Enthralling Touch slithered through the sporadic lines of Graymin as they rushed toward the vulnerable remains of Morothin. Jiran didn’t kill the tier fours or fives he drained, instead leaving them for the Forkara to boost their EXP. Without mana, the weaker beasts were slow, lacked power, and their regenerative capabilities were reduced to that of a child. With empty manapools, tier six rooks were incapable of shaping and launching the rocks that were their deadliest weapons. They were also large enough to be easily spotted and ganged up on by Bladewinds.

The stolen strength of the horde flowed into a winding river that Jiran directed into his allies. He made sure to top off Lostrifar’s formation blocks, which were thankfully intact. Compacted aura and multiple sheets of ice deflected the boulders flung his way. Elemental Castigation summoned balls of deadly fire that he blew into the horde, gouging sizzling holes in their ranks.

When enough damage was done, and the Unbroken arrived to unleash walls of destructive ice, he left. The weight of every passing minute was immense, and Jiran’s eyes were glued to the horizon, dreading the approach of another all-encompassing shadow. He made a quick pit stop at the hole he and Mayalyn used the last two days. There, he grabbed a heavy metal box with his aura before collapsing the small space.

He then rapidly traveled north under an obfuscating layer of bent light. Once far enough away from his own people, he released a steady stream of Gravity Bombs, decimating the beasts and turning their mad dash toward the broken city into nothing more than a clean-up operation for his allies.

With the initial densoon storm dissipated, the skies were clear enough to observe the Forkara spread out across the edge of the mountains. Their prowess on the front lines was nothing compared to what they could do in terrain that so perfectly suited their natures. They dove from cliffs at ridiculous speeds for their tiers, unleashing sweeping ranged bombardments that left their far slower prey in pieces. Maneuvering with impressive natural talent, they used crags and sharp ridges to block sight and fall back before diving all over again. The Graymin who were capable of flight fared far less well than those on land; they were circled and torn apart without ever having a chance to reach their opponents.

Jiran flew higher and higher until the mountains looked no larger than small bumps on the ground. It only took a few minutes for a gap in the shifting clouds to reveal the missing mountain. He approached at his fastest speed that allowed him to remain hidden. Holding the metal box in his arms, he tucked his aura in tight before descending on what was now a flat section of land roughly four kilometers across.

Thanks to Mana Omnis, he easily pinpointed a dozen groups of rooks scouting on the nearby peaks. They were hidden well beneath the snow, and the visible parts of their bodies had even taken on a white hue.

That explains why we didn’t get any reports about what they were doing.

Jiran ignored the camouflaged beasts to follow the numerous tier six beacons already surrounding another nearby mountain. Based on the size of the Imperial army, he estimated there were at least five hundred thousand rooks. They worked tirelessly to detach the mountain from the ground, ripping and tearing huge chunks of rock, stone, and ore with every swing of their mana-infused arms.

The excess materials were compacted and thrown backward, creating a rumbling racket and a massive ring of soil that circled the entire mountain. As though cutting down a massive tree, they burrowed into its base, cutting out a three-meter-tall layer. With each step closer to the center, more of their numbers were left behind. They placed their hands on the ceiling, holding up the weight of the mountain while infusing enough elemental energy into the gargantuan projectile to stabilize it.

Why are they doing this to begin with? If they attacked the front lines with this many tier sixes, they might have overwhelmed us already. I suppose one tier nine staying behind could have wiped out the lot of them.

I’ll need to kill as many of them as possible with my opening attack. It would be impossible to track down even half of them if they scattered afterward. I can either wait for them to finish cutting out that layer and then drop it on their heads, or use the new formations to wipe them all out instantly. Screw that. Why choose? I'll do both. If one fails, I'll have a backup.

Jiran flipped the metal box upside down and forty cubes fell out, each the size of his palm. He held one in his hand and surrounded it with a mixture of mana and detached aura just like he’d practiced. With a flicker of intent, the cube shrunk and vanished into a nearby synapse. The cube zipped away along a zigzag path down the framework. A moment later, it successfully completed its Teleportation, arriving a meter underground after displacing the dirt when it re-expanded.

