"Kill him," the Master's voice is heard by everyone outside the confines of her mountain. It isn't a loud or menacing war cry, but instead a quiet, subtle whisper. An infallible order given out by a confused core, stuck in her grief.
On her command, everyone who was hidden away and waiting in the shadows of the trees attacked. Waves of wolves spring from the darkness and charge the soldiers as Trixie and her pack lead the attack on the army's right flank. From the shadows to their left, Webster and the Willies appear. Behind them are a horrifying number of arachnids, drooling venom and hissing as they rush forward. From behind the King's army, the trees and everywhere else wolves and spiders were not, Lila and her oversized Bats appear, preventing anyone from the invading army from fleeing.
If that would have been all the invading army had to deal with, some of them may have made it out alive. Unfortunately for the aggressors, shadows were everywhere. Not only were monsters hidden in the darkest areas unable to be penetrated by human eyes, but so too were Assassins hidden beneath their very feet. The center of the army has already begun to fall, before the monsters can hit the outer line.
At least the men trying to hold the line can fight back. The soldiers unfortunate enough to have an Assassin in their shadow don't have the luxury of worrying about where they should have been positioned.
They're already dead.
Fangs tear into throats as Trixie and her pack run wild. Spider legs pierce through armour while some soldiers lay spasming on the ground, full of venom. Lila and her airborne army launch unsuspecting victims into the sky, letting gravity do most of their work for them. And everywhere, but nowhere, the Assassins claim kill after kill. Surrounded on all fronts and from within, the invading army was helpless and was offered no aid from their King.
The invading army is quite weak and is now in the process of being literally ripped apart, which was shocking compared to the person leading them. The King, who had launched such a devastating attack, merely watches as his army is being torn to shreds. With their formations torn apart, the army's ranks are diminishing at an astounding rate. Soldiers are being decapitated, webbed, poisoned, clawed, bitten and thrown through the air as Abi's family mercilessly slaughters them all.
Bodies burn from Dark magic, spasming as their blood merged with the red mist which has risen over the killing field. Smoke drifts to the sky and Dragons have begun to gather above, circling overhead. Their aid is, for now, unneeded as the enemy numbers drop faster than Abi's points during a Land Acquisition spree.
The King himself, since the battle had begun, had been surrounded by a new barrier, simply watching events unfold without a shred of emotion. He offered no intervention at all, seemingly uninterested. Even still as his troops are being slaughtered in droves, neither he nor his three personal guards put forth any effort to help.
The eyepatch twins and a third man in a grey robe still stand with their King and it is only when the woman laying at the bottom of the tower tries to stand up, despite her missing limbs, do they show any reaction. What happened next surprises all four of them, evident by the look of shock and stupor written across their faces.
Another woman, identical to the first in every way except uninjured, appears standing next to the former in a flash of blue light. There were no spacial disruptions around her, no mana fluctuations in the air and she hadn't fallen from the sky. She was just there. Her eyes are closed, but she is very much present.
Not paying attention to the able-bodied version of her, the injured woman still looks toward the three small girls. None of whom are moving. They had shielded their master at the cost of their own lives. The damage caused by the demonic energy was too much for the triplets' barrier to handle and as it shattered, Abi had been driven back by the power. She and the energy had passed through the girls. None of them had survived. Each Oblivion Dragon had only been level 1 and they were unable to withstand the blast.
As she turns her despondent gaze upon the King, it turns to one of hate. A primal rage burns behind the eyes of her dying body, wishing unending death and destruction on him.
If looks could kill, King Aldus would have died a dozen deaths there and then.
However, such was beyond her and her body gave out. She stills as her body collapses to the ground, rage and hate still written on her face. In the next moment, the new woman adopts the same expression and opens her eyes. They are glaring the same glare her predecessor had worn.
"How dare you?" Are the only words she speaks before she begins to concentrate the mass of power inside her body into a single point. Squashing it down as more is constantly replenished, fuelled by the dungeon, her family and most of all, the triplets. A ball of concentrated mana, no bigger than an apple and without any elemental property to speak of, forms in front of her outstretched arm.
It is as bright as a star. Lacking colour, but still shining so brightly. Becoming denser and denser by the second, yet showing no signs of enlargement, she keeps fuelling it more and more and eventually even the fabric of reality begins bending to its will. All of a sudden, the air swirls and crackles around the star of mana as it pulls in power from elsewhere. It keeps on pulling until it becomes a pitch-black orb.
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King Aldus finally begins moving again to avoid foolishly waiting to receive the coming attack. He attacks again using the same demonic power as before, with twice as much power as his first attack. The King throws it directly at the one being he perceives to be a threat. The woman with eyes of jade.
This time, however, a shield of darkness rises from the ground before her. It takes the full force of the King's attack and remains unbroken, standing strong and yet going a step further. Instead of shattering and dispersing or being deflected, the mass of demonic energy is instead swallowed whole by the wall of shadows leaving the King aghast.
