‘Hera. I can awaken someone else, but it will increase my skill cooldown,’ Forge said to the Empress while they were watching Delta be dragged away by the water.
‘Let’s awaken Shadow. I’m hoping the Heirloom can awaken too. And even if it doesn’t. I think sealing skills is our best shot,’ Hera quickly replied as the wave died down. They still had precious moments with Delta trapped inside the bubble.
Shadow approached and received the awakening from Vulcan. He already looked like he was an error in the world. As if reality itself was glitching. But it was a solid form. Now, he emanated that dark, unnatural shadow like an inverse light. When Hera moved him, she could see the flickers of the shadow as if they were flames in a bonfire. It reminded her of some effects Dark Star would create during her shows, but more ominous. To anyone else, looking at the scythe might be unnerving, as if they were staring at something that shouldn’t belong in this world. But for Hera, it was just curious and beautiful. She trusted Shadow completely, which stopped her from needlessly worrying.
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Shadow - Scythe - Stealth Affinity
Duke Alabaster
Attribute Scaling:
Empress Attributes: 852
Agility X 20.5, Endurance X 18, Luck X 18,
Strength X 3, Intelligence X 3, Charisma X 3
Active Skills:
Shadowstep Strike - Seal of Umbral Convergence
Teleport behind your target and deliver a strike from the shadows. This attack ignores 50% of the target’s armor. After teleporting, Shadow leaves behind a 2m³ lingering shadow at the point of origin for 5 seconds. Allies standing inside the shadow gain increased critical hit damage.
Cooldown: (10 seconds) 3 minutes
Extra critical damage + 20%
Passive Skills:
Shadow Mastery
Grants a 20% increase in critical hit chance when attacking from stealth or while the target is affected by a debuff.
Alabaster Dukedom skill
Subtle Sabotage
Members of the Alabaster Dukedom are experts at hindering their target’s movements. Each strike has a chance disrupt the target’s mana, making it harder for it to cast any spells for 3 second.
When the target also has one of its skills sealed, the disruption increases to 1 minute.
Alabaster Heirloom
Whispering Ink:
Enemies struck by the Ink are marked with a shimmering glyph. Landing three successive attacks on a marked enemy deals bonus damage and temporarily disables one of their skills.
Bonus damage based on a 15% of the target second strongest attribute.
Skill disable duration: 7 seconds.
Awakened:
The Scaling and Attributes are doubled.
All skills have their effects doubled, as well as the duration. Their cooldown is reduced by half.
Awakened Cursed Edge:
Enemies struck by Shadow have a chance to be cursed, reducing their damage output by 20%, and their attributes by 1% 5 seconds. The reduction in attributes can stack.
Umbral Disruption:
Disruption skills are more likely to occur. In addition, any skill that requires a certain number of strikes to be hit has that number reduced by 1.
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Unfortunately, Hera didn’t have the time to admire the scythe. Delta punched the liquid sphere, releasing him from its watery prison. He was taking a moment to catch his breath after the sudden drowning attempt. Not wasting time, the Empress used the [Blade Graveyard] summoning all of her previous court members. Beam, Brute, Executioner, Swift, Ooze, Scythe, Armory, Frost, Autumn, Tide, Dusa, DJ, Chris, Dao, Edge, Ember, Gale, Ink, and Juuchi, all emerged from the ground, like zombies coming out of their grave. At the same time, Vulcan triggered his [Phoenix Touch] to buff the entire court at once.
Livy growled, tightening her grip on the war axe, “Time for round two you fucker.”
That ended up being the signal for Hera’s private army to spring into actions.
Every passive skill her court had would be shared across all the blades due to the [Army of One] skill. Unfortunately, aside form the original owner of the skill, everyone would only be able to trigger 10% of the effects. Which meant that when someone else triggered Shadow’s [Awakened Curse Edge], it would only reduce Delta’s attributes by 0.1%. But since the effect would stack, they could likely lower his stats a significant amount. More importantly, the Heirloom skill also worked. But it would have a 10% chance of sealing a skill. All of this was aimed at a single goal. To seal either the regeneration, or whatever skill was binding this man to the Strength Spirit.
The former court members, understanding that they were only there due to the [Blade Graveyard] skill, dove into battle with reckless abandon. They were already gone, being destroyed here wouldn’t mean anything. Besides, some of them were much, much weaker than the current blades. All they could hope to do was bother the Empress’ enemies.
Robin started firing arrow after arrow, using the [Seal of Mystic Resonance] to increase the number of attacks. Storm and Shadow both arrived at the same time, aiming at the human’s arms and legs, trying to interrupt his attempt to catch his breath. Glacia was next, already spinning to trigger the [Frozen Whirlwind] in hopes of slowing Delta down. Taking advantage of his shape, being a chain whip, Clay tried to hit with his various segments one at a time, going for a quantity over quality approach. Crimotra, the guardian form of Crimson and Viper, finally joined the fight and used the mantis arms to attack the human repeatedly. Despite the awakening, Livy only arrived after the twins, but her strikes were the ones that truly gave the human pause. He seemed worried about being hit by the massive war axe, and focused only on the Leviathan when she was nearby, ignoring all other strikes. Even if every single blow coming at him was now fueled by a phoenix’s sacred fire, making his regeneration take even longer.
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As the blades from the graveyard attacked, Vulcan called them over to add a layer to the [Echoing Enchantment.] Daskka was close to Hera, in her mist form and already healing the Empress. The attacks Delta was delivering were too dangerous, and the herald didn’t want to risk losing her mum for not being fast enough. Lurize was flaking the human, trying to slash at him only when the man was about to strike. His idea was to lower the effectiveness of the blows. After all, even if this person could heal instantly, he should still be able to feel pain. A decent amount of pain in the right moment could make him lose some of the power behind his fists. Lastly, Nimbus was close to the fight but staying back. He had a skill to take in the damage dealt to others, and his barriers to protect anyone who was about to get clobbered by the human.
