Shifting situation

[North of the human empire]

Seeing the majority of the enemy army vanish before his eyes, Darganth quickly sent a telepathic message to the dragons above. Taking care to make the communication magic spell not only encrypted but also as hidden as he could, he ordered them to hold their position and be on the lookout for their enemies while staying hidden.

At the same time, he started going over the teleport destinations he had managed to memorize, something he was sure Yldra was also doing considering the expression he saw from the corner of his eyes. Quickly finding a pattern, his thoughts were confirmed when she met his gaze as he turned toward her with a slight frown.

"They better not be trying to just annoy us." Yldra murmured.

"I doubt they would do such a coordinated encirclement if they wanted just just scatter and force us to give chase." Darganth said in response.

"Probably. Though that leaves the question of what their plan is." Neandra said.

Nodding along with her words, Darganth felt as hesitant as he had never before since his rebirth. The last time an enemy managed to utilize spatial magic to thwart him had already become a mere distant memory, making it a foreign feeling for the present him.

At the same time it brought a sense of excitement with him he had dearly missed before. Though there had been great moments and even some interesting fights since his arrival on Ikrus, not knowing what would come next brought a different kind of excitement with it.

"Now then, surprise me." He muttered to himself.

Hearing his words, Allaire raised an eyebrow with a light smile, "We can force their hand if you want."

"I doubt the plan is in any way simple and I don't want to be caught unprepared, so let them take the initiative. Once we know what they are trying we'll respond and crush them."

As he spoke, Darganth's anticipation became visible in the form of a savage grin. With it, his excitement for the unknown that was to come jumped over to Neandra and Yldra, leading the two women's expressions to slowly mirror his.

"I'm starting to wonder what reality did to deserve having those two meet." Torrak said, his gaze switching back and forth between Darganth and Neandra with an exhausted sigh.

Shrugging with a light laugh, Neandra leaned her elbow onto his shoulder.

"This universe managed to survive us three, so I'm sure Vunreon will be just fine. Though I can't make promises about it remaining undamaged, I still intend to one day replicate the legend of how the sea next to Arkuns's capital was created."

"Don't give Jennia any ideas." Serania interjected in response after noticing the dragon-hydra's grin.

"Nah, I'd much rather do. Besides, the three of you will one day have to deal with the same boredom I had to live with up until a few years ago and some eccentric ideas go a long way in helping with that. And it doesn't have to be a continent with inhabitants that one tries to split in two, should be easy to find one without in some universe."

Still speaking in a carefree tone, Neandra let he gaze wander across the horizon as she continued, "Though admittedly that is a problem that is still far away. For now-"

Abruptly ending mid-sentence, Neandra's leisurely expression dropped and her gaze abruptly snapped upward. With almost no delay, Torrak and Odylia's eyes followed, with Darganth and Yldra noticing it a brief moment later.

For a few short seconds, silence followed their actions, only for it to be broken when a dragon's roar echoed out from above the clouds. Instantly, tens of thousands of gazes shifted toward the sky as large portions of their army and many of the prisoners were alerted by the unexpected sound.

Just as the confusion that followed this set in, a section in the clouds suddenly parted when one of the fire dragons flying above plummeted toward the ground. At the sight, Darganth's eyes widened as his focus narrowed in on the dragon's bleeding torso where its right wing should've been.

Before he or anyone else could react to this, another being burst out of the clouds. Without hesitation, it dashed past the falling dragon, the glowing weapon that left a trail in its wake slashing out as it passed.

The moment it did, the falling dragon's cry was instantly silenced, with Darganth's eyes widening even further as one of his kin was slaughtered before his eyes. Its killer meanwhile turned to the side immediately after, its form still not visible as more than a blur. Leaving the now headless dragon to fall behind it, the creature tried to return to the cover of the clouds.

But before it could, the claws of Neandra's true form closed in around it. Having been too slow to save the dragon, she instantly shifted her focus and shot after the attacker. Dashing after the being, she tore across its side with the claws on her legs before snapping forward with her maw, opening a light wound on its side and forcing the creature to dodge.

Slowed down by this, Darganth finally managed to recognize Ikrus's avatar in the towering figure. Unlike before, its body didn't consist of constantly shifting elements that made up a roughly humanoid form, with the avatar instead inhabiting a truly physical form of flesh and blood.

This form appeared as a towering human or giant with sixteen gems embedded at certain spots across its body, each one possessing the color associated with one element. The red fire crystal on the back of its right hand was the only one of these that glowed, something that was clearly connected with the sword of pure flames the avatar wielded in this hand.

As the avatar retreated from Neandra, this sword shifted in form, turning into a whip-like construct that swung toward her with a swipe of its arm.

Reacting to the attack by thrusting her stinger forward, Neandra batted the flames aside before again closing in on Ikrus. Unleashing a focused beam of flames that struck the light breastplate the avatar wore, she folded her wings in and let her momentum carry her into reach. With the leathery membranes closed and their drag minimized, she could then use her wings akin to arms and slash out with the claws that tipped the second joint along their width.

Puncturing those on her left wing into the side of the avatar's face, she dragged it with her as she started plummeting toward the ground. Pushing her other claw into its left shoulder, she reached into her own flames with the claws on her legs and punctured the crystalline armor it wore.

Holding on tightly as her opponent started to flail in an attempt to shake her off, Neandra spun them around. Once on top of Ikrus's avatar, she pushed off from it, speeding up its momentum toward the ground while slowing her own by unfurling her wings.