From behind their master, the figureheads who had been atop the tower have come to her aid, all casting the same skill together.
Cloak of Shadows.
Normally, it would be classed as a simple skill. One that creates a veil around the caster's body. The high-levelled Assassins have taken it a step further than that and create a blanket of darkness to protect the woman still amassing energy. The ball of magic is starting to look more like a void in space. A dark sphere of raw power, all it touches fated to be erased from reality.
As the cloak recedes, Light steps forward and activates a second skill. His Grand Skill. After reaching level 100 in his main class, the Master Assassin had been granted the skill, Night's Embrace. One that darkened even the brightest of days.
The sun flees across the sky as though chased by the God of Water himself and is quickly replaced by the moon. The night sky is dark with only the moon and stars to illuminate the killing field, but as it does, it offers one more additional buff to the growing list of those that are already in play.
On top of Abi's Mist, which offers a 20% boost to attack and regeneration, there is also Talia's Tavern, The Syndicate, The Mage and Adventurers Guilds and everything in-between which boosts health, attack, defence, magic and speed. Light's new skill offers a further increase on top of them all. It boosts all the active bonuses within range by a further 25% and applies them to anyone that he considers to be allies, regardless of alignment.
The King is thrown off by the shift from dawn to dusk, as well as the ineffectiveness of his missing magic, as he begins conversing with the eyepatch twins about the shadow shield and why his attack had failed. They, however, are none the wiser compared to him.
An ear-splitting sound begins to cry out from the mass of power under Abi's control. Their master is finally ready, and the whole of the defending force flees from the line of fire as their master whispers underneath her breath, "Die."
She releases the energy directly at the King. Space splits and reality distorts as the ground is carved away by the power of the attack alone. "Danil!" The King shouted. The person in the grey robes standing next to the eyepatch twins, Danil, springs into action. Just before the energy can tear them apart, he teleports their group away to safety. Or to what safety they can find, as they are still on dungeon-owned ground.
Abi's attack doesn't stop with the disappearance of the King, however. The now aimless force that has been released continues on through the forest and across the countryside. It passes through the ashen remains of the elf's former home, rising as it ignores the curvature of the planet. Eventually it rises above tearing up the earth, continuing through and over the trees and onto the mountains, cutting through them without resistance and then passing over the ocean. It continues on past the atmosphere and doesn't even stop there.
It is surely not their master's intention that a noticeable portion of the moon is erased from the sky. The void sphere thus disappears into the galaxy beyond, after it had left its mark on not only the moon, but Tironia itself.
The King hasn't got far as Marie, the wily-old Space Mage, had erected a closed-circuit teleportation field the moment he and his army entered Abi's territory. The King's Space Mage, Danil, will still be able to move them about with short jumps, but they won't be able to escape the dungeon's reach so easily.
They are not, however, attempting to escape. King Aldus, Danil and the eyepatch twins appear in the eastern forest. They aren't alone for long though as Abi and the Assassins follow right behind, leaving Trixie and the others to finish off the human army.
"Do it now!" the King yells at his three remaining subordinates. Eyepatch A and B do as they're told and begin to cast a spell. It takes them a few seconds, but that is all the time they need and a portal opens in the eastern forest. Not the regular type of portal you would expect to see other Space Mages using though. Not that those are in use anymore, mass teleportation being the more efficient means of travel.
Instead, the eyepatch twins have created what could only be described as a portal glimpsing the land of nightmares. One that doesn't look like it leads anywhere that anyone would want to go willingly.
Portals are generally sized like small doorways. This one is large enough to be classed as a warehouse all by itself. Flames made of purple, red and black, all clash against each other, but come together to form the outer frame. Through the stupidly-sized doorway, terrible creatures can be seen on the other side of the mirror-like fabric.
The portal lets them gaze into the beyond and what they see in that twisted place are demons. Not the demon-controlling King type, as he's rather unique, but the 'we're evil as fuck and will eat anything' kind of demon. Tentacle-like appendages and boney spikes protrude from their bodies in what can only be described as a massive freak show. There is no colour to them, other than varying shades of the same pale grey.
It is a horrifying scene and the demons covered the inner landscape as far as the eye can see. They are in what appears to be a desert with a red sky. There's no sun or moon, or anything other than demons. First, one demon notices the portal. Then another. Then more. They begin to run, sprinting towards the portal alerting more of their kind as they scream in joy. It starts a rush and a wave of demonic bodies begins fighting amongst themselves. Vying to be among the first to cross the threshold. Snarling and screaming, they fought towards their freedom.
From what the defending force can see, beyond the portal is a ridiculous number of demons. Easily more than three times the number of troops that had made up the King's original army and that's only the ones that can be seen. Who knows how many demons King Aldus just released onto the world.