Mob Sorcery 5 - Ch47

Note: Chapters 47-51 are being posted together. Be sure to read them in order. Commentary after Ch51.

Air shimmered around Mei’s body and her form flickered for a moment.

She vanished.

Then reappeared. Her body seemed to distort, with sections of it disappearing while others blurred or snapped in and out of existence. Powerful streams of magic roiled off her.

“Activate the wards,” Momo roared.

Her bodysuit-clad figure gleamed from the shadows of the empty stands, a translucent barrier clinging to her body and tails. She held her arms in front of herself in a strange stance, while her tails oscillated with ivory patterns that ran along them like power currents.

“Not like this,” Mei hissed.

She produced a familiar metal folding fan from within her robe. It was adorned with the red military flag of Japan. Snapping it open toward Momo, an inferno burst from it, spiraling through the air toward the fox.

Vince jabbed his cane at it and a black jet of flames intercepted Mei’s spell. Daji’s magic continued to pulse through his veins.

The wards thrummed beneath his feet, swiftly filling the air and becoming strong enough to nearly give him a headache. A soft blue barrier—almost aqua in color—rose over the stadium in the form of a dome. Tessellating triangles formed a glowing pattern across the barrier that appeared vaguely copyright infringing, and Vince suspected videos of tonight’s events would be subject to immediate takedowns by a highly litigious video game company as a result.

Something erupted from the ground beside Mei. One of her tails stopped glowing white and she finally returned to a fully solid form.

“Fine. I’ll play with you just long enough to break a hole in your dismal efforts,” Mei growled.

A disfigured horned figure covered in dirt and wearing a mask surged from beneath the ground. Scars ran across his entire body and a metal object had been embedded in his stomach. Vince barely recognized the undead as a former Yakuza, thanks to the pin still attached to his suit. Mei’s face twisted in fury at the sight.

“And you talk to me of betrayal,” she whispered, her voice barely audible to Vince.

Her tails surged with the same soft blue light as the dome, and a jet of foxfire consumed the undead.

A loud pop echoed across the stadium, and Mei’s contingency barrier activated, shrouding her in dense white light. Hundreds of small, crystalline objects pelted her, each exploding in flashes of light. Errant shards struck the ground and blew craters open. Mei swept the entire mess away with a sweep of telekinesis.

A spike of earth struck her from behind, and she grimaced.

Then she held Daji’s soul egg up. “This doesn’t matter. I’ll just—” Her hand and tails shined with prismatic light.

An eruption of black flames from the egg greeted her attempt at the same time several other spells crashed into her. Kiyoko’s wind blades gouged craters in the dirt, while Gaby’s lance exploded on Mei’s barrier. Ashley attempted to impale Mei with a pillar of ice from below alongside a dozen earth skewers from Nina.

The chaotic mess of spells turned the arena into a light show, with rocks and ice shards flying everywhere. Vince couldn’t see a damn thing and his weak senses were barely any better.

A weight settled in his jacket pocket and he rammed a hand into it. Daji’s egg sat there.

“You didn’t think you could be free of me, did you?” Daji asked, giggling. “Now summon your dragon and tornado. Let the others keep Mei busy.”

Vince turned and dashed away, relying on his enchanted shoes to speed up the process while Gaby and Nina dashed in. Cora shot forth on the opposite side of the field, purple light shimmering around her five tails.

“I will not be mocked!” Mei shouted.

Dust billowed past Vince as she cleared the surrounding terrain. Two paper talismans shined in her fingers, held high above her head. Both shined with gold Japanese script. Immense power exuded from them, easily a match for the majority of Vince’s comrades.

Mei hurled the talismans at the ground and two towering ogres burst into existence. Both were formed of paper mâché wrapped around an invisible frame, and the paper comprised innumerable paper talismans identical to the one that summoned the ogres.

Vince had battled these summons before. They were shikigami, a type of summon used by Japanese sorcerers known as onmyouji.

“Did you think your numbers would mean something?” Mei asked as her tails shimmered with power. “I defended an entire region of Japan by myself for centuries, barely even known to Knightsgate. My familiars are on par with legends like Zenki and Goki.”

