Through the Flames

[North of the human empire]

Arriving right as flames tore through the battlefield, Darganth announced his presence with a domineering entrance.

Bursting through the inferno that split the battlefield in two, he unleashed his gathered mana toward the nearest enemy. Manifesting as an almost transparent cone of spatial distortion that burst forth from his palm, the spell struck his target with enough force to send the man flying.

With a path cleared, Darganth dashed forward with his spear poised to strike, catching his next target with a wide swing. Pushing the woman back but otherwise glancing off her metal armor, he spun around and struck out at the shield of a third opponent with a thrust.

Unleashing part of the fire elemental aura covering his weapon on impact, Darganth caused a small explosion that knocked the shield to the side. Manifesting a small dagger out of aura in his left hand, he exploited that opening and threw the weapon at the third enemy.

Embedding itself into the man's shoulder, the dagger caused him to stumble back, with his position quickly being taken over by a mage. Unleashing an invisible slash with a slight motion of his hand, he forced Darganth to break off his pursuit of the second opponent.

Instead weaving around the attack by rotating his body, Darganth pivoted his attacks toward the mage. Swinging his spear with the momentum of his turn, he performed a strike that was mimicked by an eruption of earth from beneath the man's feet. Shooting upward at the same angle as the spear, the soil below formed into a construct shaped like a dragon's head that then closed its maw around the mage.

Thrusting out his free hand toward the end of his swing, he then let the space around the resulting earth construct implode. Crushing it and exerting pressure onto the mage's shield from all sides, he kept increasing the force he exerted even as the second opponent jumped at him.

Diverting the thrust of her spear by striking its shaft with his own weapon, he kept them in contact and pushed forward with his weapon until he held both spears in his right hand. Forcing them downward with a sudden pull, he embedded their tips in the ground before stepping back.

With it, he pivoted to the right, dragging the sphere of soil and the mage trapped inside of it along with the accompanying movement of his outstretched arm. Sending them hurling toward the woman through this, Darganth forced her to lift her shield and brace for impact.

As the mass of mostly earth then collided with her, it exploded into a shower of dirt clumps. Largely sailing past the small, circular shield barely larger than her forearm, these struck the woman's legs and graced against the top of her helmet, denting her armor but leaving her mostly unharmed.

Even the mage's body impacting did little more than briefly put her off balance, with the reactive shield he had active harmlessly passing over her while catching the lightning that struck her position immediately after.

Descending next to Darganth shortly after her spell struck, Serania seamlessly took over in suppressing the mage without a single word being exchanged between the two. Conjuring a bundle of tens of lightning bolts that shot out from her outstretched arm, she sent another surge of electricity into their opponent's shield as Darganth stopped his own spell.

Instead approaching under the cover of her attack, he manifested two swords of aura in his hands. Tearing into the shield with a parallel downward swing of both, he tore through the shimmering film of water.

Slightly bending his knees to catch the momentum of the strike, he then redirected it and slashed upward in a cross pattern. Following this up by turning toward his left, he cut a third opening into the shield with a downward slash of his right weapon before thrusting the left one through the point in between where all these cuts intersected.

Bursting through right between the two initial cuts, his weapon was met with the woman's shield as it broke through the mage's shield spell.

Stepping back as soon as he felt his strike being blocked, Darganth was already two steps away when an aura sword came slashing out from behind the water shield. Easily gliding through it without disturbing its calm surface, neither the strike nor the woman left any further holes in the spell as she stepped out to face Darganth.

Shrugging off the small arcs of electricity from Serania's spell that scattered off the shield spell and latched onto her armor, the aura user dashed forward to quickly close the distance to Darganth.

Catching the swing of her weapon, Darganth was forced back as the woman charged into him with her shield. Using the momentum the impact gave him to pivot, he managed to respond with a grazing strike that glanced off the armor on her upper arm before another swing of her blade forced him back even further.

Not stopping anywhere near her striking range, he abandoned the attempt to match her in melee and switched to spells. Dismissing the sword in his left hand, he raised an open palm in her direction and cast a time spell that slowed down her time.

Though the effect of this was only marginal, it reduced her sightly faster movement to be equal to Darganth's speed. As such, he managed to weave around her next strike with more ease, giving him the room to finish a teleportation spell that brought him in behind the mage.

With the man's focus entirely on countering Serania's onslaught of spells, he was too late to notice this. Stepping through the reactive shield spell the mage was surrounded by, Darganth breached it before the name-giving component of the shield could activate. Simultaneously shrugging off and pushing through the minimal amount of mana that flowed through it in its normal state, he closed his hand around his opponent's neck practically in an instant.

Encountering a thin barrier on his skin, Darganth again mobilized the mana he had fully drawn back into his mana pool to not trigger the barrier's response before he made contact. Letting aura flare to life around his free forearm, he formed a shimmering blade of wind and drove it through the mage's back.

Instantly, the man's spells faded out of existence as the mana holding their shapes scattered. With it, Serania's attacks also abruptly lacked anything that stopped them from raining down on the position where Darganth now stood, causing a chain of explosions to erupt all around him.

