Two events transpired with such a small amount of time between them that they almost seemed connected, although though Lord Miln objectively knew that they were not. But it was clear from both events that there was an almost unspoken agreement across the fraught battle that things were about to change
The first even was that Lord Miln received the first good news he had heard in hours in the form of Ileot’s voice whispering in his ear. “You won’t have to last much longer… I realized the only-... that all I need to do is destroy the Nether King. Then everything’s solved. Buy me some time and I will take care of it.”
The brief and unspoken betrayal that Ileot had obviously committed continued to lay between them, but Lord Miln was at least happy that he now had a goal; buy time. And also he now had a way to achieve his goal of earning merit in this battle.
The second event was that the Nether King hit Lady Iellaya with such violence that she was driven several meters backward. After stabilizing herself, a trail of blood and bile dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. The Nether King roared in triumph.
Perversely, Lord Miln felt a great deal of relief as their frantic struggle against the Nether King took a turn for the worse. When the Nether King now swung its arms, it was able to force Lady Iellaya’s vast wings steadily backward.
Not that Lord Miln left her alone to face this foe; far from it. But the thick liquid that continuously seeped from its body muted the sharpness of Lord Miln’s ambushes and barely slowed the monster as it continued spinning forward to throw a vicious roundhouse kick toward Lady Iellaya’s chest.
Yet despite the growing difficulty in buying Ileot time, Lord Miln still felt relieved. Because the shift in the state of the battle meant that Lady Iellaya was no longer demonstrating power enough that Lord Miln dreaded the battle being over and her attention focusing solely on him.
The Nether King’s roundhouse kick arrived before Lady Iellaya. About ten seconds ago, she had met that sort of blow gallantly and forced the Nether King to a jarring halt. Now, Lady Iellaya’s mouth twisted open in a grimace and she rapidly spun out of the way to avoid the strike. Luckily for her, even if her power was slowly dropping, her speed had not done the same.
OOOooooonnnnggg.
It seemed the Nether King sensed Lady Iellaya’s declining power too because it unleashed a blast of noise that cracked the surrounding ground and had what little of the floating island remained grinding against each other. Body of the powerful Aether users froze for a split second as they struggled to overcome the noise. Then, while one remained at its side, the other three Nether Heralds sprinted out to box Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln into a smaller area.
“Finally run out of gas?” Lord Miln panted, taking a spare moment to wipe blood from his cracked lips. Even he winced at the playful notes in his voice; now wasn’t the time to be flippant in front of the Nether King. Lady Iellaya ignored him, the air around her chilly enough to put out a campfire. But it didn’t escape Lord Miln’s notice that a lot of that frosty intensity had ebbed as the battle had dragged onward; Lady Iellaya couldn’t keep this up much longer.
After all, over the last few minutes of fighting, he had never completely let Lady Iellaya escape his focus. He was extremely wary of some small move that would inconvenience him and put him in danger of a mortal blow. The comment was just another way to test how focused she was on putting up a united front before the Nether King.
...this can be considered barely a pass. Lord Miln thought sourly.
Still, Lord Miln wasn’t a fool. With Lady Iellaya quickly fading, something needed to change if they were to survive this ordeal. Because as of yet, Lord Miln hadn’t earned the merits that he had planned. In fact, he had simply allowed his army to sustain an unbelievable amount of casualties. Even if Ileot did strike soon and force the Nether King to retreat, Lord Miln desperately needed to be a vital part of that effort.
And for all Lady Iellaya’s flaws, she would not lie. If he acted to help pin the Nether King down, she would dutifully report it.
Without a tangible achievement to hold up next to that raw casualty numbers, Lord Miln would be court-martialed without a chance of even defending himself. The Nexus Council wouldn’t care that he had been tricked by Ileot Swacc.
ONG.
This noise was a concerted burst of power, signaling the beginning of the brutal assault from the assembled Nether beings. The three Nether Heralds came like small tornados, their flexible limbs lashing out high and low to limit their mobility. With a surge of momentum that cracked the ground beneath it, the Nether King went directly forward to smash apart the pinned down duo.
Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln exchanged an extremely heavy glance as the forces of Nether rushed toward them. In it, Lady Iellaya expressed some of her doubts that she could handle the Nether King much longer and also barred the naked hatred that she felt toward Lord Miln. Yet she begrudgingly asked for his assistance.
In his glance, Lord Miln allowed that he could help her with the worst of the Nether King and that he had already understood that after this battle, things between them could no longer remain with even the pretense of civility. There would be a reckoning between them.
But they were both beings of Aether. On this, they agreed.
Despite the fact that it was covered in deep wounds, Lady Iellaya’s raven-winged serpent image charged forward, valiantly smashing against the Nether King’s chest. But at this point, the foe of all Aether was a juggernaut that could only be slowed by a small margin by an image projection.
Still, that small margin was enough time for Lord Miln to act. He knew the risks, but Lord Miln decided to trust the plea that he had seen in Lady Iellaya’s heavy glance; now wasn’t the time to hold anything back.
All of the power he had managed to gather during his stint as Supreme Commander was finally let loose. Utilizing all the secrets and tricks he had extracted from the bodies that he kept in his headquarters, he surged into motion animated by foreign Aether. Despite the physical reactions that Nether Heralds possessed, Lord Miln’s violence was so abrupt that the first one that he approached couldn’t bring its guard up in time.
Lord Miln’s hand swerved around the hasty block the Nether Herald threw up with its arm and pierced into its chest. Its exterior was tough, but Lord Miln was no longer holding anything back. His palm impacted the Nether Herald’s core and shattered it in a single blow. Then, even as the Nether Herald continued to spasm on the end of his arm, Lord Miln twisted and threw the limp body of the Nether Herald in the path of the Nether King.
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Just need another few fractions of a second, Lord Miln thought as he twisted to find Lady Iellaya literally ripping the last wounded Nether Herald in half. Ichor spattered down her chest and her armor began to steam, making her look like she had been splashed with boiling oil. He didn’t miss how she had moved and exposed her own back to him while they were working together. Lord Miln’s eyes continued forward to the final two Nether Heralds.
On the opposite side, the Nether King couldn’t even help itself; it caught the thrown body clumsily in its thick arms. Whatever liquid formed the outer layer of its body continued to flow downward, quickly encasing the corpse like a coffin of quick drying-cement.
OOOOONNNNNGGGGG.
“Yea, yea, I get it,” Lord Miln muttered, stepping forward and using about half of his remaining energy to simply mitigate the damage the Nether King’s scream. The ground beneath them cracked further, making their footing even more precarious. To avoid the problem entirely, Lady Iellaya once more shifted to her battered image avatar and sprung toward the weaker of the two Nether Heralds.
Gritting his teeth, Lord Miln stepped forward to stand directly in front of the Nether King. This was the part that was going to be rough. But standing there, being the last line of defense as Lady Iellaya continued to pursue its subordinates, really hit home how dangerous a foe it was.
Finally, looking the charging Nether King full in the wide, lantern-like eyes, Lord Miln felt the changes to the surrounding space and was horrified.
It was a gradual thing, but each time it screamed, Lord Miln had felt the damage the Nether King released decreasing. At first, Lord Miln thought this was a positive thing, but now it struck him how foolish a hope that thought really was; the truth was just that the Nether King’s noises were now affecting a larger area, so Lord Miln had to handle a smaller portion of it.
And the reason that the sphere of influence was growing was that the Nether King was warping the surrounding space to no longer remaining purely spatial in nature.
That grinding assault that occurred on an almost atomic level from the horrendous sounds was finally showing fruit. In fact, the facts had been present for a while, but it was only facing the Nether King directly that Lord Miln realized what had occurred. Because as the Nether King surged forward, it was larger than he had ever seen it before, and behind it was a series of phantom, folding geometric shapes. As it continued to press on the structure of Aether in the area, the more it warped space to unfurl itself.
The more it unfurled, the more it could utilize some of its own strength. And the more that Lord Miln felt like his images were traveling underwater in order to effect change in the world.
