Chapter 380: Five Shadow Kings Formation
[Storm Hornet’s Allegro!]
[Shadow Aegis!]
Bwoom!
Jasper released a barrage of lightning aether enhanced kicks that created the illusion of a swarm of giant hornets diving stinger first into their target. However, the shadow leader ended up throwing up a shield made of dark aether that absorbed the incoming attack.
Most of it anyways, a single kick managed to bypass it completely and scratch the shadow leader’s aether armor, more specifically the faceplate.
While the blow was merely a scratch, it didn’t stop Hurricroak from gloating and mocking her opponent.
An angry enemy was a careless enemy afterall.
“D’awww look at that! Looks like your big ole shield art couldn’t block everything.”
“Tsk! It’s only a scratch you brat, nothing to gloat about.”
“And yet you haven’t even landed one of those on me! So I think there’s plenty to gloat about.”
“Grrr…”
The shadow leader had dealt with infuriating opponents in the past, but they were just hard to kill.
This brat was both hard to kill and plain annoying.
Granted, it also didn’t help that most of his subordinates were tied up dealing with the so-called “demons”, who all turned out to be immune to the poisons they had painstakingly crafted for situations where the opponent was stronger than what they could handle.
It was during this tumultuous time that the shadow leader soon received a faint aether signal, one that he didn’t expect to get requested at this time…but one that he quickly approved due to how bullshit this situation was!
‘Alright you annoying brat, if you say you’re demons, then let’s see if you can really handle the dark.’
Buoyed by this decision, the shadow leader fought a bit harder than before.
“Annoying brat! Allow me to give you the spanking your non-existent mother should have given you ages ago! [Shadow Saw Slash!]”
“Oh, now we’re cooking with fucking gas are we?! [Storm Roar]!”
Evidently, the rest of the shadows fought a bit harder as well, as if to make sure their opponents keep their eyes only on them.
[Shadow Fetters!]
[Dark Lashing!]
[Formless piercer!]
But of course, the “demons” fought back equally as hard.
[Eruption Kick!]
[Frozen Morningstar!]
“FUCKING DIE ALREADY!”
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[They seem to be…fighting…harder…than before!]
[Think they’re trying to take us down by attrition?]
[Maybe…]
[Well, too damn bad we don’t exactly have stamina bars…except for maybe Hurricroak right now?]
[Nah! Core of Resolve, baby! I got stamina for days! That said, Jasper is doing surprisingly well right now too…he is kind of freaking out a bit, so we should probably take em out before they do something stupid.]
[Wait, has that boy been conscious this whole time?!]
[No, no, just…right now. Also, it’d be more accurate to say he’s not fully conscious. He was still somewhat present in the moments up till now, just not as vocal.]
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Surrounding the warehouse where the battle was taking place, more and more warriors dressed in black robes and wearing blue masks appeared one after the other.
As they appeared in the vicinity of the warehouse, each of the shadows began to form the exact same hand seal and channel their aether towards the warehouse, causing a vortext that was nearly invisible to the naked eye to form around the building in question.
These warriors were summoned here the moment the shadow leader gave his approval for a course of action that’s only done when the power discrepancy was too large for them to ignore or overcome with numbers.
One of the most important factors in war was terrain advantage.
Calvary need flat, open fields to effectively charge, archers need towers in order to fire further and it’s much easier to charge down a hill than up one.
And of course, assassins need darkness to hide their intentions.
It doesn’t matter how big or fast an opponent may be, if they don’t know where they’re going or don’t see what they’re fighting, they always fall in the end.
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As the battle raged on within the warehouse, Victor, Simos and Graff managed to bust out of the door and get into open…only to immediately about face and get back into the warehouse when they saw what was on the other side.
“Holy shit that was a lot of fucking shadows outside,” Victor noted.
“Why are there so many of them?,” Simos asked.
“I don’t know!”
“Wait, we’re on their side, why do we care if they see us attempt to run?,” Graff followed up.
Simos and Victor looked at Graff like he just said something incredibly stupid.
“What?”
To emphasize the point he was about to make, Graff held up three fingers and listed off the reasons why it was a bad idea for them to run right now.
“They don’t know we’re on their side, we’d probably look like traitors and/or escaped targets, and they’d probably kill us on sight as a result of that!”
“… ain’t that one big reason?”
“Bro!”
“I get the point you’re making, but how are we going to get out of here if we no way of identifying ourselves as friendlies? It’s not like we can strip the mask and cloak off a shadow in a timely manner!”
