They ran. It was uninterrupted for a total of five seconds before Torkmal whirled to face their rear, and a tremendous crash followed, sending her skidding back. “They’re too fast!” she yelled, “Fighting retreat! Force them to spend time healing instead of following!” She followed this command up by swaying backwards and then forwards with great speed, slamming her closed fists into the back of her own barrier. It shattered, but instead of dissipating it turned into a roiling wave of Force that careened down the hall into the pack of abominations following them, knocking them about like plants in a storm. Unfortunately, they already knew that would only delay them for a moment, so they used it to reset themselves.
Their leader took the left flank, Dornah the right, and Vath stayed behind them in the middle. There wasn’t room for him to be a proper front liner, but he could support them. Everyone else staggered themselves behind, trying to keep lines of fire clear in the cramped corridor. They began to move backwards as a call came to target the monster’s legs. There was a pause, and then the hallways were alight with essence. Vath saw at least three types of beams, including his own, a stream of jagged claw marks coming from Kaser, globes of force from Torkmal, bolts of lightning from Emara, a wave of poison from another woman, and even a thrown spark of fire that somehow exploded into a rain of fire that cascaded onto their pursuers. The only two not actively drowning the brutes in front of them were Dornah and Delki, but they were contributing to their successful retreat at least as much if not more than the others; Dornah spread ice everywhere, including forming some on the enemy at a distance, and Delki piled on by leaving those chains of his littering the ground. The links somehow fused with the stone floor, and the manacled sides lay in wait until a limb drew too close, at which point it pounced, binding their targets until the restrictive essence was overpowered. Combined with the relentless attacks, there was chaos in their pursuit; constant tripping and trampling occurred.
It was enough. Barely. If the malformed…things… had coordinated at all, they would have caught the group; pushing through was possible. But they got in each other’s way nearly as often as the group’s efforts did, and they didn’t even use the other powers they clearly had, just rushing after and expecting the regeneration to handle it until they got their hands on their prey. Even low stage Beasts were smarter than this; it was like they were completely mindless apart from knowing who to attack. Even then, they got close several times. There were just too many, and no one in their group was strong enough to break through their healing quickly.
They held on, balancing on a knife’s edge. The status quo would keep them out of harm’s way, but they couldn’t hold it forever. Exhaustion would set in, essence reserves would run out. Everything they’d seen indicated that they all had larger reserves than these things did, but they were outnumbered five to one, and they’d been fighting down the whole hall to get to them in the first place. It became a slow moving race to see whether they’d reach reinforcements before the first of them fell from overtaxing themselves. They all knew that the first would lower the pressure they were exerting, which could easily cascade into disaster.
Vath tried his best to avoid waste, aiming only at those who were up and chasing, not spending precious essence on those who weren’t active threats, but there was only so much conserving you could do with this many inexhaustible targets. He was less than a minute from having nothing left.
Abruptly, a calm voice sounded in their ears, “Disengage, disciples. I will hold them back long enough for you to get behind the defensive line.” The moment the last word was said, a gale of wind roared past them into those chasing them. It struck every one of them at once, with more potency than Torkmal had managed at the start, judging by the results. Even more impressively, it filled the whole hallway in front of them, but it didn’t so much as brush anyone in their group. Their hair didn’t even ruffle as a storm of air rushed around them. The control needed to do that was simply astounding, but they didn’t have time to gawk. They turned and sprinted toward the lobby, and they were firmly ensconced behind several barriers in no time.
“What happened, Group Leader?” the elder asked quickly. Torkmal laid it all out as quickly as she could, and Folin frowned, “I can’t hold this suppression forever, and if what you’re saying is true, we’ll need more than to hold them back in order to end this. Elder Lita’s group are already heading back, but their wing is much bigger, so it will take a bit. The problem is Group Three. Two is still gathering in the archives still, and report there are no hostiles at all in that wing, but Three stopped responding to my calls shortly before you alerted me to the threat. I have a very bad feeling that there are more of… whatever these are, in that wing. Or perhaps something worse.”
It was like his words had summoned them. A tide of silent aberrations stampeded out of the research wing passage; there were no less than a hundred of them, in addition to the near fifty still in the other wing. “I can’t hold that many; I’m going to have to let go of the other hall to help combat these! Every shield you can muster, now! Hit them with everything you’ve got!” Folin yelled quickly.
Layers of defenses sprung up, and techniques screamed through the air. With the throng the elder had been restraining joining the fight, they were surrounded instantly; thirty cultivators, ten of them nearly exhausted, versus nearly one hundred and fifty horrors. The only things that allowed them to hold on were the complete witlessness of their attackers, the number of defense oriented disciples in the two lobby groups, and Elder Folin himself.
There were all kinds of barriers with all kinds of elements, Vath even saw one made entirely out of fire that defenders kept pushing the enemy into to deplete their regeneration energy. But Folin was a marvel. His wind was everywhere; pushing attackers away when they were going to land a strike, stabbing in a lance through others, throwing still more into their silent companions to topple them and keep them occupied. It was like he could see and control the whole battle, and Vath noted that he did so without moving a muscle, and with his eyes firmly closed.
Even with all of that, they would have had casualties in just a few minutes, as their assailants began to use the varied essence in their bodies to send out gouts of power into their barriers, using the defender’s essence at a frightening rate. Thankfully, Lita and her group returned to flank them - the powerful earth cultivator with them pulling up thick walls to alleviate the pressure they were under. As soon as the reappeared group struck, the sect members found their first true counters to the insane recovery they were facing.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Wald’s path in the void emphasized stillness, which he could imbue in his attacks. The brothers had already seen him target specific pieces of Beast’s bodies, and it worked just as well on these things. A limb infused with stillness wasn’t strictly damaged, and so wouldn’t regenerate, but remained unusable. So he wasn’t able to kill them, but in his wake they were left helpless and immobile on the ground.
