The Battle With Kalkor (1/2)

Once they fly over one last hill, the battle down below is displayed in its full glory. Below Haalfrin and his entourage, they see a vast army of ants is attacking the 4 horned dragon – presumably the "Guardian" the Foxman had spoken of.

Frankly, Haalfrin is surprised at how large this 4 horned dragon is – only slightly smaller than Hraldin; that makes this "Guardian" one of Lord Fheldin's eldest sons.

Haalfrin meticulously scans the battlefield, and after a little bit, he thinks he sees where the Queen is. What else could it mean by seeing all the largest ants all lined up in a circle, as if protecting something in the middle of them all?

The dragon king must have realized what Haalfrin realized, so the scaled beast ignores the lesser beings for a moment and unleashes a great torrent of fiery breath at the Queen.

Haalfrin expected the Queen to be instantly turned to ashes… but that's not what happens. Instead, the Ants get in some complex formation and… they combine all their energy together to form a shield – protecting the queen, as well as all the ants directly near her.

The Foxman next to Haalfrin sucks in a breath and grumbles something in his own language. "Hey," Haalfrin demands from him, "What did you say?"

"Sorry. I've just never seen such perfect Affinity before." "Affinity?" Haalfrin asks. "I haven't heard that term before except for elemental affinities.

So, the Foxman explains, "When you use spiritual links to share mana, the lack of compatibility means some mana will be lost. I've never seen a perfect transfer before of mana before."

Indeed, what's scary about the Ants' technique is that despite an individual ant not being very strong, they can cast huge spells as if there were one caster by donating all their mana to their Queen.

How else could a bug swat away a 4 horned Dragon's fiery breath?

After taking all this information in, Haalfrin comments, "And you might think your Guardian is going to win, but there's at least several million ants down there. Their combined mana will make things hard for the dragon."

The dragon king seems to realize this too, so he starts unleashing his breath unpredictably across the army - burning the Ants in large swathes like huge bombs. 10s of thousands die with every breath, and the green earth is painted black.

Every smack of his tail kills hundreds, and every step killed scores. Every beat of his wings knocks the Ant army back, preventing them from getting too close.

"On the surface, it looks like the dragon king has the advantage," Jay remarks, "I don't know if he'll run out of mana before he drives off the ants, though."

However, what Haalfrin sees next shocks him. He sees with his Spirit Sight that the remaining mana inside the dead ants form into ghostly ants, then float back to the queen – all ensuring that no mana is lost from her army when an Ant dies.

Once the Queen absorbs enough Ant ghosts, she holds out her hand and sprinkles… what looks like little specks of light onto the ground.

Then, she Ant ghosts inside her would flow into the small… eggs?

Yes, the eggs would hatch instantaneously, then grow to its former size.

Only now does Haalfrin realize that as long as the ants have a speck of mana, they are truly immortal.

Freyya was right when she said the Queen could revive her army… but at least the Queen can't do so indefinitely; that's good!

Haalfrin spends a bit longer studying the flow of mana and realizes that the Ant Queen is hardly spending any mana on reviving… which shouldn't be possible!

First off, revival / rebirth is Fel magic; Fel and Reh are opposites. So a Rehkin like the Ant Queen, above all people, should be completely incapable of resurrection! This is just unnatural!

With the Revival mana being essentially negligible, the only time the Ants are REALLY using up their mana is to defend the Queen. With this in mind, the dragon king down below must be unknowingly wasting his mana killing things that won't die. While he expends energy smashing and burning them, the Ant horde is almost completely undiminished.

"This isn't good," Haalfrin frowns.

"What isn't?!" the last survivor of the Fox clan asks hesitantly.

Once Haalfrin explains what's going on, the Foxman gets really anxious and yelps, "We need to help him now!"

Haalfrin points out calmly, "Even if the dragon loses the battle, you forget that he can fly; there's no way he's getting eaten today."

The Foxman only shakes his head and replies, "He's protected all the clans in this mountain range for thousands of years! Because of him, all the surrounding clans have had peace since before my great great-great grandparents' time! Even if my clan is dead now, I belong down there. I can at least give something back!"