As Vince spun and began casting his dragon, the others closed in on Mei and her shikigami. One ogre carried a spiked club the size of an ordinary man, while the other bore a shield that looked more like a tree trunk. While Vince had a feeling these ogres fought in tandem, he didn’t see how they could stand up against a half-dozen fighters.

Cora struck first. Her empowerment magic allowed her to glide across the ground in a blur, and she shot past both ogres before they even noticed. Mei sneered at her. Cora’s fist shot at Mei’s side.

The shield ogre blinked between the two of them. Japanese characters lit up with amber light across the talismans that made up his paper body, and Cora’s body froze as if she’d punched a wall of concrete.

Actually, she could probably punch through a dozen walls of concrete. Vince struggled to think of a material that could stop her so dead.

Mei’s tails glowed white, and Cora dashed backward with her arms crossed. Bracelets glowed beneath Cora’s jacket and an odd, multi-layered barrier of crosses appeared in front of her. Mei barely even moved as her tails unleashed a force blast at the other fox. Several layers of the cross barrier exploded instantly.

Spotting the shield ogre teleporting to Mei’s defense, Nina and Gaby chose to tag-team the other ogre. They split up, their arms glowing with their respective magics.

Gaby shot at the club ogre in a streak of light. Moving impossibly fast, the ogre spun and slammed his club into her from above in a blur of green light. Dirt exploded upward as Gaby caught the blow with a summoned shield, but it forced her to kneel into the crater it created. A lance appeared in her hand even as Nina attacked from the other side.

Nina’s fist struck the shield ogre as it blinked in front of her, cutting her off from her true target. She smirked and her gauntlet unleashed her spell. Two fists of earth crashed into the sides of the shield ogre, holding it in place, and she summoned a dozen earth skewers to pierce her enemies.

The golden lance and Nina’s earth spikes fired off at the same time. Both spells tore the ogre’s paper body to shreds, even as it desperately swung at Gaby. She somersaulted to the side. The club tried to follow her, but watery coils appeared from midair to seize the weapon and hold the ogre down.

Goro’s tails glowed blue as he focused on the ogres, restraining both with his water spell.

“Cute,” Mei said.

Her tails swatted Nina and Gaby away with force blasts, cracking Nina’s barrier in a single strike. The eight-tail fox crumpled a talisman in her hand and it burned with a transparent flame.

The holes in the ogre’s bodies began to repair themselves within seconds. Vince gritted his teeth.

Those summons were well beyond anything he expected. How the hell could Mei be capable of powerful telekinesis, healing, purification magic, and also create indestructible summons as fast and strong as the best independent enforcers?

“She is an eight-tail fox. With time, she’d grow her ninth tail naturally and ascend to demigodhood,” Daji said. “But her onmyouji skills are closer to that of using magic tools. Think of those talismans as single-use magic tools that she inscribes with complicated enchantments. Chinese sorcerers developed talismans as a method to circumvent the magical weakness of humans long before Merlin and the French devised the modern spellcasting system.”

Great. So Mei had the power of both modern and ancient magic systems at her disposal.

“As will every ancient immortal.” Daji laughed.

The ogres continued to struggle against Goro’s restraints. Both Mei’s and Goro’s tails abruptly turned soft blue, and Vince knew what was coming.

Foxfire erupted beneath the ogres, and he saw them take steps toward him. The club swung through the air.

But the eerie blue flames clung to the club, eating through it within seconds and reducing it to prismatic light. Even as the tall plume of flame vanished, foxfire ripped through both ogres.

Mei clicked her tongue as she turned to focus on Goro. Her eyes narrowed as her eight tails glowed white.

“Sir!” Cora called out in panic as she spun.

“Stick to the front line,” Nina snapped at her, and the fox froze.

“Follow your orders, Cora,” Goro said.

Goro’s five tails shimmered with amber light as he summoned shields of earthen walls around himself. Telekinetic blades scythed through the earth like rocket-powered scalpels. They slammed into his barrier, first cracking it, and then shattering it. He doubled over in pain.

His contingency barrier snapped up before a third force blast crushed his chest. Goro hastily summoned more earth walls as he downed a healing infusion.

