Chapter 430 - The Scattered Dawn V

Lucius took a moment to scan the battlefield as he prepared his second shot. Numerically, they were at a clear disadvantage. They had only four to the enemy’s six, but the thoraen hunter was unconcerned. Most of the enemies were mages, and by observing them from afar, he had confirmed that, unlike his countrymen, the Vel’khanese casters lacked the ability to function in close quarters.

A smile crossed his lips as each of his party’s members engaged their intended target. Roumalou was on the vampiric pair. The blessed tiger’s fur was so thick that it was impossible for the maid to cut through it, and without any functional guards, the Vel’khanese queen would be unable to cast any notable spells.

Agrippina, in the meantime, had the warrior marked, leaving Sophia to handle the two male casters. The once famed pit fighter was fast enough to run circles around the enemy pirate. Against anyone else, Lana’s domain might have proven troublesome, but Agrippina’s blade was long enough that she could attack from beyond its reach.

The false goat, on the other hand, had familiarity and raw numbers to her advantage. She had already sketched out a detailed battle plan for seeing the pair subdued, and having seen her ridiculous abilities for himself, Lucius was confident that she would be able to see it to fruition.

That left Allegra. The Grand Magus was a formidable foe. Even with his god at his back, his chances were only as good as the flip of a coin. Still, he was confident. If he stalled for long enough, his allies would dispose of hers, and from there, taking her down was as easy as leveraging their numbers, assuming the plan was voided.

But as it stood, everything was in order. It was only a matter of time before they ensnared their prey.

A smile on his lips, Lucius aimed an arrow at the Grand Magus and fired it across the evening sky. His enchanted bow bolstered the projectile’s power, adding to it a burst of magic born of his faith to his god.

It could have been any element. A whispered prayer was enough to warp it in whichever way he thought best—such was the divine armament bestowed upon him by the lord of all hunters. And yet, even with all the flexibility in the world, he knew only one viable selection.

The sealing art would be his bread and butter.

Had he chosen anything else, she would have been able to negate his attack with an opposing element. But with sealing as his school, any magic touched by his arrows would be disabled for as long as its caster remained in combat.

And if it landed on target?

In such a fortuitous scenario, it would steal all of her magic and render her inert for the rest of battle.

He didn’t know if she was aware of its precise properties—he had heard through the grapevine that she was a master of rapid analysis—but evidently, she knew that it was best avoided.

Her eyes opening wide, Allegra cancelled her magic midcast and rolled out of the arrow’s path. Another projectile followed her to her destination, but she hopped out of the way as only a cottontail could and returned an attack of her own.

She produced a hole at his feet. It was not just a simple cavity, but a pit of burning magma that erupted as soon as it formed. He could feel his feet melting. The searing pain threatened to dissolve even his bones, but reinforcing his flesh with his faith, he steeled himself against the damage.

As long as his belief in his god held true, and as long as he remained focused in the face of agony, it would do him no harm. He very well could have left it, but forming another arrow with his faith, he sealed the spell for good measure.

Exactly as Allegra had hoped.

The lava hardened around his knees without spitting him back out of the ground and primed him to be impaled by the dozen stone pillars that burst from the surrounding snow.

Lucius steeled his will again and prepared to reject the bladed rocks. But he was not their target.

They crashed into his bow and bashed its wooden frame from all different angles. For a second, it almost looked like the divine armament would shatter, but like the hunter’s hand, it remained undamaged, practically oblivious to the Grand Magus’ attacks.

The only thing that his blind faith was unable to reject was the way that the stone closed around his arm. It locked both his weapon and his hand in place by forming a massive obelisk—a towering, stone construction that extended thirty meters into the sky.

Like the thorae’s own attack, it was a type of sealing magic. The spell rapidly sapped his strength while another five pillars sprang from the earth. Lines of magic shot from their bases, forming a pentagram with him at its center.

Her goal was clear, and her power was clearer.

Breaking through on his own was impossible.

And so he prayed to his god.

The jet black tattoo that covered his bare chest came to life with a golden light as soon as he voiced his worship. It pulsed through his body, spreading into his veins and filling his flesh before erupting from his person and shooting into the sky. The seal held for a brief moment, but it soon cracked apart, the stone pillars crumbling to dust before his deity’s might.

