Ray marched at the head of his little army. The site of their battlefield was approaching rapidly. He could already see the royal palace rising in the distance.
The plans had all been laid out. The talks had all been talked.
It was now time for the final showdown.
“You feeling like a conqueror yet, wingman?” Gritty asked beside him.
Ray stared at her. “What?”
“You said you had a Vocation called Tower Conqueror, right? Isn’t this what conquerors do? Lead giant armies to take over entire kingdoms and wage war?”
“This… is definitely not what I pictured.”
“No? I felt like it’s quite obvious.”
Ray sighed. “All I wanted was to control my life and the way I wanted to live on in this Tower.”
Gritty bumped his shoulder with a fist. “Look on the bright side! You get to fight, don’t you?”
“Fighting’s the bright side, huh?”
“Of course it is! Nothing’s as good as getting your hands soaked in the blood of your enemies.”
“Yeah…” Ray kept his eyes focused ahead as their battlefield came into view. “Just remember, we’re not supposed to be fighting the apparent enemy. We have to wait until the actual enemy is right in front of us.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was there at the meeting, wingman.”
Rising tension damped down the conversation. Not just theirs, but all the talk in the whole army. The battle was mere moments away from beginning.
Ray focused on what awaited them. The gate he had opened with the help of Adrian and the other Infected in his little group was now closed. But their plan accounted for how to get past it. That was all they had to do. Ray had destroyed the inner gate, so that was no longer an obstacle.
Of course, his primary suspicion was that the Everstead would be able to rebuild it without trouble. They were nothing more than highly-advanced Imitators after all. For all Ray knew, they could just bring in another Imitator from somewhere to become a new gate.
But the commander had said not to worry. The Everstead wouldn’t be able to erect a replacement in time.
“They’re ready,” Gritty said, eyeing the Everstead military lining the parapets on the walls.
Ray nodded. He looked back, taking in the host marching behind him. Everstead soldiers, Infected men and women haphazardly armed, new Denizens working alongside old Sylvans. “So are we.”
There was even the Eternal Guardian. Not among them directly but flying far high up in the sky. When the time came, Ray could use their ever-more-tenuous connection to call it down.
For how long was the important question. He had to hold onto the hope that it wouldn’t disappear mid-task.
A sudden roar pierced the area. The noise shrieked through them all, making the air itself shiver. Ray froze up as a patina of frost descended upon them, the temperature dropping several degrees in less than a minute. He looked around, unable to see the source of what was causing the strange wintriness.
Ray wasn’t alone in feeling it. Gritty was shivering a little beside him, a frown marring her features. Behind them, the rest of the army had come to a standstill. They were all cold.
“There!” someone shouted.
Ray looked up. Ah, shit. The attack on them had already started.
A Viledrake was flying straight towards them.
Ray: I’ll deal with it, Kredevel. You can handle things from here on, right?
Kredevel: Worry not. We will handle it.
Ray: Good luck.
Kredevel: If all goes well, we shan’t need luck.
Ray grinned as he closed the chat window.
“You faced one of those before, right, wingman?” Gritty asked.
Ray summoned up his wings. “Yep. I know how to deal with a Viledrake, although this one is a lot… colder.”
“Don’t freeze.”
Ray nodded. He spared her a short smile. “I’d tell you to not die, but really, I need to tell that to the Everstead.”
“Fuck off.” She grinned back.
As the Viledrake drew closer, Ray was met by the Eternal Guardian swinging down. Short and faint though the Mana connection between them was, Ray grinned.
The prospect of fighting the Viledrake while riding the Eternal Guardian sent an undeniable thill shivering down Ray’s spine.
“Hey, big guy,” Ray said. “Think you’re up for one more little journey? We’ve got a guest coming in we need to deal with.”
The Eternal Gurdian slowly lowered its shoulders in a gesture Ray recognized as an invitation. He quickly climbed up and got into position beside its huge head. The footing was strange. Despite feeling as though standing on a cloaked body would make him slip easily, his feet dug into nooks and crooks on the Guardian’s boy, leaving him with a more secure footing.
As the huge monster straightened to its full, majestic height, the Viledrake drew ever closer. Everything was turning even colder. Even the air felt heavier. His sight dimmed, the field of view shortening and turning fuzzy. Mist.
It didn’t take long for the changes to make sense. The Eternal Guardian took to the air, its ascent making Ray grip the cloak tightly with one hand.
He almost lost his grip when he finally saw the approaching monster.
The Viledrake was made of ice. Four huge limbs were made of jagged white-and-blue chunks, cracked and smudged with dirt. The huge, halo-like wings spreading off its back were as white as compressed snow. Its body was riddled with fissures, more and more of them cracking into being every second, each one accompanied by a noise like thunder.