Amid these, Darganth let the remains of the mage drop to the ground and let his wings sprout from his back. Overlapping them in front of himself, he reinforced them with armor pieces he manifested out of aura and hunkered down as he weathered the storm.

A few short moments later the wave of attacks coming from Serania ceased. Blowing away the smoke left in their wake by quickly spreading his wings, Darganth merged from amid their aftermath with nothing more than some scorch marks on the outside of his wings.

Ignoring these, he narrowed his focus onto the female aura user. Though standing near where both her and Darganth's weapons were stuck, she now found herself trapped between him and Serania with little chance of quickly reaching either.

Simultaneously she had enough room to maneuver and quite a few options on her next course of action, making Darganth and Serania hesitant to attack in order to retain the capacity to react to any possible choice she could make. As such, neither side took the initiative to continue the fight, creating a tense situation that lasted until the dragon Darganth had arrived with finished circling back around.

The moment the aura user noticed his presence closing in again, she moved without hesitation. Reaching out for her mana-bound weapon through the invisible connection between the two, she telekinetically called it back into her open hand by channeling mere drops of mana into it.

Dashing off to the side before the weapon even did as much as shake from the tug, she raised her shield in Serania's direction and ducked under the spell that Darganth sent her way.

"Rally with me!"

Shouting at the rest of her unit that was still busy tangling with the handful of elven, two beast, and one vampire mythic rank on the other side of the flaming wall, the woman called them to her side.

Not waiting for her ally's response to her command, the aura user spun around as her spear arrived in her hand a moment later. Bending down and slamming the edge of her shield into the ground, she conjured up a massive transparent barrier that stretched out from the point of impact.

Barely a moment after it finished forming, a spell already slammed into this barrier. Clashing against it amid the crackling of electricity, the lightning shooting from Serania's arms shot toward another spot of the barrier after the initial hit and struck again multiple times, creating a chaotic pattern as the directions of the bounces kept shifting and splitting.

A few seconds later, Darganth's spear struck the section of the barrier weakened most by this. Punching through with almost its entire bladed portion before getting stuck, the weapon briefly glowed in a light red before a burst of red energy erupted from its tip.

Burning through everything it washed across, the expanding sphere of energy first devastated the barrier before setting the grass ablaze when it reached the ground a few moments later. Another brief second later it then washed over the aura user who had already shifted her stance back toward the approaching dragon.

Just as the scorching wave was about to reach her, softly glowing white lines appeared beneath her skin, their shape forming a pattern akin to veins across every visible part of her body. Intensifying in color when Darganth's spell then reached her back a moment later, they suffused her body with a coldness that counteracted what little heat slipped through the external aura surrounding her.

As the energy burst slowly started to fade a few meters after passing over her, another figure took up position behind her. Holding his outstretched arm toward her, the human mage that arrived there layered three more enhancement spells on her in quick succession.

Hued in a faint green glow, having ten or so spike-like protrusions sprout from her right forearm, and with crimson red lines added beneath her skin, she then charged at the approaching dragon. Rising into the air as an aura avatar formed around her, she initiated the fight by firing the spikes on her spear-wielding arm.

Shooting out from her aura avatar, the wave of manifested spikes barely missed the dragon's head and slammed into his left shoulder while the realm ones simply vanished from her forearm. With it, the dragon was put off balance, forcing it to the left as that side's wing sagged down from this strike.

Quickly reacting to this by landing in a rough maneuver, the dragon shifted its path back toward its right. With it, it also dodged the woman's spear as she lunged forward and struck at its exposed side, allowing it to tear into the shoulder of her avatar with a bite.

Sinking one of its claws into the construct's right arm even as the woman struck at its head with her shield, the dragon held on and even gathered enough mana for its breath attack. Unleashing it from point-blank, its flames tore into the aura avatar, burning through its form and cutting all the way to the hip before it managed to escape with a missing arm.

Not leaving it at that, the dragon lunged forward, closing its right claw completely around the slightly smaller avatar's shield. Simultaneously pinning down the construct's quickly regenerating right arm, he snapped after its head with his maw.

Missing, he was then struck by a headbutt that hit just beneath his eye, with the impact sending a shock wave into his head that flung it to the side. A knee strike to the chest afterward sent another jolt through him, pushing him back again and opening the opportunity for a shield bash as his grip around it slipped.

While stumbling backward from these strikes, the dragon saw the freshly arrived mage place yet another enhancement spell onto his opponent just before Darganth reached him.

Though too late to stop the spell, Darganth still came barreling down onto the mage. Slamming his spear that he had called back into his hand by then into the man's personal shield with the blunt end, sending him sliding backward through the concussive force his aura erupted into.

Pursuing him, he spun the spear and slashed down with an overhead swing. But before the strike could tear into the mage's shield spell, an impact struck the side of the blade and diverted it past its target.

Pivoting as the freshly arrived beastman followed this with a quick strike from his stinger-tipped tail, Darganth stopped his offensive and stepped back. The moment enough space opened between him and his two opponents, a blast of wind struck the beastman's position, forcing him to dodge and reopen a path toward the mage.