Blessed by Kael’ahruus’ power, Lucius punched away the giant fireball that Allegra had thrown towards him before nocking his bow again and unleashing a wave of arrows.

Half were aimed at Allegra, knowing that she would be able to dodge them, while the rest were shot towards her allies—the mages that his allies were in the midst of fighting.

There had been no time for communication.

Allegra had never relayed to the Vel’khanese the danger of touching his arrows. And surely enough, as he used his hunter’s eye to see the world with time at a crawl, he confirmed that they prepared to counter by throwing their spells towards his shots.

A smirk crossed his lips. Allegra had two choices. She could either sacrifice some magic of her own to delay her allies’ inevitable defeat, or she could allow him to seal their spells and leave them to fall in the aftermath. In either case, his barrage ensured that the advantage was theirs.

Unsurprisingly, the Grand Magus chose to consign her own magic to oblivion. She struck down his arrows with bolts of lightning, timing it perfectly so each arrow was simultaneously intercepted. He almost wanted to admire the sequence’s beauty. She had perfectly controlled the individual bolts so that he would seal just one of her spells.

Had he not his hunter’s eye, he likely would have been left to wonder exactly what she had done—not that it mattered. His reaction was unchanged. He simply repeated the action, nocking another fistful of arrows to his bow.

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The second wave was clearly aimed with everyone but Allegra in its sights. Lucius half expected her to pull another, similar spell from her hat, but he also lowered his stance and prepared to evade anything that she threw his way.

But Allegra did neither of those things.

Again, lightning fell from the sky.

And again, each of his arrows was deleted.

Suspicious, he raised a brow and repeated the attack, but the results remained unchanged.

Only then was he finally sure of it. It was the exact same spell. Somehow, her magic was defying his seal.

A chuckle escaped the bee-ogre’s lips as he saw another wave denied. He couldn’t help it. It felt like his heart was threatening to beat out of his chest. Allegra was everything he had ever wanted in a target—it was precisely when his game struggled against his jaws that he understood his master’s creed, that he felt the thrill of the hunt as it was always intended, that he embodied the fervent desire to feed upon the mighty—but even she was just bait for the true chase to follow.

He needed her corpse, all of their corpses, to lure out his quarry.

It wouldn’t do to simply take down Claire Augustus.

To truly savour the taste of her flesh, he would need to bring out the demon that had destroyed the City of Progress.

If he allowed Allegra to continue to run loose, then she would certainly derail his plan, and that was something that neither he nor his god could ever allow.

It was fortunate then that he had a contingency in place—he had long identified her weakness.

The next arrow he drew was not crafted by his faith, but one of the blessed twelve stored within his quiver. When nocked against his bow, it rejected the sealing magic with which the divine armament was blessed and cycled its own pure power.

Unleashed as a line of light, it became a beam that bridged the gap between its carrier and its target without even a moment in flight. Instantly, at the speed of light, the arrow and its target were connected.

There was only one caveat.

Though it pierced Allegra, it did her no harm.

Because it was not one of his master’s divine implements.

It was one of Olethra’s.

Its ability was that of forced spending. Upon its release, it would destroy alongside itself an item of choice of equal or lesser value. And as a divine relic crafted by a true god, the arrow’s worth was far in excess of that of Allegra’s magical scarf.

There was an immediate change in her demeanor. The rabbit started shivering like mad, her buck teeth chattering with all the speed of a rabid woodpecker. Her condition only worsened when a second arrow destroyed her enchanted jacket and a third broke through the body sock she wore beneath it.

Allegra launched another set of lightning bolts, calling them down from the sky. But they never found their target. With her whole body trembling violently in the cold, her wand was too unsteady to designate the point of contact.

A smirk on his lips, Lucius raised his bow again and pointed it at her chest. He held his breath to steady his aim, and then, nearly cackling, he unleashed a wave of sealing arrows.

Allegra may as well have been disabled. By all means, the attacks should have landed directly on target, but they evaporated before they made their mark. She had wreathed her body in a bright flame and put an immediate end to her shivering. So hot was the fire that it produced a burst of superheated gas on the verge of turning to plasma.