Mei’s onslaught slowed as whips formed of wind smacked against her barrier. A gargantuan spear of earth exploded on her head, and Gaby shot through it in a beam of light, her fist emitting a backblast that blotted out both her and Mei.

A purple blur knocked Gaby aside before a thousand tons of force created a crater beneath her. Cora and the unicorn rolled aside. Mei remained unharmed, her barrier cracked but already healing.

Raw force couldn’t hope to break through. They’d suspected as much, but needed to confirm it. Vince had managed to take Mei by surprise and nearly kill her when he fought her, but that had been when she underestimated him and with Daji’s magic-consuming flames.

That meant only Daji’s magic, Kiyoko’s power, and maybe Goro’s foxfire might help. In a pinch, Ashley’s blood magic might possess the raw force to crack Mei, but any retribution might be fatal to the demon. As a purifier, Mei specialized against demons and their kin.

Vince roared the final words of his dragon incantation, and the huge monster spilled forth from the flames around him. Black fire rippled from the thirty-foot long beast and its scales gleamed with the crimson of Daji’s tails and hair. But her fox features remained at bay, and the dragon still looked like a dragon.

Mei glanced over and soft blue light overtook her tails. She’d immediately chosen him as the priority target.

A half-dozen undead burst from the ground across the stadium, each almost identical to the Yakuza from earlier. They hurtled across the stadium grounds at Mei.

“Pests!” she snapped.

Telekinesis overtook her tails and she swept the undead aside with sweeping blows that crackled against Vince’s barrier even this far away. But the undead Yakuza merely tumbled before rising again. Black necromantic magic filled in any wounds. Hamelin cackled over the earpiece.

“She already knows the trick and is scared,” Hamelin said. “Smart bitch, I’ll give her that.”

The others closed in on Mei while she was distracted by the undead. She unleashed more shikigami, creating a pair of oversized boars and a crane. Gaby blasted apart the crane with ease, while Nina and Cora split off to deal with the boars. Wind whips continued to rain down.

As Mei’s barrier began to crack, she held her arms out to her sides and a shimmering sphere surrounded her. The telekinetic bubble blocked all attacks with ease, and was easily two or three times tougher than her barrier. Vince had needed to pummel it with fireballs while using his fire tornado to take it out.

Speaking of which, he began casting his fire tornado. It limited how much he could do with his dragon, as he lacked the focus to split his attention between a meister-tier spell and weaker ones. That might be worth training if he survived this.

Dirt and rubble began swirling around Mei, and she glanced upward. A grimace marred her face.

A vortex whirled around Mei as a black star descended like a meteor, green light cascading behind them. Kiyoko hit the ground and created a miniature tornado that tore entire chunks of the field apart.

Mei reappeared sixty feet away, well clear of the blast but without her bubble. She opened her mouth to say something.

Only for her necklace to shine with Japanese script. Her eyes widened and she snatched a talisman from her sash, and burned it with foxfire.

A wave of distorted air rippled out from the burned talisman, washing over the entire stadium. Vince barely noticed it and it appeared to have no visible effect.

Except Anzu, who appeared directly in front of Mei, her arm outstretched and frozen only inches from Mei’s throat. Her golden tails were frozen in space while a subtle purple sheen glittered on her bodysuit.

Mei showed the same frozen effect, but everyone else looked around in confusion.

A few seconds passed before Kiyoko shot toward the pair, the runes on her katana glowing.

Mei blinked a few dozen feet away and Anzu’s hand shot forward fast enough to create a shockwave. Vince gulped at the sight.

Who knew the Inaba twins possessed empowerment magic?

“So you finally show yourself, rat,” Mei spat. “After all this scheming and your pathetic games, I imagined you’d be too scared to reveal yourself.”

Anzu straightened and her tails danced behind her. “How else can I collect those tails to weave into a gift for Vince after your insane dreams are dashed into the ground along with your skull?”

“Hmph.” Mei sneered. “I’d make a similar threat, but I won’t disgrace my body with the dirty tails of you and your sister. I’ll content myself with the memories of your deaths.”

Anzu’s smile vanished and she melted away into thin air. Mei gripped her necklace and grimaced.

