Jonathan withdrew, letting the mages come to the fore, combining their power to create a wall of shields enveloping the army. A multicolored tapestry of color exploded into being, intercepting the projectiles. Wooden bolts cracked in half as they impacted swirling barriers of light and darkness. Cannonballs rolled harmlessly over the heads of Jonathan and his allies across sloped plains of rock. Once, he even saw a spike of gnarled metal discorporating, seeming to lose its place in space and time. Some elements were a lot rarer than others, and Time was one of the rarest. As far as Jonathan had seen, only Fate and his own element were more uncommon.

He waited out the deluge, and as the shields faded away, he clapped his hands together, and returned fire. A black hole spun into life before him, faster and more powerfully than before. Recently, he had used Void Missile more, as it allowed him to use his Domain more effectively. Now though, he found himself craving a bit more spectacle.

The air hissed as his projectile arced through it, surrounded by a hundred more from all sides of the spectrum in terms of origin. From the most basic of fireballs to spears of crystalline light, it made for an imposing display. He tracked his black hole as it went, smiling slightly as it struck one of the cannons mounted on the walls. The bronze gun vanished into the abyss, along with a dozen attendants and a good chunk of the wall. The wall that still stood, anyway.

Stamina cycled through his body like a raging scarlet river, and into his feet, mixing with his mana and elemental energy. His muscles briefly transformed into what felt like lightning rods, and he flashed forwards, leaving a crater in his wake. Where in the Ash Heaps he had crossed much of his infant city with this technique, now he could move miles with ease. He appeared in the gap between the walls, his fist already cocked back.

A few defenders were beginning to trickle out of the gap, mustering to face the army waiting outside. The nearest was blasted into pulp, metal armor turning into a spray of shards that eviscerated the more lightly armored of his fellows.

Jonathan heard a sonic boom as Edgar rode the wind behind him, just a few seconds of a delay before he arrived. A storm erupted into life within the factory, tearing apart the tentacles that stretched out from the monstrosity in its center.

“Just in time for all the fun?”

“Of course. I think we can both agree that the thing powering the factory needs to be burned until there’s nothing left. Although, I will settle for it being minced into powder by a tornado of wind blades,” Edgar replied.

More and more guards came pouring out of doors on the sides of the walls, all clad in the same strange mix of medieval armor and hazmat gear. Masks covered their faces, but for what purpose, Jonathan could not tell. There was nothing in the air save for the normal disgusting smell of the Spillway. Perhaps he and Edgar were simply too high leveled.

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The guards were decently leveled, but not anything special, and they died like flies, splattered by Jonathan’s punches, or sliced by Edgar’s blades of wind. As missiles screamed through the air above, two men laid waste to the combined forces defending the keep. At this rate, there would be no need for any help from the others.

Jonathan could have leveled the entire place on his own if he really let loose, but he was afraid of what would happen if he burst open the monster that was producing the fumes roiling out of the chimneys above. It was processing the energy of the corpses that it fed on for some malign purpose, and he had a feeling that interrupting it without any caution would be unwise.

Instead, he moderated his power output, only using his base stats to fight. It meant he could only kill his enemies one at a time, taking a few scant seconds each. Well, it felt like seconds for him, but it was a blink of an eye for the rest of the fighters.

“What the hell even is a second anymore?” He thought. “I’m moving far faster than that now, but it still feels like the same amount of time is passing.”

As he dealt with the guards, Hushar arrived, bellowing a mighty war cry. His sword came down, erupting to fifty feet in length as he extended his elemental energy along it. A dozen guards were cleaved in half in a single blow as he brought it down, and the ground shook beneath him.

Jonathan didn’t say anything, too engrossed in his own work. Edgar had neglected to use his buff on either of the two men yet, as there was hardly a need. This battle was far beneath them. It took barely three minutes for Jonathan to kill all of the remaining guards, with Hushar and Edgar mopping the rest up.

All that was left now was the unenviable task of dealing with the disgusting lump of flesh that even now pulsated and gyrated within the center of the keep.

“This is your job,” Edgar said quickly. “You can just coat yourself in Void energy, and burn away anything that comes close.”

“What friends I have…” Jonathan said, but he saw the man’s point. His armor gleamed as he extended a shell of purple energy over it, and with an uncharacteristically large degree of apprehension, he started towards the beast that lay in front of him.

As he neared, one of the tentacles lifted, the corpse on its end dangling in a horrific matter. A leering skull flopped from side to side as the monster shook the body around, before sending the tentacle inching towards Jonathan. As of now, it simply seemed curious. After all, with Jonathan’s protections up, he must have been hard to sense. Presumably, the only senses that it possessed were ones that allowed it to detect whatever it was that it removed from the bodies.

Jonathan scanned the monster as it continued to move the tentacle, soon met with a name that meant nothing to him.

Juvenile Alokarg

Level 280

Health: 225145/225145

Status: Healthy