A thick wave of cursed mana spread out from the orb, it was unavoidable.
[You have been affected by : Instant death. But your skills negated the status]
“That’s it?” Sofia asked, looking at Everelle then Velania, who both seed equally unaffected.
“It… It did nothing?” Velania asked.
“I am immune to instant death effects,” Sofia said first.
“And all Sunless are just unaffected by most effects like these. Props of being an amorphous mass of magic goo, most such magic is designed with regular biology in mind,” Everelle continued with a shrug.
Velania frowned slightly, “What about the rest of the effects though? Did I rember the spell wrong? I was sure… Well, I… It’s your turn, I guess…”
“I only have a few options I even know of at these mana ranges… This next one is a spell I read about in a book when I was researching information on Aura,” Sofia explained before she even took her turn, “Aura lock.”
‘Aura lock; 65 000 000’
The air seed to solidify around Velania and Everelle, as if it suddenly turned into a big block of transparent glass, trapping them in place.
Seems to work as described.
What the spell was actually doing was hijacking people’s aura to lock their mana in place relative to themselves. That ant the stronger one’s aura, and the more mana they had, the stronger the restriction.
This was originally a Dragon-hunting spell, but Sofia thought that it was perhaps better not to ntion that.
“You should be able to break out of it relatively easily,” Sofia told Everelle, “Brute force will do.”
After about ten seconds, Everelle started to move slightly to the sounds of breaking glass, despite nothing much happening visually. All at once, she broke free with a shattering noise.
“Damn. Weird one. How is it that I got out before her?” Everelle asked, looking in Velania’s direction, “And why weren’t you affected at all?”
“The spell’s strength is proportional to the target’s aura, so it’s a much stronger restraint for her. I wasn’t affected because of my mana heart, it prevents my mana from being affected by external aura. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that ans she wouldn’t have been able to turn my Destroyers into petals if I had summoned them myself… But anyway. It looks like this will give her a curse mark or two.”
“How long does the spell last?” Everelle asked.
“It doesn’t have a limit, just freezes your surrounding mana once and that’s it, it unfreezes when you break out. Honestly I would be tempted to learn it if not for the mana cost.”
“Can always get it later. If it can restrain soone like her for that long, it’s a very good spell.”
“One day cooldown though.”
“Good things don’t co free.”
“True. So… How much mana do you need for your words exactly?”
Everelle scratched her ‘head’, “well… Rounding things up, I have a 500 Million, a 2 Billion, and a 50 Billion.”
“Fifty billion?! Yeah, you can forget that.”
“Figured. No black hole for …”
“You wanted to summon a black hole?! You want to send us all to the Deep or…?”
Everelle laughed, “Honestly that would be a hell of a lot better than the ‘regular’ black hole experience.”
“You say this with so much certainty… Do humans on Earth really have the technology to just make one of these things without magic?”
“In theory. Never been done, not when I was alive anyway, but- Ah, censored.”
Purple marks appeared on Velania’s left arm.
“Oh, looks like we got our first point. You already know what to summon next?” Everelle asked.
“I do, actually. That’s the highest mana cost ‘thing’ I know of for certain, actually, got a certain Richard to thank for this one,” she said, “He told they typically target the highest-mana enemy first, but it’s still going to be dangerous so… Just be ready to take over next no matter the mana count, because that’s my last word.” �
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“Understood captain,” Everelle answered, “Just rember, I will die there if you don’t protect .”
“I haven’t forgotten your instructions, don’t worry.”
“Good, then let’s go, I’ll be waiting right there,” Everelle finished, making her way to the pedestal and compressing her body into a ball of black goo the size of a head right next to the pedestal’s base.
Alright. Let’s hope that Richard was precise with his numbers…
“Hellspawn.”
‘Hellspawn; 128 554 320’
A strong flow of mana started leaving the orb, and started to accumulate about twenty ters away from Sofia and Velania. A gigantic creature, more than ten ters tall, slowly stood up. It was a mountain of muscles with three ugly horned heads, goat-like legs and huge hairy human-like hands.
The hellspawn roared.
