While Julius and Leviathan were having a brawl, things weren’t looking much better on any other front of the battle.
Currently at Purgatory a mutiny was taking place and Shael was fighting a losing battle against some of her wardens. Most of the wardens who were on her side were already dead, leaving two on her side as opposed to five on the other side with the aid of Alpha 2.
“Keep her busy while I disable this ridiculous artifact. God, this thing is ancient.” Alpha 2 was used to more advanced artifacts and technology so figuring out how artifacts in Aevis worked was time consuming and tedious.
“Both of you get out of here, this is a lost cause, so I’ll just cover your escape.” Shael ordered the last two wardens on her side leaving no room for arguments.
The last two wardens were a long-haired blonde vampire male while the other was another blonde-haired angel who was the replacement for the last one.
“May god be with you.” The angel said before picking up the vampire and flying out of the pocket dimension and towards the raging battle occurring at the capital nearby.
“Ryota would be ashamed that all of his wardens are in on this, I guess I’ll pulverize you while I’ve got the chance.” Shael had a sadistic grin on her face. Truth be told, having the vampire and angel with her only slowed her down, controlling her power was never her strong suit so when she could fully unleash it was when she was at her strongest, she was a duelist not a group fighter.
Immediately the remaining wardens felt gravity increase over one hundred-fold and some even staggered and were forced to take a knee to deal with the gravity. Seeing her opportunity Shael charged forward and used her spiked gauntlets to squash one of the warden's heads against the ground, before she could reach another one, she felt the pressure she was exerting lessen and made the other wardens able to move again,
“Nice try but where I’m from we’re used to dealing with you people who crutch on magic.” Alpha 2 didn’t even look up from the artifact he was working on and just wagged his finger at her. He had artifacts that could dampen or even disable magic all together making them incredibly useful for dealing with everyone.
Immediately the remaining wardens began to wear down Shael in hopes of killing her but that was all shattered when one of them attempted to pierce her leg with his spear, but some unknown force made its trajectory change and slam into the ground.
“Heh, gotcha.” Shael said and casually punched the back of the guy's head making his skull collapse on itself. The wardens backed off seeing this and looked at each other hoping someone could come up with a countermeasure.
“You can’t kill her, so just stay defensive you idiots because I’m almost done here.” As soon as Alpha 2 said this the rest of the wardens backed off and formed a perimeter around Alpha 2.
“Well, that’s no fun, I guess this is all I can do.” With that Shael reduced gravity and jumped out of the pocket dimension to let Alpha 2 do what he wanted.
“She gave up too easily, something not right, search the area and make sure there’s no sort of bomb or anything.” Alpha 2 said to the wardens who then immediately dispersed to search.
——Arena
Solstice was locked in combat with Cinder still while both of his supporters were now being pressured by other lower level undead.
“I can’t help him, dammit!” Luna was trying to fend off the undead to help but they kept making her back off and create distance between the three of them.
Suddenly a bolt of lightning appeared and with it Ivis appeared clearing out a few undead.
“Go help, I’ll pull some people from the formation and try to keep the undead out.” Ivis said this then immediately flashed away to the formation to begin preparations. Luna smiled at how much Ivis had grown the past few years, he seemed to have a much deeper understanding of lightning at least and his mana consumption while using lightning enforcement had clearly dropped to an all-time low.
Slowly Lily and Luna made their way back to Solstice to see him actually pushing back Cinder slowly.
“He isn’t S-Rank, is he? How is he doing that?” Lily questioned.
“I think it’s something with his eye, as time passes, he learns how to counter his enemies and slowly overwhelms them. Don’t overstep in the fight and make sure he doesn’t lose ground; we’ll only hinder him by trying to attack.” Lily nodded to what Luna said and passively supported his attacks while he gained ground.
“I see how that little minion lost to you, that’s a terrifying ability you have there.” Cinder always wondered how at the banquet he was able to slowly turn the tables on the pseudo-S-Ranker they brought and now all of his questions were answered.