It kind of made sense. The last one Ray had seen had been filled with lava, with Molten Mana. This one clearly possessed—
Fuck. That was Frozen Mana.
Ray squinted and looked closer. There! A figure was standing on the Viledrake’s enormous back. A rider, much like how Ray was riding the Eternal Guardian.
A rider he recognized well.
“Stop stealing my idea!” Ray shouted across to Mary Felds. “You can’t just come here, riding a giant monster. Have some originality for fuck’s sake.”
In typical Mary Felds fashion, she only swished an arm at Ray. Which immediately made the Viledrake open its massive jaws and belched out a crystal-rimmed roar, particles of snow and ice bursting and popping everywhere.
For its part, the Eternal Guardian responded with great speed. It rose off the ground, rushing to the air on wings spread wider than a jetliner’s.
Ray’s heart sped up by several degrees. This was actually happening. He was about to not only fight another airborne monster, but also its rider.
The two huge monsters flashed past each other. Ray had put some effort behind his teeth not chattering too much. The Viledrake was way too cold. It made him wonder how in all hells had Mary assumed control of it. Had to be with the help of the Everstead, no doubt.
Ray tried to fire at it with his draconic breaths. Primal Spiritcraft called up a Greater Windbane Maw on his hand, with which he sent a chaotic laser shooting at Mary and her gargantuan ride. They dodged easily. For the moment, they were distant enough that the Viledrake had no trouble evading.
Then Ray forgot all about shooting anything. The Eternal Guardian and the Viledrake made another pass at each other.
And this time, the monsters rammed straight into each other.
The collision nearly sent Ray flying off the Guardian’s shoulder. He was barely able to hold on, biting down to prevent himself from screaming at the impact. It was difficult not to lose his bearings as everything shook hard enough to break apart.
But the monsters didn’t separate. Didn’t continue fighting. They had clasped together, each trying to wrestle the other out of the sky as they both plummeted.
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“Make your dumb bird let go!” Mary shouted. “Before we crush you under our weight.”
Ray forced himself to get over the fear of biting off his own tongue in their chaotic motion. “None of this would be happening if you didn’t copy my mojo, Mary. If you didn’t decide, for some insane reason no doubt, that I’m supposed to be your enemy.”
“What in the fuck are you if not my enemy?”
Ray could hardly believe his ears. “I could have been your friend. Is that so hard to believe?” He decided there was no point asking such stupid questions, or worse, waiting for even stupider answers. “You can still end this, Mary. I know you can control this Viledrake. Make it stop.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll be forced to kill you.”
She brandished her sword. A thin rapier that looked more like an oversized icicle. “Just like you killed my sister?”
“I did no such thing,” Ray said. “But just for that, I am going to kill you. Can’t believe Alice had you for a sister.”
That was clearly the wrong thing to say because Mary shouted. Ray ought to have checked her new status, but there was no time now. All he could do was react as she manifested her first ability while they continued to fall erratically.
Dozens of ice shards materialized in the air over them. They shone and glinted, edged like broken glass and each big enough to punch a hole through a tank.
The monsters’ wrestling had devolved into pure savagery. While the Viledrake’s deadly cold grip was trying to directly freeze the Gurdian, the huge birdlike monster was trying to rip its enemy apart with its gigantic beak. The Gurdian completely ignored where the Viledrake had its jaws clamped on its upper arm, determined to out-damage the other monster.
So it was up to Ray to protect the Guardian from attacks by Mary. He cast Mottling Spiritguard to throw up the chaotic orbs. His defence was surefire. The orbs did well to stave off the ice shards from hitting either him or his huge ally.
Especially once he inserted some Molten Mana into the Spiritguard orbs using Origin Resonance and his Viledrake tail.
A side-effect was the orbs melting the patches where ice had taken over the Eternal Gurdian near him. That emboldened the huge monster. It began turning around, forcing the Viledrake to aim downwards. Now, when they hit the ground, it was Mary’s ride that would suffer the worst of the impact.
She recognized it too. Despite the sudden shift, she didn’t fall off. Instead, she leaped around the Viledrake, stepping on spontaneously appearing steps made of pure ice. What an annoying ability.
Then she struck. Not at Ray, which he would have been happy to deal with. Her blow was directed at the Gurdian.
Ray had run out of Spiritguard orbs to defend anybody with, but he still had his draconic maw. It was no great a matter to shoot a laser breath. “Take that—what?”
The compressed beam of chaotic fire passed right through where Mary should have been. It was nothing more than a construct of snow. A fake. Much like Ray could summon an Imitator construct to take his place, Mary could create an illusion using her Frozen Mana. Fuck.
