What is this? Estelle thought, a hot anger bubbling up in her veins. Are we actualy being attacked by a world core? This should be impossible.
For that short moment, a strange lull of relative silence fell as the Arkenlanders looked up with the same question in mind. Only the foulbeasts growls and roars and wet, rattling, wheezing breaths continued on. Even Stormshard took pause, raising his noble head to look at the foreign, glimmering creature. It swept its wings open, one ruby red and the other as blue as midnight, and roared once again, baring its strangely mis-matchedly colored teeth as it tried to descend onto The Lair..
The air shook again, and a pillar of white fire as wide as some of Arkenlands smaller cities rose into the sky from the Lair, the invading amalgamation dragon beating its wings a single time to make the several kilometer dodge it took the mountain-sized monstrosity to avoid a hit. The Amalgamation, as Estelle dubbed it in her head, roared defiantly, the roar matched with a second one now; from The Lair rose another crystalline dragon, a pearly, shimmering white one; the only master that Estelle recognized, the holy Arkenland world core Herself. The master she’d sworn to serve.
“... soooooooo… is that bad?” Magnus asked.
“I’d like to say it’s just another Tuesday, but this actually doesn’t happen a lot.” Estelle answered, her perfect eyebrows raised a bit in the first tinge of surprise she’d felt this decade.
“NEIGH!” Stormshard called out, mightily.
“And indeed you are right. I think it’s time we go on ahead of the group, my old friend. We shall do what little we can to intervene...!” Estelle said to the unicorn as she summoned up and glanced at her status window.
> Name: Estelle ‘Hellbane’ Petunia
>
> Race: Human
> Level: 999 (MAX)
> Titles: Hellbane [Selected Title], Princess of Sunglory, Champion of Arkenland, Slayer of Helliondragonhoundbunnies, Hellsurvivor, Stormsoul of Arkenland, Friend of Unicorns, Most un-delicate of flowers, Out-drinker of Dragons, Skydolphin Tamer, Petunian Warlord, Conquerer of Fuc... [248 additional titles, click here to expand]
>
>
>
> HP: 999.999/ 999.999
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> MP: 874.398/999.999
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>
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> Attack: 99.999 (+779 equip bonus)
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> Endurance: 99.999 (+799 equip bonus)
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> Wisdom: 99.999
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> Dexterity: 99.999
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> Active selected skills: Voice of Champions [Remaining cooldown: 8 minutes 48 seconds], Render-blade, Unicorn Rush, Hasten Army, Charismatic Leader, Solar Heal, Unicorn Speech, Eagle Vision, Epic Hearing of the Greater Solar Bunny
>
>
>
> Resistances: [Deselected. Click here to expand]
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> Equipment:
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> Chainmail Bikini of the Ancient World
>
> If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
>
> Helliondragonhoundbunnybone zweihander sword
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> Embershard Tiara of the Sunglory Empire
>
> Boots of Walking
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> Greater Ring of Incomprehensibly Raised Attack
Still got most of my mana left after speed-boosting the army for three days… she thought casually and dismissed the window.
“Lets go, Stormy.” she said bluntly and patted the unicorn on his robotically jointed crystalline neck. A lesser woman would have burned off her skin against Stormshards overheated engine (especially with metal underwear being rather heat-conductive) but Estelle barely noticed it with her powerful heat resistance. With a mighty NEIGH, Stormshard reared up mightily on his mighty hind legs, kicked his front legs into the air a few times for the sake of his mighty image, and then, with all his mighty might, without even touching his front hooves down, bolted off straight into the air so quickly that they traveled faster than the speed of sound and left the NEIGH on the ground, wondering where they went. For a few brief seconds, as her sword sent hundreds of brightly glowing shockwaves flying into the enemies, slaughtering many thousands with great BOOMS (that she could not hear), they traveled in complete, companionable silence. With a few of the mighty Stormshards mighty leaps, they speared through the sparse clouds that swirled around the pillar-shaped mountain. With a few more, the meteor shower suddenly seemed almost close. Then, Stormshard landed on the temple grounds that gleamed in white marble at the peak of The Lair, the highest mountain in the world. The battling dragons were closer now, and truly mountain sized; and the abyss circle in the sky that had seemed a distant eye at the ground was humongous up close, dwarfing even the dragons. Every crack of that black lightning was, on its own, worthy of being called a storm, and sent chunks of rock from the temple flying each time it struck. Over the dragons and the lightning, she could hear the roaring, churning, burning flames of the rainbow meteors.
She gazed up at the two mighty contestants just in time to dodge one of the amalgamation dragons stray breaths of elemental magic. It was a strange thing as well, as strange as its creator, multi-colored flames from which she sensed several elements; raw arcane magic, fire, water, the power of the winds… just another thing impossible about this thing. A second, smaller bolt of this magic shot at her just a second later, and with keen eyes she spotted its source. On the head of this many-horned, many-colored abomination stood a single person, in grey, flowing robes and a large stick in his hand, raised with a glowing tip. They were little more than a small dot in the distance, but Estelles sharp eyes spotted them never the less. After a brief charge of magic, the mysterious mage stranger channeled another crashing multi-magic bolt at her, which Stormshard dodged once again. This bolt was far, far weaker than the humongous attack launched by the dragon… but even Estelle herself could not say that it was weak, rather, raw power was brimming within it.
“What do you think of that, Storm?” she muttered. “I cannot recall someone dressed like them from the board meetings, but.. with power like that, what else can they be, if not a foreign World Champion breaking all laws and rules of honorary conduct?”
“NEIGH!”
“My sentiments exactly…!” Estelle rumbled in a low growl and gritted her teeth, her eyes growing bloodshot with anger. “Breaking the very Isekai Conventions... insolence… such unforgivable INSOLENCE!!!”
“NEIGH!!!!!!”
At Estelles wordless command, Stormshard jumped into the air once again, landing on the head of the pearly white crystal dragon. It did not react to her presence, and seeing as it was rather busy at the moment, Estelle thought this totally reasonable. The little battle of champions that commenced was currently of little importance to the gigantic behemoths. Estelle raised her blade, pointing it at the stranger in challenge. They paused to look at her, the staff crackling with energy, and an understanding formed between them; the fight was on. They stared at each other for long, dragged out, slow-motion moments, as the dragons still clashed, until a bolt of black lightning cut off their sight of the other. It lasted for but a moment, but when the abyssal darkness cleared, the fight was on. Estelle raised Helliondragonhoundbunnyslayer and channeled a few tens of thousands of mana into the blade until it glowed with an intensity that would sear out the eyes of a lesser human. She swung it down, and an immense, glowing, crescent shockwave that literally hummed with power (it was humming that one power metal song, you know, the one with the guitars) sliced the air itself crashing into the skull of the amalgamation dragon. The amalgamation dragon did not care of course - even if it was deeply wrong somehow, it was still a crystal dragon, a World Core - but the mysterious mage atop of it was forced to dodge.
Despite the direness of the situation, Estelle found herself smiling. It was a cruel, lopsided smile full of hunger for battle, for it had been a long time since Estelle had faced an opponent who was not only strong enough to draw out her full power, but actually did something bad enough deserved it. A great thrill shot through every little vein and fibre of battle-hardened muscle in her body, and she laughed. This was an opponent who had been forced to dodge her attacks, after all. Whomever they were, they were someone she could kill.