“Noah, we’re ready over here.”
“Roger.”
As soon as Noah sent out the reply, he stopped his intense barrage on the dragon, and took a great leap back. Both dragon and man looked into each other's eye(s) with calm, yet intense expressions.
Surprisingly and completely unexpectedly, Noah began to close his eyes while pulling back his mana pressure into his spirit into a state of non-combat, bewildering the dragon.
The thoughts of the two at this moment were completely different.
‘This inferior…He has completely let his guard down. What is he planning? He must be baiting me. Whatever. Not me concern. This is a golden opportunity. He has somehow been predicting my attacks, but in his current state, that will be impossible. I will accumulate the greatest breath, and eliminate him with overwhelming power!’
‘The dragon will probably start building up dragon breath to finish me off here. The parabolic expansion of the dragon’s breath as it leaves its mouth considered, the girth of a dragon’s breath with enough build-up time will expand to the point of being unavoidable. Can I reasonably guess that this breath will take a full minute to accumulate? If I wish to suddenly change my attitude and spring an attack on him, my mana pressure that would need to burst out before I perform the attack would give me away, and he’d just fire it early, so that’s out of the question. Not that I was planning to anyway. While he works on his finishing move, he probably has no idea that we’re building up one of our own. I’ll just continue.’
As such, the dome finally fell into silence after a full hour of fighting.
–
Roughly a hundred meters above the top of the dome so large it peeked out above the clouds.
“Seraphina. Evan will stay levitating above me, and you stay levitating above him. And above you, Noah’s ball will be arriving soon.”
“You mean Noah’s and mine. We made that ball together.”
“But doesnt Noah have full control over it now?”
“Well, you aren’t wrong. Anyway, let's get in position.”
Once again, Mia held her sword before her in an upside down position with one hand on the hilt and the other on top of the upside-down hilt.
“I’m starting. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Ready.”
“Noah?”
“...Ready.”
Mia and Evan closed their eyes, and they slowly began to unleash their mana. Inside their body, mana poured out of their spirit and into the atmosphere. The mana all around the three of them started to swirl with the three of them in the center like a whirlpool, picking up speed over time.
The whirlpool grew in size larger and larger and larger to eventually touch the next cloud layer far above them, and grew further. Their eyes remained firmly closed in a serene peace, even when Mia's brown shoulder length bob-cut hair started to bother her by flying all over the place. The intensity of her volcanic sword seemed to begin to die down, fading from being a five meter long amalgamation of fire, debris and lightning that was over thrice her height to just a stick of meter long earth.
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When the sword seemed to be completely dead from a complete lack of mana supplied to it, she abruptly absorbed the full might of the whirlpool that contained both Evan's and her own mana into herself, bringing sudden peace to the atmosphere.
‘First Runic Seal - Release’
A fierce, unwavering flame burst out downwards of the hilt and began to blossom. Over the course of half a minute, the flame stretched fifty meters downwards and the heat from it warped the hot air around it with heat mirages. The hot air traveled upwards to the three people levitating in a vertical line, causing beads of sweat to dot their faces.
Evan increased his mana output to the atmosphere around him. The more mana he would be able to output, the more Mia could throw into her sword.
‘Second Runic Seal - Release’
The fifty meter long flame erupted downwards from the hilt as an orange fiery cylindrical pillar fifty meters in width all the way to the top of the pitch-black dome of the barrier. The darkness of the night was thoroughly dispersed for kilometers around.
Far away in the battlefield where the soldiers were finally beginning to recover from the shock of the pillar that had suddenly appeared and devastated the enemy, they saw the same pillar far away in the distance above the dome that had more or less blended into the darkness of the night when the sun had set.
Aside from the few elite soldiers who were still hunting down the remnants of the monsters, most soldiers on the battlefield of which numbered roughly slightly less than fifteen thousand just watched with a dumbfounded expression on their face.
The expression on their faces was about to get a lot more stupid.
‘Third Runic Seal - Release’
Pure white.
That was the color the fiery orange pillar turned into.
If before, it was like the deepest, hottest depths of a hell, like the mouthpiece of the anger of nature come to earth, now it was like the gods of the highest heavens had added to the assault. The heat was so pure and the light was so blinding, it was divine. The pure white pillar now roared like a thousand of earth’s fighter jets, and it fell upon the roof of the dome.
Where the white-hot pillar and the dome touched, it was like water being hosed onto the back of a spoon. Fiery plasma burst out sideways like a liquid, falling sideways onto the demonic forest and causing widespread devastation. It was like a meteor shower.
Evan’s job was now no longer to simply act as a mana battery. This pillar of flame was so great in its temperature, that the three of them above the pillar would be instantly and utterly vaporized if left alone. No, they needed protection, heavy protection. He used his absolute dexterity to its infinite limits to weave an imitation of peak modern engineering on Earth.
‘String Armory - Heat Shield!’
The cone was massive, and it dwarfed the three people several times over. Inside the massive cone with the same diameter as the flame pillar, they looked like mere ants.
Evan drew inspiration from the heat shields of rockets on Earth upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere to defend against the heat of the pillar of flame.
The three, in a vertical line, stood inside the upside-down cone, near the vertex of it. A small opening at the bottom allowed the hilt to transmit the pillar down unimpeded, though it did allow some hot air to travel upwards to them. The cone was constructed of hundreds of thousands of hexacombs and spun at a great velocity to disperse the heat as much as possible. The cone was being actively destroyed and reconstructed in real time with Evan’s fingers and hands, since the parts of the cone that broke away would help carry heat away to protect the three within.
Such was the effort needed to make use of the immense destructive capacity of Mia’s weapon.
A few seconds after the construction of the cone was complete, Mia made a great effort to lift the sword. Evan moved the cone along with the movement of the sword. Considering that this feat was the equivalent of moving a skyscraper, it was understandable that it happened slowly.
Over a full ten seconds, she finally managed to turn the sword before her with both hands grasping the hilt firmly in a kendo starter position. The fiery pillar acted like a hose that spat out plasma, and where white-hot matter landed instantly began melting a deep, deep hole into the earth.
She was in position to bring the sword downwards with a swift strike onto the barrier.
Far away, many soldiers had dropped their rifles onto the blood-soaked battlefield ground they were standing on, utterly stunned, but a few observant ones spotted a truly large ball of blood as large as the cone, having turned elliptic and blurry due to the speed it was traveling at, rocket towards Mia.
Mia seemed indifferent to the incoming ball of blood.
‘Fourth Runic Seal - Release’