The Horde had no trouble just adjusting the course of Choking Wind so that it would strike at the Warden the moment she reappeared.
Much to their surprise, Phloria didn’t just Blink, but also Switched them to keep Athung safe. The Mage Knight conjured her personal tier four Spirit Magic spell, Stalwart Defender.
The penta-elemental spell used the light and earth elemental aspects to form a thick barrier that only let the light in, the fire element to convert the kinetic energy of incoming attacks into heat that the water element would neutralize, and the darkness aspect to eat at anything that stuck at the barrier for too long.
Such a young Awakened foiling one of their best spells flabbergasted the Horde and bought Athung the time she needed to finish her array. The three concentric magic circles started revolving as she projected them amid the enemy lines.
The innermost circle used gravity magic to generate a powerful suction akin to a tornado, sweeping in everything that came too close. The second circle used dimensional magic to limit the area of effect of the first array, allowing Athung to adjust its power according to the circumstances.
Whenever one of her allies neared the array, she would reduce the output so as to not suck them in as well whereas the moment only enemies remained, she would unleash the full power of the gravity array.
The last and more external array conjured a thick layer of darkness magic within its area of effect. The three magical formations combined together generated a gravity field of variable intensity where everything stuck inside would be devoured by the darkness.
On top of that, such kind of array had a limited effect on the Awakened apprentices, but it was deadly for the Hordes. Even Awakened humans had their bodies refined and their mass increased enough to easily escape the gravitational pull with their flight spells.
The Hordes, instead, were each comprised of countless small living spores that had a negligible mass, making it impossible for them to resist Athung’s spell. If they assembled into a physical body, they would also lose their greatest advantage and offer an easy target, but if they didn’t, the array alone would have cleared the field.
‘I really hope you are recording that, Solus, because Friya is going to have a field day when we show this fight to her.’ Phloria thought.
‘Yeah, sure. Attacks incoming from your three and six.’ Solus replied, amazed by how much information she could now collect with three brains even while keeping the Eyes’ scanning abilities to a minimum.
“Those three guys are amazing.” Lotho the Treant said with a tinge of envy in his voice.
“They have no training, yet they managed to assume on their own the most effective battle formation for Awakened units. The Spear, the Shield, and the Highmaster.”
He pointed respectively at Lith who led the undead by example, at Phloria who coordinated the humans in protecting the Wardens, and at Athung that alone lay waste on the battlefield.
“Maybe sending some of our recruits into the human army as a part of their apprenticeship wouldn’t be such a bad idea.” Feela pondered. “Phloria has received her training there and she’s the only one who is coordinating her actions with the others instead of acting solo.”
She pointed at the total lack of coordination of the Awakened forces.
“My apprentice is a great strategist, but with such few numbers and so many blockheads there’s not much she can do.” The World Tree sighed, seeing Aalejah rushing through the battlefield to change the exhausted crystals that fueled the arrays with new ones while also shouting orders that fell on deaf ears.
The elf pointed out every weak point she identified in the enemy formation, but no one listened to her.
“Yeah, too many people didn’t follow the protocol and fought on their own outside the fortress. Most of the Beasts and of the Fae stuck with their groups and fell with them. The fight is almost over.” Raagu said.
The battle at the fortress was almost won, but only because most of the Hordes were still busy wiping out the apprentices outside the base to keep them from joining the rest of the Awakened forces.
Once the enemies converged on the base, no matter how hard the apprentices fought, they would only delay the inevitable.
***
At the same time, outside the city.
After days of aimlessly strolling between the Kingdom and the Desert in the hope to find something that would jog his memory, Vareen had finally found Urgamakka. He would have never done it if not for the massive array field that covered the city and without the help of his new pets.
To set up the fake city, Inxialot had employed so much magical power to control his various devices that Urgamakka shone like a beacon to an Abomination’s mystical senses.
To make matters worse, there was a reason why the Eldritch Abomination had received the nickname of Plaguespreader. After centuries of studying his condition of undead and how Chaos interacted with living beings, Vareen had discovered how to share the “gift” of the black core.
After feeding upon a prey, he returned the stolen energy and mixed it up with his own, turning them into living-Abomination hybrids. Unlike Baba Yaga’s children, however, his creatures had no free will nor much time to live.
The growing Chaos inside of them made the hapless hybrids as hungry as Vareen, forcing them to feed non-stop to keep their Abomination side from devouring the living half.
They had helped Vareen to scour the lands, looking for anything that possessed enough light element to quell their hunger. Coyotes, insects, and vultures had searched the area for kilometers from both above and below until they had found the trail of the mana geyser that fueled Urgamakka.
‘This is odd. I remember the city being built upon a geyser, but I have no memory of this place.’ Vareen thought while studying the defensive arrays.
He recognized both those ancient enough to belong to the city and those that the Council had laid as a security measure in the case something like that happened.
“Dammit! This place is almost as secure as the Royal Palace.” He said after discovering countless barriers and the Warping arrays that would bring the Council there the moment the alarm sounded.
“Feast, my pets. We have to be quick. If Salaark arrives, I’ll be lucky if even one of my pieces makes it out alive.” The hybrids and the Eldritch attacked with perfect coordination.
By feeding upon the power of the external arrays, they gained the power to cast Chaos spells that pierced the internal formations, turning weeks of hard work into ruins in a matter of seconds.
***
Inside the city, at the same time.
“Don’t miss a single second of footage.” Inxialot said while he and Zolgrish fine-tuned devices that would record the energy fluctuations of the Hordes from the control center. “The runts managed to make the mushrooms go all out.
“This is priceless data and the only reason why I submitted to the Council’s decision. If the mushrooms really hold the secret of the white core, I’m going to be the only one who finds it out.”