With a cry, the Eternal Guardian lost control of the other monster. Ray twisted around to a spear of ice jutting through its shoulder.
Of course, Mary had distracted Ray while attacking from a different direction.
The Viledrake kicked off the Eternal Gurdian, quickly taking to the air as the ground neared. It was regaining its elevation rapidly. Meanwhile, they were still plummeting.
“You got this, buddy!” Ray said. “Don’t die!”
With a sudden jerk, the Gurdian threw Ray off. He cursed, but at the same time, he understood what was going on. The ground was close enough. A quick cast of Primal Spiritcraft had him calling up Soaring Wings on his back to let him fly on his own, without the need of the Guardian.
The monster itself crashed to the earth with a heavy impact, sending up a cloud of dust that overtook Ray himself. He had at least seen the Gurdian spread out its wings to slow down its plummet at the last second.
Not too little, not too late. Primordial Gauge kept Ray informed that the Eternal Guardian wasn’t dead yet.
He grinned. “Of course, you’re not dead. You’re a giant monster. You can’t die that easily.”
Their opponents weren’t done with them. From up on high, the Viledrake was unleashing a devastating attack. A blizzard coughed up into being around the draconic monster, huge boulders of ice materializing within it like icy meteors.
A second later, they came hammering down in a devastating rain.
Ray wasted no time countering. He rushed through the dust after taking a quick breath, shading his eyes against the grains floating in the air. As he reached the Guardian, he summoned up several flying Greater Windbane maws with Lifeblood Soulform.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” he said. “I got your back.”
The three flying heads, plus the one on Ray’s hand, all fired off their breaths at once. What followed was a series of detonations far up in the air where the beams of chaotic fire contacted the icy metros. A few slipped through, but Ray had used Mottling Spiritguard a couple of times. That was enough to take care of the remainder of the Viledrake’s attack.
As bits of burning, broken, and now harmless ice rained around them, the Eternal Guardian roared.
Ray grinned. “Back online, big guy? Well, fight’s not over yet.”
As though in response to Ray’s words, the Eternal Guardian got back to its feet, rising out of the dusty and icy murk. It screeched out a challenge to the Viledrake, which answered with its own icy roar.
Ray’s ears cringed at the noise. The very air shivered. But he kept a hold on his grin.
“Let’s go!”
As the Eternal Guardian took off, the Viledrake shot out its own laser breath. It was the attack Ray hadn’t properly seen on the first Viledrake. A beam of pure Frozen Mana, not that different from the breaths that his own draconic maws fired, thundered towards them.
The Eternal Guardian was distant enough to dodge it without difficulty. When the Viledrake tried to cut it across them, Ray fired off his own laser breath at it.
He grinned as it exploded. Just as he had thought. The Viledrake’s concentrated blast of Mana was no less volatile as the breaths from the Windbane draconic maws.
Unwilling to be charged into, the Viledrake twisted about and quickly dodged away as the Gurdian rushed by. Mary yelled out something that was lost to the wind as they passed. Sounded kind of like a curse.
Ray grinned. It had worked. He had figured the Eternal Guardian wouldn’t be able to hit Mary and her ride directly. But his Spiritguard orbs were a different matter.
All the orbs that had survived the impacts from the icy meteors shot at Mary and the Viledrake as they passed by. Ray had imbued them all with Molten Mana, turning them from orbs of sparking chaos to heavy spheres filled with lava. The impacts were deliciously effective.
The Viledrake cried as entire chunks of it vaporized. Ray hadn’t been able to aim carefully enough, but the way the orbs had spread as they shot outwards had been enough. They had struck the monster’s wings and limbs, setting off explosions of steam, sending out rocky, icy chunks flying everywhere.
But it was far from cowed. Especially not its rider. The Viledrake was too far away for its tail swing to hit the Guardian, but it was enough to launch Mary at them like a small rocket.
The Eternal Guardian couldn’t dodge fast enough. She was on them in a second.
“Keep going!” Ray said as his huge monster ally brought its charge towards the Viledrake to a halt. “I’ll take care of her. Get the Viledrake before it recovers.”
There was no way to tell if the Gurdian actually understood his words, or if it was some translation of commanding intent through the connection forged by the Songstress Tower Node. The important thing was that it worked. With another piercing cry, the Guardian rushed towards the injured Viledrake.
Mary was having none of it, of course. She rushed up the Guardian’s cloak way too fast.
“Coming here to die in person?” Ray asked. “I’ll give you points for bravery.”
She didn’t reply, slicing in at him fast like she was skating on ice. Her arm drew back before unleashing a skill that made the rapier multiply into twenty or thirty projections, all of them jackhammering at Ray.
