For something so massive that it almost defied meaning, there were barely any disturbances in the world, almost as if the massive tentacle was not real, just a phantom of something that could not possibly exist, however, what I could feel in space was something extremely different... it was almost as if the fabrics of space itself was being constantly torn open, and there were countless ripples, cracks and eruption happening.
It was this warning from my space resonance that caused me to quickly withdraw my domain into my body; otherwise, I suspected that I would have been instantly ground into chunks of flesh from the silent eruption of space that was happening when the tentacle erupted from the ground and was climbing towards the heavens.
It was at this moment that I realized why Vrakth, as an Arcanist Tier demon, had not used his domain during our battles, but the Arcanists inside the Caelith were able to use their control over their domain to battle me.
Even though this tentacle did not seem real, I knew that with more seals being loosened, it would become more real, and this entire place for miles would be destroyed, but already, there were things that were not visible to the perception of mortals and Adepts being broken.
In this moment, I wondered how many changes were happening around me that my perception was too weak to perceive or lacked the proper tools to understand.
There may be a lot, but one great thing about being able to swim through time was that I could revisit past events and look at them with new eyes.
The Swarm Queen was coming, and I was failing my World Quest as a result. There would be no Sovereign here to halt this eruption just to study me; I had to face the consequences alone.
As the tentacle kept rising into the sky, the tear in space accelerated the multiplication of the portal, and where there had been dozens of tears in space, there were suddenly hundreds, then more than I could count, the unreal space pressing demons out of every one of them at once, the extrusion rate climbing so fast that the waves of demons became a single rising flood.
The count went from thousands to tens of thousands to a number my mind stopped counting when it reached hundreds of thousands. The entire east, stretching to the horizon, was filled, chitin on chitin, a carpet of iron-dark bodies pouring toward the tentacle’s base at the southern face, as if they wanted to dig out the Pale Matron or sacrifice themselves for her rise.
Because I stood in the air, I could see so much, and I knew that if I survived long enough, I would surely open all my Earth Gates, because rising with the flood were the real prey.
∞
The three-horned sorcerers came in their hundreds. I had been fighting on the ground in the past loops, so I had never seen the true scale of their arrival.
They rose through the multiplying portals and spread across the sky over the crack, and behind them were the pale things that resembled translucent, veined, eyeless humanoids, and higher still, far up where the clouds swirled to avoid the tentacle, vast bat-shaped demons flew, so high they looked small, which meant they were not small at all.
From them I could feel powers that reminded me of Sad, and that meant that those bat-like demons had powers close to that of Sovereigns. I was guessing that they may not control the powers of Sovereigns, but they were most likely as physically strong and as durable as a Sovereign.
The whole ladder of the swarm, from the trash at my feet to the shapes in the clouds, unfolding at once, and all of it was rising with the Queen.
There was beauty and horror in this moment, and I had lived it long enough to find it.
I heard a sound that confused me for a moment, and I realized that it was my heart beating fast with excitement. The memories of my battles under this red sky returned to me, and I could not help the small smile that touched the edge of my lips.
’Well, Elric, it is time to see how truly strong you have...’
The first three-horned reached me before I finished the thought. I had released my web, but the spell still lingered around me for half a mile, and any unlucky two-horned that ran into it would be diced and harvested, but the three-horned cut through the web.
He was using his shadow construct to shear through my threads like they were cobwebs, and I don’t know why this made the smile on my face broaden... perhaps my madness has not fully left me.
I dropped the lazy posture and I took three steps in the air, but the fourth was Stormstep, and the air around me vibrated before it shattered by the glow of lightning that shone like a star in my previous position, and when the glow faded, I was no longer there, but anyone with a sharp eyes would have seen that the instant the lightning had flashed, it had taken the shape of a smiling mouth.
The sound of my heartbeat had not arrived when I was inside the first three-horned’s guard before its shadow-construct finished the sweeping gesture it was making to cut through my threads. Lightning Edict compressed the lightning that flowed across my skin to a glowing blue blade that found its way into the base of the skull where the three horns rooted.
I twisted my hand, and his head flew into the air, as the lightning I left on the stump of his neck drilled its way into his chest and fried his heart to ash. I was already gone before the light faded from his six eyes, my thread snapping out in short, violent lengths, taking two more heads and drawing their cores into my channels as they came apart.
[ Stored Essence: 78,695 → 85,140 ]
Better. A three-horned was worth the wait, and they were more exciting to battle, not the thrash below. And to make matters even better, there were hundreds, and more were coming through the portals.
To add to the good news, they were all turning towards me, their gaze taking in the sight of three bodies falling from the air, and then I felt a familiar sensation among their number, and I laughed.
"Oh, Vrakth, how I missed you... You have something of mine."