Nathaniel instinctively recoiled as the creature’s aura flared—monstrous, suffocating, absolute. Even the moonlight above seed to dim under its weight. But he would not back down. Around him, five colossal elentals lood, their forms sculpted from ancient sands, each radiating power. Smaller elentals followed in their wake, drawn by his call. His own aura surged in response, the dark orange runes on his bandaged arm flaring to life as he invoked his curse magic. One touch would be enough. Even that abomination couldn’t endure it unchecked.
“Attack,” he commanded, his voice low and dangerous. Yet it carried, carried by power and purpose.
The elentals responded at once, their thunderous charge shaking the ground. Auras clashed in the clearing like colliding storms. But then, from the heart of the battlefield, where darkness pooled like ink, a pulse erupted. The monster’s power spiked again, casting everything else aside like ash in a gale. Black fire ignited the air, and darkness poured outward, swallowing light. Nathaniel’s vision wavered. The creature rose above the battlefield, lifted by a pillar of writhing shadows. Light bent around it unnaturally.
From the swirling dark, massive black spikes launched—seven ters long and barbed like monstrous harpoons. The flas wrapped around them as they tore through the air, targeting the elentals with lethal precision. Smaller elentals were impaled outright, skewered to the ground, their forms already darkening as the cursed flas devoured them. Their sandy bodies blackened around the impact points, dissolving as if infected.
As the creature floated nearly twenty ters in the air, launching death at every angle, Nathaniel acted. He swept his bandaged arm forward, summoning a stream of wind that shimred orange as it passed over his cursed hand. If it reached the monster, it could mark the beginning of its end. But to his dismay, the wind simply dissolved as it touched the black inferno encircling the creature—his curse consud before it could even reach.
Shock twisted his expression. No one had ever pushed him this far. And now, one of his deadliest techniques had been rendered aningless. Rage surged through him, and he began to channel everything he had. His veins pulsed with molten orange, and a vortex of wind roared to life behind his back. Runes on his tunic blazed like dying stars, and his aura rose to match the monster’s.
Down below, the creature spun atop its pillar, launching spike after spike into the larger elentals. When a core was exposed, a tendril snapped forward like a serpent and tore it out, reducing the elental to a crumbling husk. Nathaniel wasn’t sure what kind of magic was at play—but the result was clear: total annihilation.
He had no ti left to hesitate.
With a flicker of movent, he vanished—his body carried by the wind. In a blur, he tore through the storm of black mist and fire, his aura forcing it aside like a blade through fog. He appeared beside the pillar and pressed his bandaged hand to its shadowed surface.
Touch of the Mummy.
Orange runes flared and began crawling up the dark surface, eating into the pillar like rot. The corruption spread slowly, as expected, but it was working. Realizing the threat, the creature lashed out—black tendrils shooting toward Nathaniel with murderous intent. But his form dissolved into orange wind and reford fifty ters away in an instant.
The monster’s tendrils whipped back, trying to claw away the spreading curse. But it was too late. The runes had taken root, and they were spreading too fast. Darkness peeled away from the pillar as the curse fed on its structure.
With a ground-shaking leap, the creature descended, landing before Nathaniel as the corrupted pillar crumbled behind it. Its domain flickered, destabilizing under the growing weight of the curse. And now, for the first ti, Nathaniel saw sothing shift behind the violet eye—doubt?
This was his strongest technique, and the black pillar had held up remarkably well—until now. With the creature no longer feeding it power, the structure began to dissolve into swirling shadows. Nathaniel raised his arm, the bandages around it glowing fiercely, and a jetstream of orange wind erupted from the vortex behind him. It shot toward the monster, faster than his eye could follow.
In the blink of an eye, the creature reappeared at his flank—its speed unlike anything he had seen before. Wreathed in black energy, its claws slashed toward his neck. Nathaniel reacted without hesitation, dissolving into orange mist and reforming atop the shoulder of a towering elental. Without wasting a second, he extended both hands. This ti, four sand-spears imbued with glowing curse runes launched toward the beast, drawn from the elental beneath him—material it could regenerate quickly.
The monster shot toward a nearby elental and tore through its leg like it was nothing more than brittle glass. Nathaniel tried desperately to direct the construct, urging it to strike in sync with his attacks. But the creature anticipated every move. It danced beyond reach, always one step ahead. anwhile, his cursed wind attacks were thwarted—either dispersed by veils of black mist or intercepted by flickers of black fla, both strong enough to consu his magic entirely.
Debris filled the air—stone, sand, and smoke—as the monster ascended the body of an elental. Then it stopped. With surgical precision, a tendril lashed out and tore the core from the giant’s shoulder. One of the titans fell. Only three remained—and one of them still carried Nathaniel.
“Damn it,” he muttered. He couldn’t land a hit. At this stage, the elentals were little more than obstacles. But they still had a purpose—they would wear the monster down before the final clash. He continued hurling cursed projectiles while the others fell, their cores ripped away by those nightmarish tendrils. It was grotesque—how the thing almost savored consuming them.
The mont had co.
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Nathaniel focused everything he had and transford into orange mist, reappearing directly before the monster. He lunged, grabbing for its shoulder—the one missing an arm. His fingertips connected for a single heartbeat before a devastating kick sent him hurtling through the air. Bones shattered on impact as he crashed into the sand, pain exploding through him.
Through gritted teeth, he forced down a healing potion and vanished once more into mist, reappearing atop another elental. Gasping from the pain, he raised his arm again.
“Cursed Sandstorm,” he hissed.
The vortex behind him surged. Sand whipped violently in every direction, glowing orange as his curse infused every grain. This was his final trump card—a storm that attacked both body and soul, a death sentence for anything caught within it. But it required proximity, and precise timing. He waited.
Below, the creature remained hunched where it had last struck him. It twitched, clearly in pain, as orange runes crawled across its form. Its once-overwhelming aura had dimd. The cursed sandstorm gathered, swirling with apocalyptic force. At first, the monster didn’t realize what had happened. Then the black mist around its body exploded outward—only this ti, it faltered. It couldn’t drive the storm back.
Nathaniel now had domain superiority.
His curse steadily gnawed at the dark magic, thinning it, weakening its hold. Even the black flas struggled to stay alight in the raging wind. Nathaniel laughed—ragged but triumphant—as he saw the monster falter. The glowing runes on its body had begun to fade, true, but so had its strength. It was on the brink.
In desperation, the creature launched a massive spike at him. Instead of dodging, Nathaniel directed the elental beneath him to raise its arm and intercept. The spike tore partially through, but failed to strike him. He grinned, ready to finish it—until a shadow moved.
A black figure ford from the darkness behind the spear. It hovered silently, directly in front of him. Vaguely humanoid, the specter held a colossal obsidian sword raised above its head. Its entire body was covered in glowing orange runes—runes that did nothing to stop what ca next.
Nathaniel’s eyes widened. “What—” was all he managed to whisper.
The blade ca down.
And then, only darkness.
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