Ares creates a fireball, then from both of his arms, a strong and tough fire rod pierces into the fireball, pulsing energy into it and making it bigger. Ares holds the constantly expanding ball of fire above his head. Radu and Darius run away from him, towards the horde of elementalists. Radu presses his hands against the ground, and they submerge slowly, charging up the zone with energy, preparing it for a quick, large-scale attack. Darius molds and compresses lightning between his palms, preparing several lightning nets to catch as many elementalists as possible. Radu raises his head and takes a look at the approaching enemies. One thing he notices, but is unsure of, is that they're approaching faster and faster.
“Wait… is it just me… or are they accelerating?...” said Radu, confused.
Darius raises his head as well and lets out a confused sound. In the span of a few seconds, a big, black aura covers the entire army, and they noticeably get faster and faster. Both boys instantly realize what's happening, and they turn back, shocked to Ares.
“Dude! They discovered us! They know what we're up to!” said both of them at the same time.
Ares’ sphere of flames was large enough to destroy a block of five floors and slowly expanded further.
“Launch the nets! Engage!” shouted Ares.
Both of them turned around. Darius quickly put his lightning nets as wide as he could, and Radu created a powerful earthquake beneath them, which made some of the troops trip, but they wouldn't stop. They kept on marching. They quickly got to the lightning nets, and with fierce strength, they pushed through them. Darius was struggling his hardest to keep the nets.
“Keep them just a bit more!” shouted Ares.
“But just throw it already!” replied Darius, pissed off.
Right afterwards, Ares forces himself and pushes the spheroid of blazes into the army. With his fire elemental abilities, he was able to force the sphere to launch waves of fire which would destroy anything in its path, however, the army managed to surpass the nets placed by Darius with quite some effort, but in the end allowing them to run through with no issue. Once Darius saw that, he instantly jumped back and ran away. Radu dug himself underground, going towards Darius as well. Ares was sweating as he focused on pushing compressed heat waves out of the powerful sphere he created, but his efforts revealed themselves to be almost worthless, as he ran out of stamina and the ball quickly vanished soon afterwards. In total, the three boys were able to defeat around 167 low-rank elementalists, which was nothing compared to the total number of their army. Ares didn't know what to expect, and so he flew back towards the city as he threw one last spear, which did insignificant damage. Ares tried looking for Cat, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Crap! Where did he go?!” thought Ares.
All the citizens of the city are blocked within the dirt walls raised by the ground elementalists, Radu suddenly jumps out of the ground.
“Darius! Wait!”
Darius slows down and runs at the same pace as Radu, who was puffing.
“Make a strong lightning chain! I'll dig beneath the earth and go to the other side. I'll try my best to push the wall onto the army! Pull it when the army's close!” said Radu.
Darius nods, then creates a rope of lightning. Both of them reach the raised dirt wall, which was at least 50 meters tall.
“Whoa… This is larger than it seems…” said Darius in his mind.
Radu grabs onto the rope and quickly digs to the other side, where he sees all the elementalists of the region prepared for ambushes. Thinking that Radu is an enemy, he's greeted with a flame dagger at his throat by a fire elementalist.
“Huh-? Oh, nevermind guys, it's just a kid of ours.” said the fire elementalist.
“Hold on.” said a lightning elementalist, an adult, as he stepped in.
“Our enemies are the shadow elementalists, what if he's shapeshifted into a ground elementalist?” continued the man.
“What?! Are you insane?! They're approaching! We need to push this wall on command so we can crush them at once!” said Radu.
“Yeah, that's what the enemy would say, sure, allow us to lower our main defense in order for them to step in.” said another fire elementalist.
Radu, furious, kicks the wall and forces a cube to be chopped off. The cube hits Darius’ head, he rubs the back of his head before saying, “Hey!”.
“Look!” said Radu, who was pointing through the wall towards the gigantic army.
Everyone suddenly gasped.
“Ground! Make holes through the wall! Fire! Prepare to shoot at the enemy! Battle stations, assembly!” commanded the ground elementalist.
The ground elementalists present started creating holes through the wall, enough for them to shoot through it. The fire elementalists quickly took their spots and started firing fire blasts through their fingers like bullets from a rifle. However, it had no effect against the rushing army. Seeing this, the fire elementalists started screaming out, “It's useless!” “Run for your lives!” and so everyone except Radu and the ground elementalist started running away. Suddenly, Radu felt the rope twitch continuously, it was a desperate signal from Darius. Radu suddenly gasped, let go of the rope, and started pushing against the dirt wall, but it didn't seem to budge.
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“Come on, come on, come on, don't let me down now, please, move, please!” said Radu to himself as he was pushing.
The ground elementalist was left slightly agape from his determination, so he walked up to him.
“I think you need… a little boost.” said the man before pushing the wall with a kick, sending it fully forward.
Radu stumbles down as he sees the wall rush towards the army. He smiles slightly… but the one who wasn't smiling was Darius, who was just suddenly carried along with the wall towards the army. He quickly gathered himself and stood up against the wall, crouching and gaining energy in his legs, then jumping at speeds faster than the wall itself, pushing his kick towards the army, going for a piercing dash kick.