Hera was a few meters back, sending in some spells. There were too many people surrounding Delta already, and if she got close, the rest of the court wouldn’t be able to fight properly. They would be worried about her safety and try to defend against strikes aimed at her. Another reason for her position was to give her a better view, and to test which ailments she could use to hinder Delta. It’s been a while since she tried focusing on that aspect of her abilities, but seeing someone who could shrug off any attack, this felt like the best idea. She tried her spore, and slow fields, and the usual poison, but her ailment mastery didn’t trigger. The only ailment that was still on the man was her poison, but it was struggling to spread. While thinking about something different to do, Hera noticed that in the back, a few hundred of meters away, a large cloud hand came down from the sky, slamming in the ground and spreading the clouds.
The man wasn’t on the defensive anymore. He was constantly trying to attack Livy, specifically. It was like he had a bone to pick with her and refused to let things go. Yet, he couldn’t deliver a proper blow. Every time he got close, one of the flying weapons would get in the way, either by getting in front of his fists, or going for his eyes and forcing the man to dodge. To make matters worse, every now and then, one of his skills would be sealed, and he wouldn’t be able to use them. At least all the ones that were affected by that were useless in that situation. Still, his rage was slowly increasing. After a combo where he got hit by an oddly shaped spiral weapon, a spear shining like the sun, a wide sword covered in electricity, a pair of tiny scythe shaped earrings that wet for his eyes, and the Leviathan at the same time. He growled and spun, ignoring the attacks of the biggest treat and grabbing Lurize.
Yanking the Royal Tutor’s arm, Delta punched the living armor in the chest, making the metal sink into itself. He then grabbed the armor’s other arm and slammed Lurize on the ground, pulling the hand until it was ripped off the body. The Royal Tutor yelled in pain as Crimotra jumped in, her two dagger arms glowing red thanks to the bloody claw that was fueled by all the blood they were spraying. She cut Delta several times in succession, but the man just kicked the base of her tail where the guardian part of the body combined with lower body. To follow that up, the human grabbed Crimotra’s mandibles with both hands, staring deep into the mantis’ eyes before snapping them off. For Crimson and Viper, that was the equivalent of having their jaws ripped apart.
“Crim!” Livy yelled and opened her mouth, the rows of teeth going halfway down her neck. She bit down so fast that it sounded like a thunderclap as the [Jaws of the Leviathan] were activated. She was able to remove a chunk of Delta’s shoulder, enough to expose the bone, and it was clear it wouldn’t regenerate right away. Yet that only slowed him down.
The man punched the leviathan in the stomach and when she bowed forward due to the pain, he grabbed both sides of her mouth and started to force them open. Livy tried to fight back, but even with part of his muscles missing, Delta was too strong for her. The court started attacking even more rapidly, trying to help the titled blade, but the man was resolute. He wanted to rip the Leviathan’s in two.
Yet, Livy wasn’t afraid, she adjusted her position, placing her tail on the floor while holding her ground. Both of her hands were now trying to stop him, not just from forcing her mouth open, but from moving altogether. Delta didn’t notice that change at first, and when he did, it was too late. Hera saw what was going on and used Livy as a ramp to jump over the man with an epic venomous spear in her hand. Just as she passed over the man, she used her break combo, aiming the weapon with a [Grasshopper Stab] at the exposed bone, landing to his left. It didn’t matter how powerful someone’s regeneration was. Once a bone was broken, it wouldn’t be easy to recover from it.
The attack shattered the shoulder, collarbone, and collapsed part of Delta’s lungs. He gasped, struggling to breathe and turned to face Hera. Livy tried to stop him, but the man kicked with enough strength to send her flying almost a hundred meters back. In a swift motion, he grabbed the Ophidianite by the throat and held her up, not letting even her tail touch the ground.
“Fucking bitch. Do you think that’s enough? Do you think you can kill me? I’m a human hero! Books will be written about my part in this war, and you won’t even be a footnote!” Delta roared, half of his words incomprehensible. He squeezed harder, as if he was trying to make Hera pop like her head was the cap on a toothpaste.
The Ophidianite struggled to breathe, both her hands were trying to pry the man’s grip on her. She was kicking and calling her court to help. Nimbus started running towards her, but he stopped and fell to the ground, holding his own neck. His [Share the Pain] skill taking the brunt of the damage aimed at Hera. Crimotra and Lurize tried to go for Hera’s aid, but they were both seriously wounded and struggled to even maintain their forms. Daskka was trying to get between Delta’s hands and the Empress neck to change forms and forcibly make him drop her mum. The Ophidianite started to feel her consciousness drift as her brain was deprived of blood and noticed another cloud hand in the distance. This time, one clearly being controlled by a blue-haired woman.
Suddenly, what seemed to be a meteor came from the sky, slamming against Delta’s writs, and cutting it clean off. Hera fell to the ground, and the hand lost its red color and enlarged size. She took a deep breath and saw a harpy in front of her, attacking the human. Following that up, a dwarf and a beastmen joined the fight, pulling the attention away from her.
Hera recalled the entire court, with the exception of Nimbus, ‘I’m sorry. I saw Blue. I need your griffon form.’ Nimbus nodded and changed forms. He was still able to do so since Delta didn’t get a chance to rip one of his limbs off.
The harpy that saved the Empress said something, but Hera didn’t listen, she had already jumped on Nimbus back and was now rushing to the location where she saw her friend. Despite what just happened. Despite how close she got to being killed, her thoughts were elsewhere. In her mind, she could only hope that she saw things wrong, and the Blue was not in the middle of this mess.