged them all out from the forcefield.

Heist and the Rogue still down, and couldn’t do anything.

Silfa calls out to Puma

“Puma use your devotee!”

“Puma!?”

The doll was shocked and forced to bring out its wings, calling down to Silfa’s aid and protect them from the heinous spirits. Puma can’t do anything but as a shield for her and her friends. Its rituals send to them to protect against the bad rituals. The doll’s body begins to tear apart as the spirits weighing heavily more than the stuff toy could handle. Puma’s spirit is enraging from their use of forbidden rituals. Puma roars as it is being destroyed.

Silfa’s eyes saw her doll shred. Her first pact spell with it, and sees its gone. She knows the spirits attack are killing intent. As the curse touches them, her eyes drip with tears as she shouts her doll’s name.

“PUMA!”

Suddenly a ray of unimaginable light rayed down to close to them. Causing the spirits crystallized even they have no bodies. A powerful spell that harms them, it’s the demonic spell. She turns around and sees someone is coming to save them. Voldemyr comes to the rescue with his fingers pointed to the enemy spirits.

Then one finger points at the cores. The ray of light persists on firing changes its target to the cores. The cores hit one by one in perfect precision, causing them to explode. A large mass of crystals erupted and blast all around. The ray of light turned flat horizontal and makes a crystal barrier. The explosion moves up to the barrier as the crystal barrier begins cracking. Silfa couldn’t move and only watch it happen. Her pet doll made it to her side after so much is happening.

“Meow”

The pet doll says it as its mouth is full with Puma’s remains. Silfa holds it and looks at the pet doll and Voldemyr.

In tears, she said

“Thank you”

softly.