Lita used a much more immediate solution. Her domain eroded every enemy close to her, using up their recovery at a frightening rate, and her every strike deleted what was in her path. She returned things to the void, and it turns out that when you completely expunge rejuvenating inscriptions and the essence they contain along with the flesh they are supposed to recreate, they can no longer do their task. Vath considered he might even be able to do the same with his devour, but he’d proven utterly incapable of matching these things in close combat; they were just too far above him in attributes.
Between the two older void users, though, it wasn’t necessary. They moved like scythes through wheat, and it took only minutes to end them all. They made sure to cuff all the ones Wald had left paralyzed, hoping to learn what had happened to them, but they kept a careful guard since they were unsure the cuffs would even work in this case.
Lita quickly opened up a tear back to the camp, ushering prisoners and weary disciples through. The archive team came back, having finally finished, and were rushed through. There was discussion of Group One going to check the research wing for the missing cultivators; Folin wanted to come with them as backup, but Lita didn’t want to leave the rest of them without an elder to take charge. Kaser and Emara stepped through the portal near the end, the latter leaning on the former; she’d overdrawn herself with her blasts. Vath and Dornah were about to follow them, when, abruptly, there was a rippling wave that ripped the portal to shreds, nearly bisecting a man who lunged through to avoid it.
It was oddly soundless until the wave passed through them; then there was a sensation of noise so loud that they cringed and felt wetness in their ears. Their tempered bodies didn’t lose their hearing entirely, but as they turned to the source of the wave, the voice that spoke was muted and accompanied by ringing. “Rude to leave without even greeting your host, isn’t it?” the man said with a laugh.
If the things before were misshapen and disproportionate, this man was their form perfected. He was tall, and his limbs were definitely longer than normal, but they were in balance to each other. His skin was dry, but instead of looking like crumbling stonework, it looked like a sturdy wall. The inscriptions that covered him were the ubiquitous red, but they were paired with a bright silver as his secondary, an affinity color Vath didn’t recognize. His eyes swirled with the two, reminding Vath almost of bloody steel. Which made some amount of sense since the man carried two swords in his hands, though he didn’t have any idea what affinity could make a wave that would destabilize a void portal.
“Who are you?” he heard Lita ask, but the man just snorted in response.
“You think I’m gonna give you that for free? You all had to go and wake up the experiments early while I was still accumulating, and then didn’t come to visit even after I finished. Didn’t even check on that poor team I killed. Such heartlessness.” he said with a cruel smile.
Lita’s face and shoulders clenched, and she sounded furious as she asked, “They’re all dead? All ten?”
He looked at her like she was dumb, “That’s what I said, didn’t I? Did you think I left one of them alive after killing the rest? I’m not stupid. But don’t worry, you all will join them soon enough. Though tracking down that camp will be a pain; you really annoyed me, making my job harder like that.”
“And what makes you think that will be so easy?” she ground out through gritted teeth.
“Take a look at my cultivation, elder.” he said with a smirk.
Her eyes narrowed in focus, and then widened in shock, “What have you done to yourself? Second step power radiates from you, but that core…there’s something deeply wrong with you.”
He grinned savagely, “Oh, I’m stronger than second step, but would you believe I was only at peak consolidation before this?” He gestured at his inscriptions. “Your sects are history, elder. You just don’t know it yet.” Before she could respond, the man slapped his swords together, causing an awful clang and another wave to form and rush toward them.
A thick wall of earth rose to impede it, but that was a mistake. It shattered when it was impacted, sending high velocity shards into everyone behind it, the earth cultivator included. They fell with cries of pain, and just like that, more than half the disciples left were out of the fight. Being nearer to where the portal was, Dornah had a moment longer to prepare. He raised ice walls as well, but, having learned from the earth wall, he raised several, one in front of another with gaps between. The wave was partially expended when it reached them, but it still shattered the first three walls, sending those shards into the walls behind them. Dornah was getting visibly worried when the third exploded, but the fourth and final wall held with just some cracks.
Lita yelled for the two to drag the wounded to safety as she, Wald, and the remaining Group One members lept to the attack. Wald and Lita might be the strongest counters they had to the infusions on these people, but both required them to land hits, and this man was being too careful for that. He wasn’t attacking directly unless an opportunity arose; he spent most of the fight sending out waves - through both the air and the floor. Skills and footing were disrupted, and both caused slight damage along the way just from the collateral effects.
Vath and Dornah were scrambling to save the injured, but increasingly, it seemed pointless. One member after another fell, bleeding out of every orifice on their head. What good was it to drag them out of the way, when that wouldn’t be any safer in just a few moments. At this point, the only two uninjured were Wald and Lita. She was able to obliterate any part of the waves that made their way to her, and his ability to impose stillness seemed to negate them, though it was clearly a struggle for him and he looked to be running out of essence.
Wald looked around quickly, sighed deeply, and then his face firmed. He waited until the moment the man’s swords were occupied with another’s technique, and then he leapt straight at him. The swords might have been occupied, but the man’s essence wasn’t, and a vibrating shimmer slammed into Wald in the air. He did his best to nullify it as before, but he was moving through it too quickly, and some of it broke through, causing him to cry out in pain. But then he was there, and his arms wrapped around the man. “Mother, NOW!”
There was no way he’d hold him for long. The man’s boosted attributes clearly outstripped his, and even with all the stillness he could muster, both men were vibrating dangerously. But he didn’t have to hold on. Lita flashed forward, her hand seeming to simply appear in the man’s chest. Right where his core used to be.
“Cursed…Void… Users.” the man managed to spit. And then he collapsed.