Lucius’ grin was renewed as he gave himself a silent scolding. He should have known. There was no way the Grand Magus of all people would lack a way to compensate for her greatest weakness.

Still, he was unconcerned.

He ignored the magical fire that she poured upon his body the same way he had ignored her previous attacks before giving his surroundings a scan.

Everything seemed to be on track. Agrippina was in the midst of disassembling their axe fighter and Sophia had the two mages on their back feet. Roumalou was the only one who was struggling. He was being swarmed by a group of monsters who had appeared out of nowhere. The giant, misshapen chickens were fairly weak if considered individually, but there were enough of them that the tiger was unable to reach his prey. Their signature ability to ignore any unseen damage certainly didn’t help, especially when they continued to move even after he ripped off their heads. It was almost like they didn’t care for their own well-being.

Still, the vampiric caster was focused on him, working out a way to pierce his hide with her spells.

Nodding, the hunter returned his attention to Allegra, only to be reminded that there was more than one vampire.

Chloe grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and delivered a dagger straight into his throat. It was followed by a wave of needles. The first two handfuls went into his face and disabled his eyes and ears. The next few dozen were delivered into his body, effectively turning him into a mess of metal that looked more porcupine than person.

One of Allegra’s spells struck him in the meantime, zapping a thousand times over with a lightning barrage.

But though certainly caught off guard at first, Lucius emerged unharmed. The metal pieces lodged in his throat and eyes—the ones that had struck him before he could recall his god-given aegis—were pushed out of his body as his flesh returned.

He swept his bow at the maid as he recovered, but she evaded it with ease. She even had the audacity to retrieve her weaponry before she backed off again. It was like she was taunting him. And after a moment of consideration, he realised that it was just that.

She had been stalling for time—time for the extended chants that he only began to hear once she removed the metal from his ear holes.

One was from Allegra.

Reciting the scripture of the sun, Allegra flooded the heavens with ash. Chunks of rock, columns of flame, and an entire sky’s worth of igneous material. It was accompanied by a torrent of rain and a wall of wind, together with a young tree at its core. The elements soon merged together, driven by faith—the same power that fueled his attacks—and remade the rabbit in Rikael’s image. It was one of her ars magnae, one of the famous spells that had once nearly exterminated his people.

The other incantation, recited by the queen of Vel’khan, was born of the blood spilt throughout the battle. The vital fluid seeped into the snow gathered beneath her to form a crimson throne. And from it rose a legion of fighters ready to turn the tables.

There was a praying mantis, a snake made of nothing but heads, and a leviathan from the depths of the sea. So on and so forth, their lines were reinforced by monsters from the dungeons they conquered.

It was an easy spell to seal.

Raising his bow, he fired an arrow at one of the many shapes before turning so he could face Allegra. That should have been the end of it. But looking down, as he felt a sharp pain, he found his arrow’s head sticking out from the side of his neck.

He immediately scanned his surroundings for an explanation. And soon, he found it, right as one of Allegra’s spells made contact.

Among the soldiers of blood stood the one he sought to destroy.

Among the soldiers of blood stood the form of Claire Augustus.

He nearly howled with rage, but he couldn’t afford to prioritize the copy. Despite his faith, the scripture of the sun had set his body, his clothes, and even his weapon on fire.

It was just a faint seed in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t help but doubt the efficacy of his god’s protection, not when her flames were blessed by Rikael herself. Still, even with every cell in his body lit on fire, the thoraen warrior remained in control. He continued to regenerate, his body just durable enough that her flame alone was unable to bring his end.

Anger coursed through his veins as he drew a weapon from his waist. Like his bow, the item was granted by his master, but unlike the bow, which was a low-tier relic, the blessed dagger was forged from one of the lion god’s fangs.

So deadly was the weapon that it could even kill a god.

But by the time he raised it, he found his enemies gone from his reach. They fled through a rift while the creatures made of blood held off his allies.

He could have given chase, but he lowered his weapons as a smile crept onto his face, a smile that remained even as the rift was closed—

“Olethra?”

“It went exactly as planned.”

“Perfect,” he growled. “Now, we hunt.”

—because they were not the only ones to manipulate the essence of spacetime.