The undead screeched and rushed her, while the rest of the team closed on her.

A moment later, Vince held his cane to the sky and took control of the battle. His fire tornado emerged from the air around the edges of the field, creating a battlefield large enough to prevent Mei from simply walking out of the tornado. It was his normal tornado for now, as he didn’t know the benefit of using Daji’s power for it. The pressure of maintaining both spells forced him to down a magic infusion.

Mei’s eyes narrowed at the inferno surrounding her. Her lips thinned.

“Enough games. If I have to kill all of you, then I will,” Mei said.

All eight of her tails turned blue and she hurled a talisman at Kiyoko. It exploded into a flood of pink water, and the tengu shot into the air for some reason. Goro cursed in Japanese as he hurled foxfire at the strange colored water.

“It’s cursed,” Daji said. “Too many possibilities, but the pink color means it has unstable magic. The talisman was likely a storage one.”

“Fuck. So we have to worry about what ancient evils she has tucked away and will throw at us,” he said.

His dragon leaped toward Mei and began unleashing an onslaught of Daji’s black flames, intent on disrupting whatever spell she had prepared. Her barrier began to melt away under the attack, but Mei ignored it.

The moment he made progress, her contingency barrier snapped up, just as strong. And after just a few seconds, Mei threw her hands up to the sky, as if praying to the heavens. She cast her meister-tier spells as swiftly as Kigenai.

Huge silver beams appeared above her and took the form of a symbol Vince didn’t recognize. A whirling portal of foxfire swirled between the beams. For a moment, he worried she’d turn it on them or some huge behemoth would step out of it.

Then a flood of azure flames poured out of the portal, covering Mei and a twenty-foot-radius in a waterfall of foxfire. The fire surged forth like water, spilling out and threatening to consume the whole field.

“Don’t touch it,” Nina snapped. “It won’t kill you, but you’ll lose everything magic on you.”

The entire team rapidly retreated, and Vince withdrew his dragon. His black flames vanished into the endless mass of foxfire. He could empty himself into that flood and barely make a dent.

Momo re-appeared close to the flood, her tails glowing the same blue as the foxfire. “Goro, help with a ward. I know you can as well, Kiyoko.”

“Yes!” Goro said, nodding his head like a dog as he moved his tails and arms in a complex motion.

Blue pillars shot up around the edge of the flood, and translucent boundaries shimmered between them. The foxfire crashed against the boundaries, vanishing upon touching it. Sweat appeared on Momo’s forehead, but her bodysuit wicked it away with ease. Her tails never stopped moving. Kiyoko hovered nearby, holding up a finger that glowed bright white.

The flood began to die down. The portal had already vanished. But as Vince sensed sharply rising magic within the wards, he knew Mei had only been buying time.

“Something big’s coming,” he said. “Momo, can I fire through the ward?”

Momo’s eyes widened as she looked back at him and his dragon. She bit her lip. “Not with those flames.”

Goro frowned and looked between her and Vince, but Mei proved a greater distraction.

The foxfire flood died down enough to reveal Mei floating where she had once stood. Her tails fanned out around her in a 270-degree part-circle, all glowing so white they looked religious. Mei held her hands parallel to each other and the ground, but roughly half a foot apart. Her irises and pupils had vanished, leaving only solid white.

Vince had felt this level of power only once before, and even then it hadn’t been as insane. The sorcerer helping the hit squad had been a fraction as strong as Mei.

“Virtuoso-tier spell,” he called out, fear racing through his mind.

“Barriers above and below,” Momo snapped. “Don’t ask, just cast.”

Every member of the team stopped moving and immediately summoned what defenses they could above and below them.

Vince’s dragon stood over him while he tried to project a barrier beneath him. Earth barricades wrapped over Gaby and Nina, who huddled close together as Gaby held shields of light with both hands. Kiyoko surrounded herself with wind vortexes and a bubble. Ashley did likewise. Goro summoned multiple forms of elemental defense, even as Cora rushed to his side.

They only had a few seconds before Mei smirked and pressed her hands together.

The world compressed, and so did Vince. His barriers shattered instantly as more magical power than he’d ever reckoned with slammed into him at once. Screams echoed in his ears.