Shaun didn’t attack immediately, rather he spent some time accessing the fortress and the people within. It was clear, after a while of watching, that there were a few separate groups in the area. Some were more alert than others and seemed to group together in separate areas. Not everyone had arrived here at the same time, just like his side, these people seemed to be part of a few groups that moved ahead of the main body of the army.
By the feel of it another group should be arriving within the next day given how rooms were being kept prepared in another section of the fortress and general feel of recovery from the long march from the inner to central fortress that an early E grade would need.
He had decided that there was two different ways he could approach the attack, the first was with his skills, which would involve a longer and more risky attack. The upside to this was that he would get to continue pushing his skills and gain a few levels. The other method was mass elemental devastation. He could use his air and fire elements like he had in the past to create a huge cyclone that was mixed with fire and unleash it down onto the fortress, not giving anyone a chance to fight back for the most part. The downside is no skill levels, he would get to flex his affinity a bit more though, something he hadn’t done in a while.
The more he pondered on which avenue to go he nearly hit himself in the face with how stupide he was being. Why did he have to choose one or the other when he could do both? He could easily use about half of his mana for the opening elemental attack and then follow it up with some old fashioned skills.
The moment he had his choice he moved right to the centre of the fortress, still far enough up in the air that he wouldn’t be easily seen. Closing his eyes he tapped into his air element, letting in fully encompass both himself and his surrounding. Spreading his mind all around him, connecting to the element, he let out a breath and started guiding the air into a stiff breeze before bringing more under his control and spinning it around him in a gale.
Quicker and quicker he spun the air around him until he felt people starting to take notice of the growing cyclone below. He was to far away for any attacks to successfully hit him, with the strong winds around him, any attack that did make it would be pushed aside completely.
More and more people below started to look towards him, but unless they had focused on perception completely the chances of them making him out were low. It took a full minute before he had gathered enough air around him for him to make the next step of pushing the cyclone down to the fortress. When the cyclone started to descend upon them he felt multiple shields come up to meet the natural disaster, but all of them were blown to pieces in moments by the wind under his control.
Moments before the cyclone touched down he added fire to the mix. It started slow at first, just a growing heat to the air, but one second to the next flames started to appear within the cyclone, turning it from a formidable wind to a deadly force. He pushed more flame and wind into his attack, he felt arrows try and make it to him with no success and even skills used to try and push the fiery cyclone back.
People started to run away in panic when nothing worked against him, as soon as they did he unleashed all of the gathered power into wiping out anyone foolish enough to have not run far enough away.
Condensing the power down he pushed flames, carried on the winds, out from the main attack towards the groups of people throughout the fortress, there was so much power within the attacks that no matter what defences were used against him, the people that were caught were immediately killed, no bodies were left behind, the event had simply removed them.
No person or building was safe from his attack, he was drunk on the power he was using, having become one with the elemental power he was consumed with the thought of spreading out and consuming everything around him with his fiery winds.
In his wake, building were turned to ash and people were screaming out and running over each other to get away but he didn’t allow anyone to escape him. Notifications were appearing quicker than he could count, he dismissed them all though, enjoying the destruction he was causing too much to care.
He didn’t know how long eh had rampaged throughout the fortress, but he knew that a good portion of it was no longer standing, it wasn’t until he encountered a group of people standing in his way, all stronger than the low E grades he had been chasing around, that he snapped out of his trance and realised he had used a lot more mana than he had originally planned.
Instead of half he was now down to a quarter. He had let himself get taken over by the feeling of connecting so fully to the elements and now he had a lot less mana to work with for his skill. That still left him with over 10,000 mana though so he wasn’t particularly stressed about running out given everyone here was E grade, not even the peak of E grade, just middle.
There was over a dozen of these middle E grades in front of him now, all forming together to stop him from wrecking any more destruction on the fortress. Using a bit more of his mana he disconnected himself from the cyclone and sent it off in a different direction to continue on its destruction until it burned out the remaining mana it had.
Rather than follow it or run he floated out of the cyclone and came to a stop directly in front of the group. He pulled both of his blades out and floated in the air just above them, waiting for them to make the first move. Some of them looked like they wanted to go running after the cyclone but they stopped themselves after a quick look ta the woman who was standing at the front of their group.
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**Persephone Charlo – Level 86**
It took him a moment to figure out why he recognised the name Charlo, he hadn’t ever met anyone with that name, either before or after the integration, but he did realise he had seen it, next to the name Jason, the person who was leading the war on behalf of The Pantheon. He was also pretty impressed with her level, she was the strongest person he had met outside of himself, that said a lot about her abilities and dedication to getting stronger.
