The fight had turned into pure chaos. Shouts and screams filled the air. Magnus looked up - the skies over Sky Mountain were clear, not a mosquito in sight. Not surprising, given the feast they were having below.
"Magnus... how do they even know who’s good and who’s bad?" Grace asked, voice trembling as she peered through her scope. A second later, she answered herself, "Oh! I see now. Cliff’s n - the Springvale troops - tie white scarves around their necks. The Ridgebreak Battalion folks, they wear armbands with the word ’Ridge.’"
Magnus didn’t respond. He’d already spotted that. What caught his eye now was how both sides had lost all sense.
With black swarms of giant mosquitoes circling the battlefield, so Springvale soldiers had gone mad. They shot at anything that moved, friend or foe, just to stay alive.
The Ridgebreak Battalion wasn’t faring better. The ambush had rattled them hard. They hadn’t even placed a proper rear guard. Deserters were pouring out in droves. Tony, the vice commander, had bloodshot eyes as he ca down personally, gunning down more than twenty fleeing soldiers with his guards. Still didn’t stop the bleeding.
Damn it. These Ridgebreak dogs are collapsing.
Magnus’s eyes sharpened. He turned to Grace. "Go! Tell Sophia and Emily to ready five hundred n. The mont the shooting dies down, charge in. All of them - use tal Crystals. Full power. We’re going for zero casualties."
"Zero?" Grace froze. In a war with tens of thousands? That was madness. Even with tal Crystals - what, the enemy didn’t have ’em too?
But she didn’t question him. Maybe it was just his hope talking. She nodded, then darted off in a flash.
As soon as she vanished, Magnus exhaled deep, summoned a log of Nature Crystal, lit it, and plunged down toward the Ridgebreak convoy.
His target: their vehicles. Burn them all, cut them off for good.
Bruce spotted him through the command truck’s telescope - there he was again, the one with the blue-flaming log. He ground his teeth.
If it weren’t for that damned kid, we wouldn’t be in this ss!
"Send half the guard company," he spat. "Let them all use tal Crystals. I want that bastard caught - alive!"
Bruce’s voice dripped with rage and greed. Whatever the hell that fire-stick thing was, he wanted it.
If I had one of those things... no way I’d still be taking orders from Cliff.
A hundred of those, plus tal Crystals... with just a hundred n, I could take his whole damn army.
Bruce’s mind raced with plans he couldn’t even speak aloud. Too bad he didn’t know the fire-stick and tal Crystals couldn’t be used together. Or that Nature Crystals were rare beyond belief. Magnus had just stord off the battlefield and instantly felt the pressure closing in. He stood out too much. Both sides, Springvale troops and Ridgebreak Battalion, ca at him without hesitation.
To the Ridgebreak soldiers, Magnus was the other side’s trump card - to the Springvale n, he was already a hated figure from the night before.
Guns, grenades, blades - they were useless against him. The tal Crystal wrapped around him blocked it all. The only threat ca from those with tal Crystals too - his Nature Crystal couldn’t touch them.
But Magnus had the edge - speed. His second awakening gave him four tis the average man’s speed. That was double what most first-awakened could manage.
He kicked aside three tal Crystal soldiers in four steps, broke free from their grasp, and in one swift leap landed in the middle of the battlefield. He used a soldier’s shoulder as a stepping stone, vaulted up again, hit another’s head, and just like that, he left the tal Crystal troops on both sides spinning, targetless.
Not far off was the Ridgebreak army’s convoy. Magnus locked eyes on the command vehicle. A ring of dozens of soldiers surrounded it - they weren’t fighting, clearly guarding a higher-up.
Magnus charged in with his round log-flat club swinging, aid straight at the two front soldiers, hoping to set them alight and trigger a chain reaction through the rest.
But to his surprise, every damn one of them had tal Crystal defenses.
So many elite troops ard to the teeth, standing here while chaos raged in the field. Cowards. Their commander clearly had no spine, hiding behind these crystal-armored bodyguards.
Before Magnus even had ti to curse, he noticed the command vehicle itself had started up, engine humming - they were trying to flee.
More than twenty soldiers rushed at him. He drew a deep breath, then sprang forward. In a flicker, he stomped on soone’s helt, flipped up, and landed on the roof of the fleeing command vehicle.
"Thought you could run? You should’ve known the price when you attacked Ashbrook Town," he growled.
With both hands, he swung the club down. The strike shook the vehicle’s roof, and blue flas imdiately burst and spread across the tal surface.
The log weapon had shrunk down to about the thickness of a single arm, just under two ters long, and still burning through energy at a frightening rate. Magnus knew even just a touch from it would light the vehicle - sa blue fire, sa destruction. But slamming it down like this triggered the ignition faster and burned more Nature Crystal at once.
That was fine with him. He wanted to trap the commander before he could bail out.
Ten seconds later, the command vehicle exploded with a deafening bang. The blast knocked Magnus sideways. Mid-air, he twisted, bounced off a few other vehicles, and didn’t waste the montum - wherever he hit, he set them ablaze.
"Who the hell is this kid?! What’s he trying to do!" Tony yelled.
He’d been blown into the air himself, his tal Crystal shielding barely keeping him alive. In that towering fireball, he clearly saw Magnus, moving from one vehicle to another, each one erupting in flas.
And in his hands - what exactly was that weapon? Tony hit the ground hard, frustration bubbling to the surface. He didn’t even bother to stand before roaring at the guards, "Move! Go catch that bastard right now! Don’t let him torch another damn vehicle!"
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