The third beast I managed to detect is the Stormscale Basilisk. It is serpentine, as the na implies, and it’s about the size of a building, and yet it’s impressively fast despite its mass.
Its serpentine form carves through the forest, shimring scales flashing with every movent. Each motion tears into the earth, splintering roots and crushing the undergrowth beneath its weight.
Trees bend and snap as its coiling body smashes through them, sending broken trunks to the ground. Lightning crackles along its hide, leaping outward to strike nearby branches in sharp, blinding arcs that always seem to reach farther than they ordinarily should. Leaves shrivel and blacken, with their edges curling from the raw force of the lightning surging through the air.
The ground trembles as if nature itself were being torn apart. And the beast is currently fighting.
Explosions of fire, mana projectiles, trees bending and trying to hold it, ground around it moving to grab it. There is also a huge golem made of earth in its path, and around that golem, black smoke surrounds it.
Sophie, Gareth, Savant, and Klara are there, fighting it, along with a bunch of guys I do not recognize, but judging by their mana signature, they must be Hell difficulty at the very least.
A burst of orange light suppresses the lightning and attempts to poison the beast. Sophie and Blackie controlling her golem. Gareth, with a silver crown over his head, enduring the incredible attacks of the beast. And Klara, clad in armor, lashes out at the beast with a big axe coated in sticky red light. Every ti she cuts into the beast, so of that red light, smoke, or whatever it is, remains and lingers in the wound until the Basilisk envelopes itself in a burst of lightning to burn it away.
Sophie imdiately reaches out to through the link and shouts, (Don't look into its eyes!)
Just in ti, I look away.
The Stormscale Basilisk destroys the trees in its path, throws aside the golem, and charges at only to be stopped by Gareth, who stands in its way, silver armor and huge shield in his hand, blocking the lightning. The Basilisk tries to strike him, but a silver bubble surrounds Gareth. The beast crashes against it, and instead of breaking or pushing him away, the building sized beast bounces back.
It attacks again with the sa result, and the barrier refuses to budge an inch, though it doesn’t seem to make sense. It should be torn from the ground and tossed aside with Gareth inside.
(It has so sort of mana based poison that spreads through its gaze, causing your own mana to paralyze you. And it can do the sa thing with its domain to a lesser extent,) Sophie explains.
Klara approaches the beast from the side and leaps onto its back, swinging her ax as she does. All the lightning crackling there channels a path through her armor, and several arcs of lightning lance through the blade of the ax, heating its surface and causing the tal to glow red from the heat. The red-haired woman swings it down, only to make the huge beast spring forward, crashing through a number of trees until it finally shakes her off.
Sophie's mana rises up, and the trees around us bend, extending their branches and trying to grab the beast or slow it down. Her golem shrinks, the dirt falling to the ground, as it abandons its rough humanoid shape into the form of a snake that slithers toward the Basilisk.
The golem coils around the Basilisk, which keeps moving, tearing up chunks of earth in its rage, as it opens its mouth to release a powerful, stream-like barrage of lightning that sets the surrounding trees on fire and carves chunks out of the ground.
Savant places himself in the beast’s path, surrounding himself in the orange light of his domain, and lifts his sword. The broken blade glows with the sa orange light as it extends, radiating increasing levels of mana. The light around Savant expands, forcing Klara, Gareth, and the others to move back as it collides with the beast's domain. Lightning crackles and fractures upon reaching deep into [Dawn].
I could join in and get the last attack. I could probably just hunt the other beasts in the anti and let the others do all the work, just to killsteal this one later.
But at the sa ti, I know Lissandra is watching, and this is not what she had in mind. Even if I did take first place with that strategy, she would not accept it.
I know because, in this, our thinking is the sa.
Just as I'm about to leave, I detect a presence.
Tacita appears out of thin air, standing within Savant's [Dawn].
She smiles widely, untouched by the orange mana radiation that once seed to cause her so much trouble. Her modified field shields her, countering its effects.
Savant detects her and shifts his body, moving with incredible speed for a mont, just fast enough to counter.
But Tacita accelerates further, circling him with a playful grace that feels almost taunting. Her dagger flashes several tis.
Savant loses one of his legs below the knee and is about to lose his arm at the shoulder, but he shifts, and her dagger sinks into his forearm, unable to pierce the bone. I'm sure that bone is not the sa as other pieces of his body.
[Dawn] shrinks, and he changes frequency. Just a mont is enough for him to grasp Tacita's field, and with an incredible show of skill, he modifies his domain on the spot to counter her.
But Tacita knows it as well; as a final goodbye, she stabs her dagger with a green blade into his side and slaps him across the face before disappearing.
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The Stormscale Basilisk seizes the opportunity, and its lightning presses against the weakened [Dawn]
and almost hits Savant, who just barely manages to absorb part of the attack, before Gareth’s silver bubble surrounds him, deflecting the rest.
Gareth groans and rushes against the beast in tandem with Sophie's golem, which begins to grow in size as they charge.
I track the shifting air and glance to my left just in ti as Tacita appears nearby.
Noticing that I’m looking exactly where she planned to appear, she falters briefly, then shakes her head and disappears.