He breathed a sigh of relief. This had been his first attempt at Teleporting an actively charged weapon formation. The previous attempts had all been on the scouting formations. He still had no intention of attempting to Teleport himself.

Jiran made a slow ring around the mountain, maintaining his invisibility while periodically Teleporting cubes into the ground. The projected blast radius of each was nearly five kilometers, while the original ones he made before Mayalyn’s ingenious idea were only three. He hadn’t tested them yet to be sure, so he stuck with a distance that would almost certainly overlap, causing a chain reaction if he triggered even one.

Once done, he found a position on the ground and waited. It took the rooks six hours to burrow out the entire layer of the mountain. Inside, the beasts shuffled energetically like a colony of bugs. When the mountain began to shake, Jiran made his move. He dropped the layer of obfuscating elemental light to focus all his minds on creating as many chakrams as possible. He chose to use fire, as the heat would melt the rock above and below the missing layer of mountain, further destabilizing their ability to hold the gargantuan structure above their heads.

Multiple beams of crimson energy raked across the backs of the outermost rooks. This was his first time firing into so many tier sixes at once and he quickly realized their tough bodies were absorbing the energy faster than anticipated. Normally, his chakrams could decimate everything within a line two kilometers long, but with only higher-tier beasts as targets, he was barely managing five hundred meters. If he didn't increase the speed he was killing them, there was a good chance they would manage to launch the mountain before he made a dent in their numbers.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The monsters were far from idle after his opening salvo. Three dozen boulders raced toward his position from the nearby peaks. Unlike his time dealing with the rooks in Mortan, he could now easily perceive the attacks. Mana and aura forced his body through a complex series of evasive maneuvers even as Enthralling Touch connected with the closest of them to restore his mana.

The boulders zipped past from above, blasting into the ground with a thunderous crash. Elemental Castigation charged another five chakrams of super-heated plasma. This time, Jiran joined his lasers into a single beam that pierced deep into the ranks of beasts inside the mountain. Through that gap they created, his sixth and final beam carried a gravity bomb that detonated directly in the center.

The bomb contained five percent of his mana, which wasn’t nearly enough to absorb and store so much rock. It only managed to absorb around three hundred meters before the compressed matter was expelled. Due to the blast being contained inside the thin layer dug out of the mountain, its explosive force was amplified, devastating a large portion of the remaining tier sixes.

The mountain rumbled and shook before dropping on top of the survivors, trapping them under far too much weight to easily escape. A gargantuan clap resounded, releasing an expanding wave of dust that Jiran used to hide himself from the sniping mountain-top rooks.

After reactivating his obfuscations, he used Mana Omnis to track the trapped beasts while considering how to deal with them. Their numbers were already reduced to half, which was still more than enough to swamp his allies' defenses on the front line.

Without warning, the framework directly around Jiran went haywire; perfectly matching the intensity of Foresight’s ringing warning in his neck. The vibrational sense he had begun to understand in The Land of the Lost was screaming holy hell, as though enemies were approaching from every direction. Not seeing anything, but trusting his senses, Jiran slunk away in a crouch while pulling his mana and aura in tight to create the least disturbance in his surroundings.

My obfuscation isn't perfect. It only works well when I move slowly. With all the rooks on the peaks, if I try to fly out of this dust in a hurry, they’ll definitely spot me and their attacks would be much more accurate if I was flying in a straight line. I should avoid trying to flee too quickly. But this feeling… something bad is definitely coming. Did the rankers miss a higher tier on their way north?

Before Jiran could make up his mind on the best course of action, a tier seven Graymin arrived in a series of rapid Teleportations. He recognized the quick and sleek Slayer variant from Mortan. The ones he’d killed there had been annoying to pin down due to their reduced Teleportation cooldown.