He had seen it coming. Impervious Shell appeared between him and Mary, taking the entirety of the skill’s damage. While it cracked and shattered at certain spots, the shell held firm.
Mary leaped to its top with the grace of a cat. Ray swung in a Soulstrike but she bashed it aside with her sword. Were her stats so high that she could more or less fling back Ray’s skills with just her weapon? Couldn’t be. She wasn’t even as high a level as Ray. Probably some innate property of her rapier.
With Ray’s attack pushed aside, Mary rushed him. Her ice shards followed in her trail, all of them shooting at Ray. He had called up a salvo of Spiritguard orbs just in time.
They blocked and collided with the shards. But that created a chaotic rain of black-red fire and spiky pieces of ice. Ray did his best to ignore it and get a proper angle on Mary to hit her with the draconic maw. She swung past him too fast, unfazed by the pandemonium, then slicing her blade with a frosty slash.
Ray dodged, thanks to Soullife Cloak boosting his speed. She still caught his wing, though.
Just as he got busy de-summoning and resummoning Soaring Wings, Mary flipped over the edge of the Eternal Guardian’s side. Cursing, Ray was about to follow, before he remembered just how fast she was. By the time he reached the spot Mary had “fallen off”, she could already appear behind him.
Ray used Lifeblood Soulform to—
The Eternal Guardian cried out a split millisecond before a spear of ice burst out of its flesh. Ray didn’t see it coming at all. Like the creature he was allied with, he was speared through as well.
The pain was terrible. It was only the shock, unbelievably worsened by the sheer coldness around his injury, that prevented a scream from slipping out.
Fucking Mary Felds had gotten him.
Worse, she was behind him. Focusing on Primordial Guage pinpointed her location even as he moved faster than he thought possible. She was poised to stab in from behind, finally ending Ray.
But Lifeblood Soulform had worked, even if Ray had been interrupted. So, he used Spectral Step.
Mary’s blade stabbed through empty air as Ray reappeared next to his Imitator construct. He was already using his Recovery to fix up his injury, biting through the pain to focus. It helped that the agony was quickly going away.
Of course, Mary wasn’t going to sit back and let Ray heal himself up. But he was ready. When Mary came to attack next, she faced the Imitator.
The construct that had taken her exact form.
And promptly froze at a single touch from Mary Felds. Ray gawked a little. What kind of skill let her do that? Would she be able to freeze him just as rapidly with nothing but a touch?
Ray didn’t even get the time to check if his construct was actually dead or not. Mary attacked again. This time, she did so via completely different dimension.
“I’ve had enough of you,” she yelled out. Her voice rapidly changed, turning into a distorted warble that still retained all her ferocity and vitriol. “It’s time you died.”
Ray had a hard time even understanding what kind of attack it was. Everything was turning solid around him, like Mary had frozen reality itself. Things turned bitterly cold. Light twisted and bent at odd angles, like… like he was stuck in a prism of ice.
And through this prism, Mary moved with what felt like the speed of light. Compared to Ray, at least, who was stuck completely. He could barely move, failed to even call out his spells, especially with how quickly Mary was almost upon him, stabbing in with that oversized frozen needle.
For a fleeting second, Ray wondered if this was what his Imitator construct had felt as it was flash-frozen.
His construct.
His construct.
Just as the pain of Mary’s first strikes bloomed, the frozen construct changed form. Ray had sent his will, his concentration, his desperation to survive and win. Ice crackled and shattered as the Imitator construct turned into a flying Greater Windbane Maw.
It promptly belched out a detonating blast of chaotic flames. The prism and everything within it exploded, Ray himself flying back. Thankfully, he managed to latch onto the Eternal Guardian’s shoulder.
Mary Felds had no such luck. She screamed as she shot off the giant monster. The Viledrake had already disengaged from its opponent, so there was no place for her to fall back on. It made Ray realize that she probably had elevation limits for her mid-air ice-step skill just like he had for Soaring Wings.
But Ray’s faint hope that the construct’s fiery blast meant Mary plummeting to her death was lost in the next second.
“This isn’t over,” she shouted, even as she continued falling. “You will die, Raymond.”
Before Ray could reply, the Viledrake flashed in. The Eternal Guardian began swooping forward, but it was too late. The oversized icy reptile opened its huge jaws and swallowed Mary whole.
Both Ray and the Eternal Guardian froze. Now that wasn’t something he had expected. Had Mary really allowed herself to be eaten by her ride?
A moment later, the Viledrake roared, its whole body glowing with white energy.
“Oh boy,” Ray muttered. “Please don’t tell me she just became the Viledrake.”