Maybe Iellaya isn’t weakening… Lord Miln thought solemnly as he stared at those strange shapes. Maybe this bastard is just continuing to grow accustomed to the fighting…
Behind him, Lord Miln sensed Lady Iellaya inflict a deep wound on one Nether Herald while taking a wound herself from the other in exchange. But then the Nether King was before Lord Miln, and he couldn’t afford to allow his attention to waver.
The only source of hope was the figure standing on the other half of the sundered floating island, and the growing orb of white lightning appearing above his head. Already it pulsed with potency, holding within it the capability to strike a real blow against this Nether King.
ONG.
Twisting sideways, Lord Miln did his best to present the smallest target possible and smashed his way directly through the sound attack. Then the Nether King’s two limbs rumbled outward, the visual distortions around them so intense that it was difficult to find the true blow within all of the distractions.
I can’t handle this normally… Gritting his teeth, Lord Miln did some rapid calculates in his head. Then he sighed.
Even though Lord Miln knew there would be consequences for this action later, he activated a partial array of his own invention within his body. There was no other choice. Just like he did for the conscripts that came to the frontlines, the array would isolate his image. But rather than forcefully separating said image form his body, this version of the array forcefully suppressed the other aspects of his personality so that the image would benefit from all of the mental resources at his body’s disposal.
A blade is the most reliable weapon for a reason, it’s best to be sharp. Lord Miln thought to himself as he felt himself changing. No longer was he the Supreme Commander of the frontlines trying to earn merit, but he was his strongest image: a magenta orchid with gleaming petals.
Rather than trying to resist the raw power of the Nether King, Lord Miln became a small and sharp image that forced its way forward. The orchid fluttered as though a terrible windstorm was blowing above, but its petals seemed to become increasingly luminous. Those petals became razors to sheer through the Nether and create an opening.
Spinning, Lord Miln slipped underneath the Nether King’s blow and arrived at its side. His fingers stretched outward and his body became a dazzling orchid. Bright magenta petals erupted outward in a flurry, cutting deeply into the geometric shapes of the Nether King. It erupted in another vengeful roar and Lord Miln wavered like a leaf in the middle of a rainstorm in front of its ire.
But as it tried to retaliate, Lord Miln had already forcefully suppressed his injuries and moved behind it. The flower did not stand up to the storm, it endured it. Once more the orchid bloomed in an unexpected location, and once more Lord Miln’s image cut into the Nether King in front of it.
Yet just as Lord Miln was about to strike again, aiming to eviscerate the Nether King, something changed.
For the second time in only a few minutes, two things happened almost at once.
The first was the more eye-catching of the two events. There was a huge noise like a bear being roused to wakefulness and the remaining bits of Aether sky trembled. All the energy in the surrounding area began to churn. Then there was an ominous rustling and a huge, gleaming tree appeared in the sky above them. More than that, the surrounding space was punctured and ripped as thousand of thin golden roots abruptly surged upward from the original landmass and stretched upward to the floating islands that were sinking into the Great Rift.
While the towering tree gleamed with a luminous golden script, it was the image of the golden roots that was suddenly the most pervasive. They pulsed with energy, stretching wider and wider, branching and stretching outward in a mesmerizing pattern. They pierced up through the island and anchored it back to the remaining bastion of Aether. They wiggled upward, several passing only a meter or so away from the blooming orchid.
Their appearance and aura of power was so shocking that even the Nether King was briefly bound by them. The strangest part was the way that they moved freely between Aether and Nether, apparently perfectly satisfied in existing in either.
The second after they appeared and launched themselves outward, these distant portions of the vast tree began to drink the surrounding energy. In enormous quantities. Those golden roots were like the veins of a primordial beast, pumping obvious power to that enormous trunk that towered over them.
The image… of Randidly Ghosthound? Lord Miln thought dumbly. But with everything but his core image cut off by the array, he couldn’t understand where it had come from. Or why it was no so much stronger than it had been in the past.
The second thing that happened was that there was suddenly a hand pressed against the small of Lord Miln’s back.
Turning around, he saw Lady Iellaya’s gaunt face. She had one hand against his back and another lightly touching one of the nearby golden veins. Lord Miln saw her take a breath, witnessed her divert the energy flowing within that root through her fingers and into her body.
Then she unleashed an attack, one with enough piercing power to rip both through his body and into the Nether King.