“Is this really how you want to play it? You rush forward and attack us with no back up and before either of us have even finished the first part of this event stage? I have heard you were unstable, but this is more than even I expected.” Of all the things he thought that she would say, this was not one of them. Attack him without talking? Sure. Curse at him? Definitely. But calling him unstable was not where he thought she would go.
“I got bored, sitting around and waiting isn’t really my strong suit.” He smiled at her just as an idea came to him to sow some seeds of chaos. “If you want, I will let you leave, just you though. You can run back to Jason and tell him how mean I am while I have some fun here.”
Persephone actually laughed at him when he had finished talking, like she thought he was joking, when he didn’t laugh back and just started at her with a serious expression she stopped. “You are serious aren’t you? You actually think you can kill everyone here?”
He didn’t reply, instead he used more of his mana to summon three flame hounds and 3 Zapian eagles. Once they all appeared he was down to only 6,000 mana but it was worth it to see her face when the creatures appeared. “Go have some fun guys.”
The moment he finished speaking to them all six of his summons spread out in different directions and started hunting down people to kill. They would be able to do a lot of damage on their own, especially with the strongest people in the fortress all standing here with him. It didn’t take long for screams to be heard not far from them, bursts of flame and lightning could be seen when his summons attacked which just made Persephone angry.
“You really are unhinged if you think I am going to let you get away with that.” He didn’t have any time to reply before a spear emitting a powerful feeling of nature combined with something else he didn’t recognize was sent his way.
Rather than dodge the attack he conjured five mirror blades and used one of them to knock the spear of course while sending the other four straight at the people behind Persephone. Moving quickly he entered into close range combat, before he knew it she had another spear in her hand which she used to block one of his blades and moved swiftly to avoid the other.
While she was moving he blew up all five of his mirror blades and teleported into the middle of the group that was still standing behind her. The explosions killed 3 people and hurt many of the others. Many of them had very good quality armour or some other means to protect themselves against the attacks but it had cost them to protect themselves.
That left him with an opening he took advantage of, using only his blades he cut down six more before Persephone even had a chance to rejoin the fight with him. When she did come to attack him again he felt her spear reinforced with a connection to her, the power boosted and glowing a soft green. He recognised the power she used, it was a nature affinity quite like his own but augmented in a way that was much more dangerous.
Coating his sword is a fire strike he met her spear head on, blocking the attack with his own and using his own fire affinity to fight back against her own affinity. This was the first time he fought someone with an affinity and without knowing exactly how she could use it he needed to keep his guard up.
As they fought, neither gaining ground as he was fighting a dozen people at once with most of his focus on Persephone, he knew that extending the fight was not in his best interest. He had already used a lot of mana, and now he was at the disadvantage because of it. He silently called out to his summons, all six of them still alive and killing. They rushed back to him so that he could take back the mana and boost his strength.
Persephone, like him, was stronger than their level would indicate. He silently berated himself for using so much mana in his initial attack on the fortress. He was no where close to losing this fight, but as he was unable to go all out without risking draining all of his mana he was now relying on pure sword skills to attack and defend.
Persephone threw her spear at him again, coating it in some kind of skill that he saw was more than just a physical boost, his Mana Sight, which he had been using since the beginning of the fight showed him clearly that if he touched the spear he would get some kind of infection, not dissimilar to his cured sword.
He shifted into the air and blew right past her, appearing again at a distance and a split second later used a majority of his mana to throw a bolt of lightning directly at her from behind. The attack was unleashed with a thunderous shock, reaching her in a split second. A metre before it was set to hit her she disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving the lightning to instead hit several people that she left behind.
Focusing on his echo he couldn’t find her anywhere, it was as if she had simply vanished. He knew she wasn’t dead, he had seen how the event pulled the dead out, this was something different, an escape skill or item that sent her away if she was going to die.
Just as this happened his summons made it back to him, instead of taking back his mana he had them fight the remaining people from Persephone’s group while he continue to scour the area for clues, making sure that she wasn’t going to reappear or was hiding close by.
Seconds turned into a minute and the last of the middle E grades died, still there was no sign of Persephone. He was annoyed at letting her get away, if he had been more in control of his elements he would have had more mana to use in that fight. He knew that he had the Elemental cube from Queen Elivasia and that she had told him to train his elements, but not once in the last 6 months had he done so. If he had he would have probably just killed off a key person in The Pantheons army. Instead he had let her go, that was on him and his lack of training.
Refocusing his echo he found that there was still plenty of people in the fortress to kill. Many were dead or had run away but he still had more work to do before he decided his next steps. Rather than take a potion to bring his mana back up he sent his summons back out to kill and he drifted up into the air a safe distance up and slipped into meditation with one thought on his mind, what affinity did Persephone have or did she have more than one?