“If I land this kick… It must weaken the shield!” said Darius in his mind before impact, managing to penetrate and weaken the shadow barrier.
Once the barrier disappeared, everyone's vision was clear, and just now they realized that a gigantic wall of dirt was coming right towards them. Panicking, the front rows try running in the opposite direction, ending up bumping into each other, losing complete velocity against the wall, which sweeps them like ants. The ground elementalist extends out his arm with his palm open, then he clenches his fist.
“Fall.” and the wall of dirt fell down onto a portion of the army, burying it under a thick, 10 cm-wide layer of dirt. The rest of the army stopped for a slight moment, then their anger rose even higher, continuing their sprint, this time while letting an even louder war cry. Darius punches through the dirt coffin laid upon him and manages to get himself out of his grave, sighing after getting out. He looks around, and he sees every unit run past the fallen wall, scratching the back of his head a little.
“Maybe Radu was right, they don't care about crushing every single little bug, they want to clear the large majority which is against them, maybe they do want to replace us and not destroy us. I see no one coming to attack me.” said Darius in his mind.
The citizens of the Other Lands, upon seeing the giant wall crush a part of their enemies, they have been encouraged “Let's go!” “We outnumber them!” “We'll win this flawlessly!” could be heard among every elementalist. Before we'd know it, nine thousand elementalists were ready for combat right at the exit of the city. Ares, who had witnessed everything until now, was boiling with anger.
“What?! How dare that little mole steal my spotlight?! I'm the one that's supposed to end it all!” said Ares as he charged a compressed blast, a mix of fire and magma, before launching a volley of magma and fire blasts at random directions in the army, being able to damage a few elementalists with each hit. As he is focusing fully on the attack, he sees a shadow elementalist right in his face with his leg raised. Ares looks up surprised, then, before he would be able to react, he gets kicked down into the ground, canceling his attack. Radu quickly dug beneath the ground and pulled Ares out of the stampede, running away together with him. Ares regains his consciousness, but he instantly gets filled with boiling anger.
“Let me go, let me go! I need to win!” said Ares.
“Stop it! You moron! Can't you see we're all at our limits?! If anyone can win this war, it's the citizens of this city! We played our roles! All we can do is watch now!” shouted Radu.
He didn't stop digging until they were 2 miles away from the city. Ares has a slightly grumpy expression with his arms crossed, seeming that he understood the situation they're all in. Darius, with his last ounces of strength, charges up one final dash to leap over the army, rolling on the ground to nullify the impact, then starts walking towards Radu and Ares.
“At last, that buffoon managed to sprout out of nowhere.” said Ares, for some reason disappointed.
Radu sits down on the ground, panting, then lays on his back.
“There's a high ranker on our side, they should be fine.” said Radu.
“I'm a high ranker as well, and I stand no chance against such large numbers.” replied Ares.
“It's because we're still developing, you can't compare yourself to an adult yet, Ares.” said Radu.
And then, the two forces clashed in a brutal fight, the mixed elementalists, against the legion of shadow elementalists. Words cannot describe the fierce combat, determination to crush the other, the desperation of winning. Was it even a fair fight at this point? No one could tell. However, one thing was true… No matter how you'd put it, the dark side will always fall beneath the light. And so, after a battle which held less than we'd thought, the OLands citizens have won, with the casualties of 274 elementalists. Every single shadow elementalist has been slaughtered, their bodies
evaporating gently. The three boys remained in total awe as they witnessed truly, for the first time in their lives, true bloodlust and killing intent.
“But… why did their bodies vanish?” asked Radu.
“I'm not sure, but probably if a low-rank elementalist dies, they simply evaporate.” replied Ares.
Radu raises his eyebrows.
“Oh! I didn't know that. I wonder what could be the cause.”
“Most likely, it's about the elementalist core evolving together with one's rank.” continued Ares.
Radu crosses his arms and rubs his chin.
“Now that I think about it… You're not wrong. But… to lead an army of so many low-rankers… I have a feeling this is far from over, it was too easy, if you think about it. In addition, that cube is still above us.” said Radu, before both of them looked up. Just then, Darius finally arrived after limping for dozens of minutes. He sighed before speaking.
“Am I seeing delusions, or did every single shadow elementalist vanish?!” asked Darius.
Ares groans and lays on his back, annoyed.
“I am not explaining that thing again…”
. . .
The cat floated over to stefan3B and tried his best at waking him up.
“Hey, meathead, wake up.” said the cat as he rubbed his forehead.
stefan3B slowly groaned, then stood up.
“What the hell happened… I hope I won…”
“Yep, you did, let's go home now.”
“Ugh… My back hurts…” complained stefan3B.
Suddenly, the entire zone starts to clear out of its gloomy presence. The gray atmosphere converts back to normal, as if it's being pulled somewhere by someone… right behind him. stefan3B and the cat turned around, and standing in front of the crater was DG, fully healed, with glowing dark blue eyes.
“Hey, missed me?...” said DG before laughing like a pure maniac.
“If… and only if… you would have cleansed the atmosphere, you would've clutched and saved everyone, but no, you left it all there for me to absorb and heal.” continued DG
“Impossible…” said stefan3B, with a starstruck expression.