"DON'T!" Resburn shouts as he reaches to grab the Foxman, "You'll die pointlessly!"

Alas, the Foxman had already drawn his sword and was rushing down.

Haalfrin pulls Resburn back and gestures at the Foxman with his head, "Let him go."

"Why!?" Resburn growls, "Throwing himself down there won't solve anything!"

Haalfrin shakes his head and calmly answers, "Well, he just lost his entire clan. I can understand wanting to be reunited with them."

Haalfrin then looks down at the dragonbone ax at his waist, and the thinks to himself, "I should probably join, right? This looks like a juicy battle to be a part of."

He knows that he can fly too, so he won't be in too much danger if he throws himself down; he can always escape. However, he's a dragon slayer, so he should at least be able to make a difference (unlike the Foxman).

Even still, Haalfrin looks behind at his comrades before he heads down. "I still need to make sure they make it back safely," he thinks to himself. Then he says aloud, "See that ridge up there? You'll observe the battle from a safe distance."

"Yes sir." Haalfrin sits down with one leg dangling over the cliff, and the other with his knee propped up, and his left hand draped over his upright dragon-bone ax – just so he can observe for a little longer and see how things go.

There are a LOT of ants dying down there, and the Death Aura is so thick that even his companions can feel it – despite being immersed in it all the time at the Threshold.

"Haalfrin, is that...?" one of the common soldiers asks before his voice trails off.

"It's Death Aura."

"Bleh," the man throws up, "I feel like I'm going to be sick."

Haalfrin ignores them and focuses on at least doing something useful. "There's more Death Aura than I'd ever seen," he thinks, "I have nearly half a million Wills by now, but not enough Death Aura to feed them all. This is the perfect opportunity to saturate my soul with more Aura."

So, as he watches the battle, he constantly absorbs the Aura. Given that there are literally millions of Ants down there, and that the Ants are constantly being killed and revived again and again, the Aura has stacked up so much Haalfrin is sure he's never going to see a battle with as many Fatailities as this one.

What's even more ridiculous is when Haalfrin notices a small detail about Aura in the battlefield. Whenever an Ant is killed, it releases the same amount of Death Aura each time – no matter how many times each individual Ant has died before.

In other words, the million Ant lives down below isn't a million Death's worth of Aura; it's many… many times more than that.

How ridiculous. No matter how much Aura Haalfrin absorbs, there's just no end to it; it appears that the Ants are dying faster than Haalfrin can absorb their Aura. The only downside is that they don't give any Wills after they die, though Haalfrin already knew that.

Because the torrent of Death Aura grows thicker and thicker as it spirals into Haalfrin's soul, it eventually becomes so thick that it becomes visible to the naked eye – just like the Crow goddess's Aura.

If the Death King himself had been here, he'd think that Haalfrin was already a Death god, with the amount of Aura he has around him.

Realizing that he's getting a bit too strong just sitting here, Haalfrin cracks his knuckles and picks up the dragon bone ax. "Well. Let's get going."

---------------------

At the very beginning of the battle, when Dakka's power first flares up, the battling Dragon King looks up and shouts in Haalfrin's direction, "DAAAKAAAA! IS THAT YOU!?" There's a brief pause as the huge 4 horned dragon twirls in a circle with flame coming from his mouth – creating a barrier of fire around his body and clearing his perimeter of Ants. "NOOO, IT'SSSS a DRAGON SSSLAAYYER."

Haalfrin doesn't bother trying to shout, so he just sends a telepathic message in between him swinging his ax, "You... do know that you're fighting a pointless battle, right? The Ant Queen is just going to endlessly revive anything you kill."

"I KNOW THAT," comes the dragon's booming shout, "I'M NOT BLIND. HOWEVER, IF I LEAVE HERE, THEN MY CLANS WILL FALL."

Haalfrin sighs dejectedly while crushing large swaths of ants with each swing, "Dakka's uncle...how long have you been fighting here?"

"OVER A WEEK."

Oh goodness. That dragon's mana capacity is just monstrous.

If the killing had been this intense for over a week, then why wasn't the Death Aura countless times thicker by now?