Before leaving as well, I send a ssage to Sophie, (Jean is approaching from your right and will be here in a few minutes. On your left is the Chinese tournant winner, but she’ll arrive after Jean.)
After delivering the ssage, I teleport away into the air and use kinetic energy to fly higher.
So that ans that the Nightshade Stalker, Witherclaw, and Onyxscale Hydra, for which I have sothing prepared, remain. Killing two out of the five Special grade beasts should get first place, combined with all the other kills. But there is also a chance soone will killsteal the Stormscale Basilisk and another beast and push for the 1st spot.
My decision not to killsteal the Basilisk only puts more pressure on , but I'm sure I know how Lissandra would feel about that.
I boost myself to the ground where I estimate the first floating island will crash.
The first attendee I et is so Hell difficulty guy; he turns his gun and points it at . It reminds of a sniper rifle, made out of materials I recognize as endurium and arcanadium. I also sense a bit of voidsteel, likely used for the bullets.
I wonder what he’s using to replace gunpowder. Or, for that matter, if he even needs it? If he has telekinesis, he can make it bounce inside the rifle or store montum to launch the bullet at speed. Maybe there is so inscription that handles the acceleration. Kinetic energy could work here, too, or even so kind of fire skill that would serve to create a small explosion.
I shake my head to put these thoughts away and say, "The floating island will fall soon. I would leave this area if I were you."
He follows my finger as I point at the island.
"It seems like it," he says. "I have noticed that fucked-up amount of mana up there. Soone pulled so crazy shit up there…"
Before he can finish, I teleport away.
Moving forward, I co across a pair who feel like they are from Easy difficulty. They don’t even notice before I teleport them away.
I dash further to the right between the trees and boost myself onto a branch. A Hell difficulty kid, around 15 years old, notices my movent as I pass through the leaves. He shoots lightning at , and I swing my hand, deflecting the lightning with a barrier I quickly create around my hand, and make it hit the nearby tree.
Before he can do anything else, I punch him in the belly to break his concentration and then teleport him away.
I continue doing so for the next 10 minutes, cleaning the area of everyone I can, and only then do I lift back up into the air.
Just then, the first floating island plumts, not gradually, but instantly, like a dropped stone. Whatever kept it aloft is gone, taking all the support systems with it, including the fail safes and backup chanisms.
Even from here, I can see the monstrous pull on the surrounding mana from the island's center, the black spear already on the brink of destabilization.
The sky rumbles with the weight of what’s coming. The floating island, vast enough to hold a city, begins to fall in a sudden, violent plunge. The sheer pull distorts the wind, sending shockwaves outward and bending the clouds around it as if the sky itself were being torn open.
From below, it looks like the sky is collapsing.
The forest on top of the island writhes as the falling mass picks up speed. Trees sway violently, so are uprooted in their entirety, their massive trunks flung into the air like twigs caught in a storm. The ruins, weathered stone structures half-buried in moss, begin to fall apart, the force of the fall shaking them apart before they even reach the ground.
And then there are the beasts. Tens of thousands of them.
So leap from the edges, trying to escape. Beasts of all kinds, including serpentine, winged, and phantom abominations, all desperately seek the sky. Others, either too stubborn or too oblivious, remain on the island, roaring, screeching, and howling.
As the island plumts closer, the pressure of the air around changes, so intense that it feels as if the atmosphere itself is being crushed beneath its weight. The ground below begins to react, tremors rippling through the area even before the island reaches it.
Then there is the impact. The ground erupts on contact, in an explosion of dirt, stone, and raw energy blasting into the sky like a volcanic eruption. A shockwave filled with debris erupts outward, leveling everything near the impact.
Trees find themselves obliterated, their remains scattered into the wind in clouds of splinters, leaving a significant portion of the forest altered in an instant.
In addition to the beasts on top of the island, more on the ground find themselves caught in the destruction, reduced to nothing as the sheer force of the impact tears through them. Those lucky or unlucky enough to survive are thrown through the air, with their bodies broken and limbs twisted.
And at the center of it all, the remains of the floating island lie half buried in the ruined landscape, shrouded by a massive dust cloud.
It looks like it's all over, but deep within the shattered ruins, sothing stirs.
At the island's core, the black spear finally destabilizes.
For a brief mont, everything goes silent, even the screeches of the beasts around it are cut off.
Then it erupts. The blinding white light fills the ruins, followed by a massive mana disruption pulse tearing through the forest. Everything within a mile or more is affected. Magic flickers and dies. Inscriptions collapse.
Another shockwave hits, a violent blast rips outward, sending debris in every direction. The nearby beasts that survived the impact are flung like ragdolls. Chunks of rock the size of buildings are sent flying through the air, crashing into the trees of the forest and rolling still further. So even fly through the air and fall into the sea, sending geysers of water erupting into the air.
The heatwave follows, a wave of searing air that scorches the land and ignites portions of the forest. The following implosion pulls everything into a vortex of crushing force. Dust, flas, even the very air twists and vanishes, pulled into the vacuum.
For a mont, there is again nothing but silence. Then cos the final release. A concussive blast that carves out a deep, empty crater where the ruins once stood.
And the hunt continues.
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