“Wait…maybe…”
It was in that exact moment, when this controversial suggestion was made, that Fia Venus had suddenly appeared.
“What the fuck are you three doing sitting around for?!,” she yelled, “we have to get out of here, now!”
“We were just-wait, what?”
“Don’t question it, just follow her!”
Fia flung open the door to the outside and proceeded to strut out, followed by Simos, Graff and Victor. As the quartet left, several new shadows entered the warehouse, carrying with them several unmarked scrolls.
“What the hell are those?”
“Above your pay grade, now move.”
Just before the scroll holding shadows disappeared from the line of sight, Victor turned his head back to see the scrolls being unfurled one after the other.
He couldn’t make it out completely, but the runes he could make out were the words, “true darkness”.
While he wasn’t the most versed when it came to tune arrays, he knew that anytime the rune, “true” was involved, bad shit happened.
‘What the fuck kind of array is that?’
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[Oi, Hurricroak! That trafficker bitch is looking to make a quick exit!]
[Oh no she don’t!]
‘GET HER!’
[Working on it.]
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“Hey! No retreating from the battlefield without at least getting hit once! [Thunder Ball]!”
“Don’t think so!”
Boom!
As soon as Hurricroak saw that Fia was about to make her exit, alongside the now increasingly irrelevant trio of idiots, she fired off a concentrated ball of thunder aether that kind that would cause continuous sonic damage to one’s body upon impact or explode in an ear shattering sound.
However, before it got close enough to even graze the bitch who was the cruz of this situation, the shadow leader intercepted and knocked away the ball of thunder to the side, causing it to detonate elsewhere.
Evidently, this had the unintended consequence of blasting open a hole into one of the warehouse walls, allowing the people inside to see what was going on outside.
Namely, the sheer amount of people outside dressed like the shadows inside the warehouse.
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[Oh shit, there’s more of them.]
[Oh goodie, more people to annoy the shit out of me!]
[What are they…doing…with their hands?]
[I don’t know, but the shadow vortex thing surrounding us doesn’t look-]
<=ALL OF YOU, OUT OF THE WAREHOUSE, NOW!=>
[That’s not good.]
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As soon as this happened, the shadows engaged with the kaijin other than Hurricroak stopped fighting and proceeded to exit from the vicinity as quickly as possible.
The kaijin were about to follow suit, but before they could, four new Aether Grand Masters appeared and intercepted the kaijin before they could escape.
These new Grand Masters also had an oni-like appearance similar to the blue one engaging Hurricroak, but these new ones were colored different shades of blue.
There was probably some deeper meaning behind this coloration, but the kaijin were too busy fighting to give a flying fuck at the moment.
“Took you three long enough!”
“Apologies, Ogrim, but we found it rather incredulous that you were fighting demons. Good to know we were wrong.”
“Wait, you’re being held up by a child?! I thought you’d be having issues fighting this big elephant looking one!’
“I’m a…mammoth!”
“Oh fuck, they talk!”
“Shut the fuck up for a moment!,” the one identified now as Ogrim replied before grappling Hurricroak.
“Get off me Captain Bad Touch!,” Hurricroak roared as he cranked by the lighting to try and electrocute their grappler.
But Ogrim held strong as he made the declaration that cleared up what the fuck was going on.
“Shadows! Open the formation, now!”
“Hah!”
As the order was given the shadow vortex suddenly increased in density until it completely enveloped the warehouse, the kaijin, and the shadow leader’s inside.
All that was left now was a giant sphere of pure darkness, the kind not even stars and moonlight could pierce into.
One could only speculate what would happen inside this sphere of darkness, but to certain individuals, it was bad enough that happened in the first place.
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Formation: Five Shadow Kings.
Ranking: Sixth
Affinity: Caligos.
Description: A formation developed on the Umbral Spider Continent, it allows the warriors channeling it to create a zone of “pure” darkness. That is to say, it creates an area where all five senses, touch, taste, sound, smell and hearing are utterly eradicated.
Not destroyed mind you, but so muffled and distorted one might as well be crippled in all five senses anyways.
The point of this formation is not to destroy those entrapped in it, but rather, create an environment where assassins and those trained in using their aether in detective manners to take advantage of those who are used to using heightened senses to win.
In essence, it forces the battleground to be one where one must apply their “sixth sense” to win.
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=It is, but I don’t think we have anything to worry about until-.=
‘WHY DOES MY BRAIN FEEL LIKE ITS GOING TO RIOT OUT OF MY SKULL?!’
=That happens.=