Jiran couldn’t help but feel a pang of longing to rip the beast to shreds and absorb the challenger density tantalizingly waiting just below its skin. Luckily, the compulsion was weak and easily discarded because, within five seconds, there were nearly a hundred more tier sevens blinking through the air. They swarmed his previous position, which now felt far too close for comfort, and went to work tearing apart the ground.

When nearly five hundred more tier sevens came bounding into the valley from every direction, Jiran’s blood ran cold and sweat soaked the inner layer of his armor. It wasn’t the rapid appearance of so many tier sevens that terrified him as he was confident he was faster than them; it was the fact that nearly every one of them was completely devoid of mana, making them invisible to Mana Omnis.

The rooks and the mountain were a trap! There’s no way it's a coincidence they have no mana and arrived so quickly. Were they targeti—

Jiran’s train of thought was shredded as several clues simultaneously aligned within his minds: The words of the Graymin, demanding to bring, ‘Him,’ his hypothesis that the beasts had the ability to steal the skills of the creatures they devoured with the filth, the appearance of the king so quickly after his exploits in Mortan, the way the pawns all screamed in unison when he first displayed Enthralling Touch, and now, this ambush, designed specifically to catch someone capable of draining mana. The beasts had even waited until the rankers were drawn north to spring their trap.

Everything that’s happened, this entire war, it was all orchestrated to catch, kill, and consume… me.

As if under the commands of a general, the few tier sevens with even an ounce of mana remaining inside their manapools leaped high into the air. They hovered in a loose circle, surrounding a figure that emerged from the clouds. This newest beast wore an eerily familiar smile. Jiran would never forget those eyes that glistened with wicked intelligence. Even before Identify confirmed its health was nearly fifty percent greater than a normal slayer, he knew it was the very beast that nearly killed Reihnhardt and Ravenna before the Remalon arrived.

It escaped him once, wisely fleeing before ever exchanging blows with him, and now it was back to settle the score.

With a pointed finger, it directed the airborne tier sevens who began systematically blasting the ground in a web-like search pattern. Jiran crept further away, but the violet blasts of destructive energy drew closer far faster than he was moving. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before they found him.

- Above the ruins of Morothin -

Nine figures in dark robes Teleported into the stratosphere high above a raging battle. Deep hoods hid their features but failed to prevent them from gazing down at the mixed forces of humans and abominations that clashed against the Graymin, holding the beasts back with unsettling ease.

“They threw a mountain, how unsettling,” One of the hooded figures remarked while dipping his head in deference to their leader who stood disinterestedly at the northern edge of their formation.

Another commented, her tone curious, “Yet they have not been overwhelmed. The abominations are more powerful than our estimations.”

“They must be cleansed!” A third figure raised his hand, palm pointed toward the fighting far below.

Their leader spoke for the first time, his voice a whip that caused them all to flinch, “Don't you dare, Twelve. Unless you wish to revisit the penance chamber so soon. The same goes for the rest of you. Until our prime objective is complete, any wasted mana will be considered dereliction of faith.”

Twelve shuddered, his hand dropping to his side in a flash. He stood unmoving after that with his head lowered, not making a sound.

The leader continued, his voice now calm yet commanding, “Three, have you located Jiran of Feylon?”

“No, Sir. He is not here. Is it possible he fled?”

“Based on his previous exploits, it’s more likely he chose to assist the princess in countering the Gray’s new strategy. Three, find and secure him. He must not be allowed to expire before the cardinal has his answers. The rest of you will come with me to ensure the emperors’ demise. Let the Graymin clean up the abominations for us. If they can’t then we shall return.”

“What of the new portals?” Three questioned.

“Leave them for now. If the worst comes to pass, they will be our only path out of the empire.”

“If they are so valuable, should we not secure them?” The curious woman asked.

The leader’s voice turned harsh, causing the gathered Templari to instinctively tremble, “We have no way of knowing if sealing them in a barrier would destabilize them. Just one more reason why securing Jiran is such a high priority. He must not be allowed to die.”

He directed the last to Three who nodded sternly, “I understand, One. I will fulfill my duty, or embrace the Voice’s serenity.”