Launching past the new opponent, Darganth immediately switched back to attacking. Creating more room for himself with a swing to the side in passing, he stopped the horizontal swing with the tip of the spear pointed forward and accelerated even further.

Striking the mage's defenses with a quick thrust, he barely even attempted to pierce through them and instead unleashed a spatial spell the moment he came into contact with them. Stretching space around himself through it, he expanded the handful of meters separating him and the beastman aura user by a factor of over a dozen, creating a bubble of about a hundred meters of extra space in all directions.

At the same time, the distance between him and the mage didn't change, keeping the human trapped within striking range. And with reinforcements delayed by at least a few seconds, Darganth didn't care to dodge the blast of flames that shot his way.

Having focused entirely on boosting his enhancement spells during his advancement to the mythic rank, something Darganth had already noticed and which gave him the confidence to push through the attack, the man's spell only barely surpassed the peak fourth rank in power, making it wash over Darganth with limited effect.

In response, he struck out with his spear an instant later, tearing into the mage's shield as he circled around him with every strike. Amid this onslaught, his opponent barely managed to cast a single spell, with his mana instead constantly being diverted to repair the shield wherever Darganth's spear had passed.

Blocking this one counterattack with the shaft of his spear, Darganth finished rotating halfway around the mage shortly after. With his two opponents now almost perfectly in line with each other, he sent the mage flying backward with a strike of his palm that sent a repulsive force into him before dismissing the spatial spell that expanded their battlefield.

Flying back, the mage almost immediately crashed into the beastman that came running as almost thirty meters distance turned to not even two without any change in his momentum.

Having been sure of this outcome, there was no delay after this before Darganth's next spell struck and a pillar of flames shot up around the two. Encasing them completely, it obscured their sight long enough for Darganth to finish his next attack.

Casting another spatial expansion spell, he this time centered it around his two opponents. Additionally, he purposefully removed the component of the spell responsible for creating the additional matter that ensured that the ground and other objects that extended beyond the radius of the spell's effect at multiple points remained continuous.

As such, the earth beneath the two men's feet suddenly filled dozens of times the space with the same mass, leaving it only as an uncountable number of individual particles that fluttered down and accumulated on the bottom of the ensuing crater. Amid this, Darganth's opponents also plummeted downward as they abruptly lacked ground to stand on.

Waiting one or two brief seconds until he sensed the mage's fall slow down, Darganth didn't try to bet against how fast the man's flight spell could accelerate him upward and directly cancel his spell. Immediately, the loose dirt particles were compressed back together as space returned to its normal state, causing a small eruption of earth to jump out of the crater as the more densely arranged grains crashed into one another.

Amid this small explosion, his two opponents vanished as soil reappeared all around them and swallowed them whole. During this, the mage's shield strained under the impact of the expanding earth being flung against it, with small cracks forming across its surface.

However, once the initial momentum vanished, the pressure on it quickly fell back below what it could endure. But before the mage could even fully enjoy seeing his defenses start to mend, Darganth's next spell already struck.

Rapidly increasing gravity manifold in the area, he quickly returned the pressure facing his two opponents beyond what the mage's shield could endure. Already cracking under the weight of the ground above him, it couldn't offer him any protection from it when Serania sent a blast of compressed air into the ground.

Pushing through the multiple meters of soil above the man, the spell burst through the mage's shield and erupted upon contact with the mage. The ensuing blast ripped him apart and sent the loose earth flying upward, leaving a shower of dirt to fall on Serania and Darganth.

At the same time, it catapulted the aura user upward, sending him flying through the air with an enraged expression. Not giving the two any respite, he burst toward Serania by jumping off from a platform of coalesced air that formed beneath his soles.

Swinging down his claws as he shot toward her, his strike slid across her personal shield and sent him flying past her. Rolling over his shoulder to catch the head-on landing that followed, he slid to a halt before lunging at her with a furious shout.

"To stand against your own people. I'll at least take you with me, traitor!"

Reacting calmly in the face of his attack, Serania stepped to the side and let his strike sail past her personal shield. Already channeling a spell through her arm, she then raised her hand and sent a wall of lightning his way with a pushing motion of her fingers.

Bending as it came into contact with him, the spell layered itself around the beastman as it enclosed him from all sides. The numerous horizontally aligned bolts of lightning that formed it pressed against his body during this, burning cuts into his skin and flooding his system with enough electricity to kill a manaless human.

"These words might be wasted at a dead man like you, but I betrayed nothing. I help the person who matters most to me enact his vision, something I intend to do so for all eternity. And while those on the beast continent fell in line, you were just foolish enough to oppose him so accept the consequences instead of complaining that I don't care for the same people that never did anything for me."

As Serania finished speaking, ten lightning spears appeared in a flash all around her. Appearing as bolts of lightning that were frozen in place, the constructs were nonetheless substantially different as they possessed mass despite otherwise still acting like lightning.

Thus, when they struck after accelerating toward the aura user, they didn't just burn and electrocute him but cut into his flesh just like a metal spear would have. Simultaneously still containing their electric charge, they unleashed their energy as all ten skewered the aura user's body, burning him from the inside out as lightning directly flooded into his organs.