"HOW THE HELL DOES HE HAVE SO MUCH MANA?!" Irhaal scread into the storm of exploding frost, her voice cracking as another shockwave slamd into the do.
Gone was her previous aloof elven poise as shards of ice the size of her forearm hamred against the barrier, each impact jarring her teeth as she forced another spell into existence.
Blue flas of the highest purity she could muster spiraled around her hands before she compressed them into a tight killing sphere, launching it with a sharp sonic crack of her own.
And it missed.
Because, of course, it missed.
"Damn it!" she screeched as the fireball exploded uselessly into the clouds.
Her voice was swallowed instantly by the next blast -
-BOOOOM-!!
As another colossal Ice Boulder detonated onto the do, sending shrapnel flying like frozen artillery.
The barrier rippled violently with cracks shimring across its surface before sealing again.
Gorran, Tier 5 warrior and walking fortress of Team Laps, staggered even with Amaterasu’s blessing coursing through his own magic.
"How much longer, Naya?!" he growled as he braced his shield up like he was holding up a collapsing sky.
Beside him, Naya stood perfectly still.
Eyes closed and hands pressed together.
Her breath was steady despite the carnage while Naf clung desperately to her robe, shaking like a leaf while the priestess whispered the final lines of her prayer:
"O Radiant Mother, Sun that burns the false
O Dawn that pierces shadow’s veil.
Hear us, and guide your wrath to our foes
Let your arrows fall as judgnt from the heavens."
And then the temperature changed, and light gathered up above...
And the next mont, the sky split open.
A halo of gold tore into existence overhead, bathing the entire forest in the light of a newborn dawn.
Within the radiant circle, countless orbs of condensed sunlight ford, each trembling with the goddess’s power.
"Irhaal!" he roared with a savage grin, "Hit him with the biggest, dumbest spell you have... let’s scorch that bastard!"
Irhaal didn’t need to be told twice. Her hands shot outward with blue fire swirling around her like miniature hurricanes as she began her chant again.
And up above, Nico hovered in the clouds with frost caking his arms.
He looked at the tiny golden glimrs appearing in the halo.
And as he blinked, the glimrs grew.
And grew.
And grew.
"...oh co on," he groaned, dumping every ounce of MP into flight and precognition, and bolted.
And a mont later-
-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-!
The golden orbs detonated into motion, and launched after him at supersonic speeds, catching up to him instantly.
Nico managed to dodge the first volley by the skin of his teeth, feeling the heat graze his cloak.
But the projectiles curved mid-air.
They arced... corrected course, and ca right back at him.
"They’re HOMING onto ?!" he yelped.
He fired back on reflex, unleashing fragntation Ice Pebbles.
-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-!
So orbs detonated mid-air, hit by the shrapnel before exploding in bright bursts of gold.
But for every one he hit, ten more scread toward him.
There were hundreds.
No... They were far more than that.
And each one tracking him with the unblinking precision of a divine targeting systems.
The sky behind him lit up like a golden teor shower.
"THAT’S... THIS IS BULLSHIT!" he scread as he dove, spun and twisted, detonating pebbles in all directions.
But still the lights chased him like celestial heat-seeking missiles.
The sky had beco a battlefield of gold and frost.
And Nico twisted through it like a man trying to out-dodge God’s bullet hell, with each precognitive flash slamming into his mind with brutal force.
Precognition didn’t speak; it lunged at him.
Two seconds of the future with hundreds of variables dumped into his skull all at once, making his vision go white at the edges.
Every incoming orb wasn’t just a projectile; it was a variable of trajectory, angle, speed, and there were hundreds of them.
The strain compressed his thoughts like soone tightening a vice around his brain.
He dragged breath through his teeth with each pulse that hit him.
Left.
Up.
Down... twist.
A golden sphere streaked past his cheek, blistering the skin before exploding behind him with a thunderous crack.
Blood trickled from his nose.
Still, he forced a Fragntation Ice Pebble with hands trembling, reinforcing the inner core till it overloaded with just enough mana to detonate at that exact second to match the incoming cluster and -
- CRACK - BOOM-!!
Three orbs burst apart mid-air, but the shockwave staggered him, as ten more instantly curved toward his exposed flank.
[Can’t keep up!]
Tracking hundreds of those orbs via Precognition, and creating Fragntation Ice Pebbles all the while doing evasive aerial maneuvers against super-sonic homing projectiles required the kind of cognition Nico simply didn’t have.
"Ah!" Nico yelped as another blast grazed his foot, spinning him in the air.
Through gritted teeth, he fired off another sequence of fragnted pebbles, each one requiring more precision than his fraying mind wanted to give.
Yet the barrage did not slow.
It chased him like a divine teor swarm, lighting the clouds in gold.
Nico wasn’t winning.
He was surviving on instincts, future-sight, and raw stubbornness.
But while he was carving chaos through the sky, the island below cracked with a different kind of violence.
A ripple of black mana unfurled at the forest’s edge.
Luke stepped out of the darkness with his knife drawn, and wild grin spread across his face.
And in the sa heartbeat, Nom-Nom dropped in front of him, with violet embers curling off her wrists.
And blood dripping down onto the ground from the gash on her shoulder as she growled.
The air between them snapped like a drawn bowstring let loose.
A Greater Dragon.
And a master of shadows who still thought he was fighting an experintal newborn dragon.
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