“Let’s switch it up yeah?” Suddenly Cinder switched his style and began to heavily favor his corruption magic along with a few pieces of tech he squired from Alpha 2.
Solstice never had the chance to fight a high-level corruption user and now was the time. He found himself getting weak incredibly fast along with his vision getting blurry.
“It’s hard keeping up that tempo now, isn’t it?”
Solstice didn’t reply and tried to keep his head clear, Lily and Luna noticed this and started to increase their pressure and give Solstice more time to recover but suddenly a giant rip appeared above the arena and from there complete chaos ensued.
Alpha 2 was the first land on the ground followed by his army that was teleported into purgatory all those years ago.
“Let’s finish what we started boys.” With that one phrase a bunch of aged men roared and charged forward decimating everything in their path, a bunch of them had aged quite a few years but they managed to keep their bodies in relatively good shape, so it didn’t affect their combat skills very much.
Back in the noble's booth Ariel saw this occur and only smiled.
“Let’s go Siphon, we’ve got a mission to do.” Ariel opened another portal and both her and Siphon disappeared, the rest of the rulers saw this and got out of their seats and joined the chaos that was occurring.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Ryota! Your daughter is missing!” As soon as the guard said this Ryota threw a soldier he was battering to the ground and instantly got worried.
“Find her at all costs! We can’t let her interfere!”
“Yes sir!”
A manhunt ensued to find his daughter amidst the chaos that was dangerous enough for even S-Rankers to die easily.
—-Back to Solstice
“Your shadow is doing some weird stuff; I think they’re about to make their move on you.” Victor warned Solstice.
“How do I counteract this Victor my senses are all screwed up.” Solstice had never fought with all of his senses and body impaired at the same time and it was showing in this crucial moment.
“It sounds dumb but try to focus on one sense to heighten it, that and use your aether to power your lightning aura, not mana.” With Aether's ability to empower spells to absurd degrees it could almost completely counteract the corruption running rampant through his body.
Solstice felt his body lighten up again and as he charged back into the fight, he felt a movement behind him that screamed death, he subconsciously increased the gravity around him as high as it could go and tried to get away but even then, the blade sliced open a large part of his neck.
“Tsk, I was hoping I could get out of this shitshow quickly.” The assassin said while looking at Solstice with complete disdain.
Solstice knew he would be hard pressed fighting this person who was stronger than Cinder so he finally decided to pull out his true weapon and with that hopefully he could hold out long enough for help.
Finally, he donned his war glaive and prepared to fight tooth and nail, but the assassin only smiled while pointed behind him. Before Solstice could react, he felt a body slam into him, and it was none other than Luna. Her body had dark red patches all over it with blood slowly dripping from all over.
“I couldn’t contain him; I hate being so weak and useless!” Luna was livid and using that anger as fuel she managed to prop herself up with vines supporting her and light magic slowly purifying her,
“I can buy you maybe a minute or two, I need you to go all out.” Luna patted Solstice’s back and limped back to the fight between Cinder and Lily.
“I’ll go help them, so don’t die.” Suddenly Rina appeared and flew past Solstice to help the other two girls. Solstice could only smile seeing all of them not fight for once.
“Don’t lose focus idiot!” Victor screamed just as a tanto flashed by Solstice's face and sliced through his chin all the way up to his cheekbone.
“You're way too inexperienced kid, just die already.” The assassin was slowly getting more frustrated because her strong suit wasn’t one on one fights, it was just assassination, the longer she stayed the higher the chances someone would come to help him.
Solstice immediately fired off three arrows at the assassin from his war glaive and charged forward to keep the pressure. The assassin didn’t expect the arrows, so she dodged all three and attempted to get away but felt her body get slow and gravity press down on her all at once.
“All these fucking affinities!” She knew that he possessed affinities for a lot of magic types, but she didn’t know he had time to make some of them cohesive in combat.
Finally, Solstice managed to slice her arm making it almost unusable, before he could follow it up, he saw three dark darts appear from under him and two managed to puncture his legs while the other barely missed his crotch.