There was no magic, the re air pressure of the sound wave blew Sofia away, it was like getting hit by a wall, she lost 60% of her health in an instant. The remainders of the Architect Matrix instantly crumbled, and the Aura Lock surrounding Velania was brutally shattered.
Fuck. Sofia thought as she hit the far wall of the ga room. The majority of her bones were separated in small pieces inside of her, like pieces of a puzzle waiting to be assembled.
Everelle managed to stay near the orb!
Sofia hurriedly started fusing her bones back haphazardly and flying back toward the orb. She had to be there when Everelle used her next word, or they both wouldn’t survive it.
She watched as Velania summoned large cubes of Mithril over the hellspawn’s heads and hands, and Asterite shackles around its ankles, before pushing the creature back with her telekinesis.
The hellspawn was pushed back but did not topple over, it banged its hands together and the mithril cubes were blown to smithereens in one strike, freeing its humongous hands.
Instead of attacking more, Velania rushed to the orb.
“BASILISK!”
Sofia couldn’t quite see the mana cost from where she was, and she did not even really care, as she was more worried about the giant green thing that had just appeared in the sky. It was like the bloated demonic fusion of a Dragon and a Sandworm, it had no limbs except for two pairs of leathery wings, and a gigantic maw with teeth the size of doors.
For one reason or another, it instantly turned to the Hellspawn busy freeing its heads from the mithril cubes.
A wave of mana traveled through the Basilisk’s entire body before shooting out from its gaping maw. Sofia could barely see the attack, and suddenly the Hellspawn along with the entire half of the ga room behind it were covered in a thick layer of green muck. Everything seed to lt at the touch of the muck, and gigantic plus of smoke arose.
Yet, the battle stopped there. The two creatures were silenced by the apparition of sothing new that they instinctively knew to fear without even understanding it.
Everelle had taken her more human form again, with a hand on the orb, she had calmly pronounced two words.
“Sundial 2.”
A huge ball of tal had appeared beneath the basilisk. It was decorated with what looked like depictions of four different flags, in different flavors of red, blue and white stripes and stars, with a few yellow stars. Hovering mid-air, the thing’s appearance had propagated a strange pulse around the ga room. A harmless pulse without any magic, that yet sohow felt like reality itself was being torn apart.
Sofia rushed and teleported, making it to the pedestal. The plan was for Everelle to compress herself back into a ball, and for Sofia to hide her in the hole of her chest while she deliberately hurt herself by charging into the hovering ball. That would give her protection through [Singularity edict], and hopefully allow them to both survive the incoming doom.
The large tal ball started to shine. It was like a miniature sun, and it made a sound unlike anything Sofia had ever heard. Like the low sound of a looming end, certain to co.
The basilisk and the hellspawn fled to the corners of the room in a frenzied panic, trapped by the ga room’s boundary.
Everything happened in fractions of a second. Before Sofia could enact hers and Everelle’s plan, they were both uncontrollably pushed back hundreds of ters.
Sofia heard Velania’s voice, “ADURIN’S WALL!”
She couldn’t see anything anymore. The light was too intense. Either way, she had no ti to make it back to the thing before whatever was going to happen happened.
Then the light died down all of a sudden.
We’re dead.
It was in that mont that Sofia realized the utter inadequacy and weakness of her angel bolts.
That thing Everelle had summoned? Overwhelming power.
It felt like ti was slowed down a thousand tis as Sofia watched the tallic ball expand and the explosion start, just a few hundred ters away. It engulfed everything.
Calling it an explosion was perhaps too weak, in fact. It was hard to describe the thing other than by saying the obvious, it was like the birth of a new sun.
And at the last instant, as Sofia felt the heat of the explosion reaching her, as she herself was about to be swallowed by the mind-blowing torrent of flas and energy, soone appeared in front of her and Everelle. A winged paladin in shining armor, raising a gigantic Mithrium shield.
The paladin scread as she fought back against the deafening explosion.
And soon, it was over. Everything disappeared, the explosion, the heat, the power, the shield. Sofia and Everelle were alive, unscathed.
In the distance, the artifact rolled on the floor, cracked.
The paladin fell limp to the ground, her armor and wings disappearing into a thick mist of mana.
Sofia rushed to her side.
“Velania!”
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