Oh yeah. Death Aura naturally dissipates into nothingness if it's left alone for too long.

Haalfrin shakes that pointless curiosity out of his mind, and he responds telepathically, "I hate to break it to you, but while you've been pinned down here, the rest of the Queen's army has already wiped out all life within a few hundred miles. Your clans are all dead now."

There's a brief lull in the battle as the dragon's body droops down lethargically. Then, he abruptly roars in fury, and the next few attacks are flared with so much hatred and power that even Haalfrin is shocked by the huge shockwave that echoes across the landscape out.

This strike was directed at the Queen, and she naturally put up a shield in time. However, this attack alone consumed half of the total mana between all the ants, as they had to spend it all protecting the Queen. About half of the Ants drop dead from having all the mana sucked from their bodies.

Even the remaining Ants are momentarily stunned, as the shockwave was so loud that it blew apart the brains of the Ants within a few thousand feet, while the rest of the army had their eardrums completely shattered. Even the Queens ears are bleeding, and she leans over in pain.

Despite the dragon's target being the queen, Haalfrin has to stop what he's doing and quickly raise an insulated barrier to protect his comrades from the heat and shockwave – they'd have definitely died or gone permanently deaf otherwise.

What shocks Haalfrin is that the blast disorients even him; the only reason he's not completely blown away by the wave of fire and compressed air is because Dakka's ax managed to catch him in time and help anchor him to the ground.

Before he can shake the dizzy feeling from his head, the giant 4 horned dragon is already flying towards Haalfrin, and the human is unable to avoid the dragon as it carries him away helplessly in his talons.

The dragon obviously isn't paying attention to the other humans, so before the dragon can fly away without them, Haalfrin thinks fast and outstretches his hand - lifting them all up and yanking them towards him. Jay was already untying the rope around his waist and activating the enchantment - elongating it and tossing them all an end so that they could all hang on together without losing each other in their flight.

After everyone is secured behind him, Haalfrin cries out to the dragon, "Oi! Why didn't you just finish all the ants off if you're that powerful?"

"... I RAN OUT OF MANA. TODAY STILL COUNTS AS A VIC-"

"Can you please stop shouting!? My ears hurt because of you!"

"Anyway," the dragon continues saying, "Today still counts as a victory because the ants only gather mana through eating. They can't passively regenerate through the air and heat like we can - at least, not as far as I know."

"…I thought dragons gorge themselves in order to be brimming with power?" Haalfrin asks.

Dakka speaks up and clarifies the misunderstanding for Haalfirn. "No, no. We do that in order to fill our mana over its normal capacity."

The older dragon nods his head after hearing Dakka's telepathic reply. "Hmm… Yes… My last attack right there used maybe a couple years' worth of calories for me."

"…Yeah," Haalfrin shakes his head glumly, "but I don't think you can out eat the ants, so wasting mana is much more dangerous for you than for them."

The dragon king growls, "How so?!"

"They can spread out faster than you; or rather, their method of gorging is far more efficient than yours," Haalfrin answers. "If they can eat faster than you, then they can recover their lost mana much more quickly. They'll be ready for a rematch much sooner than you."

"Hrrrmm….," the dragon king rumbles, "We'll have to talk with some of my brothers and ask them for help then. Even if we fail, Father can just wipe them out with a few well placed kicks."

Haalfrin shakes his head and says urgently, "Didn't you see those Ants? Their Queen can make an endless amount of Ants just by spending mana. The more they eat, then the more mana they'll have to make more Ants; they don't HAVE a limit on mana. Shouldn't Lord Fheldin just kill them all now before these Ants REALLY get out of hand?"

In Haalfrin's mind, the Ants can grow more powerful than anything else if they just eat enough.

The older dragon's mind goes along the same road, and he laughs out loud, "Silly human! Even if the Ants eat everything in the world, Lord Fheldin will still be fine! We don't need to bother Father for something like this."

The dragon looks down at the string of humans floating behind them, and for some reason, he thinks it looks pretty funny. "Anyway, where do you want me to drop you humans off?"

Jay looks up at the dragon and says solemnly, "The Threshold, please."

"Thought so."