“Heh she’s cheap.” Victor mused seeing how ruthless this assassin was.
“Quit laughing and tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do!” Solstice yelled.
“Honestly? No idea, be defensive and hope for the best.” Solstice heard this reply and immediately went dark in the face. He couldn’t move too well now that his legs had blood gushing out of them, and the corruption was still in his system.
“Oh, you're screwed now.” Victor sounded as if he had completely given up.
Solstice looked over and noticed that Cinder was walking towards him unobstructed, the three girls fighting him had completely vanished while the other undead were no longer being boxed out by Ivis and his group.
Before Cinder could make his way to him, he began to fade away into ash, signifying mana was longer keeping him sustained.
The only thing around Solstice now was mounds of dead bodies of guards mixed with some invaders and teens from the tournament.
“I hate being the center of attention.” The only living people in the arena now were the assassin and Solstice.
“You did your job admirably.” Suddenly a voice echoed throughout the arena, and it was none other than Alpha 2.
“Aren’t your leaders supposed to be here? Bunch of cowards is what it looks like.” Alpha 2 yelled in the arena hoping to incite some idiots to charge forward but nobody did.
“Well, your death is long overdue, get out of here assassin I think I want the honor of killing the son of the dragon and elf who ruined our plans.” The assassin wasted no time and melded into the darkness never to be seen again.
As Alpha 2 walked forward he began pulling out a weapon that resembled a musket that the dwarves used.
“This is an assault rifle, of course this backwater world wouldn’t know what that is but here’s a demonstration.”
Alpha 2 loaded the gun and shot Solstice in his kneecap, making him collapse onto the ground.
“Couldn’t even see the bullet could ya? I made it out of special material that could pierce you dragons.” Alpha 2 was putting on display how proud he was to be from a far more advanced world.
Alpha 2 kept slowly walking and just making sure his rifle was clean as it could be.
“Ya know, I almost killed your father, but who knew he would burn his own lifeforce just so he wouldn’t die. That’s some impressive determination, clearly you didn’t take after him in that regard.” Alpha 2 finally made it to Solstice and slammed the butt of his rifle into his gut making him almost throw up.
“Do something, anything?” Alpha 2 kept bashing Solstice but before he could just finish him off a huge pressure descended on the arena.
“Leviathan my friend! You finally made it; did you kill your last friend you ever had yet?” Alpha 2 had somehow done some digging and found out that Julius and Leviathan had history and decided to try and inflict some mental damage to the man.
Leviathan didn’t reply and merely stood above the arena acting strangely.
“Too scared to fight me? Come down!” Alpha 2 sounded almost mad with anger trying to coax the man to fight.
Suddenly a giant circle appeared below the arena signifying a giant spell wasn’t currently taking place.
“FUCK! EVERYONE GET OUT!” Alpha 2 roared and all the soldiers he brought with him in the arena were attempting to flee, while they all were leaving Solstice managed to finally lift his head only to see the circle and Victor standing in front of him.
“You were the sacrifice, look over there.” Victor pointed towards the sky and all he saw was all the rulers just watching while his own mother was channeling mana into the circle that was fixing to whisk him away to somewhere far away.
He also saw that Lily and Luna were currently being held by guards from their own factions to keep them away from him. Both of them were bloodied and beaten but were still trying to break out of the grip of the royal guards. Seeing them still trying to get to him warmed his heart but these things didn’t matter to him anymore.
Right before the circle was completed the hooded figure who warned Solstice jumped into the arena and covered Solstice from potential enemies.
“My Daughter!” Ryota roared and began to make a beeline for the hooded figure, but Leviathan conjured up walls of pure mana that kept all of the invaders inside while keeping everyone else outside.
“Drop this shield now or I’ll come after you!” Ryota yelled over to Leviathan who in return backhanded the man and sent him flying away and momentarily incapacitated.
The last thing Solstice saw was a single tear threatening to fall from his mother's eye before darkness fell upon everyone in the circle.