A moment later Ikrus impacted the ground, its massive body throwing up a plume of debris as punched a crater into the soil. A second later, Neandra gently landed at the edge of the crater, with her two front claws being positioned right at the edge of the crater as her posture sank into a low prowl.

"Darganth said that you'd be weaker but I didn't expect it would by by this much." She said, the vigilance her posture and movements displayed standing in stark contrast to her almost arrogant tone, "Or is Irsyr doing more damage to you than he thought?"

Receiving only a snarl in response, Neandra was forced to dodge shortly after speaking as Ikrus sent a cascading mass of ice her way. Leaping to the side and appearing next to where the attack passed through in practically an instant, she retaliated by unleashing a storm of wind blades with a roar.

Shredding through its defenses, her attack at first tore into its body. Flaying flesh from its body only for the wound to regenerate within a second, she trapped Ikrus in place despite failing to deal lasting damage.

Just as Neandra considered using her ascended mana for the first time in a real fight, the stalemate was broken when an outside force intervened a few seconds later.

Instantly noticing it when the newly arrived enemy started blocking her spell, she shot into the air with a quick beat of her wings. Barely a moment after she did so, the ground beneath Neandra tore open as Ikrus was free to unleash another attack, with metal spikes springing out from the ground and piercing the spot where she had been from all directions.

"Finally joining us?" Neandra asked Arkuns as his form appeared behind the fading barrier that had blocked her attack.

Responding to her words with an icy stare, the human emperor didn't hide his disdain for her as he lifted his sword and pointed it in her direction.

"Still looking down on me, even now." He said barely loud enough for her to hear, his voice tinged with frustration and anger.

"The seriousness with which I have to treat Ikrus isn't your accomplishment. Or do you hold so much faith in the little toys your army brought with them?" Neandra asked.

Grinning slightly as Arkuns' eyes narrowed in response to her words, she decided to take it a step further. Moving about a dozen meters to her right in one slow motion, she purposefully waited a few seconds until a massive bolt struck her at her right shoulder. Shattering against her scales there, the projectile vanished as fast as it had appeared on the battlefield as it broke into splinters of wood and metal.

However, to her surprise, Arkuns didn't seem too surprised or even demoralized by this. Instead, he pointed the palm of his free hand toward her and intoned, "Reverse Scale."

The moment the words left his lips, Neandra sensed a burst of mana spread out from him and rush toward her. Flowing through her defenses while barely being weakened by them, it struck her near where the bolt had impacted and seeped into an area between her shoulder and the base of her neck. Being similarly little affected by the body's innate resistance to foreign magic, the spell-like effect infused her scales in the area while doing seemingly nothing.

Left briefly stunned, Neandra at first didn't even consider reacting when Rezal appeared before her a second later. Instead keeping her focus on trying to find out what just happened, she only acted when she noticed that the beastmen emperor's attack targeted the exact same spot.

Trusting her instincts, she shifted her torso at the last moment. Thanks to this, the aura infused claws targeting her were met with scales unaffected by Arkuns' spell, leaving Rezal's claws to harmlessly scrape across them.

When she didn't move any further after this, the man in question briefly thought he might succeed easily as he quickly retreated. But the moment he was propelled backward despite pushing off from empty air thanks to his usage of world connection, a massive wall of wood shot up from the ground and blocked his path.

Watching him react as quickly as she had expected and pivot to have his arms outstretched toward it, Venrie unleashed a focused beam of wind that struck her fellow emperor in the side. Exploding upon contact, the compressed air then sent him flying into the crater where he slid down along its steep wall before coming to a stop near Arkuns.

"I honestly didn't expect any spell he has to affect you without you wanting to." Venrie said as she floated over to hover next to Neandra.

"I'm as surprised as you are. His little tricks might've always been more effective at their task than spells, but this is new."

As the two spoke, Torrak and Odylia appeared next to them in a surge of water that rose out of the earth and sank back into it after their arrival. Both were already in their true forms, with the latter being somewhat different compared to the fight in the elf forest. Instead of resembling a squid with far too many tentacles, she had morphed her form to appear as something looking vaguely humanoid.

Standing upright with her torso and leaning her head down so that she looked forward, she stood suspended on legs made entirely of intertwined tentacles, with two arms created through the same method hanging at her side. Lastly, her torso was surrounded by even more tentacles that wound around her, creating an even more human-looking shape and simultaneously providing some protection.

Seeing them standing opposite of them as Venrie let the wood wall sink back into the ground, Arkuns and Ikrus both twitched slightly in frustration.

"We have free reign, all of his plans should be interrupted and soon dealt with." Torrak told Neandra and Venrie.

Alerted by his words, Arkuns shifted his focus past Neandra for the first time since he stepped onto the battlefield. With it, he found the battle to have erupted anew around them, with both armies keeping two or three kilometers distance from them as the forces accompanying him clashed with the elves and beasts.

A second later his attention was drawn slightly further to his right as a sudden roar alerted him, allowing him to shift his gaze just in time to see Darganth's full true form shoot into the sky. Swiping one of his claws through the air, his arm briefly became suffused with a silver glow before blood abruptly splattered against his palm.

Under Arkuns' wide eyes, he crushed the two human mages he had just forcefully dragged out of the spatial plane before sweeping his gaze across his surroundings. After a moment, his eyes locked onto an empty area of space, shortly followed by him dashing toward it and vanishing into the spatial plane.

But before he could further think about this, Arkuns' thoughts were dragged back to the matter at hand as Neandra lunged at Ikrus with a roar. Immediately drawing on more of his own mana, he raised his swords as he was forced to turn his entire focus toward his own battle.